I love a good Rube Goldberg machine - and this is one of the best I’ve seen!
Some people can really make a musical instrument speak.
No, I mean literally. (Narration is in German, but watch it anyway, and read the subtitles. Or Don’t, and just listen to the English bits!)
Building a Better Teacher - NYTimes.com
Although there are inevitably a lot of US-centric aspects to this article, I nonetheless found it interesting.
(Caveat: I haven’t actually read all of it yet!)
Amazing live sand art.
I saw this video a few years ago, but it is well worth a re-watch.
via UI and Us — UI and Ux design - UI and us Blog - Multitouch Art, Sand to Silicon
Happy spider
Ah. One of THOSE days.
“ If Apple becomes a company that uses its might to quash competition instead of using its brains, it’s going to find the brainiest people will slowly stop working there. You know this, you watched it happen at Microsoft. Enforcing patents isn’t a good long-term play: it’s the beginning of the end of the creative Apple we both love. ”
Wil Shipley’s Open Letter to Steve Jobs Concerning the HTC Lawsuits.
Roomba Vacuum Robot modified to see stuff as it works, to help you find things
Wael Chatila, One on my many legions of fans* sent me an email about a Roomba hack he made that mounts a computer and camera inside - so you can index any text the Roomba encounters as it goes about its vacuuming. Hopefully, that way you can find lost things in the real world! Neat!
As a bonus, you can also control the Roomba across the internet connection, and see the images from the camera - a spybot for you to check on your own home while you are out.
I think one of the coolest things about this Roomba hack is that it leaves the vacuuming function fully functional, and all the added parts are inside the case. Nice work!
A suggestion, Wael (or anyone else who wants to build it): I wonder if it is possible to index the images themselves and do a reverse image search? That way you could feed in an image of a lost object in, and find it in context. There are formidable challenges, for sure, but it would be very cool.
:)
Now, where did I leave my keys?
* for very, very small values of ‘legion’.
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