Ask The Mythbusters
Slashdot is inviting folks to post their questions for the Mythbusters – not sure if it’s too late, but have at it! – “Who are the Mythbusters? Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman are the hosts of a unique and popular television show on the Discovery cable channel. Working from a background in the special effects industry and shooting on location at effects warehouse M5 Industries, Jamie and Adam attempt to shed light on hearsay, rumour, and myth. Along the way they usually run across a little bit of science, too.”… Link.
“The $100 laptop designed by the Massachusetts Institute for Technology (MIT) and the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) association, previewed at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) conference in Tunisia last week, will be using a Redhat Linux variant as its operating system.” [
Sony has a new release of the PSP firmware, this one is 2.60 and it actually has some interesting features. This latest update’s main features include WMA support, DRM capabilities, and a RSS Reader. The RSS reader makes the PSP one of the few MP3 players that can get and play podcasts via Wi-Fi without a computer. 
Neat, podcasting on TiVo – I hope it will download more content based on traffic conditions, then you sync that to your music player. David Zatz says “TiVo is beefing up their HME offerings by centrally hosting applications and partnering with Yahoo! Yahoo! weather, traffic, and photos are available by entering your account info on the TiVo box. Also being tested are Internet radio (Live365), the podcaster application I previewed at Digital Life, Fandango movie tickets, and some various games. TiVo’s beta is scheduled to continue testing into early 2006.” [
A couple free ways to make flip books – PC: “Flipbook Printer is a program that lets you make your own printed “Flipbooks” from avi movie files using business cards. Makes a great present – have the kids send a flipbook of them waving hello to the grandparents, or send your loved one a movie of you smiling or blowing them a kiss. It’s the ultimate in low-tech movie making!” 
“Early users of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 are coming up with innovative ways to fix some of the first reported glitches plaguing the new videogame console. One of the fixes involves dangling the unit’s power supply in midair with string…Other 360 owners joined in, saying that once they cooled down overheated power units — by using fans or in one case, a half-filled bottle of frozen water — their consoles stopped crashing.” [
Here’s a fun Google video of what happens when you put Mentos in soda (you might want to mute the sound). The video doesn’t explain how it works, but there’s an overview