geekery

Seen here doing it wrong, a woman demonstrates the hose-free vacuum attachment she invented (IN HER MIND) while somebody films her for an entire minute without saying anything or feeling bad. "She's probably never even heard of Youtube," they justified to themselves while uploading the video. Hit the jump for the sadness in progress.

Got some old floppy disks lying around? How about a little spare time? Are you a Star Wars fan? If you answered yes to all three of those questions, here’s the perfect project for you – a Millennium Falcon, X-Wing Fighter and Death Star cobbled together from old floppy disk parts.

Instructables contributor Jetpack5 has put together a tutorial showing how you can make these fun desk toys using old 3.5-inch floppies, and a couple of everyday tools like needlenose pliers, a hammer and a nail. Oh, and the Death Star requires a bunch of rubber bands too. Both the Falcon and the Death Star are made identifiable by the round metal floppy spindle, while the X-Wing is comprised mostly of those metal shutters which used to protect the delicate floppy disk innards.

I think these little models manage to capture the spirit of the originals, despite their relatively primitive shapes. If you’d like to make some for yourself, use the Force and head over to Instructables for the full instructions.

What other Star Wars creations do you think you could make from old floppies? I think you could probably make a pretty cool Darth Vader helmet from old black 5-1/4″ floppies. Any volunteers?

The second Vimeo Festival + Awards is fast approaching, celebrating the most creative and original films that have premiered exclusively online. Now, Vimeo has announced the 2012 finalists in all categories, including Animation, Action Sports, Documentary, Music Videos, Advertising, Fashion, Experimental and more.

The event, which will take place on June 7-9, 2012 in New York City, gathers together the likes of Mike Figgis, Ted Hope and Lucy Walker to watch the winning films from this year’s submissions. Also featured at ceremony will be the premiere of Limbo, a new film by last year’s grand prize winner, Eliot Rausch. Rausch created the film using grant money from his award.

Check out a handful of this year’s finalists below:

From Jeremy Boxer, Director of the Vimeo Festival + Awards:

There has never been a better time to be creator. The Internet has created a leveled playing field, so that now everyone now can fundraise, shoot, edit, and distribute their projects. What’s next for online video? Well, that’s what we will be exploring at this year’s festival with the help of our awesome speakers. We have designed the festival to have something for everyone from any level of experience. Now that the barrier to entry has come crashing down perhaps we can find new creators with ideas yet to be seen and encourage so many others to start using their imagination so they too can start to create.

To get a better idea of what 2012 will be like, you can check out the recap from Vimeo’s first festival below:

➤ The Vimeo Festival + Awards in NYC

You’ve probably been overwhelmed by enough Instagram shots of this weekend’s annular solar eclipse to think you’ve seen it from every angle and through every filter. But you haven’t seen anything like the video above.

Photographer Cory Poole made the one-minute video by combining 700 still images through a Coronado Solar Max 60 Double Stack telescope, according to his YouTube post. The telescope “has a very narrow bandpass allowing you to see the chromosphere and not the much brighter photosphere below it,” Poole writes. Add in the dramatic, spacey soundtrack, and the video becomes even more of a winner.

What are the coolest annular solar eclipse photos and videos you’ve seen? Let us know in the comments.

More About: space, viral, viral videos, YouTube

London soccer club Chelsea won its first Champions League title on Saturday, defeating German side Bayern Munich to become Europe’s best team. It was a nail-biting close final match that went down to a penalty shoot-out.

But on Twitter, it wasn’t even close — Chelsea was dominant.

The all-star London club gained 73% of team-specific Twitter mentions related to the match, while its star players were buzz magnets as well. The match’s five most-mentioned players — in order, Didier Drogba, John Terry, David Luiz, Ashley Cole and Petr Cech — all suit up for the Blues.

Chelsea’s coach even outpaced his Bayern counterpart by a rate of more than two mentions to one.

And Chelsea’s sponsor, Samsung, was mentioned nine times as often as T-Mobile, which sponsors Bayern.

This is all according to research by the marketing firm ExactTarget, which tracked and analyzed more than 1.1 million match day tweets to see how the Champions League final played out online. ExactTarget’s findings are summarized — in both German and English — in the infographic below.

