Ever wonder what was going on inside your car engine, but were too afraid to open up a hole and just look? Here’s a video made by someone who did just that (ok, maybe it took a little more effort). Can you identify all 4 of the strokes that go into a single cycle of the engine? [via neatorama]
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From the MAKE Flickr pool:
The Smart LED connects a single LED to a microcontroller and power source, allowing it to do fun stuff like relate the ambient temperature via pulses of light. Jim Blackhurst’s remix dispenses with the resistors for an even smaller profile, connecting the LED directly to the coin battery and ATTiny25 microcontroller, changing the RGB and flashing as instructed by the ATTiny’s built-in temperature sensor. See Jim’s Flickr set for more views.
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Just a friendly reminder that the 2010 Bay Area Maker Faire Call for Makers ends Thursday, March 31st, so get your applications in soon. We hope to see you there!
Looking for info on all of the Faires? Check out the 2010 Maker Faire roundup.
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Hot off the press iTunes 9.1 (not in software updates) but a download on Apple’s site – it now supports “books” since the iPads are making their way around the globe. I have a Kindle and I like it, but I might go iPad if I can’t search text on all the “Kindle” apps (Mac, PC, iPhone) for another week.
So far the update just added my audio books to “books” and it also added an enhanced podcast I made, but it’s not displaying it properly now, interesting… more later. Might need to do some hacking, it’s unclear what the iBooks format is – a plain ole’ PDF is not in the “books” section, and that bothers me, but it appears using something Calibre and converting it to ePub works…
Gakken makes excellent kits, many of which come from the Maker Shed with English instructions. The Karakuri Somersault Doll kit‘s directions are Japanese-only however, so I put together this build video to show the key assembly steps.
In the Maker Shed:
Employing a centuries old secret artisan technique collected from real Edo-period figures, the kit includes everything you need to create your own acrobatic doll (even the screwdriver!), plus a festive traditional kimono and a stylish tiered pedestal on which to stage performances. Moreover, with you pulling the strings, you can adjust the mechanism to control the velocity of the doll’s action. There are no English instructions included (book and kit are in Japanese but beautifully done) but the detailed illustrations are more than enough to easily put this kit together. MAKE is proud to be the exclusive distributor in North America for these brilliant kits from Gakken.
You thought six cores were nifty? This week, AMD and Intel have begun the multithreaded battle in earnest — if only on the IT front — with chips that have up to double that core density. This week, AMD has officially brought us that Opteron 6000 series leaked last week, a set of 8- and 12-core processors aimed at dual- and quad-CPU servers that it claims have both higher performance and lower cost than Intel’s recent hex-core offerings. Not to be outdone, Intel has just introduced a 8-core processor series of its own, the Xeon 7500, that it envisions deployed in mammoth 256-processor configurations. In bulk orders of 1,000, a single 12-core Opteron costs nearly $1,200, while the cheapest single 8-core Xeon will set you back a cool $2,461 in the same quantity. We don’t doubt they’re powerful, and we’d kill for a pair of either in our gaming rig — but at those prices, we’ll stick to building our supercomputer out of PS3s — Oh, wait.
AMD launches 12-core Opteron server chips, Intel counters with the 8-core Xeon 7500 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Mar 2010 23:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
GameStop listings are about as accurate as a 14th century musket — especially when it comes to release dates — but that didn’t keep news site GameSpot from capping the above screenshot. As you can no doubt read, the picture suggests that SanDisk will indeed release a specially-branded 8GB USB flash drive alongside the Xbox 360′s USB storage update — but at twice the normal price for a drive of that capacity. Our red hot rage at this injustice is tempered somewhat knowing there’s no concrete proof the $40 figure is correct, but knowing SanDisk (and, frankly, Microsoft’s own propensity for overpriced storage) we wouldn’t be surprised to see several green thumbdrives pulling a premium at retail next week. Once more for the record: as long as it’s larger than 1GB, smaller than 16GB and you format it using the Xbox 360 menus, any USB flash drive will do.
GameStop listing shows SanDisk’s Xbox 360-branded USB drives at outrageous prices originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Mar 2010 22:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Whether or not you think the iPad is in and of itself a worthy purchase, let’s not forget the investment doesn’t end at the retail counter or online shopping cart. Two little newsbits have popped up to serve as a helpful reminder to just that effect. The first comes way of verbiage from the iPad end-user licensing agreement dug up by MacRumors; in a nutshell, it suggests that while iPad OS 4.x updates will be provided gratis, subsequent releases (5.x, 6.x, and so on) could be offered at a premium, à la how iPod touch handles firmware. This is far from a confirmation, but it’s well within Apple’s right to do so. The second bit is derived by The Consumerist by way a supposed leaked app store video. Comparing the prices of iPad-optimized software with the iPhone equivalents showed quite a hefty uptick in consumer cost — e.g., $4.99 Flight Control HD vs. $0.99 Flight Control. The pool of eight apps seen in the video would cost $53 in all to purchase, while the same set for the iPhone is $27. That screen real estate don’t come cheap, y’know — that is, should the prices seen prove legit. At this point we can’t confirm, and more than likely, we won’t know for sure until the eleventh hour.
iPad’s trailing costs: like the iPod touch, only bigger? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Mar 2010 21:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
If Apple had its way, we expect that the iPad would go down in history as the device that nearly single-handedly destroyed Adobe’s empire of Flash. While HTML5 has been in development for years, content providers like the Wall Street Journal, NPR, CBS and more have only begun transitioning video services to the new standard (and subsequently, away from Flash) now that it’s time for Cupertino’s big release. But this week, Adobe has found an ally in Google, which has just announced that the Chrome browser — and more importantly, Chrome OS — will not merely support but natively integrate the technology. In the short run, what this means is that the Chrome browser won’t require you to download Adobe Flash Player or spend time updating it before back-to-back YouTube viewings and marathon Newgrounds sessions. In the long run, Google explains that it intends Flash to become an integral, seamless part of web design up there with HTML and Javascript — and if we extrapolate, an integral part of its new Chrome OS as well. Pardon us for thinking out loud, but it sounds like Google’s found an exclusive feature to highly tout, when it inevitably brings a Chrome OS tablet to market.
Monday, March 29 was supposed to be a happy day for Fusion Garage — that’s when the first JooJoo tablet pre-orders were scheduled to greet customers. Unfortunately, it’s looking like Tuesday, March 30 will instead go down as yet another day full of unresolved questions for the fledgling company: not only did the 29th come and go without a peep, a new document from the TechCrunch lawsuit sent to Gizmodo suggests that only 90 total pre-orders were made as of February 11, and that 15 of those orders were canceled. Uh-oh. Now, Fusion Garage tells us that JooJoo units are actually in Los Angeles, where they’ve just been released from a paperwork-related customs delay, and that the “absolute worst case” is that they’ll arrive to customers via overnight shipping on April 2nd, although FG is hoping for the 1st. We’re also told that the 90 preorder number is low and the court documents are inaccurate because the company’s relationship with PayPal was terminated over those issues with the terms of sale — but the JooJoo website still lists PayPal as the only payment option. Right. See what we meant about questions?