CLOCKWORK TEASMADE - Patented in Birmingham in 1902, this brass and copper tea maker was the first Teasmade. The alarm clock triggered a switch and a match was then struck against moving sandpaper, lighting the spirit stove under the kettle. Once the water boiled, the steam pressure lifted a hinged flap and the kettle would tilt, filling the teapot beneath. Finally, a plate would swing over the stove, extinguishing its flames.

This site shows a step-by-step mod to get your Nintendo Wiimote to flash an LED when it rumbles. Ingredients for this mod include a Triwing screwdriver, a 0603 LED, copper circuit tape, and some wire strippers. Pretty simple mod that will definitely add some bling to your game.

LED Rumble

Dark Roasted Blend has a large round-up of weird, wonderful, and thoroughly unnecessary computer casemods. Some of these you've likely already seen in your online haunts, others not.

Cool Computer Case Mods

Circuit City headquarters has ordered their stores to "destroy all copies" of the latest issue of Mad Magazine, according to an anonymous tipster. The retailer apparently isn't amused by the 4-page spoof of "Sucker City." Inside, Mad's 1-page preview and headquarters' response.

Unplggd has two articles on shopping for cheap tech in Asian markets and how to haggle down the price on the stuff you want.

Do your research. One of the first steps in haggling over a sale in Asia is to do proper research before making a purchase. It's easy to find out what the retail prices and market value prices of items are in Asia beforehand. For example, you can check out the listings on Yahoo! Auctions in Taiwan. I use Google Translate to get an idea what a page says.

Yahoo! is really big in Asia, bigger than eBay in my opinion. Almost everyone uses Yahoo! including Asian retailers and vendors. They aren't really used as auctions per se, but rather as an e-commerce site. These auction lists give you an idea of how much an item retails at different vendors. These prices are almost always lower than the retail price. I've bought cell phones, laptops and desktop computers this way. I just call up the retailers and get their location.

Bring a local. The best way to get a better deal is to go with a local friend or acquaintance. They will be able to haggle better and faster than you ever will. However, they do need to know a bit about what you want.

How To... Take Advantage of Technology Markets in Asia

How To... Haggle in Asian Technology Markets

More:

• KOBA electronics in Singapore
• Tokyu Hands - Maker paradise
• Akihabara, Eat your heart out

We put up with too many cables. There are at least four different kinds of USB plugs, two kinds of FireWire and like a million different ways to connect something to TV or monitor. Modern gadget life can be kind of retarded in this way. Why not one kind of cable, or just a couple? I don't know. But until everyone gets on the same appendage-to-hole scheme, in the meantime, you can use this: an illustrated guide to pretty much every kind of cable you will see in current gadgets and what it's used for (unless, you know, Sony springs a new one on us overnight, which is honestly possible).

It's the first day of 5 in 5 and there's a parade of projects. See the gang free themselves from Positioning Systems, choose their food decisively, sash a speaker, stick socks to a tee, mate software circles, print Mega Man, enliven their claw prizes, greet with robots, calm a TV, root for poops, Eco-nomize a billfold, season some mittens, dramatize their voicemail, cut their own coins and Franken their Faces. This motivated group of ITP students and their Guest Star, Bre Pettis did each project in a single day and they'll do another four each this week for a total of around 50 different projects in five days!

Days: 1 2 3 4 5

Here's an Instructable on how to replace the button cell battery on a Nike+ receiver for as little as the CR2032 battery costs you. To get a replacement receiver costs $20.

Replace battery in Nike+ receiver for under $5 [via Lifehacker]

Dave Rocamora turned his old Ikea night table into a charging station for his gadgets, and made it an elegant lamp at the same time. He made a nice instructable about it, too, so with not much more than a router and utility knife, you can achieve the same look.

Don't want to shell out a few hundred bucks for one of those iPod speaker docs? This Tupperware homebrew dock and speaker set is a cheap alternative and pretty simple to build with little overhead investment. There's even a trapdoor for easy access for your iPod when you hit the road.

Ipod Cool & Creative DIY Speaker!

