The Blaugh

This Instructable will show you how to tap into a FREE source of electricity! All you need is a phone line! All phone lines have a constant flow of voltage, around 40-70 volts (up to 100 volts when it rings!), but you can’t just plug stuff into it and expect it to work. You can really mess with your phone system by doing that. I discovered how to do it the right way!

Most video viewing specs have the small hitch of cutting you off from the outside world by obliterating your view with their tiny screens.

Not so with this spanking pair fresh in at the Apple Store. While still not recommended for driving, they manage to prop themselves far enough up your delicate conk to give you half an idea of what’s going on in front of you while you watch South Park.

Naturally, they’re designed to work seamlessly with video iPod; the battery pack doubles as a sturdy case for your player’s protection and keeps the screen flickering for up to eight hours.

Audio’s taken care of by the built-in, noise-reducing ear buds and an in-wire remote keeps you in control. And, of course, you can don lycra and pretend to be Lieutenant Geordi La Forge from Star Trek, which is always a bonus.

Nintendo Co Ltd said on Wednesday it would start selling its “Wii Fit” home fitness game in Japan in time for the critical year-end shopping season, sending its shares to a record high.

Nintendo’s announcement comes just a day after Sony Corp said it would cut the price of its PlayStation 3 by 10 percent in Japan and launch a new, lower-priced PS3 model, to battle Nintendo’s dominance.

The new game, which goes on sale on December 1 for 8,800 yen ($75), features a pressure-sensing mat called the “Wii Balance Board”, which looks like a set of bathroom scales and can sense when a person moves and leans, enabling players to “head” virtual soccer balls and experience ski jumping on a TV screen.

The board can also be used for such activities as yoga and aerobics.

The new software is likely to be the next major sales driver for Nintendo’s Wii game console after initial demand was stirred by popularity of “Wii Sports” software, which lets gamers play a virtual tennis match in the living room, analysts have said.

Move over Japan? A Bangladeshi graduate student is developing a robot capable of picking up objects, mopping floors and performing other simple tasks — at the fraction of the cost of other humanoids.

Feroz Ahmed Siddiky of the International Islamic University in Chittagong says his “IRobo” responds to voice commands, has spatial intelligence and is cheap because it’s made from scrap materials he’s collected from electronic shops and car mechanics.

Saitek has some pretty cool gaming peripherals including some rather interesting mice. The supermodel of their mouse lineup is certainly their new Obsidian wireless mouse. This little mouse takes a page from the Logitech G7 book and gives you two battery packs so you can mouse on and on and on.

Computer makers have been told they’ll no longer be able to get Windows XP OEM by the end of this year, despite consumer resistance to Vista and its compatibility problems.

By early 2008, Microsoft’s contracts with computer makers will require companies to only sell Vista-loaded machines. “The OEM version of XP Professional goes next January,” said Frank Luburic, senior ThinkPad product manager for Lenovo. “At that point, they’ll have no choice.”

EMI Group has announced a plan to sell its music online without copy protection technologies, a significant step that will give consumers greater freedom in the way they can listen to music purchased online.

The music without DRM (digital rights management) technology will also have a higher audio quality, offering a sound close to that of the original recordings, according to EMI. But it will also come at a higher price, with each DRM-free song costing about 20 percent more than current downloads.

The announcement was made at EMI’s headquarters in London on Monday by EMI Group Chairman Eric Nicoli. He was joined by Steve Jobs, chief executive officer of Apple Inc., whose iTunes music store will become the first online retailer to offer the DRM-free music.

Knoppix, the famous live Linux CD that practically started the live CD trend, needs no introduction to most people. One of the things that’s so great about it is that you can take it with you and boot to a familiar Linux environment on almost any modern computer, without touching the OS that’s already installed on it.

Of course, it can be even more portable when it runs entirely off of an inexpensive USB key. So let’s install it to a 1 GB USB key, and create a persistent home directory in which to store files. Only let’s do it the lazy way, and keep use of the command prompt to a bare minimum.