Retro-blogging: Best posts of July 2008

Previously, on "The Tech In Me":

• Close Encounter with a Star
• This is so true
• How to really cool down your laptop
• Two girls, one cup - Thank God for the Internet
  
• Putting those retro-3D-glasses to work
• Another way to generate power while dancing
• Testing your website in different browsers
• Just don't click it
• Using Quicksilver to tweet
• R2-D2 and C3PO make a special appearance
• 3D tetris... kind of!
• Internet ramblings
• The other side of the world
• PacMan is everywhere
• A different kind of alarm clocks
• Rotate screen display in Windows Vista

Turn your pictures into a miniature model

By now you've probably seen around the Web some of those pictures that look like miniature models but are in fact pictures of real places that were just modified to look like it. Here are a couple of examples of photos that I tilt-shifted to make it look like a miniature street filled with small cars:



Looks nice, right? And you don't even have to be a Photoshop genius to pull something like this. All you have to do is use TiltShiftMaker.com. This website is quite simple and allows you to create this kind of photos quite easily and without having to have that much of photography knowledge.

Enjoy!

A few gadgets that I would love to see on my kitchen

Sauce Dispensing Chopsticks


People who love sushi like I do, know it's not easy to get all those food sculptures from a plate to the sauce dish and then to the mouth. Using these special chopsticks you can avoid some embarrassing accidents with the sauce and simply enjoy your sashimi.

D-Cell Battery Salt & Pepper Shakers


The D-Cell Battery Salt & Pepper Shakers are simply great. Not only you'll surprise your friends with such a neat gadget, you'll also be able to see how much “power” (or pepper) you have left through the power indicator panels so you know when to “recharge.”

Spinning Spaghetti Fork


It's not that easy to do all that spinning in a full-of-sauce spaghetti plate, so why not use this electrical fork and make things a lot simpler?

Sharky Tea Infuser


How cool is that? To have a shark swimming around in your cup of hot water, while the tea is getting ready. Pure awesomeness!

Portable Toasters


Here's a gadget that I totally dream off. I hate my toaster because I can never tell when the bread is done. Sometimes it burns the bread, other times it simply is not enough. How to know for sure? Well, do it manually with this portable toaster.

There are more here.

Using the cars' weight to generate energy

Kinetic energy is not a new subject on this blog. I've already shown you how this kind of technology can be used to generate enough energy to power some parts of a nightclub or more simply, your MP3 player.

This time I bring you a great idea developed at a Sainsbury's supermarket in Gloucester, United Kingdom. This supermarket has installed kinetic plates in the parking lot that use the weight of shopper's cars to pump a series of hydraulic pipes, which in turn drive a generator. The figure below is quite self-explanatory:


Apparently, the kinetic system can generate enough energy to power the store's checkouts. While it may not seem as much, it sure is a great step towards a more green attitude.

Here's another picture at location:



Source: Engadget, Guardian

Retro-blogging: best posts of June 2008

Previously, on "The Tech In Me":

• DVRs, TVs and infrared sensors
• So, you thought your Bluetooth headset was secure?
• The key to my heart
• Cool webdesigner shirts
• Quantum superposition, or how can video games be creative
• How to make solar power more appealing
• YouTube just got more interesting
• Dance to charge your cellphone
• How to download musics from MySpace using Safari and "wget" (on Mac OS X)
• Eco-friendly gadgets
• How old is the Internet?
  

Interesting ideas/products that we may never end up using

The USB Fan Tie

The K-wine plate

The Strawberry plate

The Solar-powered tie

There's more here.

Funny stuff: musical charts

Try guessing which musics these charts refer to:








Source

Retro-blogging: best posts of April 2008

Previously, on the "Tech In Me":

• Optical illusion
• Oh shiiiiiiiit
• Programming Joke
• Standards a la Microsoft
• Crossing the bridge problem
• What if programming languages were...
• Using QuickTime to create stop-motion videos
• Technology to break Olympic records...but only for swimming
• How to setup Apache, PHP and MySQL on your Mac
• Yahoo and the Semantic Web
• The portable gaming consoles

The truth about cellphones

Rechargeable batteries with solar cells

Now here's a great idea: integrate a solar cell directly into a rechargeable battery so that it can recharge just by facing the sun.


The SunCat batteries were born when its creator wondered as to why "hasn't anyone made a battery with integrated solar cells" and answered: "The batteries should just bask in the sun like a cat and left for a while, in a sunny window, they would slowly recharge."

I think it's a great idea and the good part is that you can do it yourself... that is, if you can get around the necessary parts and have the skill to build them :-)

Just check the SunCat blog post for details, here.