News: Alexander McQueen Tribute Cupcake
Martha Stewart Living Radio recently held a cupcake contest, and unfortunately the winner was NOT these Alexander McQueen cupcakes, by Julia Cunningham, DJ on SiriusXM U.
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News: DARPA Spy Camera Capable of Scanning Eyeballs in a Crowd
DARPA and Dallas's Southern Methodist University are collaborating on a super high tech camera, capable of scanning eyeballs in a moving crowd.
HowTo: Make Augmented Reality Cookies
Designer Mike Clare (of my own alma mater, RISD) has extended the augmented reality mania (1, 2, 3) to baked goods. Thanks to the crowd and Josh Delcore at AR World for the find. Here's how it works, via Design Boom:
News: Heart Beet Gardening!
Be Still My Beating Heart, it's Heart Beet Gardening! So we all know that eating organic can be a challenge sometime to our pocket books. With tomatoes being $3 a pound some places, I often get asked how can I eat organic without breaking my bank account. One solution, grow your own! Not sure how to do that? Heart Beet Gardening is here to show you how!
Gizmodo: Real Gaming for Macs Finally Here with Steam
Steam for Mac lets you Instantly Play Portal Check out this article on Gizmodo about how you can instantly start playing REAL games on your Mac.
HowTo: Diagnose Anemia With a Salad Spinner
Another example of outstanding resourcefulness and ingenuity in the medical community (see earlier this week: Blood Sucking Plunger Could Heal Millions).
News: Apple iTravel to Eliminate Airport Torture
The folks over at Patently Apple have uncovered some very promising looking plans for a future iPhone app called iTravel. iTravel plans to cover ticket-buying, electronic check-in, car rentals, and possibly even Apple designed airport kiosks. Fingers crossed it comes out soon. Apple excels at making dummy-proof, intuitive, easy-as-pie user interfaces, and man, the airline travel process sure could use a little streamlining.
News: The Science of Badminton Pt 2 of 2 (CCTV)
Part 2 of this short documentary continues to explain the different designs of racquet to suit different styles of player.
News: FarmVille Uncensored
Innocence meets malignancy. Expressiveness meets perversion. Farmville meets Disturbia. Can you top these funny and disturbing FarmVille hay bale art masterpieces? Surprisingly, few farmers have dedicated their farms to perversity—but maybe more should! I'm surprised no one has designed boobs yet. Most seem to prefer swastikas.
News: Alexander McQueen's Final Collection Is Strikingly Sci-Fi
Sci-fi being just one descriptor, the late Alexander McQueen's final Spring 2010 collection draws inspiration from that and much more.
News: Rockers 'OK Go' Deliver Another Viral Music Video- Rube Goldberg Style
With an impressive series of viral music videos to their name, it is no surprise that the latest video from indie rockers OK Go is another hit. The video is directed by James Frost, in collaboration with Syyn Labs, a collective of engineers that work on elaborate art projects. A huge Rube Goldberg machine was built in a warehouse, for a one-take video for the song This Too Shall Pass.
News: YouTube App Lets You Put Yourself in the World of 'Stranger Things 3' via Augmented Reality
So you're all done binge watching Stranger Things Season 3 and you want to start sharing your personal review with friends.
News: Samsung Patents a 3D Touch System for Its Newest Galaxy Phone
Ever since Apple launched 3D Touch in 2015, we've wondered when the feature would come to Android in earnest. While Android has supported pressure sensitive displays since Nougat and a few fringe manufacturers have taken advantage of it, none of the big OEMs have thrown their hats in the ring — that is, until now.
News: There's a Neat Nav Bar Animation When You Squeeze the New Pixel 2
If you looked away for a split-second during Google's Pixel 2 hardware event earlier today, you probably missed a nifty little finishing touch. While demonstrating the new "Active Edge" squeezable frame that launches the Google Assistant, a subtle animation was briefly shown on stage.
