Before them newfangled computers gave us photo editing abilities, absent grandparents used the next best option. Praying that couple isn't dead. Praying.
Tech Buzz After a Boing Boing reader discovered an ATM Skimmer — a camouflaged device and hidden camera attached to the ATM which steals your card information and pin — two others quickly found ATM skimmers around Manhattan. To the first eagle-eyed discoverer, police said it was “first one” they'd ever seen. Apparently, they need to be taking a closer look. And this is why I keep all my earnings in a shoebox under my bed. Try and counterfeit that, thieves!
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/02/sudo_make_me_a_s...
Bre Pettis & friends create a robot that'll literally make you a (cheese) sandwich at the push of a button. Totally reminds me of Pee-Wee's Breakfast Machine, which is a technologically direction I'm willing to work toward.
http://www.wkowtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=9667184
Some lady in Madison, WI bought a $1,100 Dell computer in order to take online classes. What the lady didn't know was that her operating system, Ubuntu, wasn't compatible with the software needed for her classes. To make a long story short, Verizon saved the day, the University decided to accept different file formats, and Dell did nothing.
http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/12/2000-year-old-a.html
Composed of 37 interlocking dials, the world's first computer was a Greek contraption that was used for modeling, predicting dates of the heavenly bodies, and even setting the time and date of the Olympic games. The dials were recovered in 1902 from the sea, and just now finally put together. Check out video of the working model at the link.
http://www.physorg.com/news148193433.html
A Japanese research team has revealed that it's created technology that could eventually display your dreams on a computer screen. HONESTLY, do we want to be able to see ON A COMPUTER SCREEN what other people are dreaming? Creep alert.
“You can't reach inside the screen to move things inside your computer, but you can use the mouse.” Making fun of old people who don't understand computers is like shooting fish in a barrel (mean/easy/weird), but whatever — “Treat the mouse button as if it were hot. Sort of like the potato, in the game Hot Potato.”
Tech Buzz This is no joke. There’s a whole community of so-called “Office Walkers” that set their computers up on treadmills so they never stop walking while at work. Ever! Doesn’t this take away from the whole benefit of being a cubicle slave? I value my time spent at my desk, where the only exercise I get is a few chair spins a day accompanied by a gleeful “Wheeeeee!”.
Business Buzz Microsoft is set to announce they’re canceling their bizarre Bill Gates/Seinfeld ads. They’re “moving on to phase two” of the campaign, which will reclaim the nerdy PC character from Apple’s ads, and which sounds like a way better idea than confusing us all with the tale of the stolen leather giraffe.
Just when you thought they couldn’t get any weirder, Seinfeld and Gates release their second commercial. This one titled, “New Family”. At 4.5 minutes long, the ads come off more as a really bad web series than a viral commercial.
Mythbusters demonstrates the difference between a CPU and a GPU with a little live art demonstration. Parallel processing, dude. Whoa.
Tech Buzz Dell has released photos of their first ever mini laptop, meant to be a low-cost alternative for developing countries. The third world is always getting all the cool gadgets! This one should also be available here in June, starting at $399 (according to speculation).