Gearfuse

The Wiimote is much more of a versatile tool than I think even Microsoft could have imagined. People have hacked the Wiimote to create some zany and awesomely practical mods. But I think “lawnmower control” is a new one.

The Casmobot Lawnmower is navigated using nothing but a hacked Wiimote and the crafty engineering by several scientists at the University of Southern Denmark. The mower syncs with the Wiimote via Bluetooth, allowing the user to control the cutting edge, the direction of the mower and even allows you to set a autopilot mode, in which the mower only mows within a designated area.

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The big news this Friday is that MMS is finally coming to the coveted iPhone, which is great, because I’m sick of hearing people bitch about it. We actually thought we’d see MMS enabled with the big 3.0 update, but nope, took a few more months than expected while AT&T got their shit together. Let’s all get MMS, send off our first message and forget that the service even exists. That’s how it’s going to be.

Anyway, if you’re following along, AT&T will be upgrading your phone tomorrow via your carrier settings. Your iPhone will have to be plugged into iTunes for the update to take effect. AT&T plans to release the update by early afternoon EST.

So basically, you can bet your ass that around noon tomorrow Twitter will be in an outrage, full of people enraged that they haven’t received their MMS yet. Prepare for an onslaught of #myfirstmms hash tags.

They might look like they are made of real LEGO bricks, but the LEGO Walkie Talkies are simply designed to look like a brick DIY. Sort of disappointing really. I’m sure an actual LEGO Walkie Talkie would take a considerable amount of time, money and effort. But I bet it’s doable. Get on that, GEARheads.

These walkies feature a 3000 foot range so a little more than half-a-mile, but I imagine at half-a-mile, the transmissions are barely audible. Grab your own set for $28. Take what you will from the price concerning the quality of these walkies. They might look cool, but don’t be surprised if you can’t go very far. I’d say these are for inside the house and the close surrounding area only.

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So, you’re chilling out in your cube, looking at porn or playing solitaire, or doing whatever it is you do when you’re supposed to be working. It’d suck to have your boss sneak in while you were slacking away. The WiSpi EX30 from Brickhouse lets you secretly set up a wireless camera within 30 feet of your cube, or wherever you want to monitor.

The 2.75″ monitor is easy enough to conceal and is indispensable for letting you know who or what is approaching, no matter how hard they attempt to sneak up on you misbehaving. Grab yours for $175.

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Verizon users are grinning. There’s finally a new phone in the pipes that people will actually want to buy. It’s the Blackberry Tour and it costs as much as an iPhone 3GS and drops July 12th.

What’s that magic $199 price tag net you? The Tour of course can do 3G but it also has a nice 3.2-megapixel camera with autofocus, a 480×360 display, Bluetooth and GPS. While the lack of WiFi is disappointing, it’s hardly surprising for a Verizon phone. Hell, consider yourselves lucky enough to have Bluetooth! Overall, looks like a decent phone for the business crowd.

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While amateur photographers have long enjoyed the luxury of the WiFi-enabled Eye-Fi SD card, pros will be happy to know that there’s finally a solution available for them. For $150, you’ll cop a 4GB SD card that supports WiFi uploading, the ability to choose which pictures go where and RAW imaging support. Gizmodo reviewed it and says it’s great, so if you spent over $2000 on a digital camera, it may be worth a look.

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AT&T is cleverely upgrading their HSPA data speed later this year to their new 7.2 wireless networking technology, creating potential speeds of 7.2 MB per second.

AT&T notes that the new speed boost will be released in time for new notebook cards and smartphone devices. Can you say third-gen iPhone?

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Having trouble losing weight? This little patch is about to change all that. It’s being produced by a company called PhiloMetron and here’s how it works: slap it on your arm and sensors will measure your energy and calorie intake. From there, the data is beamed to your phone via Bluetooth where you can measure how much you’ve eaten in a day. Afterwards, you can cry and commiserate over a box of Girl Scout Cookies. Enjoy.

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Alright. Stick with me on this one. You crazy Europeans love to created weird names for products, like The Mirror by Violet. That being said, The Mirror’ is one of the neatest gadgets I’ve seen in a long time. Hook the $60 plate up to your Mac or PC and get ready to read some RFID tags. The set includes Ztamps (glorified RFID tags) that you can stick in objects and assign actions. For instance, say you shove one inside a sandwich. When you put the sandwich on top of the The Mirror by Violet, it could open up Firefox and surf to the Scanwiches blog.

Sounds like a creative tool. I’d like to know how you’d use this cheap RFID reader. I’d probably shove some in empty CD cases so that the songs would automatically play in iTunes when activated.

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The Arduino continues to power innovation and creation well into 2009. This blender, created by Matti Niinimaki, is rigged to create beats. No smoothies here, folks, just pounding techno full of cheesy sound FX. The Beat Blender prototype reads fruit embedded with RFID tags that are dropped into it. Hitting different blending speeds (Puree, Liquify, Blend, Grind, etc.) will add different effects and filters to the music, allowing for a unique style of making new music.

Matti’s setup makes use of a combination of hardware and software, including Max/MSP, Ableton Live, an RFID reader and of course, the Arduino. What gives Matti? Max/MSP? You know Pure Data would work just as well and we’d all be able to play around with your code.

I guess when God gives you lemons, you make music.

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