Gadget Lab’s DIY Superhero Suit Contest: We Have a W1NN3R It turns out — as we’ve always suspected — that readers of the G-Lab are a talented, crafty bunch. And nerds. Hopeless, comic book reading nerds. (That’s a compliment in case you were wondering.) And now all that nerding…
It turns out — as we have always suspected — that readers of the G-Lab are a talented, crafty bunch. And nerds. Hopeless, comic book reading nerds. (That’s a compliment in case you were wondering.)
And now all that nerding out has finally paid off. Nearly two weeks after we challenged you to send us your ideal do-it-yourself superhero costumes, we have a clear cut champion. We received entries from folks dressed as Tank Girl, the Scarlet Spider, a SMASHED Hulk, and, ahem, Super David. But after a long hard fought battle that even Alan Moore would be proud to document in graphic novel form, we’re ready to announce out winner of the Great Gadget Lab DIY Superhero Suit contest and recipient of the ultra-rare $2000 special edition Iron Man phone from LG.
And that winner is: Ryan Peters for the awesome RoboCop-meets-Iron Man mashup he cobbled together from discarded gadgets and aptly dubbed Used Electronics Man. And get this: the guy actually had the stones to wear it not only on a Wal-Mart shopping spree (as seen in the picture above)
The NASA 2009 Astronaut Candidate Class recruitment—for the first mission to the Moon in four decades—may be over, but if you didn’t send your résumé, don’t worry: you can still be a space sofa potato and look at the pretty images and videos, like this newly-released NASA simulation showing how the whole thing is going to work.
Rather than building a big, pricey, and very complicated rocket carrying a smaller space ship—like the powerful Saturn did in the Apollo missions—the Constellation program will use two rockets to send a larger spacecraft. The first rocket will carry the lunar lander along with a propulsion stage into Earth orbit. The second one, the Ares I launch automobile, will carry the Orion spaceship with the astronauts on board, which will be rendezvous with the lunar lander in orbit and dock. Once docked, the propulsion stage will push the combined craft to the moon and some lucky, smart, and courageous astronaut would be able to say: “It may not be the first step, and it certainly won’t be the last one.” Or “Oh boy, whooooopeeeee-doooo!”
Those who threw down the extra cash for a first gen PlayStation 3 got a few bonuses in return—the newer 40GB version is shy a few USB ports, a memory card reader and hardware-based backwards compatibility. Nyko is solving two of these problems with their Media Hub, a 3-port USB hub with media card reader (SD and Memory Stick). Compatible with all available PS3s, the Media Hub snaps seamlessly onto consoles and works from a horizontal or vertical position. Anticipate the Media Hub to hit stores this August for $20. Sorry you’re still jacked with the backwards compatibility stuff. [Nyko]
If you want to get your iPhone App into the App Store in time for the July 11 launch, you’ll have to submit it by July 7. That’s next Monday. If you’re one of those children who always does their homework at the last second, we suspect there’s going to be less BBQ and more “OMGWTFBBQ we’re not done!” this weekend. And there’s no copying off the smart kid now either, so we don’t want to see Super Monkey Ball and Super Orangutan Ball turn up next Friday. Of course you don’t totally have to be there at launch, but there’s a much higher chance of more press coverage if you’re. Don’t forget to look at our App Contest as well. [MacRumors]
Snake Oil Bandage Claims to Electrify Wounds The CMB PROSIT medical dressing appears at first to be a great idea. When wet, it allows current to flow through the bandage, thus killing bacteria and generally wiping out things that thrive in a damp environment. Upon closer inspection,…
The CMB PROSIT medical dressing appears at first to be a great idea. When wet, it grants current to flow through the bandage, thus killing bacteria and generally wiping out things that thrive in a damp environment. Upon closer inspection, though, the dressings, which cost around $250 for ten, seem a perfect fit for our new Snakeoil category.
First, no electricity is supplied to help fry the skin-gremlins. Instead, the CMB uses “microcurrents”, 100mV/mm currents which are generated by the human body at injury sites. According to the blurb “It is believed that this flux in the local biocurrent is the stimulus to heal.” [emphasis added].
So, if the microcurrents are already there, doing their anti-microbial thing, what does this dressing do? It seems that it allows this current to flow, but only when wet. I might be missing something here, but surely anything allows a current to flow when wet. Since the CMB doesn’t actually retain any more water than a regular dressing, how does it help?
A look at the PDF of the FDA application and a letter of reply shows that this is nothing more than a regular dressing with a tiny zinc and silver added:
If you’re one of those weird and sometimes gloomy people (like me) who get the urge to shut the curtains on even the nicest of days, a new solar development will give us a new excuse to do it: It…
If you’re one of those weird and sometimes gloomy people (like me) who get the urge to close the curtains on even the nicest of days, a new solar development will give us a new excuse to do it: It might help the environment and save us a few bucks.
Sheila Kennedy, a faculty member of MIT’s School of Design, has developed new solar textiles and used them to create the first sustainable, energy yielding curtains. The curtains were developed for a green-living exhibit at the Vitra Design Museum in Germany, and the coolest thing about them is that they can produce up to 16,000 watt-hours of electricity (or about half of what’s needed to power up a house every day.)