News: Huawei Gains Ground with High Sales of Mate 9
Huawei is the third biggest smartphone manufacturer in the world and continues to increase its market presence with each new device. The Mate 9, the company's latest high-end phablet, has been available for four months now and has sold five million units so far. This is 36% more than the Mate 8 sold four months after its premiere last year.
News: The Latest Android N Updates Are Here with Better Emojis, Launcher Shortcuts, & More
The latest Android N preview build was released today, April 13th, and included Emoji Unicode 9.0 support, among other things. The highlight is definitely the emojis, and the new designs are intended to look more realistic than the older, blobbier emojis. The update also allows for skin tone variations and adds new emojis like the face palm, selfie, and the juggler, to name just a few. Get These Emojis Right Now
How To: Download All the New 6.0 Marshmallow Wallpapers on Your Android Right Now
Android 6.0 Marshmallow is due out later this fall, but Google has already released three preview builds of the upcoming version. So if you really wanted to give Marshmallow a try, you could install the preview on your Nexus device right now. But if you just wanted to get a little taste of what's to come, we went ahead and pulled all of the brand new wallpapers out of the latest release.
News: Apple Created a Switcher Guide for Android Users, but Don't Bother Reading It
Apple used to be a great, innovative company. But lately, it's filling its coffers with money raked in from selling folks on "new" and "unique" features that have been blatantly ripped off from Android.
How To: Download All 15 Wallpapers from iOS 8 Right Now
Patience is a virtue that many of us do not possess, which is exactly why we've previously shown you how to acquire the initial wallpapers for Mac OS X Yosemite and iOS 8 beta.
News: Leaked Images of the Samsung Galaxy S5 Show Updated User Interface
Mobile World Congress is just around the corner, and if patterns stay consistent, Samsung will be unveiling their newest member of the Galaxy line, the Galaxy S5.
How To: Do Braid Bun Hair Style
How To Do Braid Bun Hair Style Tutorial For Beginners!!!! Check-Out this awesomely cool Braid Bun Hair Style which has been especially made for all the fashionable and Contemporary Girls. Made in few easy and simple steps, this modish hairdo will take your elegance quotient to a new level. Step 1: Comb Your Hair and Make Them Smooth and Tangle Free.
How To: Turn an Old Washing Machine Drum into an Awesome Outdoor Fire Pit
If you want to put a fire pit in your backyard, but don't want to spend a lot of time or money on it, this $10 DIY Upcycled Fire Pit designed by Sarah and Joe over on House & Fig is the perfect weekend project. It's simple, looks great, and shouldn't take much more than an hour to put together. You can pick up a washing machine drum from a used appliance store, and you'll also need a few pieces of steel for the legs and a can of high-heat paint.
How To: Make a Super Simple Wool Felt Sleeve for Your iPhone (Or Any Smartphone)
There's no shortage of DIY smartphone accessories out there. From a stylus for your tablet to a design-your-own iPhone case, there's something for just about everyone. The best part is that you can usually make your own accessories for way less than you'd pay for them in stores, plus you can customize them however you want.
How To: Identify Any Shade of Color with Your Android Device Using the Color Grab App
As most of us know, men and women are (shocker alert) different. Not only are they different, but they view the world an entirely different way.
How To: Make a DIY Camera Bag Insert to Protect Your Gear
When you have expensive camera equipment, the last thing you want to do is just throw it all in a bag without any kind of protection. If you don't want to buy a separate bag, you can always use an insert, but they can get pretty pricey, too.
Minecraft Survival Lesson: Join Us This Saturday for Some Innovative Tripwire Trap Building
Out of all of the new features in Minecraft 1.3, tripwires are undoubtedly the most fun to play with. They provide an entirely new functionality that's still being innovated and discovered.
