Here's a fun online toy I found through Deep Fun- you paste in the url from an online image you like, and the software converts it into a kaleidoscope image - you can change the kaleidoscope image by clicking and dragging with your mouse. (that's my cat, Jamie)

Here's an R/C hovercraft toy made mainly out of junkbox parts:

The workings of a hovercraft are fairly straightforward: one high-power motor with an airplane propeller forces air down through the hole in the center, which pushes the bottom of the hovercraft off the ground. This greatly reduces friction, allowing the hovercraft to scoot around without much trouble. It also makes it much more difficult to control, however: when the hovercraft turns, it will keep traveling in a straight line unless more thrust is applied. Since we are used to controlling cars or boats, the newtonian behavior of a hovercraft is challenging indeed. The body of the hovercraft is made out of styrofoam, cut with a saw and sanded to smooth the edges. The skirt on the bottom is made out of pieces of a plastic GAP bag, attached with Scotch tape and hot glue. The radio control unit was scavenged from an old boat I had, along with the drive motor mounted on the wooden supports, while the lifting motor was from my physics teacher. The battery is 300 mAh 6V NiMH (or NiCd, I forget), and I have a pair of them. They were about $6-$10 each (again, forgot) and about $12 for the 2 1/2 hour charger. The servomotor for steering was from an old RC car I had

Project Hovercraft [via Hacked Gadgets]

More:

• DIY Hovercraft with 4 PC fans @ 22V!
• Garage Hack: Hovercraft
• Thirty minute hovercraft
• Homemade Hovercraft Instructions - Weekend Projects

Space Squid is releasing issue 5 and throwing a free soiree tonight:

SATURDAY, AUGUST 16th, 5pm-7pm, BIKINIS SPORTS BAR

A big SPACE SQUID party! For the biggest SPACE SQUID issue yet!

There will be free copies of Space Squid #6 (with a COLOR COVER)! Enjoy some FREE APPETIZERS!* Drink some deliciously intoxicating regular-priced BEVERAGES! Marvel at the DINING ETIQUETTE of the Space Squid editors! Meet Central Texas' finest hacks (and some actual published authors)! Chat with a Squidgrrl! Buy a Squid t-shirt at unheard of prices ($7)!

Jenny @ CRAFT points us to this easy scrabble lazy susan using a bracket, some illustration board, and fuzzy furniture feet.

Dot at Dabbled posted a tutorial her husband Dameion made for this handy bus for toting finger puppets around. Great for fuzzy field trips.

On RoboCommunity, Grandlarseny37 has done a preliminary take-apart on the new WowWee Alive Cub robo-critter.

Inside the WowWee Alive Cubs: Part 1 [Thanks, Robert!]

The earliest elementary zoetrope was created in China around 180 AD by the prolific inventor Ting Huan.

It consists of a cylinder with slits cut vertically in the sides. Beneath the slits on the inner surface of the cylinder is a band which has either individual frames from a video/film or images from a set of sequenced drawings or photographs. As the cylinder spins the user looks through the slits at the pictures on the opposite side of the cylinders' interior.

You should be able to make the Zoetrope from found or recycled parts. If you can't salvage parts like a motor or potentiometer, you local electronics shop should have them in stock.

Finding parts:
Remember all those toys the kids have outgrown, or the VCR your neighbor threw out. They all contain switches, motors and wires. It can be a lot of fun scavenging for parts. Just be careful, things like TV's and computers can have high voltages even when they are unplugged. Only scavenge for parts if you know what you are doing. In general, kids toys that are battery operated are fairly safe to rip apart.

This build is a general guide to making a Zoetrope. Make adjustments depending on what parts you find, or purchase. If you make your own Zoetrope, post it in the MAKE Flickr photo pool and send me an email. Thanks!