The Gadget: Linksys’ Dual-N Band Wireless Router just became official, giving users simultaneous 5GHz and 2.4GHz bands so 802.11N users and 802.11G users can coexist without N users having to use the crowded 2.4GHz space. Also, since it’s dual N-band, two N users can connect (one to each frequency) without interfering with the other. It’s styled in Linksys’ new form factor, which helps accentuate that Linksys is more for consumers (especially compared to their parent company Cisco).
The Price: $199 MSRP, but Amazon lists it for $149 for some reason.
The Verdict: Great. Although the outside shell has changed from the traditional utilitarian Linksys blue and charcoal to a shiny dust-magnet black, the innards still carry on their workmanlike quality. We put it on the second floor of our three floor house and it was able to cover each room, including through the walls to all the bathrooms. File transfers were speedy and comparable to the Apple Gigabit Airport Extreme we’ve been using for a while. The on-router configuration website is typical Linksys, but it also comes with their slightly newer EasyLink Advisor configuration application that helps you set up your network if you’re not used to diddling with this stuff.
The upside is that if you’ve both N and G devices co-existing on your network now, this is a good solution to not slow down the N devices. Plus, one N device doesn’t slow down another N device if they’re using different frequencies. You also get a USB port for easy network storage sharing. Its Darth Vader glossy black is pretty much the polar opposite of Apple’s Luke-white Airport Extreme. Since the prices are so close and the feature set is almost the same (Apple’s $179 vs. this one’s $149/$199), it’s really up to you which style you want. [Amazon]
Here’s Mani getting the name right and explaining some details.
The image associated with this post is ideal viewed using a browser.Wow. Stan Glasgow, at dinner last night with a few journalists, told us that Sony plans to network 90% of all of their products, thousands of models, by 2010. It’s a matter of getting content on and between devices. He said that the goal was to have it happen automatically or with a click of a button.
The VAIO was mentioned as a focal point of the strategy, and by that method, Windows. But Glasgow also mentioned that there would be additional software to help them achieve this goal and differentiate themselves from other computer makers, hopefully without the bloat you see in today’s VAIOs. I have some concerns about their software expertise but they’ve been addressing that recently. I am more concerned about their expertise in hosting services, like Xbox Live versus the maturity of the Playstation store. Glaslow also went into slightly more detailed answers as to how their cross product connectivity is being shaped, continuing past what president Howard Stringer stated about each group no longer being insulated from each other during development. He said that software development would begin from the beginning of product cycles and that specific designers were in charge of setting up the UI similarities and setting up the common kernels. There were central groups that supposedly connect all the other groups.
I should hope the networking efforts happen within the next generation of product because this gen’s examples are not that strong; Hancock will be, this fall, the first title available on the Bravia internet link streaming system released ahead of disc releases. But given the $299 price tag and the bad reviews of the motion picture, they need to do a lot superior. As far as content streaming goes, I don’t think that Sony’s world wide web video strategy will fly until they build this hardware into every Bravia Television. Talking of connectivity, Glaslow also mentioned that a Sony Reader E-book with wireless connectivity was being developed.
As a close, I’d asked Glaslow why there were so many Sony products and why were the names so confusing. He’d replied that he’d concurred it was an issue, but that there were many sides to the problem including tracking a specific model through design to manufacturing, when they’d so many SKUs. And that it was possible to do different internal and external names, but the problem with iconic names is that submodels get lost in the shuffle. I thought to myself, I guess they should probably not release so many models because we find it pretty confusing when shopping Sony.
And now all that nerding out has finally paid off. Nearly two weeks after we challenged you to send us your ideal do-it-yourself superhero costumes, we have a clear cut champion. We received entries from folks dressed as Tank Girl, the Scarlet Spider, a SMASHED Hulk, and, ahem, Super David. But after a long hard fought battle that even Alan Moore would be proud to document in graphic novel form, we’re ready to announce out winner of the Great Gadget Lab DIY Superhero Suit contest and recipient of the ultra-rare $2000 special edition Iron Man phone from LG.
The 
Those who threw down the extra cash for a first gen PlayStation 3 got a few bonuses in return—the newer 40GB version is shy a few USB ports, a memory card reader and hardware-based backwards compatibility. Nyko is solving two of these problems with their Media Hub, a 3-port USB hub with media card reader (SD and Memory Stick). Compatible with all available PS3s, the Media Hub snaps seamlessly onto consoles and works from a horizontal or vertical position. Anticipate the Media Hub to hit stores this August for $20. Sorry you’re still jacked with the backwards compatibility stuff. [
If you want to get your iPhone App into the App Store in time for the July 11 launch, you’ll have to submit it by July 7. That’s next Monday. If you’re one of those children who always does their homework at the last second, we suspect there’s going to be less BBQ and more “OMGWTFBBQ we’re not done!” this weekend. And there’s no copying off the smart kid now either, so we don’t want to see Super Monkey Ball and Super Orangutan Ball turn up next Friday. Of course you don’t totally have to be there at launch, but there’s a much higher chance of more press coverage if you’re. Don’t forget to 
The CMB PROSIT medical dressing appears at first to be a great idea. When wet, it grants current to flow through the bandage, thus killing bacteria and generally wiping out things that thrive in a damp environment. Upon closer inspection, though, the dressings, which cost around $250 for ten, seem a perfect fit for our new 
The Gadget: Linksys’ 
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