By Adam Pash, Lifehacker – May 14, 2010 at 01:00PM
Google’s handing out priority invites to their one-number-to-rule-them-all service, Google Voice, to any student with an email address ending in .edu. If you’re a student and have been waiting for an invite for a while, your priority invite should get there within 24 hours. Once you get it, get yourself up to snuff by reading our guide to easing your transition to Google Voice. [Google Voice for Students via Google Voice Blog]
By Jason Fitzpatrick, Lifehacker – May 14, 2010 at 08:30AM
If you’ve been having trouble with your wireless signal the culprit might be interference from other wireless routers in the area. Free web-based tool WiFi Stumbler will show you which channel is least likely to cause interference.
WiFi Stumbler uses your computer’s Wi-Fi antenna to scan local access nodes. You can do a wide open scan or narrow it down by the type of encryption, the manufacturer, the radio type, frequency, or channel.
When you’re done with the scan you’re presented with both a detailed listing and a chart showing the number of nodes. Using this information you can then switch your router to a less occupied channel—every router I’ve ever purchased has been set to Channel 6 for some reason and just getting it off 6 has been a huge help in every instance.
Have a favorite tool for tweaking your Wi-Fi? Let’s hear about it in the comments.
By (author unknown), Gizmag Emerging Technology Magazine – May 13, 2010 at 10:00PM
Ready for a bit of a mental mechanical challenge? Try your hand at understanding how the D-Drive works. Steve Durnin’s ingenious new gearbox design is infinitely variable – that is, with your motor running at a constant speed, the D-Drive transmission can smoothly transition from top gear all the way through neutral and into reverse. It doesn’t need a clutch, it doesn’t use any friction drive components, and the power is always transmitted through strong, reliable gear teeth. In fact, it’s a potential revolution in transmission technology – it could be pretty much the holy grail of gearboxes… If only it wasn’t so diabolically hard to explain. We flew to Australia’s Gold Coast to take a close look at the D-Drive – and it looks to us like Durnin has pulled a rabbit out of his hat. Check out the video after the jump and see if you can work out if there’s a catch…
Continue Reading Video: Is Steve Durnin’s D-Drive the holy grail of infinitely variable transmissions?
Tags: Automotive,
CVT,
D-drive,
Durnin,
Inventor,
Transmission
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By admin, Columbus on the Cheap – May 13, 2010 at 08:54AM
Celebrate 100 years of scouting with Adventure Base 100 National Tour at the Columbus Zoo on May 22-23, 2010! Zoo guests of all ages are welcome to explore Adventure Base 100, including a giant projection Dome, a ropes course, museum quality exhibits and more.
This event is included with your admission or membership to the Zoo. […]
By Saikat Basu, MakeUseOf – May 12, 2010 at 03:31PM
Google Earth is a fantastic simulation of our planet. You really can do without playing games on it. But games based on Google Earth do up the fun quotient.
You can spin the virtual globe with your mouse and have a lot of globetrotting fun from the comfort of your armchair. With air travel not being so much fun anymore, it’s quite a good idea to do some ticketless treks now and again.
Google Earth gives us a bird’s eye view on lots of things which we wouldn’t have seen in our entire lifetimes. Like the Nevada crop circles or the fantastic news of the mythic Loch Ness sighting.
Google Earth is the virtual face of a very real world. So, it’s not surprising that it has become a playing arena for lots of fun and games. Most of the free Google Earth games are based on the geographic power that Google Earth brings to our browsers and desktops.
Google Earth games are hardly launched with the kind of fanfare and media blitz that typify the genre. So, where do you go hunting for free Google Earth games?
The Google Lat Long Blog is kind of the official voice for Google Geo products, but there’s hardly any Google Earth games related information there. But there’s the unofficial Google Earth Blog which is a treasure trove of tidbits on the subject. My first steps into the Earth’s gaming zone were through the links laid down here. Take a look. Multi-player games like GEMMO or GE Football are always worth a round.
If you are a fan of the fun side of Google Earth, park yourself at the Google Earth Community. You might want to check out the discussion threads on Fun and Games.
Everyone knows about the Flight Simulator on Google Earth. If you don’t, read Leon’s post on it here.
Then there are others that you might not have played yet. Here are six of them –
Earth Contest is a free travel game you can play with your friends. The site itself calls it an armchair travel game. You play against The GameMaster in this virtual world. You can choose to play the mystery game (Who Killed Gary Egerson?) or click on the trivia game (Entertainment & Gossip Trivia).
