“The Man” vs. machine

Getting a ticket for speeding is a fear that most drivers face every day. For 16 percent of drivers this year, that fear will become a reality. Of those, only 5 percent of people will not contest their ticket, costing them an average of 150 dollars.

While many drivers get pulled over for speeding, others have learned to avoid the police officer’s radar gun with a device of his or her own — The radar detector.

A radar gun uses radio waves to detect the distance and speed of objects based on the doppler effect. A radar detector is able to detect these waves before they catch the speeding car.

A radar jammer is something different from a detecter. Instead of alerting the driver to a speed gun, it creates a jamming signal that causes a confusing echo signal.

The use of a radar jammer is illegal and could lead to felony charges, fines, or jail time. Detectors are illegal in Virginia and Washington D.C. and on all military bases. They are generally illegal in all non-commercial vehicles under the Communications Act of 1934.

In this infographic, topcriminaljusticedegrees.org looks at different kinds of speed detectors as well as how they can be avoided or manipulated.

Street Fighter stop motion: Ryu vs Ken as you’ve never seen before

There have been many renditions of fights between Street Fighter primary characters Ken and Ryu. Cartoons, CGI, even real-life movies have been used to portray the fight between the two evenly-matched combatants.

The one below may be the most creative one yet.

Using a Nikon D5100 sent as a sponsorship tool, YouTube user counter656 uploaded the video today and it’s already starting to make its rounds.

Photography past meets present – best iPhone accessory ever?

It doesn’t get more awesome than this. It does not get more awesome than this. I don’t think anyone can argue that the iPhone already takes pretty swell pictures, as far as phones are concerned – but this is something new entirely.

Black Design Associates have dreamed up this inarguably awesome iPhone/Leica i9 combo that simply begs to be produced for real-real. Can you just imagine this?

Says BDA of the design: “It’s common practice to combine a smart phone with a digital camera, but how do you combine a great smart phone with a great digital camera when your brands may speak to very different categories?”

Apparently, they’ve answered their own question – and how.

Location-based album launches musical elitism to new heights

Do you exist? Do you like music? If you answered yes to both questions, you’ll likely find this pretty neat. Bluebrain, a band based out of Washington DC, have just released a new album – but not as a disc, or even as an iTunes download. The album is a location-aware app that tracks you via GPS and causes the music to evolve as you move around.

Sadly, the area you must move around in order for the ‘album’ to work is ‘The Mall’ park area in Washington – although, if you’re lucky enough to live around there, you might want to check this out. I haven’t been this excited about music in ages.

For the rest of us across the globe, we’ll have to be content with this video trailer for the album.

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/24250620[/vimeo]

Lego Super-8 camera only further proof that Lego really can solve every problem

I dream of a world wherein we’ve built everything out of Lego, simply because we can. A post-apocalyptic future after which we’ve rebuilt humanity from the ground up with naught but our wits and Lego. I have yet to see a task that can’t be handled with a few cogs of Lego Technic and a pair of capable hands, and this Super 8 camera built by Friedemann Wachsmuth does nothing to contradict this claim. Of course, the lens and lamp aren’t Lego, but whatever. Still counts.

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/20107617[/vimeo]

And you were never without internets again

In the market for a new computer? How does 25 bucks fetch ya? Cooked up by game developer David Braben, ‘Raspberry Pi‘ is a PC he’s hoping to market to teaching children the joys (or horrors, depending on which camp you’re in) of programming.

So, what do you get for $25? Well, howsabout a 700MHz ARM11 processor, 128MB of RAM, HDMI Out, and a single USB port, running Ubuntu 9.0.4? Yeah, that’s not much. But it’s pretty impressive once you’re told that this computer IS A USB STICK.

No foolin’. Here, watch Braben wax lyrical about it for a few minutes. No, he doesn’t rap. But as mad fly as this device is, he really doesn’t need to.
What would you do with a $25 PC?

The console you never knew you wanted

YouTubist EdsJunk wants to build you an Xbox Slim laptop – and he’s not above charging you hard-earned sweetcoin to do it. For $1600, Ed will build you a rough-n-tumble unit, perfect for playing Streeet Fighter 4 on the road. That might seem pretty expensive, but just look at this thing. A thing of beauty, it is. A 17-inch HD screen (720p), 4 USB ports, and a built-in power brick make this one styling unit. But check it: for the much more affordable price of $200, Ed will take YOUR Xbox and mod it into one of these. If that isn’t the coolest, you don’t know what’s up.

Just watch this video and tell me you couldn’t stand to have one of these.

Kinect armchair takes laziness to its logical conclusion

Sit back, and relax.

For the rest of your life.

Quite possibly the coolest Kinect hack yet has come from Microsoft itself – in the form of this Kinect-powered motorized armchair, built using the soon-to-be-released Kinect PC SDK. With a flick of the wrist, the chair reclines, adjusts, and even becomes mobile, all while you laze about. If this blatant incarnation of slothdom isn’t the reason technology made it to this point, nothing is.

Behold!

Alright, so the operation of this thing is still a little cumbersome, and really doesn’t look all that usable, let alone pleasant. But think of the future! A future in which we all hover around in little chairs like Modok. That’s a future worth living for. That’s a future worth waiting for.

Rolltop – A Flexible Laptop May Be Closer Than We Think

You’re already watching the video, so let me break it down: this is Rolltop. It’s a laptop that rolls out. Pretty simple. And probably not the first one of these you’ve ever seen – but as the technology actually exists to make this a possibility now, it serves to make something like Rolltop all the more exciting.

What makes Rolltop especially rad, though, is that unlike many of these videos that typically represent only forays into wishful thinking by ambitious design students, the Rolltop team is actively vying to reach production. So the real question here is not ‘if’, but ‘when’ – or perhaps even more poignantly, ‘would you’? Is a sleek, all-in-one, laptop-cum-tablet your bag? As a tablet, I can imagine the Rolltop would be aces. As a laptop? Well, we’ll see.

For more information, or to donate to the project, you can visit Rolltop here.

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