[Hack a Day] 1 New Entry: Alarm clock automated blinds

Alarm clock automated blinds


alarm

[Anupam Pathak] knows how jarring it can be to wake up to a traditional alarm clock. He decided to hack an alarm clock so that it would open the shades in his room to allow in natural light. He found the pin that went high when the alarm was triggered and used that to signal an ATtiny45. The microcontroller activates a servo connected directly to the blinds. He has switches on the side of the clock to manually control the blinds and to cut power to the audible alarm. Video embedded after the break.

[via SparkFun]

      

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[Hack a Day] 1 New Entry: Alarm clock automated blinds

Alarm clock automated blinds


alarm

[Anupam Pathak] knows how jarring it can be to wake up to a traditional alarm clock. He decided to hack an alarm clock so that it would open the shades in his room to allow in natural light. He found the pin that went high when the alarm was triggered and used that to signal an ATtiny45. The microcontroller activates a servo connected directly to the blinds. He has switches on the side of the clock to manually control the blinds and to cut power to the audible alarm. Video embedded after the break.

[via SparkFun]

      

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[Hack a Day] 4 New Entries: Hacking at Random 2009 dates announced

Hacking at Random 2009 dates announced


Hacking at Random, an international technology and security conference, has just announced the dates for their 2009 event. The four day outdoor technology camp will be held August 13-16 near Vierhouten, Netherlands. HAR2009 is brought to you by the same people who held What the Hack, which we covered in 2005. They’ve done this every four years for the last 20. We’ll be sure to attend. We loved CCCamp in Germany last year and plan on attending ToorCamp in Seattle this year too.

[photo: mark]

      

Reversing Google's iPhone voice search


Google recently updated their Google Mobile App with a couple new features. Voice Search automatically starts listening when you raise the phone to your ear. Just say what you’re looking for, and it will poll Google and return the results. The app leverages Google’s voice recognition engine, which they’ve been training with Goog-411. [Andy Baio] has been experimenting with audio transcription and was curious what the new app was doing behind the scenes. He started by sniffing the packets as they traversed his network. Unfortunately, the size of the data packets transmitted is so small that he’s almost certain he’s missing something. He’d appreciate any help in this endeavor. Part of the problem might be Google getting special treatment and using undocumented iPhone SDK features.

      

Guardian Hack Day


The Guardian’s technology department hosted its first Hack Day last Thursday. Developers were freed from the drudgery of their everyday jobs to make fun toys and tools. Many of the hacks that developed played around with the website, like the Guardian commenter blocker, or the Guardian Button integrated into the Google Toolbar. We liked the Guardian Politics Page LED Swingometer, created by [Tom Armitage], which scanned the Guardian’s politics RSS feed for mentions of “Conservative” or “Labour” to yield the “swing” of a page to an Arduino. We wanted to see more of the Java-enabled Robot Dude. You can track Fhe Guardian’s Hack Day activity on Twitter with the tag #ghack1 or check out their photos on Flickr.

If you want to participate in a Hack Day, Last.fm is hosting one this December.

      

Animated LED keyboard


led_keyboard

[Brian] made this really cool LED keyboard. He started with a Deck Legend Fire. When he got it, he realized that every key had its own LED, but the entire unit was either on, or off. He just couldn’t live with that and decided to start hacking into it to make each light individually controlled. He found a perfect empty space in the back of the keyboard and designed custom PCBs to control his lighting. he notes that he spent 12 hours of cutting and soldering wires to each of the lights in the keyboard, that doesn’t include the PCB construction.

In the end, he had a fantastic looking keyboard that had cool effects like heat mapping and idle animations. All stock features still work and it looks almost entirely stock. The only obvious difference is the fact that it has two USB cables coming out of it due to some issues with his KVM switch not detecting it.

      

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[Download Squad] 7 New Entries: PETA mashes up Cooking Mama and Stephen King for gruesome holiday fun

PETA mashes up Cooking Mama and Stephen King for gruesome holiday fun

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Cooking Mama: Mama Kills Animals'Tis the season to go on a murderous rampage, according to PETA. Once again proving hostile to cavemen but friendly to animals, PETA has re-created Cooking Mama in a Flash version (downloadable on Macs and PC's through the magic of Adobe AIR).

Unlike the soothing "Better than Mama!" you're used to on the Wii, this Mama is more akin to Sweeney Todd. PETA is calling their creation, "Cooking Mama: Mama Kills Animals." I think I just heard the Lawyermobile at Majesco pulling out of the garage.

Killing turkeys, ripping out their guts and stuffing them with Atkins-unfriendly carbs is the name of this game. PETA tries to drive home the point that cleaning and cooking a turkey is a messy, horrible affair. Unfortunately, I had too much fun with the cartoonish game to truly grasp the horror of the situation. Luckily, after two rounds -- and regardless of whether you "win" -- you're treated to a "bonus" video describing and illustrating the sad lives commercially-raised turkeys are forced to endure. It ain't pretty.

Still, I give the idea two big thumbs-up for creativity; PETA has always been a creative bunch. But I doubt the Southern gents I know would be dissuaded in the least by this game. It's tricky to preach through videogames, and trickier still to illustrate terror when making something so cute and fun. All the same, I look forward to "Hello Kitty: Shelter Edition" if they ever pick up the idea.

Check out the screenshots... if you dare. Oh, and if you check out the game I recommend you turn your speakers down. There's some screaming and loud music involved. Enjoy!



