Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Frighteningly enough, this isn't the first (or second) time that we've seen scientists pat themselves on the back for creating a mind-reading machine, but a dedicated team from Carnegie Mellon has just announced a computer that "has been trained to read people's minds by looking at scans of their brains as they thought about specific words." In a completely unsurprising move, gurus familiar with the development are suggesting that the breakthrough could be used to better understand how the brain organizes knowledge, and eventually, treat language disorders and learning disabilities more effectively. That's all gravy from here, but when this stuff starts passing as evidence in court, you'll know it's time to seriously investigate a relocation to Mars.

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Apologies to reader Miguel for taking his fantastic creations and shoving a lousy pun on it, but it was either that or "sTEAmpunk". These Steampunk Tea Pots are really, really amazing, and they're all hand-made and unglazed colored clay pots perfect for putting your morning tea into. Mr. T would approve.

GALLERY

Boiler

Encounter

PlanetX

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Web-based account manager Zefty helps kids understand spending and parents manage what they owe the little ones. Manually or automatically "deposit" money into kids' accounts, and they (and you) can see what they've saved. If your tyke's tech-proficient, they get their own login to enter what they withdrew and why, but parents get a super-user account as well. There's also "Zefty Checks" kids can request money with, and an allowance calculator that determines a reasonable pay rate. Zefty is free to use, requires a sign-up.

Filed under: GPS

First things first: considering the huge amount of press garnered by a recent position art scam, this here could indeed be just another spoof to get your hopes up. That being said, we're pretty sure no one with any level of decency would do such a vile thing on Easter Sunday, which is precisely when the above bunny was purportedly created from waltzing about with a Magellan GPS and a digital camera. The artist himself admits that what you see above is a slightly cleaned-up version of the actual path, but we're told that any edits that occurred had no huge bearing on the outcome of the piece. You be the judge.

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Lockergnome has somewhat convoluted way to game the Amazon system to get an extra 5% off of anything in the store, as long as it's actually sold by Amazon.com and not a third-party retailer. It's too long to list here, but the gist of it is that you tell Amazon you already own something, wait a day, and they'll recommend that item back to you at a 5% discount. Not sure how this makes sense, but Lockergnome says it works. Go check it out, cheapos. [Lockergnome]

Filed under: Cellphones

Hah, did you really have the nerve to doubt CraigIX? The iPhone gamepad add-on that we heard about just last week is already inching closer to reality, and there's a video to prove it. In the somewhat unexciting clip posted up after the jump, you'll see a PCB mockup of the device doing its thang, though it's quite inelegant in its current form. If you just needed one more something to boost your interest / confidence that this critter was real, you know where to head.

[Via zodttd]

Continue reading Prototype iControlPad proves itself on video

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Filed under: Cellphones

Hah, did you really have the nerve to doubt CraigIX? The iPhone gamepad add-on that we heard about just last week is already inching closer to reality, and there's a video to prove it. In the somewhat unexciting clip posted up after the jump, you'll see a PCB mockup of the device doing its thang, though it's quite inelegant in its current form. If you just needed one more something to boost your interest / confidence that this critter was real, you know where to head.

[Via zodttd]

Continue reading Prototype iControlPad proves itself on video

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Web site Appropedia describes in impressive detail how to convert your gas-powered lawnmower to solar power. The process involves some serious hacking of your original push mower and an investment in parts, but when you're finished you'll be hacking down grass with nothing but the power of the sun. Not bad for a weekend project, if a little on the expensive side.

Microsoft's Surface multi-touch table sure is cool, but who has $10,000 to spend on a gadget like that? I personally have maybe fifty bucks to my name right now, so I guess I'll have to fulfill my multi-touch itch with a cardboard box and a webcam like this guy.

Seth Sandler, an undergraduate student at UC San Diego, built a portable multi-touch pad out of a cardboard box, a piece of glass, paper, and his Philips SPC900NC webcam. The camera picks up on the shadows created by your fingers when they're placed on the pad's surface. A tracking software then transfers the motions onto a computer screen. Multi-touch goodness at an incredibly low cost—looks like I can afford to eat this month after all! [New Scientist]

Filed under: robots hacks

It's caturday, so let's post some freaking cats. With a little research we found commercial, hobbyist, research, and cyborg cats.

First up is NeCoRo. Released in 2001, this is probably the most recognized commercial robot cat; renowned for its creepiness.

Not wanting to be shut out of a market Sega has developed their own creepy cat. Yume Neko Smile is available for $72 and as the video demonstrates, gets very annoyed when you pull its tail.


Household robot cats aren't a new invention. Straight out of the "Teddy Ruxpin era", comes Petster Deluxe. The fur covered robotic lump can avoid obstacles, respond to claps, or use a wired remote.


Philips Research's entry into this feline nightmare is the iCat. It's a 38cm tall cat equipped with 13 servos to control facial movements. The goal is to have shared platform for researching man machine interaction: man's interaction with weird looking cats.



Hobby robot company Dynamizer took the popularity of humanoid robots and developed an entry level cat robot. It's designed to be cheap and easy to expand with new sensors.


Above is a cat robot scratch built by Lim Tian Siak.


Finally, we have Elvis, the cyborg cat. He lost use of his hind legs in an accident, so his BattleBot building caretakers created a bot he could drive by pressing on two buttons. It seems, given the right equipment cats would spend their days spinning clockwise.

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