Google Maps: 3D Polygons

So much for getting anything done this weekend.

Google Earth Forum

QR Codes Gaining, finally

Japan's QR codes are finally getting some headway into other countries.
http://www.akihabaranews.com/en/news_9778.html

Virtual Slide Rule

For all those times your calculator is not working...
http://www.antiquark.com/sliderule/sim/

DIY: Make

This site has plenty of good ideas.
http://www.makezine.com/blog/

Word of the Day: Nigh

If you have time use it in a sentence today...

MSN Encarta Premium - Dictionary - nigh

Omega 6 DOF Haptic Device

When they come out with a smaller one I'll get two.
Omega

Robo-One

One small step for a 20 channel toy, one giant leap towards Robotech.
Robo-One

Oldest Puzzle in the World: Forma Urbis Romae

An ancient 60ft wide map of Rome was discovered 500 years ago in thousands of small pieces. Recent advances in computer pattern matching have helped determine the proper locations of all of these pieces.
Stanford Digital Forma Urbis Romae Project

NTBUSWAB: New "Troops" movie

From the makers of Troops, comes Imperial Military Personel Stories.

Google Maps: Entire Globe covered

Google Maps covers the whole world now. See Slashdot

Word of the Day: Torofluxus

Today's word of the day includes a video.
http://www.grand-illusions.com/torofluxus.htm

Application of the Day: Process Explorer

Task Manager on speed. Note in particular the Google lookup function.
http://www.sysinternals.com/

Physics Processing Units

Aegia is working on hardware accelerated physics engines. Their demos are jaw dropping. And this is just emulated...

Application of the Day: Cleanup

Time for some spring cleaning. "Cleanup" will go after all the temp garbage that IE leaves behind, leaving a nice, crisp, lean machine worthy of cooking on egg on. For some extra flavor, add a dash of /O /Y when launching.

Watches: Jaeger-LeCoultre Gyrotourbillon Magic

While the gyrotourbillon itself is indeed a marval, it's the equation of time and date fly-backs which I find so elegant. If only this thing wasn't worth more than my house...

When engineering safety factors go horribly wrong...

Take (1) very large bulldozer.
Take (1) much larger weedwacker.
Take (3) seconds of distraction and you get...


Specs:

• The mover stands 311 feet tall and 705 feet long.
  
• It weighs over 45,500 tons
  
• Cost $100 million to build
  
• Took 5 years to design and manufacture
  
• 5 years to assemble.
  
• Requires 5 people to operate it.
  
• The Bucket Wheel is over 70 feet in diameter with 20 buckets, each of which can hold over 530 cubic feet of material.
  
• A 6-foot man can stand up inside one of the buckets.
  
• It moves on 12 crawlers (each is 12 feet wide, 8' high and 46 feet long).
  
• There are 8 crawlers in front and 4 in back.
  
• It has a maximum speed of 1 mile in 3 hours (1/3 mile/hour).
  
• It can remove over 76,455 cubic meters each day.
  (100,000 large dump trucks at 40yds. each)

Shredder

This thing is simply awesome. The couch even gives off a painful cry before being obliterated.
http://www.ssiworld.com/watch/couch.htm

Google Earth Update: Full City Scanning

Get your change ready for the Google ice cream Laser Truck!

Compare to Amazon's A9

TechDrool challenge: Derby

Take 1 cult classic: Animal House
add 1 drunken festivity: Soap Box Derby
And you get ...

liveplasma

What used to be musicplasma is now liveplasma. It's a slick UI, with some nice cross-category relationships.

Lenovo's ThinkPad X41 Tablet

This one was hardly a secret, but Lenovo formally took the wraps off the ThinkPad X41 Tablet today (it’s also the first ThinkPad to be introduced after Lenovo’s purchase of IBM’s PC computing division). The official specs: the convertible-style X41 Tablet weights 3.5 pounds, is 1.14 inches thick, and has a 12.1-inch display, a Pentium M processor, up to 1.5GB of DDR2 RAM, 802.11a/b/g WiFi, and an optional integrated biometric fingerprint scanner. Goes on sale June 14th with a starting price of $1,899.



Lenovo's ThinkPad X41 Tablet arrives - Engadget - www.engadget.com

Watch: Ulysee Nardin Triology of Time

The Ulysee Nardin Trilogy of Time collection is beyond words.

Application of the Day: WinDirStat

Install this app. Immediately.

Lego: Han Solo

This would make a good conversation piece.

Etch-a-sketch in sand.

Lego: Rubik's Cube

Combining two of the best toys ever.

The Caffeine Injection Machine

For a site that is dedicated to the caffeine rush and technology - I thought I would kick it off with my new favorite "combo plate" for the two... You just can't beat the Jura Automatic Coffee Machine

After a little research I found this particular Jura model which is Swiss made (knowing our affinity for Swiss watches this makes sense) and falls right into the middle of the price range but has pretty much every feature a man could want in an espresso machine - to sum it up the ability to; Grind, Tamp, Brew and Clean all in less than one minute! Now that rocks.



CAPRESSO

Audi A2

Little. Yellow. Different.

Planetarium

Wish I knew German. Festo Harmonices Mundi

http://www.novumnet.de/0603/uk/1000000007/inhalt.php

iPod shuffle RAID

Why anyone would need to do this, I don't know, but it has a certain Voltron appeal.

Word of the day: Ephemeris

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephemerides

An ephemeris (plural: ephemerides) (from the Greek word ephemeros= daily) was, traditionally, a table providing the positions (given in a Cartesian coordinate system, or in right ascension and declination or, for astrologers, in longitude along the zodiacal ecliptic), of the Sun, the Moon, and the planets in the sky at a given moment in time; the astrological positions are usually given for either noon or midnight depending on the particular ephemeris that is used. For scientific uses, a modern planetary ephemeris comprises software that generates positions of the planets and often of their satellites, or of asteroids or comets at virtually any time desired by the user. Often there is an option to find the velocities of the bodies of interest, as well. Typically, such ephemerides cover several, or even many centuries, past and future; the future ones can be covered because celestial mechanics is an accurate theory. The biggest uncertainties, nowadays, are due to the perturbations on the planets of numerous asteroids, most of whose masses are poorly known, rendering their effect a bit uncertain.

Watches: Opus V

If only this were rotated 180. And not worth more than my car.

Google Earth

3D Buildings. At least medium detail for just about the entire world.
'nuff said.