Cool toys and Gadgets

Boxee is pretty much brand new, but they’re already releasing an update to add new features to the mix. The company’s media player software that’s currently in an alpha version for Macs and Linux only, just got an update that adds the ability to stream Netflix movies and videos from sites such as the WB network, MTV and offers up photos from the Boston Globe.

Just two weeks ago, Boxee was working to gain venture capital funding in an effort to license their XBMC-based software to set-top box makers. An update like this certainly can’t hurt that effort, especially as more and more people are looking for ways to get their online media on their TVs.

The update also adds interface tweaks for sites such as CNN, Flickr, Picasa and Hulu. Plus, watching YouTube videos is now easier due to better browsing and added support for H.264 video. Though not currently compatible with Apple TV because of hardware issues, Boxee is working on adapting their software to it soon. A Windows alpha version is also on the horizon.

Relevant Entries on SlashGear

• Samsung Blu-ray players to support Netflix in HD
• Roku release GPL source code for Netflix Player
• Samsung Blu-ray Players now support Netflix and Pandora Services
• Hack your 360 to stream Netflix movies
• Netflix is considering streaming movies to the Xbox 360

The Norwegian company has released the Alpha version of Opera 10 browser for PC carrying a new rendering engine, Presto 2.2. Presto 2.2 will be the base for all Opera 10 browsers and is 30 percent faster compared to Presto 2.1 that is used in Opera 9.5+ versions.

The new version concentrates more on web standards, thus making Opera 10 to achieve a full 100 in the Acid3 test and also include features like on-the-go spell checking, auto-updating to latest versions and better HTML renditions in Opera Mail.

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Multi-tool... is a font via NOTCOT. Marcus writes -

My neighbour forgot his multi function tool in our kitchen. I started playing around with it and (surprise, surprise) tried to create a whole alphabet with the sentence “typography can be a multi function tool” in mind. I did not yet find the time to create a real font but if you want to play with it, feel free to download the high resolution versions of the colored (5MB) and the black(0.5MB) characterset as PNG.

Photography by Simon Jansen

New Zealander Simon Jansen has all the bona fides of an alpha maker. A software engineer and classic car restorer, he's got a half-built R2-D2 and a custom minibike he made from scratch. He achieved geek fame with his ASCII animation of Star Wars scenes (asciimation.co.nz), which practically defined obsessive attention to detail.

But a jet-powered beer cooler? This bloke operates on a whole 'nother level of absurdity.

Jansen set out to make the holy grail of many a maker: the homemade jet engine. In his Auckland garage, he welded his own combustor, bolted it to an old turbocharger, and added a leaf blower for air flow and a propane tank (sans regulator) for fuel.

The trickiest part was the oil system, which must maintain critical lubrication pressure: "I used an oil pump from an old Ford Escort Mark 1, driven by the motor and gearbox from a cheap 12-volt rechargeable drill!"

Don't try it at home without an exhaust temperature gauge that goes to 1,000°F and an rpm meter that hits 100,000. But bloody hell! It worked, with

the head-splitting roar that jet hobbyists live for. "Incredibly loud," Jansen recalls fondly. "You can hear the air being ripped apart as it is sucked into the turbine. I was grinning for days."

From adversity came the real breakthrough. Jansen's jet burned propane so fast that the tank rapidly iced up, dropping the fuel pressure. So he stood the tank in a tub of warm water. When a colleague remarked that the iced water could then chill beverages -- eureka!

Jansen says beer and dangerous machines don't mix, so he abstains from the frosty bevvies until he's finished playing with the engine. Ever the tinkerer, he has stripped down and rebuilt the jet beer cooler several times. "The latest iteration should be more self-contained and portable," he promises. "I've been telling the mates at the office we'll fire it up in the car park."

>> Jet-Powered Beer Cooler: asciimation.co.nz/beer

>> More Homemade Jets: junkyardjet.com

From the column Made on Earth - MAKE 11, page 19 - Keith Hammond.

James Delaney's created The Unfocused Brain, an interesting variation on Mitch Altman's Brain Machine:

This program and schematic is designed to flash LED's in certain brain wave inducing patterns. The device is controlled by four buttons that switch the generator between Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Theta frequencies.

...
After building and trying out the SLM I noticed that certain transitions from one state to another created particularly strong visual hallucinations.

My project is a deviation from the original SLM. Since my hallucinations seemed to be the same with or without the audio component I decided to leave it out. I added buttons rather than a program so the user can change frequencies spontaneously. I built this project with the Attiny461 chip.

Check out the Make Brain Machine thread for more ideas on variations.

And, if you get really ambitious, switch to low-frequency ultrasound for brain stimulation (pdf; thanks to Bryan Bishop for the link)

Pixel-based typography from 1567 - On the death and 441-year life of the pixel via DF.