[Via Planetsave]

PETA mashes up Cooking Mama and Stephen King for gruesome holiday fun originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 18 Nov 2008 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Lorem2: for the discerning lorem ipsum aficionado

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Designers know the words "lorem ipsum" all too well. If you've mocked up a layout for anything with chunks of text in it, you've probably run across the infamous Latin paragraphs that commonly show up as filler. Where do you get your lorem ipsum, though, and how do you make sure it's the right fit for your design? Lorem2 is one great way to do it.

Lorem2 is a nicely laid-out collection of lorem ipsum paragraphs and bullet points, both short and long. If you're the kind of person who keeps a text file full of this stuff, you might be better off filling it up with the whole contents of Lorem2. You'll never have to give a second thought to avoiding repeated text that detracts from your layouts, because the solution will be close at hand.

Lorem2: for the discerning lorem ipsum aficionado originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mobile voice, IM app Fring announces embedded ad trials

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Fring is a fantastic mobile application, allowing mobile users access to voice and text chat via Skype, MSN, GTalk, and more on their mobile handset or iPod Touch.

On their official blog yesterday, they announced the introduction of embedded ads on a trial basis. No specifics were given, only the reassurance that revenues would be used to sustain development and bring even more great features to Fring.

Ads will appear only for "a small number of randomly selected Fringsters each day." They continue, reassuring users that their Fring experience won't be affected.

While I don't own a device capable of running the app, I have used it on a friend's iPod touch. I'm not generally a fan of adware, Fring is certainly a good enough app to deal with the minor annoyance of a few banners - provided they're kept to a reasonable level.

If you're a Fring user, what do you think about this news?

[ via Symbian Freak ]

Mobile voice, IM app Fring announces embedded ad trials originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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BareSite tries to improve the mobile browsing experience

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I recently wrote about Intersquash, a service that generates code to optimize your site for iPhone browsing. BareSite is the flipside of that: it allows mobile browsers to access a "bare" mobile version of any site, based on the RSS feed. The results aren't as pretty as what you'd see from a natively mobile site, but sometimes you don't have that choice. On the other hand, a decent mobile browser and RSS reader can achieve the same results.

So, does BareSite work? I actually had some trouble with it. It seems to be confused by RSS feeds without a pubDate element -- like, currently, Download Squad's. This definitely detracts from the BareSite's usefulness, especially considering that decent RSS readers already exist on several mobile platforms. The Google search function on BareSite is also useful, but kind of unnecessary, as Google has mobile versions of its sites, and some mobile browsers build a Google search function in already.

BareSite tries to improve the mobile browsing experience originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Fashion Your Firefox offers easier browser customization

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Mozilla has launched a new service called Fashion Your Firefox. The aim of the project is to make the browser customization simpler for the average user.

When you visit the page, you'll be presented with a number of options that target specific browsing "personalities," like Finder and Seeker, Shutterbug, News Junkie, and others. Select a profile, and FYF displays a selection of the most popular relevant addons.

The Finder and Seeker, for example, offers Stumbleupon, Interclue, and the Mini Map Sidebar. News Junkies can select Wizz RSS, Morning Coffe, ReadItLater, and ForecastFox.

The installation process has also been streamlined. You don't have to add extensions one at a time - place a checkbox in each one that interests you and click the install my addons button when you're done. Firefox will process your queue en masse.

FYF is incredibly simple to use, its suggestions are right on the money, and it works well. Perhaps one day we'll be able to tag our preferred extensions and easily add them to new Firefox installs using a system like this.

Fashion Your Firefox offers easier browser customization originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Gyroball - Time Waster

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GyroballRemember the classic arcade game Marble Madness? If you enjoyed the frustration that is trying to guide a ball along a 3D course using an isometric view, without falling off the arbitrary edges, just like in Marble Madness, you'll probably enjoy Gyroball.

As you might be able to tell, I find Gyroball frustrating. The first few levels are fairly straightforward, but on the third or fourth level, I was completely stymied. It started driving me nuts. I'm sure many of you long-time timewaster players will cruise right through that level without a second look, but for whatever reason I just couldn't get the right combination of direction, momentum and control.

The game controls are dead simple - use your direction arrows to push the ball in various directions. Of course, because the game is presented in an isometric 3D display, the arrow keys do not correspond with the direction that your ball will typically be traveling; the ball is mostly going in diagonals, requiring multiple button presses at the same time, or very quickly alternating between two.

If your frustration tolerance is high, this game could be played for an extended period. Otherwise, it makes a nice, short time waster between tasks.

Gyroball - Time Waster originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Help! I need a free app to convert DAA and UIF files!

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Download Squad reader David contacted us, asking for a solution to his problem and it's one I've dealt with myself: fighting with the proprietary disc image formats of MagicISO and UltraISO.

"I've been looking through the web for some free program to do this for me and I haven't had any luck. UltraISO and MagicISO are great programs, but I just don't have the money to dish 30 bucks on each [one]."

First off, let's be honest. If you're dealing with a UIF or DAA, it's very likely a disc image of a program or game you torrented (this may or may not have been my own experience). If you're extracting, mounting, or burning something like that, you may as well just torrent MagicISO or UltraISO too and be done with it. I'm certainly not going to judge anyone for doing that.

Continue reading Help! I need a free app to convert DAA and UIF files!

Help! I need a free app to convert DAA and UIF files! originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 18 Nov 2008 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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