Boutique hotel chain The Standard has commissioned its own custom lightbulbs whose filaments are replaced with double-Xs that glow with delicate, pastel hues; other boutiques like Chateau Marmont and The Mercer also have do their own bulbs.
The 3 watt bulbs have a warm low glow. Dimensions of each globe is about 4.75" x 2.25" and they screw into any standard incandescent fixture. We love how they look on a light string using multiple sets. The bulbs are individually boxed with a KAWS and The Standard sticker and then wrapped again in an outer box that holds all three, also co-branded.
IEEE Spectrum reports on Windoro the window-cleaning robot.
The robot consists of two modules that go on opposite sides of the window and hold each other using permanent magnets.
The Windoro robot can clean windows 6 to 25 millimeters thick (0.2 to 1 inch). And no, you won't see it hanging on skyscrapers -- its creators say it's designed for cleaning windows at homes and stores.
One of the robot's two modules works as the navigation unit. It uses accelerometers to navigate and bump sensors to detect obstacles and window frames. The other module is the cleaning unit, which has four spinning microfiber pads and a reservoir that dispenses detergent.
From the last days of WWI, Paleofuture brings us this illustration for a "trench destroyer" that graced the Feb, 1917 cover of Hugo Gernsback's The Electrical Experimenter: "The design of this mobile dreadnaught, with its steel-tired, spoked wheels, suggests that its inventor may have been influenced by agricultural tractors or perhaps an amusement park Ferris wheel. The trench destroyer also embodies the common goal of military visionaries: maximum offensive power with total defensive security." (This description is from Yesterday's Tomorrows: Past Visions of the American Future, by Corn and Horrigan).
Sudan's Military Industry Corporation has everything you need to stage your militaristic atrocity, from small arms to tanks, mortar rounds to army boots (boots presently out of stock). No prices given -- goodness, what a bunch of e-commerce tyros!
The woman "is resigned to losing her phone, but still wants its SIM card back since that has her precious photos and contacts." And the crocodile has bigger problems: he "has not eaten or had a bowel movement in four weeks and appears depressed and in pain."
The cover project from our newest issue of MAKE, Volume 25, is Doug Desrochers' "$5 Heli-Rocket" (seen above being field tested by intrepid Make: Labs engineering intern Nick Raymond). With a mere $5 worth of materials, including toilet paper tubes, coat hangers, and rubber bands, you can build this high-flying model rocket. Instead of employing a standard parachute, this rocket releases its three tail fins, made of thin corrugated cardboard, which swing open like helicopter blades to slow the rocket's descent. We've shared this entire project with you in Make: Project, and invite you to get in and collaborate. Also, check out the author's video of the Heli-Rocket in action, and be sure to grab a copy of MAKE Volume 25, fresh on newsstands right now.
Check out MAKE Volume 25: MAKE Volume 25: Arduino Revolution
Give your gadgets a brain! Previously out of reach for the do-it-yourselfer, the tiny computers called microcontrollers are now so cheap and easy to use that anyone can make their stuff smart. With a microcontroller, your gadget can sense the environment, talk to the internet or other hardware, and make things happen in the real world by controlling motors, lights, or any electronic device.
MIT students Grant Jordan and Kyle Vogt found themselves in possession of a high-security safe -- the S&G; 8400, a class-1 safe of the sort formerly used to store classified documents. They wanted to open it, but they lacked the combination and were unable to crack it using the sort of techniques that work on lesser strongboxen. So they build a safecracking robot that autodialled combination after combination (the robot excluded "impossible" combinations that couldn't be set due to material limitations of the mechanism, which substantially reduced the keyspace). They eventually opened the safe, but didn't find anything interesting in it.
We used a custom stepper motor to rotate the dialer head. The dialer head transmits torque to the dial via a piece of heavy duty surgical tubing. The stepper motor we chose has more than enough resolution to implement our algorithm, but it's not quite as fast as it could be. Stepper motors have an extremely high "holding torque", which is ideal in this situation since the dial must be held in place while the butterfly knob is being turned.
The head also contains an RC servo motor with a machined knob to mesh with the butterfly knob. This setup enables independent rotation of both the dial and butterfly knob. The stepper motor shaft is also connected to a high resolution optical encoder for position feedback. The encoder is mainly used to detect when safe is successfully opened. The torque required to open the safe when the correct combination is entered is much higher than the maximum torque of the stepper motor, so the encoder is programmed to report when the position error exceeds a certain threshold. Basically, the stepper motor stalls and the encoder flips out if the safe actually opens.
Italian furniture maker Tappezzeria Rocchetti has attained a new zenith in tatty representations of glorious antiquities with this sofa based on the Roman Colosseum:
This sofa is the perfect example of an exceptionally manufactured sofa that offers both the comfort of a sofa and the unique feeling of visiting a historical monument like the Colosseum in Italy, Rome. The manufacturer, Tappezzeria Rocchetti is actually famous for its craftwork upholstery that already has over sixty years of tradition. This sofa is a mix of antique history and also modern features - comfort and modern materials, being perfect for the little hostels in the city of Rome , offering the tourists a taste of the ancient Rome while still inside or in front of the TV set.
Designer RD Silva's Turnstyle record player reduces a turntable to the bare minimum: a stylus arm, a motor, a switch and a speaker. It's the polar opposite of the first record player I bought for myself, around 1985 -- a Panasonic all-in-one radio/turntable/double cassette deck that was the size of a bar fridge but weighed only a few kilos, having been bulked up in a big, largely empty box to make it seem more substantial and therefore worth the price.
This gadget is a barebones adapter for mildly tech-savvy people to connect a 2.5" or 3.5" hard drive to your computer's USB port.
I've been using it for about six months, and have attached a variety of drives (IDE and SATA) to my Mac, to a PC, to a VirtualBox Windows VM, and to a dedicated NAS box running Linux. I've consistently used it without installing dedicated drivers (and for that matter, without reading the installation guide which is provided on CD-ROM).
For the same money (about $20) you could get a USB enclosure that keeps your drive better protected, but then you'd be locked into one specific drive size and connector type. The Vantec adapter is flexible across several drive types (2.5" v. 3.5", SATA v. IDE) , and comes with adapters for both the data and power connections.
I reach for this gadget when I need temporary access to a drive--usually because I took the drive out of another machine and need to get data off before it dies. Or, because I need to format a drive before it gets installed elsewhere, or just for a fast data transfer.
Upcoming appearances:
• February 25, 2011: University of Wisconsin Milwaukee Never Say Diagonal of the Covariance Matrix: 6 Things Scientists Can Learn From Science Journalists
This gadget is a barebones adapter for mildly tech-savvy people to connect a 2.5" or 3.5" hard drive to your computer's USB port. 
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