By Sean Michael Ragan, MAKE – August 17, 2010 at 01:00PM
Made almost entirely from machined aluminum by Kuba_T1000. It feeds plastic BBs from an electric ammo pack that holds 16,000 rounds. Check the embedded video for an impressive live-fire demo. [via Hack a Day]
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By Achal Khetarpal – CyberDefender, Gizmodo – August 16, 2010 at 05:40PM
Researchers at Internet security service provider CyberDefender looked at some of the most dangerous things you can do online and explained how to protect yourself if you’re not quite ready to give up things like Internet porn completely. More »
By Lauren Davis, Gizmodo – August 16, 2010 at 02:30PM
While we’re waiting for the Ghostbusters to return to the big screen, a group of artists have dragged our favorite ghost hunting foursome back into the spotlight with a Proton Pack-powered gallery show. More »
By Adam Pash, Lifehacker – August 16, 2010 at 02:00PM
When you buy cords or cables at places like Best Buy or the Apple Store, you normally pay a hefty price for the convenience. DeepSurplus sells nearly any cable you could want, generally for much less than more popular resources.
As a reader of the great-gadget site Cool Tools points out:
For example, Apple sells a mini to mini cable for connecting your iPod to your stereo for $24.95. The same cable can be had for less than a dollar from Deep Surplus.
The site’s also got extremely reasonable prices on other cables, like, for example, this 25-foot Ethernet cable for $5 (less if you’re buying more than one). You’re almost never going to find a good deal on cables at the likes of Apple, Best Buy, or other large retailers. Sometimes the convenience may be worth it, but for our part, we’d have to be pretty desperate to pay the extra $20+ for what should be a very inexpensive cable. (For what it’s worth, the specific cable mentioned at Cool Tools should also be easy to find at your local electronics store for anywhere between two to five bucks.)
UPDATE: As many, many commenters have pointed out, MonoPrice is another excellent option with often even better deals.
By (author unknown), Cool Tools – August 16, 2010 at 12:43PM
Deep Surplus is a fantastic source for an encyclopedic array of cables.
For example, Apple sells a mini to mini cable for connecting your iPod to your stereo for $24.95. The same cable can be had for less than a dollar from Deep Surplus.
For work I buy all of our networking patch cables, USB cables, etc. for 10% of the cost of buying them at Staples, Microcenter, or Best Buy. I recently bought some rather hard to find white, two-lead speaker wire, which elsewhere was as pricey as $80, for $12 for a 25-foot length. I also bought a 6-foot mini (iPod) to dual RCA (for my older audiophile amplifier) cable for $2.75, compared to $24.95 at the Apple store.
I rely on them whenever I need essential cables affordably.
— Aram Salzman
By (author unknown), News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com) – March 22, 2013 at 12:56PM
Frustrated by size limitations when uploading images to Google+, photographer Trey Ratcliff discovered a way to get around the limitations, and upload original full-resolution photos. In a blog post, he has put together a step-by-step guide on how to do it, which involves using Google Drive – Google’s cloud storage service – and sharing images directly from there to Google+. Click through to read about how – and why – he did it. (via Reddit)
By Deron Bauman, clusterflock – August 26, 2010 at 11:56AM
If you watch only one naked hay baling video today?
(thanks, Patrick)
By Adam Pash, Lifehacker – August 26, 2010 at 08:30AM
You already know Gmail integrated with Google Voice for free phone calls (and cheap international calls) from your inbox. But apart from using it to a friend, Gmail’s new phone calling capabilities introduce a lot of cool capabilities to your inbox.
Let’s say you’ve got a landline set up with Google Voice and you don’t want to pay for caller ID. Or you just spend a lot of time staring at your computer. If you’re logged into Gmail, and someone rings up your Google Voice number, you can see who’s calling on your computer without digging your phone out of your pocket.
Assuming you’ve already added your Gmail Chat account as a number that can be reached through Google Voice (which also assumes you’ve signed up for Google Voice), you can transfer calls from your phone to your computer to save cellphone minutes. Here’s how it works:
1) If you’re logged into your Google account, go to the Google Voice phone settings page. At the bottom, you should see a new option for Google Chat (like in the image). Make sure it’s checked.
2) Now, when you’re in the midst of a call on your cellphone—let’s say you were talking to someone in the car, and now you’re home—just hit the * (asterisk) on your phone’s number pad to send the call to another Google Voice phone. If your Gmail account is open, your inbox should start ringing. Pick up in Gmail and hangup your cellphone.
The opposite works, as well—i.e., transferring calls out from Gmail to your cellphone. Oh, and remember: If you’ve got a decent Bluetooth headset, you should also be able to stay relatively mobile, even if you’re talking from your computer.
Misplace your cellphone under a pile of clothes or deep in your couch cushions? If you left your ringer on but don’t have another phone on hand, just log into Gmail, dial your cellphone number, and follow the faint sound of ringing.
