Allerta Lead Designer Eric Migicovsky just released the code to his Facebook Places check-in app for the inPulse smartwatch. This simple app communicates over Bluetooth to an Android smartphone, which in turn interacts with Facebook Places. Without reaching for his smartphone, Eric can easily check in to his Facebook Places account using an easy to navigate one button interface.
When I first came across this video by South Korean maker Mok Young Bak I have to admit that I didn’t quite get it. I haven’t had that many buttons on a mobile in years. All kidding aside, any technology that gets you away from a desk is well worth the investment. Bonus points if it includes streaming video and remotely operated actuators.
The newly released Motorola Atrix is the fastest Android smartphone to date. With its blazingly fast Nvidia Tegra 2 processor, generous memory, and innovative accessories, the Atrix is shaping up to be one heck of a mobile. Receiving a 9 out of 10 repairability score, the folks at iFixIt.com say, “This is also the most-repairable smartphone we’ve ever taken apart!” Let’s take a look, shall we?
The multitude of cheap plastic cup holder smartphone mounts is staggering, yet the majority of them are either overly engineered, cheap flimsy plastic or proprietary. I’m surprised that we don’t see more commercial designs similar to the stand in this video by the Mechanical Mashup crew. Heck, there’s even room to coil up a loose power cable inside the cup.
Being made of glass, however, a proper Kipp generator is an expensive piece of apparatus, with new models costing upwards of $250US as of this writing. However, as the useful gas-generating reactions are usually aqueous, rather than organic, an all-plastic Kipp generator is almost as useful as a glass version. PVC pipe is inexpensive, durable, ubiquitous, and easily and securely joined using cement made for that purpose. Demountable PVC fittings are available in a wide variety of shapes and sizes and can be used to provide the necessary “dismantlability” for loading solid reagent into the device. Presented here is my design for such a low cost Kipp-type generator, with instructions for its construction.
If you’ve got an old camera laying around and are looking for some fun, try taking off the lens and snap a few pictures through it with your smartphone. If you’ve got a particularly interesting lens, like from a Lomo or some other odd plastic camera, you might then want to glue it to a spare case like redditor linc90 has with a derelict iPhone 4 case.
This how-to from maker Ryan Mottau explains turning the ever popular binder clip into an adjustable vent mount for almost any smartphone out there.