SEE ALSO: English Premier League: The Social Media Season

Despite soccer’s worldwide appeal, nearly 69% of Champions League chatter took place in English. The chattiest countries? Great Britain, at almost 23%, the U.S. (9.9%), Brazil (9.4%), Germany (8.6%) and Indonesia (5.8%). The rest of the world together, meanwhile, produced just over 43% of Champions League tweets. Spanish was the second most popular language for tweeters, at 15.8%.

This celebratory tweet from Chelsea’s official Twitter account gathered the most match day retweets, with more than 7,000. Congratulatory posts from UEFA and Spanish power FC Barcelona also gathered more than 2,800 retweets apiece. Chelsea, meanwhile, used the weekend’s social media buzz to surge past 1 million Twitter followers.

For the full picture of how this weekend’s Champions League final played out on Twitter, check out the infographic below.

Did you follow the match? What role did Twitter play for you? Let us know in the comments.

Thumbnail image courtesy toksuede, Flickr.

More About: infographics, sports, Twitter

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Law & Order & Food is a Tumblr with nothing but stills of the Law & Order cast eating, which is something they seem to do a lot of, because the're in NYC, which has some pretty badass takeout. Also: it's characterization.

Law & Order & Food (via MeFi)

My friend Sean Bonner just pointed me to a wonderful music history project, put together by Brian Stefans: at lapostpunk.blogspot.com, an MP3 compilation of post-punk and experimental pop music in the Los Angeles area from the mid-seventies through the mid-eighties.

I kind of think of this as a portrait of the city at the time more than a collection of tracks that will change the world (though more than a handful I think are unfairly neglected). I’m wondering if someone like Rhino Records would want to do a Nuggets-type collection from the period? They already have one of Los Angeles from 1965-1968 called Where The Action Is.

Incredibly comprehensive. What a labor of love. There's a Volume one, and a Volume two.

This is for every would-be Internet mogul who has yet to type </head> on their big project, but has already written the speech they’ll give when they ring the opening bell at the NYSE.

(I say this as someone who had very specific plans for putting the kids through university on the proceeds of our Second Life venture. Sigh.)

Not that there’s something wrong with dreaming of making it big when you read about the Facebook IPO or the Gurflr acquisition or whatever’s chewing up the trending topics in Silicon Valley this week. There’s a lot of pleasure in picturing yourself in the shoes of the latest tech gazillionaire.

But not nearly as much pleasure in walking in them. At least, not while they were treading the winding, rocky path you have to follow to get there: all that planning, building, reversing out of actual dead ends, plowing through the illusory ones, avoiding impending disaster, living through disasters that stop impending and start happening, nurturing a community of users, finding capital, running out of capital, getting hacked, making the wrong hire, losing the right hire to a better offer, finally gaining some traction and then promptly getting slapped with a patent suit, trying to decide when to hold back and when to scale…

…and knowing that for every Mark Zuckerberg, there are countless others who worked just as hard, were maybe just as smart, but who made just one wrong call, or had the dice come up snake-eyes at exactly the wrong time, or one month before coming out of stealth mode saw someone else launch with the same product.

It isn’t all or nothing, of course. It’s not like you either create Facebook or dress in a barrel for the rest of your life. Even when your web app dies a silent, unmourned death, you’ve learned something along the way, you’ve probably built relationships (and hopefully didn’t burn any), and if you have the appetite to set off on that path again, that’s capital you’ll be able to draw on.

Maybe more important is how you look at success. There’s room for a very few Facebooks in the world, and if that’s your definition of success, you’re almost certainly doomed to disappointment.

But if you see success in creating something brilliant or useful or entertaining that reaches – not multitudes – but enough people to make a real difference in the world, then you’ll see a lot more opportunity out there. And at least for me, letting go of creating everybody’s favourite thing creates the room to create nine people’s favourite thing.

Which, who knows? might well open up the creativity and experimentation it’ll take to create the Next Big Thing.

