Andy Aaron’s Handmade, Victorian-Style Calculators Deserve a Tip of Our Hats
Filed under: Computers, Back to School We've never carried them, but we sometimes wish that we had pocketwatches. You know, with a gold chain arched over the middle button of a sharp looking vest (which we've also never owned). It's a strange sentiment, particularly since most of us don't even wear wristwatches. (There's a clock on that cell phone for a reason.) A slightly less intense, but...
Read MoreJapanese Robotic Wheelchair Automatically Follows You Around
Filed under: Computers Strolling around with your wheelchair-bound loved ones might one day be a whole lot less stressful, thanks to a new robotic wheelchair created in Japan. Designed by researchers at Saitama University's Human-Robot Interaction Center, the wheelchair uses distance sensors and built-in cameras to keep track of a pedestrian's position, allowing the chair to remain on the...
Read MoreE Ink Begins to Sample Capacitive, Color E-Readers
Filed under: Computers It appears that color E Ink readers aren't as far from being commercially available as most have thought. E Ink Holdings (formally PVI), the group responsible for the screens housed in Amazon's Kindle and Sony's Readers, is leading the way by offering samples of its color panels to manufacturers. In addition to creating color-capable displays, the new screens are...
Read MoreJapan Introduces Gadget Dryer For Soggy Phones, Clumsy Bloggers Rejoice
Filed under: Cell Phones, Computers We've all lost a high-tech gadget or two to that most low-tech of the natural elements: water. (Or, in the recent case of this writer's laptop, coffee.) Always miles ahead of us stateside folk, who have alternately used hair dryers and bowls of quick rice to dry out our devices, the Japanese have implemented the Dryer Box, a sort of clothes dryer for drowned...
Read MoreDIY Robotic Paintball Sentry Blasts Holes in Cardboard Boxes
Filed under: Computers The appeal of paintball is lost on us, but that doesn't mean we don't recognize a cool robotic paintball turret when we see one. Thanks to Ubergizmo, we found this particular one, a DIY project by some nerdy paintball enthusiasts at Alter Robotics. It's a pan-and-tilt, robotic tripod turret, equipped with an electronic paintball gun (that looks infinitely cooler than the...
Read MoreYouth Microsoft Office Competition Tests Excel and Word Proficiency
Filed under: Computers, Back to School This week, Microsoft hosted the final rounds of the Worldwide Competition on Microsoft Office, during which 50-odd young people gathered in Park City, Utah, and competed to prove which four were the most proficient in Microsoft Word 2003 and 2007, and Microsoft Excel 2003 and 2007, respectively. Those few dozen showed themselves to be the best of the best...
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