Google Voice is already pretty good at setting up conference calls (demonstrated in the video above). Now that you can call from your computer, you’ve also got a quick-and-dirty speakerphone perfect for the group of people sitting around a table on your coast.
This is less of an “amazing new thing” than a nice, practical side effect of having one more thing integrated with your inbox. Say you get an email from a colleague. You want to send a quick followup, but it’s going to be a lot more appropriate talking than typing a reply. Dial the person up in Gmail and talk it out without disrupting your workflow.
Google Voice has handy recording function, but whenever you enable it (hit 4 to start and finish recording), Google Voice announces “This call is now being recorded.” Prefer to record a conversation surreptitiously? Calling from Gmail puts the audio on your computer, where you can use any number of tools to record your system audio on-the-sly. (For example, despite what I thought at the time, Whitson later told me he wasn’t aware I was recording the call in the video above.) File this under the know-your-state-laws category.
Speaking of neat things you can do now that your computer hardware is accessible for both inputs and outputs, consider this: If you set your onboard system audio as your default input device rather than a microphone, you can, say, play the caller a little song. That’s maybe a little boring. On the other hand, it’s even easier to navigate to your favorite prank call soundboard and have a little fun.
Your mileage may vary on this one, but anywhere you’ve got your laptop and free Wi-Fi—like, say, any Starbucks in the U.S.—you can fire up a free phone call to anyone in the U.S. or Canada and chat away. There’s a good chance that many free Wi-Fi hotspots don’t provide you with enough bandwidth to make high enough quality calls, but if you’re desperate to save on minutes (or just don’t have a phone handy), it’s worth a try.
Got a great use for phone calls in Gmail that we missed? Let’s hear it in the comments.
Big thanks to my pal Jason Chen for help brainstorming and testing.
By Drea, Business Pundit – August 25, 2010 at 12:46PM
Every year, today’s greatest thinkers gather at various TED (Technology Entertainment and Design) conferences around the world. Their talks, which you can find on TED’s website, are often insightful, educational, and fascinating.
As a TED junkie, I decided to compile 20 of the best business talks in the conference’s history. Each talk offers insights either into a business leader’s mind, or into concepts that will change the way you think about business and the economy. (If you have any favorites not included on this list, please mention them in the comments below.)
20. Chip Conley: Measuring What Makes Life Worthwhile
Hotel owner Chip Conley talks about adapting Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to a business model based on happiness. He shares what he learned on the way.
19. Jeff Bezos on the Next Web Innovation
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos offers a fun, visual lesson on how people behaved during the gold rush, and how the dot-com story almost exactly reflected that behavior. He uses excellent stories, clips, and pictures to make his case, which puts a chapter of our economic behavior in historical context.
18. Chris Anderson: The 4 Key Stages of Technology
Author and WIRED editor-in-chief Chris Anderson talks about the four stages that a technology needs to go through to become viable. It’s a valuable look at what a thought leader has to say about technology trends. The talk, while more intellectual than entertaining, is full of useful tips, including how to think about technology and how to time an innovation.
17. Barry Schwartz on the Paradox of Choice
Too many products and services in our society lead to too much choice, according to psychologist Barry Schwartz. Even our identity is a matter of choice: We invent and reinvent ourselves whenever we want. He goes over positive and negative effects of this choice in people, including the levels of satisfaction people experience with products, how products affect them, and how regret plays into the equation. It’s a unique look into today’s consumer society.
16. Sergey Brin and Larry Page on Google
Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page talk about their company, search patterns, and Google.org. A fascinating talk if you’re interested in inner workings of Google.
15. Richard Branson’s Life at 30,000 feet
Virgin emperor Richard Branson shares interesting parts of his life story, including making it big with Virgin and selling Virgin Records to start an airline. This talk, with TED curator Chris Anderson, gives you a rare peek inside Branson’s head.
14. Jan Chipchase on Our Mobile Phones
Head Nokia researcher Jan Chipchase explores engaging questions on mobile technology. What do mobile phones really mean to us? How would someone who can’t read use a mobile phone? How would impoverished people in developing countries use one? Chipchase gets you thinking about mobile technology in a completely new way.
13. John Doerr: Salvation and Profit in Greentech
Legendary Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr gives a serious talk on climate change. Claiming “we’ve reached the time…when panic is the appropriate result,” Doerr talks about how to fight climate change, eminent VC-style. This fascinating talk shares Doerr’s valuable perspective on battling a big problem, not to mention a number of interesting company stories.
12. Cameron Herold: Let’s raise Kids to be Entrepreneurs
Entrepreneur Cameron Herold shares his own stories of school to help us revisit the way we see success in children—and in ourselves.
