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This is pretty straight forward, this maker took apart one of those hand cranked flashlights and soldered in a plug for his phone - this video shows you how -

Use A Flashlight To Power Your… Video - Link.

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Originally from MAKE Magazine on February 28, 2007, 10:32am

The tinker.it blog (and site) has tons of great projects for designers and artists, like this one a Multitouch table -

This is an experiment based on “frustrated total internal reflection” aka FTIR. This is a very basic demo and we did it just to see how it work and it took us just 4 days!

tinker.it » Blog Archive » multitouch table experiment - Link.

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Originally from MAKE Magazine on February 28, 2007, 1:55pm

Cory Doctorow:

NORML has announced the winners of its “Ron Mann’s Cannabis Clip” video contest. There’re some damned funny pot videos here.

Link

(Thanks, Ron!)

See also Make a pro-dope short, win $1k

Originally by Cory Doctorow from Boing Boing on February 27, 2007, 11:59pm

Cory Doctorow:

Bloomframe (from the Dutch firm Hofman Dujardin Architecten) is a cross between a picture window and a balcony — it slides out of the side of the building to convert to a balcony when the need strikes, then retracts when you’re done.

Link

(Thanks, Michael!)

Originally by Cory Doctorow from Boing Boing on February 27, 2007, 1:37pm

Xeni Jardin:

Following up on yesterday’s BB post about a new youtube soundtrack for the 1902 silent film Voyage Dans La Lune, John Brownlee of the Wired blog Table of Malcontents points us to a recent Wired.com piece he did on silent film revivalism online. He explains:

The piece explores modern scoring of silent films and the future of silent films on the ubiquitous video displays of major cities (as well as all silent, black and white plays based on Louise Brooks films… oh, and Cthulhu): Link.

It hadn’t even occurred to me to talk to some of the people rescoring films on the Internet for the piece, and now the heel of my palm is shuddering against my forehead for missing that angle, because it’s one of the cooler aspects of silent film revivalism. It doesn’t even stop at silent film: for example, there’s this experimental rescoring to the trippy French animated classic Fantastic Planet.

I’m actually posting up an interview over the next couple days with the girl who did an all silent, black and white play (part one: Link) and I’ll be following up over the next week or two with a bunch of other interviews with
artists involved with silent film revivalism.

Image: a still from the contemporary silent film by Paolo Cherchi Usai, which is mentioned in Brownlee’s Wired story.

Previously on BoingBoing:

Originally by Xeni Jardin from Boing Boing on February 27, 2007, 1:08pm

Originally from Split Screen on February 22, 2007, 11:59pm

Originally from Split Screen on February 21, 2007, 11:46pm

Sleepwalkers (Online exhibition) (Flash)
Sleepwalkers (Exhibition info)

Sadly I’ve missed the deadline for this post, as it is about an exhibition that ended on February 12; Julie had told me about it earlier but I didn’t get around to posting in time. I hope some of you got to see what sounds like an intriguing installation, where Doug Aitken projected synchronized videos onto the walls of MoMA. Read Julie’s post on Sleepwalkers to get a sense of what the exhibition looked and felt like.

Doug Aitken (WARNING: the site will resize your window) has been utilizing multiple channels of audio and video in his works for a long time. I’ve been meaning to pick up his book Broken Screen.

Thanks to Julie Talen.

Originally from Split Screen on February 20, 2007, 5:30pm

For years, WK Interact’s massive and strikingly beautiful black and white murals on an abandoned gas station on Lafayette street were a fixture of lower Manhattan. Not just for people who were following the street art scene, but to everyone who saw them. In many ways WK’s work on Lafayette Street defined the neighborhood. But then, about 18 months ago, all of the work was destroyed when bulldozers took down the gas station to make way for a hamburger joint.

But this week, we’re able to return to Lafayette Street as WK discovered that one of the people filming him that morning has posted some of the footage on Youtube. You can watch it below…

Originally from Wooster Collective, ReBlogged by Rosanna Flouty on Feb 26, 2007 at 10:00 PM

Originally from Eyebeam reBlog on February 26, 2007, 9:00pm

David Pescovitz:

Architect-turned-photographer Kazuhiko Kawahara (AKA Palla), from Osaka, Japan, takes simple architectural photographs and then digitally mirrors, rotates, cuts, pastes, darkens, lightens, and combines them into stunning new images. From a PingMag interview with Palla:

By making it symmetrical I confront the natural with the mechanical, the artificial. Architecture in itself is made entirely by people to be used and controlled by people. It is artificial. However, when people come and gather, it becomes like a city, a living organism and the situation transforms into something more natural. My works contain both those artificial and natural components. I’m attracted by the dynamism of the change from a simple form to a complicated organism.

Link to Pallalink site, Link to PingMag interview (via Neatorama)

Originally posted by David Pescovitz from Boing Boing, ReBlogged by Rosanna Flouty on Feb 26, 2007 at 09:56 PM

Originally from Eyebeam reBlog on February 26, 2007, 8:56pm

[Image: Inside the riveted curvature and infinite throughways of Ontario's subterranean generating station, as photographed by Vanishing Point, about whom I hope to post more soon. While you're there, by the way, don't miss the so-called Depths of Salvation. Meanwhile, see BLDGBLOG's own take on urban knot theory, then join our tour of London Topological].

Originally posted by Geoff Manaugh from BLDGBLOG, ReBlogged by Rosanna Flouty on Feb 26, 2007 at 09:38 PM

Originally from Eyebeam reBlog on February 26, 2007, 8:38pm

a novel data visualization system that allows users to interactively explore complex flow scenarios represented as Sankey diagrams. the system provides an overview of the flow graph & allows users to zoom in & explore details on demand. the system is applied to the energy flow in a city. different forms of energy are distributed within the city & they are transformed into heat, electricity, or other forms of energy. these processes are visualized & can be interactively explored.

an interesting energy Sankey flow diagram was published in the February issue of Science Magazine (via scienceblogs.com), that demonstrates how “… more than half of the energy produced (in the US) is wasted”.

see also situational awareness map & flow maps & pivotgraph & .