Supplies you need:

• (1) Old CD - Think AOL, or any demo disk
• (1) CD spindle case
• Paper - Black & white [you can paint the paper black too!]
• Small Eraser
• (1) Motor - Scavenged from a kids toy
• (1) Switch - Again, scavenged
• Some wire

Tools you need:

• Scissors
• X-Acto knife - Be careful!
• Soldering Iron
• Rosin core solder

Part 1: Finding the parts

The first thing you do is acquire some old or broken electronics to scavenge for parts. You can find a motor in many kids toys. If you don't have kids, or know any kids, then just go to the dollar store and buy something with a small electric motor. Hopefully it will have a few switches and batteries too. I bough a small orange fan for $1, and it didn't work at all. Technically the fan would spin, but there wasn't any air movement. It's a perfect candidate for ripping apart.

Disassemble the fan, or what ever recycled toy you have. A lot of times the screws are hidden under stickers so check there if it doesn't open easily.

When I was done I was able to salvage (2) AA batteries, (1) small light bulb, a nice motor, some wire and a lanyard. I'll keep whatever I don't use for another project.

In my bin-parts I had a battery holder, which was scavenged a long time ago. It holds (4) AA batteries. I thought this would be perfect, but I had to cut it in 1/2 so it held (2) AA batteries.

A quick score with a razor blade, and I could snap it in half.

The Waboba ball, which is about the size of a golf ball, has taken off around the world after videos were posted on YouTube.

Made of a combination of plastics with a lycra coating, it is described as having the consistency of a breast implant.

The ball is about the same density as water and floats when at rest, but bounces high and true when thrown. It continues to bounce until it is caught or runs out of steam.

Trossen Robotics has announced the winners of their latest Trossen Robotics Community building contest. This scratch-built Wall-E, by TRC member 4mem8, won first prize (a SG-5UT Robotic Arm). Trossen writes:

We got to watch 4mem8 bring this guy to life and document every painstaking step that he took building this Wall-E robot from scratch. That's right, this was not a kit, in fact he had the majority of it done far before the movie actually hit theaters and the toy stores were flooded with Wall-E merchandise. The robot itself is carved and crafted largely out of wood, and the rest from random parts found here and there... like a true 'junk-bot ' should be! 4mem8 has made a great contribution with his knowledge and experience in building bots, so we're very proud to present him with the first place prize in this round of the TRC contest. Great job 4mem8, you earned it!

August TRC Project Contest Winners!

On Ben Heck's forums, this modder shows how he managed to cram an Xbox 360 wired controller inside the shell of a PS3 Dual Shock shell.

This mod is done with the PS3 board (original version) stripped of almost all of its parts and the controller's daughter board kept intact (mostly) and the CL board cut to about the size of the battery in a PS3 controller.

3PS60 Controller, Wired 360 controller in PS3 shell

This garden railroad modeler built a morse code signaling beacon for his layout driven by a Picaxe 08M. He shows you how to design it to either flash or sound out your desired messages. The builder also updated he article a few years back with a more hardware-friendly Microchip 16F684 PIC processor.

Morse Code Beacon

This circuit bent Pikachu reminds us of a punk rock electronics experiment gone very wrong. Watch the video for the full effect of this thing's ravenous evolution.

via The Adventures of teapot the cat

What do you get when you combine LED throwies with a gaucho snaring weapon? This clever contraption, dubbed the E-bola by creator Tetranitrate on instructables. Using the LEDs and batteries as weights, this throwing weapon lets your prey know you're coming. Oh, and also makes for some nice long-exposure photography. This is probably dangerous to use inside and around others, so be careful (and never use it on your smaller siblings).

Mike Perrucci, aka Mazeguy, builds amazing domino runs - he's even worked with Penn and Teller. His site has lots of info about building runs, including this Tips and Tricks page, where he shows you how to incorporate Slinkies, soda cans, and toilet paper. Great fun if you have a lot of time and a high tolerance for frustration . . .

