Japanese Sohgo Security says it will have its Guardrobo D1 robot show up for work in one year. The Guardrobo D1 is 1m tall and can move 30cm/s. The security robot is equipped with surveillance cameras and wireless communications. It can be used to remotely patrol buildings on a given path. Sohgo Security tests the robot in a hotel, jewelry store and another location in Tokyo this summer to prepare it for commercial use. [via] Link.
Another project turning boxes in to something else. FedEx Furniture is furniture put together by empty FedEx Boxes, and held together by fedex packaging supplies. All of the furniture seen here is 100% functional. The couch is standing/sleeping approved, I sleep on the bed every night, I eat at the dining table, and I work at the desk almost 20 hours a day. Link.
Free bricks on Craigslist + mud + straw + 3 hrs of work = lots of delicious pizzas. Three days ago I got some free bricks on Craigslist here at our new “offices” in Palo Alto, and built a brick oven so we can have totally sweet pizza parties all summer long. I took some pictures – it looks kind of shabby but makes deliciously wonderful pizzas. Adobe mortar used liberally. Link.
What self-respecting geek doesn’t get the warm fuzzies at the mere mention of the RAID. With the rising GB to Dollar ratio, we felt it was a good time to feature a project that takes Pure Geekieness(TM) and mixes in a good helping of do it your self. Where else are you going to store all those MP3s (legally obtained, of course)? On a single 200 GB Drive? Or a RAID 5 Array? Take you pick, I know where I will be storing mine. Link.
Converting home videos to DVD is a great way to preserve, share and enhance those old tapes that may be aging not too gracefully and “do it yourself” tape to DVD conversion can be easy and affordable. If you want to transfer VHS to DVD, several options exist for the VHS to DVD conversion and, if done right, the DVD’s can look even better than the original VHS tapes (for simplicity sake I use VHS, but this process also applies to VHS-C, SVHS, Hi8, regular, even Beta). Link.
Dave5 has a really interesting post about using the Sony Librie e-Ink device as a universal game machine. In his examples he uses the screen as a chess, checker, Ludo and other game board images as the display so the games can be played on top of the screen of the device- you could really create any game board with an e-ink device. He then goes in to what could happen with a bigger screen, e-ink pieces and networking. It’s a little glimpse of what’s to come I think. Link.
I’ve been setting up a Newton and an Emate here for a couple articles- This IM client looks really good. NewtonIM is a jabber client for the Newton Message Pad 2×000. It requires Newton Internet Enabler. Any Makers out there using a Wifi’d Newton? Link.