 

Noise to Signal - a cartoon by Rob Cottingham

About - Contact - Speaking - Cartoon blogging - Store

See more cartoons about social media, business and the way we live and work online at Noise to Signal Cartoon

Back in February we told you about Lady Gaga’s social network “Little Monsters”, which could turn the concept. of how celebrities interact with their fans on its ear.

The site, powered by Palo Alto based Backplane and still in private beta, skips social networks like Twitter and Facebook, allowing Gaga’s fans to interact with her directly.

When celebrities like Ashton Kutcher and Lady Gaga joined Twitter, it was a major turning point for the product. A whole new userbase flooded the micro-sharing network, who foam at the mouth for every 140 character update from their favorite singer or movie star.

With her own social network, Gaga is making her fans feel even more special, as well as setting them up for opportunities to sell albums and schwag to them directly:

What’s more intimate than that experience? A mobile one of course. According to one of the designers at Backplane, a “Little Monsters” app is in the works:

Check it out. Little Monsters App on @dribbble: drbl.in/ecRI

— Caleb Ogden (@calebogden) May 21, 2012

In response, Backplane’s CEO said that we might see Gaga on the iPhone mighty soon:

Soon! RT @calebogden: Check it out. Little Monsters App on @dribbble: drbl.in/ecRI

— Matt Michelsen (@MCMichelsen) May 21, 2012

What does the app look like? Take a look at the screenshots that Caleb Ogden shared on Dribble today:

While Little Monsters might not take a huge bite out of Twitter’s usage, it surely will steal eyeballs when it comes to Gaga fanatics. If the musician is posting exclusive updates to her own social network, there’s simply no reason to look elsewhere for the content.

Backplane is a community platform, meaning that the Little Monsters model could be spun out an infinite number of times for other celebrities with massive appeal. Justin Bieber anyone?

Only a couple of weeks after launching its much-awaited iPad app, Spotify has now opened its song-filled doors to Australia and New Zealand. In a couple of blogs that look to be all but copy/pasted, the company runs down its services and the pricing points for each.

Free, Unlimited and Premium are all available. Unlimited will run $6.99 AUD and $7.49 NZD, while the Premium pricing is $11.99 and $12.99 respectively.

The company has been on a tear with new updates lately. We’ve gotten the Spotify+Apps combination, improved search and most recently an update for Playlist Radio. Unfortunately, the company’s implementation of its embeddable Play Button is a bit wanting, as it requires that you have Spotify installed in order to play back a track. But with improved social features and a ridiculous amount of funding underway, it seems Spotify is bent on world domination.

Bradley Mellon

Solar eclipse as seen from El Centro, California

Click here to view this gallery.

Over the weekend, an astounding astronomical phenominon occurred: an annular solar eclipse. This type of eclipse, which happens less than once a year, occurs when the Earth’s moon crosses paths with the sun to create the effect of a spectacular glowing ring. This is due to the size of the moon compared to the size of the sun.

Only people in a certain geographic area get to glimpse each of these rare phenomena. This time, people in Japan, California, Nevada, southern Utah, northern Arizona, and New Mexico were granted the best view.

We asked Mashable readers to submit their best picture of the solar eclipse. We received very inventive photo submissions from across the world.

Check out some of our favorite solar eclipse photos that you sent us, and let us know in the comments what you thought of the eclipse.

More About: photography, Solar eclipse, space

Because meteorite jewelry is like, so steamy hot (think ice cubes on your nips after a scalding shower) right now, here's a $4,200 gold and meteorite ring featuring all the planets of the solar system represented in different precious stones. And speaking of precious stones -- look at this piece of onyx I picked up on a hike this weekend. "That's a dog turd." You sure? I tried scratching it and-- "Got pieces of it under your fingernail?" I...thought onyx was soft like talc.

This ring features a complete band of Gibeon Meteorite framed and mounted in an 18k gold band. The meteorite has been etched with nitric acid to reveal the characteristic patterns, or Widmanstatten figures, of iron meteorites, and set with 9 gemstones representing the planets of our Solar System. Mercury is represented by a rust colored Sapphire, Venus a golden Sapphire, Earth an irradiated blue Diamond, Mars a Ruby, Jupiter an Opal, Saturn a Cats Eye Chrysoberyl with an inlaid 24k gold ring, Uranus a green Sapphire, Neptune a blue Sapphire and Pluto a black Diamond. What really makes this ring special is that the band of meteorite spins independent of the gold ring, so when it is on, the planets rotate around the wearer's finger.

