Archive for the ‘Gadgets & Technology’ Category
Posted on October 24, 2008 - by CDS
Steampunk Goggles – Titanium Photochromatic Variable-Aperature Spectacles
Update: I thought I would post the actual maker of these goggles, too. The website is: http://www.smugmug.com/gallery/6278166_YCdn5. There are a lot more photos and details at this site.
It’s entirely possible that Mike Brown overdosed on ADD meds: These brass goggles scream “attention to detail.
Some numbers: The leather is actually bolted to the eyepieces, using 48 tiny bolts plus another four for the nosepiece. The leather was chosen for the tanning process which should give it a klife of a few thousand years.Ditto the eyepieces, which are machines from titanium and coated with Titanium Nitride. Predicted lifespan: 500 years plus. There are even brass eyelets in the leather eyecups to stop the lenses steaming up.
Mike put in a few nice extras, too. The sliders in each eyepiece close the leaf-apertures inside, which will cut out light and also sharpen your eyesight, just like a pinhole camera. The lenses themselves react to light and get darker the brighter it is.
source: Wired Magazine Blog
Posted on September 25, 2008 - by CDS
Peugeot Design Contest, 2008 5th Edition
“Create a Concept Car which is designed to evolve within the cities of the future, whilst retaining the key values of the 21st century. The projects should bear Peugeot’s stylistic codes and must contain the following four aspects included in this design competition: environmental awareness, social harmony, interactive mobility and economic efficiency.”
Source: Peugeot Design Contest 2008
Posted on August 19, 2008 - by CDS
Casa Tóló by Alvaro Leite Siza Vieira
Portugese architect, Alvaro Leite Siza Vieira, created this unique vacation home that is sort of molded along the side of the hill it is built on. Instead of using stilts or other common architectural elements, this home slopes upwards, just like the hill. The home starts at the top of the hill, appearing like a series of flat, concrete panels. Outer stairways, pools, and blocky rooms with panoramic windows add an artistic feel. I would LOVE to live here.
Source: designboom
Posted on August 19, 2008 - by CDS
Yamaha Wearable Motorcycle Concept
Looks really cool, but what about safety? Could you imagine getting into even a minor accident in this vehicle? There’s a million reason why this wouldn’t work today, but what about in the future? Is it possible to have such safe, clean roads, with strict enough traffic rules and enforcement that something like this would work? Maybe. Makes me think of futuristic movies, like I, Robot or Minority Report where our terrible traffic problems and congestion have been solved using automated vehicles that drive themselves or automatically run on tracks at speeds five times what we drive on the freeway. Maybe this wearable vehicle concept will sort of be what mopeds and electric cars are to us today: an alternative to the norm.
Source: CrunchGear
Posted on August 12, 2008 - by CDS
With the Olympics Festivities come a Slew of Cyber Attacks and New Phishing, Virus, and Spyware problems
The fellas over at Boing Boing posted this information regarding the Beijing Olympics Screensavers. PLEASE READ THIS IF YOU’VE DOWNLOADED ONE.
Boing Boing reader Bruce Satow tells us:
“I’m a Systems Administrator at a large university and I think I may of found something important, but not sure, but I think it is worth reporting. One of my friends said that it would be a good idea maybe to post this information somewhere that is popular, like boing boing.I’m a big olympics fan so I often check the official Beijing 2008 olympics page.
One of the sections is called the “fun page.”
This page has wallpapers and screensavers for your computer. I have reason to believe that the screensavers are keystroke logging programs hidden inside the Flash animation.
On my Windows XP workstation, I run Symantec Corporate Anti-virus, Zone Alarm Pro, as well as Spybot manually. I do many scans and security checks to make sure that my computer is never infected or compromised because of the type of work that I do.
Today I put on a wallpaper and installed one of the screensaver. The one I installed is called “The Spring of Beijing”. It is a flash based screensaver.
I set my screensaver to autolock the console so when it is running, you have to type in a password to unlock the screen. I had left my workstation unattended to do some work on another computer and when I came back to my computer, the screensaver was active and running. Normally, I just hit a key or move my mouse and the screensaver stops and then the login prompt appears requesting for my password. However, this time the screensaver was still running, but I could not interrupt it. So I did a cntrl-alt-del to stop the screensaver and I noticed that my Zone Alarm had gone off. A message balloon came up saying that the FlashForge Screensaver has a keylogger type program running and it had blocked access to the internet.
Then I thought — how clever. You have to type in your password to disable the screensaver, so basically it was sending the password and other information somewhere.
I did an anti-virus scan with the latest defs and a spybot scan with the latest updates, but it did not detect anything. I am not a Flash programmer so I really can’t validate my findings. I figure there are probably thousands of people who have downloaded this screensaver, and if they are not running some type of security program such as Zone Alarm Pro, it would go completely unnoticed and undetected. I am hoping that you guys might know someone who could dissect the screensaver and validate my findings. I hope that I am wrong about this, but somehow I feel that my finding is correct. I just don’t know enough about Flash programming to investigate it further.