HACKED. Holy crap—somebody just went and TORE MY FREAKING USB CABLE IN HALF while it was still attached to my laptop! No — wait — sorry. That’s just my USB flash drive. My bad. Nevermind. Mammoth 2-gig capacity. Peggable blistercard packaging. Design: Windell Oskay

This mod shows you how to install 4 LEDs above the controller port of an XBOX to illuminate when the plugs are installed into the machine. I guess this maker had the problem where his controller was always loose from his console, so he decided to make it official and have the connection "glow" when attached. You'll need some basic soldering skills for this mod, but the details are all spelled out at the link below.

Controller Port LED Mod

This wrist watch is modeled after a Sinclair ZX81 from the early 1980s. Although it looks like telling time with this watch would be very difficult it's a nice homage to the past that someone thought should be worn on your wrist. Unfortunately we don't have very much info on who built this or where to find it, but it's pretty inspiring (in a retro way) nonetheless.

This video shows a Wii Fit Balance Board controlling a "SkyBot" toy robot to move around a platform. Check out the link below to the downloadable Python source code for this hack and lots of good details on how it was built.

Wii Board

The "Oterp" by Antonin Fourneau is a prototype sound editor built inside a PSP console with an integrated GPS that allows you to manipulate sound in real-time based on your location on earth. The device also collects new sounds when it detects that you have arrived at specific pre-programmed locations on the planet, with the end goal of mixing the reality of our natural environment into video game music sounds. Pretty interesting idea and we will definitely be seeing more of this type of project with the advent of iPhone 3G and the addition of GPS into its digital audio, gaming, and video capabilities.

Oterp @ Media Lab Prado

Although this project is considered old by blog standards (2002), we still like the simplicity of this device. The "Transparent Headphones" are a custom built pair of headphones with a microphone attached to the outside of each ear piece. The device detects nearby sounds and fades the sound out of the corresponding ear that detects the loudest sounds. So for instance, if you are at work in front of your computer with your headphones on and someone is trying to talk to you on your right, your right ear's phone will fade out and the microphone's output will fade in so you can hear what they are saying. Pretty simple idea that we hope will be integrated into all future headphones.

Transparent Headphones Project Page

The "Reflect" table is an LED board embedded inside a table that monitors the sound levels of people's conversations with an array of microphones around the exterior. The multi-color LEDs show the sound levels of the chatter of those speaking so that they can get a visual picture of who is dominating the conversation. The translucent paneling in front of the lights is meant to move the feedback system into the background so that people will not concentrate on the lights. Pretty nice, but I think that might ruin the conversation itself.

REFLECT: Noise Sensitive Table, [via]

The zBoost, this is one of those things that I'd like to try for a week to see if it really works. I actually have access to a spectrum analyzer so I'd like to see if it worked. The signs seemed to indicate some type of war with Femtocell.

The zBoost YX230 signal booster extends a Cell Zone for a single user in vehicles. The YX230 captures the signal outside of your vehicle and amplifies it on the inside for a better signal. The zBoost YX510 for your Home or Office extends a Cell Zone (up to 2500 sq ft) for multiple users and protects the carrier networkusing patent-pending technology.

The Wi-Ex YX500-PCS unit will work only in the PCS frequency range (1850 - 1990 MHz), and the Wi-Ex YX500-CEL will only work in the Cellular frequency range (824 - 896 MHz).

Cell phones from providers like Cricket, Metro PCS, Suncom, T-Mobile, and Sprint (excludes Nextel) normally work with our YX500-PCS model, and cell phones from providers like AT&T and Verizon will normally work with the YX500-CEL model. Most of the wireless phones in use today are in the PCS or the Cellular frequencies. Some wireless service providers are PCS only while others will operate in the Cellular and PCS frequencies. This varies from city to city. If your service provider shows both 800 and 1900 MHz the YX500-CEL will probably work. If your service provider shows only the 1900MHz, the YX500-PCS booster will work.

Next up, the Novint Falcon.

The Novint Falcon lets you control a game in three dimensions, and also lets you feel high-fidelity three-dimensional force feedback. The Falcon controller moves right and left, forwards and backwards, like a mouse, but also moves up and down. When you hold the Falcon's detachable Grip and move your cursor to interact with a virtual object, environment, or character, motors in the device turn on and are updated approximately 1000 times a second, letting you feel texture, shape, weight, dimension, and dynamics. The Falcon lets you control and interact with games in more realistic way, allowing you to develop real physical skill and muscle memory, adding a new dimension to gaming.