[link: uni-weimar.de & uni-weimar.de (mov)]

Originally from information aesthetics on February 27, 2007, 11:15pm

There is a great set of pages from The World of Science, published by Golden Books in 1954 over on Modern Mechanix. Th is fellow is soldering
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Originally from MAKE Magazine, ReBlogged by Leon Reid on Feb 28, 2007 at 01:02 AM

Originally from Eyebeam reBlog on February 28, 2007, 12:02am

Convincing the taxpaying public that the Moon is worthy of a human return requires far more evocative scenarios than those that have been have been used so far to promote NASA’s Vision for Space Exploration.

Originally from SPACE.com, ReBlogged by Leon Reid on Feb 28, 2007 at 12:28 AM

Originally from Eyebeam reBlog on February 27, 2007, 11:28pm

Find a Wi-Fi hotspot in your area with Hotspotr, a new Google Maps mashup that relies entirely on user input.

As with other Wi-Fi finders, you can search for hotspots by entering a city, ZIP code or place, then get maps, driving directions, phone numbers, etc. Hotspotr also lets you rate and review existing hotspots based on criteria like wireless quality, food/drink quality, availability of AC outlets and so on. It’s fairly easy to add hotspots of your own, though you have to supply the location’s address; there’s no built-in address lookup.

Ultimately, the success of Hotspotr depends on community participation. As of this writing, there was exactly one hotspot listed within my ZIP code: The one I entered myself. Even so, this is one slick mashup, so get there and start listing your favorite hotspots. In the meantime, check out Lifehacker readers’ favorite hotspot locators. — Rick Broida

Originally from Lifehacker on February 26, 2007, 10:00am

• Hack Attack: Top 10 Ubuntu apps and tweaks
• Ubuntu Tip: How to mount a Windows NTFS partition
• How to install Photoshop on Ubuntu
• Install and run Ubuntu without disturbing Windows
• Compare Linux distros side by side
• How to install anything in Ubuntu
• Thirteen things to do after you install Ubuntu
• Introduction to the Unix command line
• The Windows-to-Linux roadmap
• 5 ways to run Windows software on a Linux system

Originally from Lifehacker on February 27, 2007, 9:00pm

The Linux on Desktop blog offers 13 installations that will make your new Ubuntu desktop feel and work a little more like Windows.

The list includes utilities every computer user needs, like a PDF reader, RAR unarchiver, the Flash plugin, DVD playback support and desktop search, as well as apps that enable NTFS (Windows-formatted) disk access, and different codecs for multimedia playback support. If you’re taking the leap from Windows to Ubuntu, be sure to also see Adam’s top 10 Ubuntu apps and tweaks. — Gina Trapani

Originally from Lifehacker on February 26, 2007, 10:30am

Blogger Steve Rubel details how he uses Gmail as his center of operation for almost all of his work. His post describes:

• How to turn Gmail into a massive personal database (Gmail + the Google Toolbar)
• How to get real-time news updates in Gmail (Gmail+ Google Talk + Twitter)
• How to automatically store your bookmarks in Gmail (Gmail + del.icio.us + Yahoo Alerts)
• How to manage Calendar and To-Dos in Gmail (Gmail + Backpack + GCal +  GTalk + iMified)
• How to blog from Gmail (Gmail + Wordpress/TypePad/Blogger + IMified)

Rubel’s methods are certainly inventive, and though they lack the speed of similar offline tools, they are spot-on if you do a lot of work from different computers. Though it’s hard to imagine doing all of this from Gmail (sometimes it’s best not to try to make an apple out of an orange), it can make life easier to integrate tools when you can, and Rubel offers several interesting ways to squeeze more functionality out of Gmail. — Adam Pash

Originally from Lifehacker on February 26, 2007, 4:30pm

Windows/Mac/Unix (Firefox): Firefox extension Tab Groups lets you organize your Firefox tabs into - you guessed it - more tabs!

Just create and name your high level tab groups, then organize your existing tabs into new groups or move them between groups with a simple drag and drop. Tab Groups is a very new extension (still in alpha, in fact), but the core functionality is already there and so far it’s worked wonders for me. There are, however, a few kinks that require the proper setup for Tab Groups to work.

Namely, Tab Groups doesn’t currently work with the Tab Mix Plus session restore - but it works perfectly with Firefox 2’s built-in Session Manager. There are a couple of other limitations you might want to check out before you dive in head first, but none of them posed a major problem to me - especially since I’m so excited to get the tab grouping functionality.

If you’re used to having 20+ tabs open at a time, this kind of organization tool can come in very handy, especially if you’re limited by a small monitor. — Adam Pash

Originally from Lifehacker on February 27, 2007, 3:30pm

Mac OS X only: Freeware Dashboard widget xCuts provides a simple way to look up keyboard shortcuts on your Mac.

xCuts lets you narrow down what shortcut you’re looking for in a number of ways, but one of the coolest features of xCuts for me and the rest of the Windows-to-Mac switching bunch is a section specifically covering Windows shortcuts and their Mac equivalents. Aside from that, xCuts covers other system-wide and application-specific shortcuts (including a handy Quicksilver cheatsheet). I’m not huge on Dashboard widgets, but this is one I actually plan on using. xCuts is freeware, Mac OS X only. — Adam Pash

Originally from Lifehacker on February 27, 2007, 12:30pm