In the first, you start off with a fixed amount of Earth Contest dollars. The game gets played inside the Google Earth application. The idea is to go from one location to another with the help of clues. Along the way, you can help others with clues or even mislead them. And you get an airplane to hop from one location to the next.
The Trivia game is also about solving the quiz on celebrities and travelling from location to the next depending on the answer.
Tina also mentioned it in her post on Google Earth: Cool Resources and Plugins.
PlanetInAction has two games – one takes you to the heights of space and the other brings you to the sea level. Both can be played inside the browser with the Google Earth plug-in installed.
Moon Lander lets you experience the adrenalin rush of Apollo 11’s moon landing. You get to take manual control and land the Eagle spacecraft just as Neil Armstrong had done all those years back. He had limited fuel, you have unlimited supply. Are you a better pilot?
Ships puts you on the helm of your own cruise liner or tanker, or even a river barge. You get to be the captain and navigate the ship across many of the scenic seaboard locations around the world.
Sea-seek.com has a submarine simulator (among other choices) which gives you the choice between doing some coastline surveillance off the coasts of California, Gibraltar, or Greece. Or you can take the sub and dive deep into the Mariana Trench, Milwaukee Deep, or Romanche Trench.
You get to monitor a control panel and set things like speed and piloting controls. You can opt for a Cessna or a helicopter to do some simulated fly-bys over the oceans.
GEWAR is a massive multi-player online game that you can play in your browser with the Google Earth plug-in installed. The game comes with lots of rules and laws that need to be followed. GEWAR is about building your own armies with the resources you have. The objective – to capture cities around the world. Each city has a value and the total value with each player decides his position on the leaderboard.
The currency for this online world is called Geos and there are a lot of activities you can do to earn them and fund your armies. You can even purchase a nuke and obliterate a city in one blast. Armies are pitted against each other and it can be literally, a scrap.
Where On Google Earth is an online geography game. Pictures taken from locations around the world are posted and you can leave your guesses in the comments section.
Each contest lasts one week and you can refer any source to get to the answer. Get them right and place yourself on the leaderboard.
Google Earthing is a similar Google Earth based ‘guess the right answer from the photo’ game.
Google Earth games might not put you into the same kind of Avatar style immersive experience that many high end games give. But if you want to combine education with fun, then Google Earth remains a great tool. All net chatter on Google Earth signals the fact that these are very early days for the mashup of Google Earth and games apps. These games are also about the potential that remains to be tapped.
That’s for later, right now let’s fire up the blue globe and go around the world and try them all out at least once.
Which is your favorite Google Earth game?
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By Erez Zukerman, Download Squad – May 12, 2010 at 03:15PM
Filed under: Utilities, Video, Open Source
YouTube downloaders are a dime a dozen. Unfortunately, many of them are thinly veiled malware/adware containers, or they are just plain cruddy. What makes youtube-dl special is that it’s cross-platform, free, open-source, and CLI-based. If you don’t know what CLI means, you probably don’t need it :). In a nutshell, though, it lets you download videos from the command line (you can see a CLI tutorial for it over at tinyapps.org).
Since youtube-dl is written in Python, it basically requires a Python interpreter to run. Luckily, a user who goes by the name of nishad created a standalone version for Windows and even added a neat GUI (pictured above) for users who are not comfortable with a CLI interface (or don’t need it).
I tested it using a single video, and it worked very well. Once I set all of the options and hit the Download button, a shell window popped up and the script started executing. The GUI was very clear about this; it told me “please don’t close the command windows opened” and had me press a button to signal that I really did understand.
The interesting part here, for geeks, is the CLI version. This could have some very interesting uses in scripts. If you use it to create something worth mentioning, don’t be shy — share it in the comments.
YouTube Video Downloader provides GUI and command-line download interface originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 12 May 2010 14:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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By Adam Pash, Lifehacker – May 12, 2010 at 02:30PM
Summer’s coming, and for many of us, nothing cures residual work stress like enjoying a nice fire in the great outdoors—or even just our backyards. A step-by-step guide on DIY site Instructables details how to build a backyard fire pit.
Simple, portable fire pits have become pretty common (and relatively inexpensive), but if you really want to go all out, the Instructables guide goes into painstaking detail on how to build a safe, affordable, and permanent backyard fire pit for your backyard.
By Drea, Business Pundit – May 12, 2010 at 06:41AM
Image: Stuff by Ash
By (author unknown), certified bullshit technician. – May 12, 2010 at 12:02AM
the official duty rule of thumb.
