DIY magnetic spice rack
I love this idea [via lifehacker].
Easily fixing stuck pixels
Fix stuck/dead pixels on your monitor with Killdeadpixel
Awesome — supposedly can often fix stuck pixels with minimal effort on the part of the human. Almost makes me wish I had one to try it out on… ;-)
The multi-touch-shiny train is gathering steam – all aboard!
At the intersection of hack and wow: Low-Cost Multi-touch Whiteboard using the Wiimote — ooh, that’s just lovely [paulmiller].
And in other multi-touch news, it appears Nokia may have something very shiny indeed up their sleeve, namely taking the “touch” out of “multi-touch” with 3D gesture tracking based on ultrasonic transducers [reddit].
Three or more transducers arrayed around a perimeter of the mobile device create a 10-20 cm working volume of space above the display, where user finger locations and their movements in real time can be detected using triangulation techniques. These movements can then be interpreted as various three dimensional gestures.
Popgadget, and some thoughts on domains
Bash pointed me to popgadget yesterday — cool gadgetry and “stuff”, reported mostly from a geek girl PoV. Some representative goodies: Mmmm… Non-alcoholic malt liquor flavored with beef extracts! · go grammar girl! · your very own space age shower and turkish bath · skateboarding robot (rollerskating, more like?) · awesome inflatable iceberg climbing wall.
Peeve: once upon a time, .net domains were (albeit informally) reserved for people providing network services, eg ISPs, registrars, etc. These days it’s “just another” gTLD which anyone can buy space in, and I think that’s a shame. The appeal of the domain to its purchasers – as far as I can tell – is that you get to say “look! We’re on the net!”. Well, so? I mean, you have a domain, so clearly you’re on the net. Saying .net tells us nothing more about who you are. I guess what I’m trying to get at is: why have a variety of gTLDs if they have no actual meaning? As far as I can tell, the country TLDs have some meaning, but the gTLDs are just one big pool now.
Irony: I’m guilty of this too, having registered both gimbo.org.uk and gimbo.co.uk; in my defence, requests to the latter are rewritten as requests to the former, as I wish to discourage use of the latter, while retaining ownership. But why should I retain ownership? What if some fellow Brit forms a company called “gimbo” and wants the domain? Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? I’d be rich! Rich! Rich! ;-)