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?

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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.

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Well they didn’t really take over the entire library; they merely took over the jobs of librarians and the hassles of students. Students no longer have to search through the massive stacks of books to find that obscure book their philosophy teacher asked them to pick up. Every book, CD, and DVD in the library are tagged with a radio-frequency ID chip for the robots to detect. While librarians get to keep their job organizing media published after 1990, the robots automate the process for all other media. These fork-like machines can detect, pick-up, and store all the materials in a large, three-story facility; it would be funny to see some freshman trying to get a book from the top of a three-story high stack of books.

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]