11. Ray Anderson on the Business Logic of Sustainability
Ray Anderson, head of the Flor carpet company, says business can lead us out of our sustainability mess. Anderson, whom Fortune has called “America’s greenest CEO,” calls himself a recovering blunderer. His talks about alternatives to businesses that are “stealing our children’s future,” using the greening of his carpet company as an example.
10. Yochai Benkler: The New Open-Source Economics
For the first time since the Industrial Revolution, communications, computation capacity, and other building blocks of the economy are in the hands of the crowds. 70% of critical Web applications are produced open-source, in direct competition with big corporations, notably Microsoft. Thought leader Yochai Benkler explains what this means for jobs, corporations and the economy at large.
9. Charles Leadbeater on Innovation
What is creativity, and where does it come from? Think tank researcher Charles Leadbeater explains why you don’t need an organization to innovate. Innovation, rather, has always been interactive and collaborative. Today, consumers are often ahead of producers in terms of ideas. Leadbeater shares why this is, and how our world of innovation actually works today.
8. Dean Kamen: The Emotion Behind Invention
Prolific inventor Dean Kamen, best know for creating the Segway, describes his work designing a new kind of prosthetic arm for soldiers who lost limbs while serving. He describes not only his own thought process, but the people who motivated him to make it work. This is an excellent look inside the mind of one of today’s greatest inventors, not to mention the stories of the vets who inspired him.
7. Bill Gates on Energy: Innovating to Zero!
Uber-philanthropist Bill Gates shares where he’s putting his money in order to help lower carbon emissions to zero by 2050. An interesting talk by one of today’s leading philanthropists and ex-CEOs.
6. John Gerzema: The Post-Crisis Consumer
Trend expert John Gerzema talks about how consumers are behaving now, and the four cultural shifts that drove them to their current habits. He provides a thought-provoking model of where consumers are. Importantly, he also describes how businesses can connect with today’s consumers.
5. Dan Ariely: Are We In Control of Our Own Decisions?
We make many mistakes, but don’t have an easy way to see them, thanks to cognitive illusion. This excellent talk by Predictably Irrational author and behavioral economist Dan Ariely gives us insight into how we make decisions.
4. Steve Jobs: How to Live Before You Die
This is a recording of Steve Jobs’ 2005 speech at a Stanford commencement. He talks about his health, his dreams, his attitude on life, and, naturally, Apple.
3. Seth Godin: Not Business as Usual
Author and blogger extraordinaire Seth Godin delivers a compelling talk on the merits of bad or bizarre ideas in marketing. In characteristic contrarian fashion, he emphasizes that normal will not get you noticed. He uses fascinating examples to make his points on ideas and marketing.
2. Malcom Gladwell on Spaghetti Sauce
Author and thought leader Malcolm Gladwell makes points about companies’ market behavior and human nature by telling market researcher Howard Moskowitz’s story. Moskowitz, charged with figuring out how to make Campbell’s Prego pasta sauce more desirable, discovered that in general, people only liked three kinds of sauce, including one niche–chunky–that no sauce manufacturer had touched before. Gladwell’s story offers insight into product segmenting, the food industry, and how people behave in market surveys.
1. Rory Sutherland: Life Lessons from an Ad Man
Ad man and compelling speaker Rory Sutherland gets inside the consumer mind by comparing real with perceived value. This is a talk not to be missed, by one of TED’s most entertaining business speakers.
By Michael Arrington, TechCrunch – August 25, 2010 at 12:40PM
We were excited when we got our hands on an unlaunched version of Google Voice for the desktop, which let users make and receive calls via a soft phone on their computer. We hear that software is still on ice, though, and won’t be launched any time soon. But it probably doesn’t matter – today Google Voice is being integrated right into the browser via Gmail. It’s amazingly good – I know because I’ve been testing it for the last few days.
Just download the Google Talk plugin for your browser and you can then make calls to any U.S. or Canadian phone number directly from Gmail. And if you already use Google Voice you can make those calls anywhere else, too, for a very low per minute charge. The feature is fully integrated into Google Voice, which means you can set Google Voice to receive calls in Gmail, and use your Google Voice contact book. Dialing a phone number works just like a normal phone. Just click “Call phone” at the top of your chat list and dial a number or enter a contact’s name.
This is great news if you’ve got bad cell reception in your home or workplace, because you can make and receive calls anywhere you have Wifi reception. Some other very cool features: if you’re on Google Voice and take a call from within Gmail, you switch a call over to your mobile phone and continue it on the go without having to drop the call and reconnect.
Call quality is very, very good – comparable to Skype. See video below of test calls we performed. (Play fullscreen for best viewing, and make sure to check out the screenshots below).
Pricing:
Calls to US and Canada for free at least through the end of the year. Google PM Real Time Communications Craig Walker says they hope to keep these calls free indefinitely, provided the margins on international calls can cover the free US/Canada calls.
2 cents/minute landline rates to dozens of countries, with no connection fee on calls.
Mobile rates are often less expensive than competitors.
