Playing God is entertaining. If it wasn’t, games such as The Sims and the iPhone’s Pocket God wouldn’t be nearly as popular as they are. So why shouldn’t gadgets offering a bird’s eye view of another person’s misfortune not be popular as well?
The Falling Books Bookend adds a dose of omnipresence into your study or library. Watch as a little unidentified man perpetually raises his arms in fear of the oncoming avalanche of knowledge.
When you think of New Jersey, your mind isn’t whisked away to a magical island. Instead, you think of guidos, landfills and the all-time Asteroids champion. Sure, I’m from NJ originally, but that’s not going to keep me from hating on my home state.
But for once, New Jersey has something worth checking out. Mikyoung Kim Design has created this landscape installation that features giant luminescent barcodes scattered around the Ocean County Public Library in Toms River, NJ. The barcodes glow in an ambient state, giving the landscape around the library building a unique look. The goal of the installation is to get people thinking about digital patterns and such but I think kids will enjoy running around the lights at night. Keep it simple, keep it fun.
The iPod is hands down the most popular music player on the market nowadays. To really get the most out of it, you’ll need to whip out your Arduino microcontroller and the soldering iron. Using a new library written to allow control of an iPod through a the 13-pin connector, you’ll be able to write programs that can get the Arduino and iPod talking in ways never seen before. If you build it, they will come.
Think you can ride a Segway? Sure, it might look easy – until you fall. For those not skilled in the ways of a normal-sized Segway, perhaps a mini Segway would be more to your liking. This DIY project found on the Arduino.cc forums was posted by user Arduino.poet whose created this mini-Segway which has no practical purpose but does show his passion for hardware and the Arduino. Why else would he be the self-proclaimed Arduino poet?
Using some LEGO pieces and an Ardunio, this Segway is capable of self-balanced movement at a speed that could be deemed too fast. Just kidding, this thing is slow as molasses. Arduino.poet also uploaded his library to Sourceforge for all to use and is willing to answer any questions anyone has on the project over at the Arduino.cc forums. My question: where’s the cup holder?
Know those arrows in iTunes that appear when you select a song? Yeah, the ones that take you to the iTunes Music Store when you’re trying to change tracks. Kill Apple’s dirty little secret and use this tip from TUAW to get your arrows to redirect to your iTunes Library. Instead of making impulse purchases on DRM-ridden tracks, you’ll end up discovering hidden gems from your favorite artists.
In a rush? Just rock this terminal command:
defaults write com.apple.iTunes invertStoreLinks -bool YES
BOOM.
When working at maximum capacity, these robots can travel at a whopping 7 mph, meaning they can retrieve 5 books in an average of 2.5 minutes. No human could ever get 5 books in 2.5 minutes unless it was by the same author. This quick return time in retrieving books will save hours (literary) for students at Chicago State University, where the average time for students to retrieve 5 books was 2 hours. Now they can spend time reading the books instead of looking for them. Now they students at CSU can really enjoy their $38 million facility in its entirety, with its 800,000 volumes. Now the librarians don’t have to yell at kids making out in the library for being so loud. — Nick Rice
CSU library [Wired News]
