How old is the Internet?

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Eco-friendly gadgets

Lately, I've been posting on more eco-friendly technologies (such as the car that runs on water or the gadget that charges your cellphone while you dance) because I've been increasingly concerned about the serious consequences that may occur if Humanity doesn't find alternative sources of energy to end our dependency on fossil fuels.

And to continue in that wave of eco-friendly technologies, here's a list of some interesting gadgets/ideas to turn our technology consumption a bit more "green":

• Solar Cells under Multi-touch displays - This is an idea based on the patent that Apple recently registered that stated their intention of creating a layer below the iPhone's display made out of solar cells. The idea is really insteresting as it allows you to leave your gadget on the sun to charge itself, but I still have doubts if it's actually a good idea to leave the gadget exposed to intensive heat :-)
  



• Solar cell backpack - This one is obvious. This backpack receives sunlight and turns it into energy used to charge your gadgets inside, such as a laptop, cellphone or iPod.
  



• USB-rechargeable battery - Forget about special chargers that you have to use to charge your batteries. This battery charges itself once connected to a computer's USB port.
  



• Kinetic-based batteries - In the same line as the dance charger, this battery charges itself with the movement that a person produces while walking, which means that it doesn't need to be connected to an energy source directly to be then used in some gadget :-)
  

You can find more eco-friendly gadgets here.

Source: The Hottest Gadgets

How to download musics from MySpace using Safari and "wget" (on Mac OS X)

DISCLAIMER: even though the instructions provided in this post may be (mis)used to download copyrighted material, this blog or its author do not support any piracy activities and cannot be held responsible for what others do with the knowledge acquired here. The author disseminates this knowledge with the sole purpose of allowing users to backup musics that MySpace's publishing artists already allow users to download, which is the case in the given example.

MySpace is a great social website that has specialized in providing access to a lot of musical material from musicians around the world. Some of those musicians publish their musics in their profile and even allow downloading them (as you can see in the figure below that shows the music box for Ani DiFranco), but for doing that you have to be logged in to your MySpace account.


But what if you don't have (or don't want to create) a MySpace account? Well, that's what I'm going to show you:

1. First of all, let me remind you that this can only be done using version 3 of the Safari web browser and a small Unix utility called wget. To install wget in Mac OS X, check here (I tried using Firefox 3 but the Page Info's Media tab (Tools -> Page Info) does not show the necessary files)
2. So, let's start. On the music box on the musician's profile (in this example, I'll be using Ani DiFranco's profile) click on the music you want to download and let it load entirely (you'll see it loading if the blue thin line is growing in the progress bar of the music player)
   
3. Open the Activity window in Safari (Go to Window->Activity)
   



4. Search for the file (or files, in case you've already load several songs) with a larger size (around 3 MB - may vary depending on the duration of the song) or you can search for the file with the address having some sort of combination of the words "cache" and "music". Then, double-click it.
   



5. Safari will open a new window and will start playing the music that you just selected. If you take a look at the address bar, you'll notice that the URL points out to a complex address of an MP3 file. This is MySpace's cache file for the song you selected and can be downloaded directly.
   



6. However, this cannot be done in Safari. If you try using the File->Save Page as... option, you'll notice that it's not enabled. That's where "wget" gets into play.
7. After installing "wget", the command with the same name will be available on Terminal's prompt. Just copy the URL (until the "mp3" part, as shown in the figure above) and paste it after the command at the Terminal, as you see in the following figure:
   



8. This will download the file and will place it in the current directory (In the figure, you can see that I did this in ~/Desktop)
9. Then, just use the MP3 player of your choice and enjoy! :-)

Final remarks: the cached MP3 file is often of lower quality, so don't expect perfect CD quality whilst listening. Also, the downloaded MP3 file comes with no tagging information, so you'll have to fill in everything on the MP3 management application that you choose. I didn't try this in Windows so I don't know if it's possible. If you test it in Windows, let me know the result in the comments.

Source: The Mac Newbie

Dance to charge your cellphone

This is not a new idea (yep, when I was 16 I had a wrist watch that was built based on this concept - the simple swing of my arm while walking was enough to power the watch), but at least someone got the idea of using the technology for more recent needs. As a matter of fact, I often wonder why is it that so much (of my) energy is wasted while cycling in those stationary bikes at the gym.



Well, now it's possible to use our body's kinetic energy while practicing several activities (such as dancing, or something more suitable to your taste...) to charge gadgets, such as Orange's DanceCharge that allows you to charge your cellphone.

Source: Engadget

A car that runs on water

A Japanese company has developed a car that runs only on water and air. Why isn't something like this shown on every newscast in the world? Doesn't this represent a step further to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels? Check the following video for details:



Source: TugaTrónica (Portuguese - check an English source here)

A cushion for that special position

Engadget may call it absurd, but I wouldn't go that far. Sometimes I prefer to be lying down while reading or working on my laptop but it's really not that confortable, specially for the neck. But looking at these pictures I think this might actually be a good way to solve the posture problems:


What do you think?

Firefox 3 Download Day Certificate

Did you help setting the Guiness record for most downloads of Firefox 3 in just one day? If so, then you can have your very own certificate. I've already got mine :-)

Source: bit.ate

YouTube just got more interesting

Here's an excelent example of how the new Youtube's annotations feature will revolutionise the way we deliver video content:

How to make solar power more appealing

It is very important to find new energy sources that allow us to overcome the dependency on oil. But so far it has been difficult to find suitable alternatives. And one of the reasons behind this (but definitely not the most relevant one) is the fact that these new energy sources require huge installations that are not very appealing. Whether it's because they're big or ugly or uncomfortable, the fact is that most people don't like how solar power appliances look like.

That's why some people have been working on trying to make this technology look more appealing. Here are some examples:

Veil Solar Shades:

Lily-shaped pads in rivers:

SunTable for your patio:

Solar Plants:

Quantum Superposition, or how can video games be creative

Imagine you play the same video game 1000 times. Then, imagine that you create a video where you superimpose all off those 1000 iterations into one single video game flow using the concept of quantum superposition. Also, imagine that you add a nice background music theme to make the video even more enchanting. Here's the result of doing just that using the popular racing car video game TrackMania:

Isn't this just amazing?

Source: Reality of Nature