I'd like to check one of these out and play around with the SDK, this and a 3D printer and/or Spore seem like a lot of fun.

And finally, Mio's Knight Rider GPS with sounds and the "look" of Knight Rider - audio from William Daniels too. I can't help it, it's really neat.

The "Image Fulgurator" by Berlin-based artist Julius von Bismarck (which recently picked up a Golden NICA at this year's Ars Electronica Festival) is a device that physically manipulates photographs by implanting messages onto the object being photographed. The device senses if a camera's flash goes off and synchronizes a projection on the object being photographed at the same time. The result, as can be seen in the video on the site, is that tourists and others taking photos end up having bizarre images mapped onto their photos. Check out the details on how it works at the link below, and there's even info about his patent application for the gadget.

Image Fulgurator, [via]

Next time your alarm goes off in the morning and you switch it off, only to sleep through your important meeting that day, you might want to look into this nifty alarm clock. The 80s cube clock forces you to solve the puzzle before the alarm stops, so you need to be on your toes and ready for work extra early.

80's Cube Clock, [via]

The first day of 7 in 7 at ITP produced Catty CPU Cliques, Prototypes for Relational Garments, Elevator Music, Proximity Maintenance Device, and a Body Transformation Video. Click on a picture to read about each one-day project in the 7 in 7 blog.

David Jurick, Adam and Damien Stolarz, authors of our forthcoming iPhone Hacks book, were interviewed by Xeni at last month's Maker Faire for this BBtv segment.

iPhone Hacks with Xeni

Interesting piece on AfriGadget about mobile phone hacking in rural Africa:

One of the more interesting innovations is the development of a dual SIM card hack so that users can access multiple carriers.

This product has two SIM card slots in a single phone - primarily to support price sensitive/prudent consumers who wish to optimise their call costs by maintaining SIM cards from two different phone operators. As in many countries - calls to a customer using a different Ghanaian operator cost slightly more than those on the same network.

Mobile Phone Ingenuity in Africa

Here's a cool project that shows you how to build a lightsaber like Luke Skywalker used out of a 1500 Hoover Vacuum Cleaner. Now if only you could use them in tandem and fight the "dark side" while cleaning up your living room carpet.

How to build a Lightsaber 
from a vacuum cleaner

I was at the Embedded Systems Conference today in San Jose, and I saw a presentation where a Sony XEL-1 OLED TV was torn down live. It’s a sweet piece of technology, the crispest screen I’ve ever seen. Unlike LCDs, the screen doesn’t develop weird artifacts when you poke at it or twist it. I first saw it at CES in January, and then I got to lay my hands on it ever so briefly while in Japan a couple weeks ago…so tempted to get one…and then, I run into it today, again, by chance: the speaker’s luggage was lost so the teardown presentation, originally scheduled for yesterday, got moved to the day I was at the conference.

How did they choose what to include? As Tom Nguyen, one of the organizers, put it in an email: "Well, they have a cool-factor that requires no explanation (you'll know it when you see it), they're radically new rather than improvements on existing products, and they represent an essential combination of design form and function." (By the way, that's him up above with Joe Wilcox's fun-to-ride Tilting Trike.)

Here are a few of the things that really stuck in my mind (and more in my Flickr set).

Brent Teal is a total maker--he built this Glide Cycle prototype in his garage after a friend of his wanted to continue jogging despite his bad knees. It's like a cross between an elliptical machine and a bicycle--the demo video is hypnotic. Elliptigo



I've fantasized about wireless chargers for years, so it was a thrill to see one in action. You buy WildCharge cases for your various devices, and then you lay them down on the charging pad. Voila! Maybe not the most efficient way to go, but it is cool.



Speaking of chargers, this one was also nice: the HY Mini, which allows you to charge up your cellphone with either a tiny solar cell or a mini fan. Jason Wang was manning the table when I stopped by, and he said he charges his cellphone as he drives to work by sticking the fan on his car.



On the non-commercial side of the spectrum was the Embrace Infant Thermoregulator, which replaces expensive incubators with a simple, portable $25 sleeping bag with a phase-change material insert.



And I totally loved MagnoGrip's awesome magnetic belt clips, tool pouches, carpenter belts, and other construction accessories. Suspenders are cool again!