The detection was made by Zone Alarm Pro with advanced settings. After the screensaver ran for a while, I came back to my computer and it was still running, tried to interrupt it, it would not stop, I did a cntrl-alt-del to kill the screensaver and notice the warning and process block from my Zone Alarm Pro.
Someone with some time might be able to setup a computer on an isolated network and to monitor packets coming from a Win XP pro computer with that screensaver installed to see what the heck it is doing. I normally don’t get excited about things like this, but I thought it maybe too important to just ignore.”
Regarding Mr. Satow’s testimony here to Boing Boing, Infowar Monitor editor Greg Walton tells us:
Such tactics are not only political weapons. The start of the Beijing Olympics last week kicked off a slew of malicious internet activity. Some are relatively indiscriminate – using malicious software embedded in innocent websites, often of news organisations with audience numbers boosted by their sports coverage, which then infects the visitor’s computer. Some are more sophisticated.MessageLabs, a security company, detected a bogus email sent to at least 19 national sporting organisations that purported to be International Olympic Committee information on media plans for the Games, but was actually carrying a trojan which takes control of the PC and scans all files and networks to steal information.
See this related news story in the Independent.
Related: Update on China/Tibet cyberattacks (and Russia/Georgia), and call for testimonials.
Posted on August 12, 2008 - by CDS
Spam & Virus art by Alex Dragulescu
“Alex Dragulescu is a Romanian visual artist whose practice embraces both traditional and new media. His projects are experiments and explorations of algorithms, computational models, simulations and information visualizations that involve data derived from databases, spam emails, blogs and video game assets. ”
“The images from the Spam Architecture series are generated by a computer program that accepts as input, junk email. Various patterns, keywords and rhythms found in the text are translated into three-dimensional modeling gestures.”
“Malwarez is a series of visualization of worms, viruses, trojans and spyware code. For each piece of disassembled code, API calls, memory addresses and subroutines are tracked and analyzed. Their frequency, density and grouping are mapped to the inputs of an algorithm that grows a virtual 3D entity. Therefore the patterns and rhythms found in the data drive the configuration of the artificial organism. ”
“The ASCII values found in the text of spam messages determine the attributes and qualities of the Spam Plants.”
Source: Alex Dragulescu
Posted on August 8, 2008 - by CDS
Recycle Bike
Matt Clark, an industrial designer from Southern California, has designed a new recycleable inversion-1 bike. It looks pretty cool to me.
“This bicycle prototype is aimed at improving and solving multiple issues involved in production. Particular attention was paid to maximize the potential utilization of automated processes and more cost efficient materials (IE: plastics).
The bicycle consists entirely of reinforced and unreinforced recyclable polypropylene. The patent-pending bicycle features a two component
frame: the plastic INNERFRAME and the plastic outer structure, both (in this iteration) dual components sets. Ideally, the material would be sourced from recycled plastic sources (IE: previously used consumer products such as bottles, containers, etc) to reduce environmental impact and to reduce material costs.”
Sourece: Bike Commuters
Posted on August 8, 2008 - by CDS
löscheimer Windows Recycle Bin
“plastic, steel and glass. where should the data go? an icon regains its physical form.”
I wish this was available in the US. I would definitely buy one.
Source: dialog05
Posted on August 6, 2008 - by CDS
Big Dog Quadruped Robot
Boston Dynamics has just released a brand new video of their DARPA-fundeed Big Dog Robot. Big Dog is meant to be a “pack mule” for soldiers some day. Behind Big Dog is some pretty cool force-controlled technology. With its quadruped gait it can regain balance when needed, traverse rough terrain by feeling it out, and climb 35 degree inclines. In this new video, in addition to some footage from previous videos, you can see it handling slippery ice, slopes in deep snow, and demoing its new walking gait.
Posted on August 6, 2008 - by CDS
Luxeed Dynamic Pixel LED Keyboard
“Sure we’ve seen illuminated keyboards before, but then we saw the Luxeed Dynamic Pixel LED Keyboard and stopped looking. With 430 LEDs the Luxeed is capable of individually lighting each key in your choice of color. What’s more it can do some amazing tricks like an animated rainbow across all the keys, or make each key light when you press it. You get four “preset” buttons above the arrow keys you can use to instantly choose between different customizable lit skin presets. Set-up a glowing skin for your favorite game with different colors to indicate each key action… or create illuminated patterns and designs. Hey, the Luxeed doesn’t have a tiny screen on each key like the legendary Optimus Maximus, but it’s a hell of a lot cheaper.”
Source: ThinkGeek