Core77 has an interview video with Brit Leissler, who made (and is still making) the Octopulse. From the site:

Brit Leissler, of Shoot the Stylist Studios in London, demonstrates the Octopulse, an experimental instrument designed for Yamaha's Product Design Laboratory. This little creature has as a goal to turn listeners of music into players of music, which, in practical terms, takes the form of a knitted synthesizer that turns unapproachable technology into an easily approachable, tactile and emotional object. With this cuddly 'alien bagpipe' you can control analogue sound synthesis through unconventional means. The 'tonetacles' of the Octopulse react to motion and light, transferring movements into information for an analogue synthesizer to convert into cacophonous noises. This unconventional soundscape alters perceptions of what music could be and allows the electronic sounds of a synthesizer to be accessed by anyone.

The next gen Octopulse will be Arduino powered. Oh, I just love tentacled electronics!

More:

Sensor squid relation game

Jason over at Haqckszine found the Tilted Twister, a LEGO NXT robot that can solve a Rubik's Cube without the help of a PC. It's really impressive to watch!

Just place the scrambled cube on Tilted Twister's turntable. An ultrasonic sensor detects its presence and starts to read the colors of the cube faces using a light sensor. The robot turns and tilts the cube in order to read all the faces of the cube. It then calculates a solution and executes the moves by turning, tilting and twisting the cube.

Building instructions and source code are available on Hans Andersson's site.

Crabfu. Is there no stopping this guy? He seems to be cranking out a bot or other cool creation on a near-weekly basis. Here's his latest, a remote-controlled golfing "bot."

Putter Bot

Daniel Carnes writes in to tell us about this cool wooden RC tank built by Matthias Wandel. The site has lots of pictures of the build. Matthias also makes other super elaborate wood works.

Here's a messy dissection of a Magic 8-Ball. Really, don't taste the blue fluid - sheesh, I can't believe they did that.

And I love the idea of modding one. If you were careful, you could repackage it and give it as a gift.

These homemade wireframe trucks from Cameroon, Africa use a large steering wheel to maneuver a small car on the road. Really simple construction here, built from found materials and junk, but pretty inspiring nonetheless.

via Street Use

Gunk on Floor (where do people get these names??) put together a great Instructable on making a spy periscope - it's a classic kid's project.

Instructables user peterthehun made this costume hat replica of a Rubik's Cube. Oddly disturbing, and I wonder how he can see out of it!

Ronnie Hinton of Florida made a tunable six-string cigar box guitar, base on the project in MAKE vol. 4. As the video on his site shows, he can play a decent tune or two on it!

From the pages of MAKE:

Cigar Box Guitar by Ed Vogel in MAKE volume 4 - preview online (digital subscribers can read entire article)

Our city prohibits street fireworks within the city limits (though you couldn't tell from the noise on 4th of July night!). We're going to contribute our own safe, legal noises this year with some Really Obnoxious Noise Makers from this Instructable.

Lots of pics of the Seattle Power Tool Drag Race in this Flickr Pool.

Seattle Power Tool Race and Derby 2008

Here's a collection of 8-bit art made with colored Post-It Notes. This is an art form I'm sure Staples and OfficeMax really hope catches on...

Post-it Note Art: 8-bit Edition [via Hack n Mod]

Matt Kirkland peels back our illusions about cute robot toys, via Bot Junkie. The machine inside the ghost?

There are two parts the game and the hardware connection. After a little research I discovered the possibility to read out the speed of a Powerball with a sensor. By connecting this sensor to the Arduino (and a bunch of other electronic components) it is possible to use the rotationspeed of the powerball on your computer.

Read more about Powerball

Natalie @ Craft found this fun tutorial on making a Super Foam-erator - a great easy (and messy!) kid's project for out in the yard.

Saturday I went to Artopia in Seattle's Georgetown area. Lots of cool art everywhere! Divide from Hazard Factory explained his (very loud) jelly bean gun, yet another way to dramatically fling things into the air. Only use this outside!

More:
Make a Spud Gun Instructions and 3D PDF
The SGTC Mega-Launcher Spudgun