The struggle to adequately render letterforms on a pixel grid is a familiar one, and an ancient one as well: this bitmap alphabet is from La Vera Perfettione del Disegno di varie sorte di ricami, an embroidery guide by Giovanni Ostaus published in 1567. Renaissance ‘lace books’ have much to offer the modern digital designer, who also faces the challenge of portraying clear and replicable images in a constrained environment.

Samsung will fulfill the dream of users looking for a QWERTY phone at a cheap price. The Gravity or in T-Mobile’s parlance, t459 offers a full QWERTY keyboard hidden beneath the screen and alphanumeric keyboard. As you would expect, there is nothing extraordinary over here except the goodness of QWERTY. T-Mobile will preload e-mail client settings of AOL, AIM, Yahoo!, Gmail while IM client list includes AOL, ICQ, Windows Live and Yahoo!.

The Gravity further pulls in a music player, 1.3-megapixel camera, Bluetooth, advanced voice recognition, loudspeaker, PIM functions and microSD expansion up to 4GB.

T-Mobile will be selling the phone for a cheap price of $50 with a mail-in rebate of $50. However, to qualify for the rebate, a user need to buy the phone with a 2 year contract and have a data plan not less than $14.98.

On today's episode of Bre Petis' I Make Things, my pal Nick Farr of HacDC demonstrates the Polyalphabetic Substitution Cypher Slide Rule (PASCSR) he made and uploaded to Thingiverse. Thingiverse launches today, too. It's a site, created by Bre and Zach Hoeken, where you can share your digital designs/object files with the world. Cool.

I Make Things
Thingiverse

Only few weeks after being released in the US by T-Mobile, BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8220 is now out in the UK too.

The smartphone is offered only by O2 for the moment, but there will probably be other carriers to also release it in the near future.  

RIM’s first and only clamshell, the Pearl Flip 8220 is also the only Canadian smartphone to pack two displays: a 2.6 inches internal one with 240 x 320 pixels, and a 128 x 160 pixels external one. Obviously, the latter allows you to view incoming calls, messages, battery status and so on, without opening the handset.   

Of course, in case flip phones are not your thing, you can wait for the touchscreen BlackBerry Storm, which should hit the UK soon, via Vodafone.

Anyway, here are the main specs & features of BlackBerry Pearl 8220:

• SureType QWERTY keypad
• Wi-Fi
• BlackBerry Maps
• Push email
• HTML browser
• Document reader & editor, from DataViz
• Stereo Bluetooth with A2DP
• 2 MP camera with flash and video
• MicroSD, SDHC card support for up to 16GB
• Talk time: up to 4 hours
• Standby time: up to 14 days
• 102 grams
• 101 x 50 x 17.5 mm

BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8220 can be acquired from O2 UK even for free, but for that you must sign a contract agreement and get a (probably expensive) data plan. 

Via Press Release

• AT&T finally brings the BlackBerry Bold: $299 starting November 4
• RIM, Nextel to launch the BlackBerry Curve 8350i in Latin America
• Qik alpha release client for BlackBerry now available
• Moto Q11 is official, out in December for an affordable price
• BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8220: RIM’s first clamshell smartphone announced

Mobile Safari on the iPhone is great. You can pinch-out/double click to zoom in, pinch-in/double click to zoom out, you can open up to 8 tabs and it also works as a local Word/Excel document and PDF reader. It doesn’t hurt that it’s one of the fastest mobile browsers available out there, but I’m sure I’m not the only one who wants to try an alternative mobile browsing experience on my iPhone. You know? There should be another browser, at least one, that can be used on the iPhone other than Mobile Safari.

Opera Mini is one of the most popular mobile browsers on handhelds, and it’s available for smartphones all over the world, regardless of whether they run on Symbian, Windows Mobile, or even low-end operating systems only capable of running Java-based apps. It’s fast, intuitive, and is very easy to install. It easily becomes one of the top contenders for an alternative browser on the iPhone.

Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t agree with the many people who say Opera Mini should be on the iPhone. In fact, even though there’s already a full-working Opera Mini app for the iPhone, as per Opera CEO Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner’s NYTimes interview, Apple won’t let it into the app store:

Mr. von Tetzchner said that Opera’s engineers have developed a version of Opera Mini that can run on an Apple iPhone, but Apple won’t let the company release it because it competes with Apple’s own Safari browser.

One could argue that Apple is just protecting its right to successfully milk the cash cow they have built on the iPhone platform, but taking a user’s options away before asking them is like playing God (which strangely, is very Apple-like, anyway.) There’s no promise that Apple will ever change its mind regarding Opera Mini on the iPhone, but really, the decision is entirely up to them. I used to look forward to using Mobile Firefox on the iPhone, but it looks like it will be a very long time coming if Apple doesn’t change its ways.

• Opera Kicks Out Mini 4.1 Beta
• Opera Mini 4.1 officially released
• Opera Mobile 9.5 Video Demo
• No Opera Mobile 9.5 for Symbian next week. Only WM users happy
• Traffic to social networks makes up to 40% of mobile internet usage