Did you read that? They included Pluto! I knew some people hadn't given up on him. Don't you worry bro -- we're gonna get your planet classification reinstated ASAP. "Hurry -- Uranus has been making fun of me." What the -- you tell that jerk he was named after buttholes! Thanks to lizzy, who claims she touched the One Ring once even though I know she didn't and is a DIRTY ELVEN SWINDLER! Kidding, she's human and I'm sure very pleasant (and probably not sending any more tips).

The B9Creator is a 3D printer that’s flying off virtual shelves on Kickstarter.

The B9Creator is a do-it-yourself 3D printer kit. Currently, it’s one of the most successful 3D printer projects seeking funding on the website. Backers have already raised $164,418 with 21 days left until the funding deadline. The project surpassed the initial $50,000 goal within a day.

Supporters of the project will receive a B9Creator 3D-printing kit with a donation of $2,375 or more. The estimated delivery date for a limited number of printers is August 2012.

Guitars, custom prosthetic limbs and jawbone transplants are all products of 3D printing. These printers create solid objects by generating layers of material on top of each other.

The B9Creator, developed by Michael Joyce, is made with anodized aluminum and stainless steel. The portable device is supposedly able generate more complex and detailed models than other 3D printers.

It does so via a projector, which is attached to the machine mechanically and shines light to “cure” the resin material, setting it in place. This allows the B9Creator to generate fragile, high-resolution molds. The 3D printer generates about an inch of material every hour.

SEE ALSO: 3D Printer Creates Chairs From Recycled Refrigerators [VIDEO]

The resin costs 10 cents per gram. A miniature Eiffel Tower mold printed by the B9Creator is seemingly sturdy and extraordinarily detailed. The model, which weighs about 12 grams, only used about $1.20 of material.

Once the B9 is in production, consumers will be able to build and print resin models at home. The machine is less than 30 pounds and about two and a half feet tall. The B9Creator kit will come up with basic software allowing users to come up with new models. The printer — upon completion of the project — will have an open API for developers to advance the existing software and hardware.

Would you buy a 3D printer for office or home use? Tell us in the comments what you would create.

More About: 3D printers, kickstarter, Tech

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In what some might view as a surprise announcement, T-Mobile’s CEO, Philipp Humm, told the Seattle Times that his network is more than content with the performance of Windows Phone. Microsoft and its partners have been quite close-chested when it comes to Windows Phone sales figures, making comments of this nature revelatory.

Here’s the full excerpt from the larger interview that relates to Windows Phone:

[Seattle Times]: T-Mobile made a commitment to push Windows Phone this year. How is that working out?

[Philipp Humm]: I think we have a very good relationship with Microsoft, and we discovered that, in particular, for customers who are new to smartphones, they really enjoy the simplicity of the Microsoft [user interface], so they like the design and the ease of it.

[Seattle Times]: Are Windows phones selling as well as you hoped?

[Philipp Humm]: We are so far quite pleased and I think Microsoft, if you talk to them, [is] quite pleased with T-Mobile.

There are two important points that Humm made, the first of which is that Windows Phone is finding its own niche. In a world dominated by the iOS-Android duopoly, to find market space is a challenge. However, given that most markets are still making the transition to complete (effective) smartphone penetration, Windows Phone, given Humm’s comment, may have found its in.

Secondly, his comments that Microsoft is content with T-Mobile implies that the working relationship between the two firms will likely continue. T-Mobile, which lacks both the iPhone and a top-tier Windows Phone handset, could use a hand up.

And of course, having a carrier positively remark on Windows Phone sales is, well, not exactly small potatoes. Still, Microsoft, how about some real figures?

Larger size here. And, Amazon link, if you're so inclined. (Thanks, Joe Sabia, via Reddit)

You can find all kinds of LCD screens in broken electronics. But it’s often a chore to figure out how they are controlled if you don’t have a working device that can be used to sniff the communications protocol. [Justin] grabbed this character LCD screen from an old Brother printer and decided to see if he could reuse it in his own projects. Luckily the driver card still worked so he patched into the LCD’s control lines and sniffed the signals when the printer is powered on.