How To: NASA Engineer Shows You How to Build a Mini Curiosity Mars Rover Out of LEGOs
You might have seen our post on this last week: It's a working reproduction of the Mars Curiosity Rover made with LEGOs, but it's a bit complicated for anyone without a decent amount of robotics knowledge. Plus, you need to have some Mindstorms NXT and TECHNIC parts lying around. If you want something a little simpler than programming a working LEGO rover, you could always build a scaled model of the MSL out of regular LEGOs. Not only is this easy to build and looks great, but the step-by-ste...
How To: Download TED Talks Videos onto Your Computer with the TEDinator
The TED website offers hours and hours of amazing streaming videos, with subjects including why videos go viral and sixth sense technology. With so much great content, it make sense that you'd want to save some of it to your computer, perhaps for a long plane flight or bus ride home. Unfortunately, because TED uses a proprietary video player, you can't use the normal stream downloading sites that you would for, say, YouTube. Luckily, there's a way around that.
News: Befriend a New "BUD" in This Saturday's Minecraft Workshop
BUD switches (short for Block Update Detector) can be triggered without levers, buttons, tripwires, or any other traditional switches. Instead, they're triggered by changes in block status. That is, placing a block, destroying a block, hoeing grass, clearing snow, etc.
News: Learn to Use Unique ABBA Switches in This Saturday's Minecraft Workshop
Not to be confused with the band, ABBA switches are so named because they reverse outputs such that they fire in A-B-B-A order. So, your redstone devices will essentially fire in one order (A and then B) when activated, and then deactivate in the reverse order (B and then A).
Dash Mount Phone Holder: Another Way
So this is what I did for the dashbount phone holder. I used a cologne box. A lot of them come with another box inside thats much more sturdier than the one on the ouside.
News: Creepy Baby-Bots
OK, first thing's first: need to get this insane picture out of the way. I think this might classify as horror movie creepy.
News: Wooden Combination Lock Demonstrates Inner Workings
Lockpickers, school yourself. The incredibly prolific, woodworking whiz Matthias Wandel demonstrates the inner workings of a combination lock with his wooden mechanical model.
News: Bomb-Proof Your Home With Wallpaper
Incredible. A company called Berry Plastics (in partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers) has developed a working bomb proof wallpaper. The technology has the ability to protect against both natural disasters and warfare.
News: Tattoo Yourself (or Your Girlfriend)
Henna. Beautiful, fun, exotic... and best of all... Do-It-Yourself (with a little practice). Also, unlike tattoos, it's temporary. Henna generally lasts for 1-3 weeks. An ancient tradition, henna is believed to "bring love and good fortune, and to protect against evil."
News: Sole Keyboard Conducts Orchestral Sculpture
According to Wikipedia, "Sympathetic Resonance is a harmonic phenomenon wherein a formerly passive string or vibratory body responds to external vibrations to which it has a harmonic likeness."
News: Why should you covet a Fixie bike?
(We did not know about these, either...until we discovered these videos.) The fixed gear bike, also called a fixie, was designed for track racing in the velodrome. Working bike messengers brought them to the NYC, Tokyo, SF, London streets on account the cycles gave them far more control to maneuver the urban jungle. The Chinese acrobat peddling a bike with 18 contortionists wrapped around him, must have a fixie.
DIY Challenge: Custom built Arcade/Emulator cabinet
Designed in by me Solidworks CNC router cut melamine body and lexan for screen
News: Crazy Race
Have each jackass design their own 'Racecar' to race down a steep hill with. Let each homemade car have their own things to help them win. Weapons darts thumb tacks fireworks smoke bombs, etc. Play dirty and see who the winner is. The first one down gets a dollar, and the last one down has to attempt to french kiss Rick Kossick or Lance Bangs. Or another punishment for losing.
How To: Make a prop adult diaper with a towel or trash bags
Don't spend the money or suffer the embarrassment of going out to buy adult diapers. Prop diapers are easy to make using just a towel or some white trash bags. Watch this video costume design tutorial and learn how to make a folded prop towel or trash bag adult diaper. Make a prop adult diaper with a towel or trash bags.