He used the OpenBench Logic Sniffer for this project. It easily captured the data, and also provided analysis tools. The SPI analyzer managed to decode the command signals and message of “Please wait” that pops up at power up. After a bit of folly with the pin out of the display, he is now able to control it thanks to an Arduino library which he wrote. Check out the demo after the break to seem him scrolling through a bunch of different functions for the device.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGdUqVe2NVE

Filed under: Microcontrollers

After seeing the Dalek wedding cake toppers we posted a few days ago, [GAS] reader Lee sent us a picture of the top of his wedding cake featuring a pair bride and groom daleks.

This was from our wedding in August.

Daleks were off the end of Doctor Who pencils. Sadly they are of the new Moffat variety. You can’t have it all.

Veil from piece of old lace ribbon.

Flowers from haberdashery store.

Top hat from middle of cotton reel.

Colours of Daleks chosen to match the colour scheme of wedding. Was the only way my geek bride to be would agree to it. Tried to have whole geek cake but she was not having that.

Cake toppers were quite the talking point on the day.

Thanks Lee!

No related posts.

This is the ultimate in aspirational automotive paintjobs, surely. It's more unsourced net.stuff -- anyone know where it originated?

(Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

Music-streaming site Spotify announced on Monday that it is headed down under.

The Sweden-based popular service — which came to the U.S. in the summer of 2011 — will be bringing its platform of more than 16 million tracks to Australia and New Zealand. The move highlights Spotify’s aggressive growth strategy of expanding into new markets.

Although Spotify recently launched in Germany, it has yet to debut in certain regions, including Latin America and Canada. Competitors such as Rdio, which is already popular in Brazil and Canada, and Sony Music Unlimited, which has currently the broadest international availability, are already mainstays in Australia and New Zealand.

SEE ALSO: Spotify Who? Pandora Surges Past 150 Million Registered Users

However, there is no denying that Spotify has its sights set on global growth.

Unlike its initial offering in the U.S. which featured only six months of free unlimited access, users in Australia and New Zealand will have full access to Spotify indefinitely. In March, Spotify revealed plans to keep the service free past the six month trial. Originally, for those that didn’t sign up for a premium package — ranging from $4.99 to $9.99 a month — the site would be limited to 10 free hours of streaming music each month.

Which country do you wish Spotify would roll out its services to soon? Do you think the platform is on path to become the largest of its kind? Let us know in the comments.

More About: apps, Music, rdio, sony, spotify

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Redditors currently serving in the U.S. armed forces are about to get a big thank you from the Reddit community. The social news site aims to pair users in the U.S. with members serving abroad in an offical Reddit gift exchange for the troops.

The initiative is part of a larger ongoing project, “redditgifts.” This secret-santa style gift exchange allows users to swap goods with each other. Past redditgifts exchanges have presented users with DVDs, letters, basic necessities and even a laptop.

The troops gift exhange launched Tuesday — and comedian Stephen Colbert has already claimed the first spot on the list of gift givers, or “santas.”

Colbert is no stranger to Reddit. The community caught his attention when they raised more than $100,000 in less than 8 hours for the “Restoring Truthiness” rally

According to Reddit, it will be getting more well-known Redditors to join in on the redditgifts for troops exchange too.

In the video below, Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian claims he was inspired by recent conversations with members of the armed forces on Reddit who received care packages from other users.

This is one of many recent initiatives from Reddit that show the impact it has when it convenes its large community for goodwill. We’ve seen what small gestures and random acts of kindness had on one terminally ill man, and Ohanian hopes to bring the same encouragement and good-spirited nature to the many troops overseas.

SEE ALSO: How Reddit Saved One Man’s Life

Signups for troops and santas begins Tuesday May 21, and ends June 18. Users sending care packages must ship by July 9.

What do you think about Reddit’s recent acts of social good? Share your thoughts in the comments.

More About: reddit, stephen colbert, U.S. Military

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