Sifting through the Instructables website I came along this retro looking USB spinner wheel or Jog wheel. The USB tutorial project is a bit complicated and requires some technical know-how, so if you are looking to increase your mod skill sets, this might be the project for you.

So what is something like this good for anyway?  The jog wheel functions like your wheel on that mouse you have, but larger and has good momentum which is nice when searching through large bits of code, viewing long webpages or searching through numerous documents.

A job wheel is also excellent for media editing like sound or video.  You can scroll around in these large files effortlessly and without stressing out your finger from the mouse scroll wheel.  With the heaviness of the VCR head you can get the motion going and it’s inertia will keep it spinning for quite some time and when you’ve found the frame you’re looking for, just hold the wheel to stop it.

Enough about the sales pitch of a DIY project, jump over to

USB keyloggers are always a good idea to have around. Sure you could make the argument that it’s incroaching on someone’s space, or that it’s flat out illegal to track someone without them knowing…but forget all that.  To many ups sides.

What about keeping check with your kids?  Or making sure employees are keeping honest?  What about some backup or recovery and you need to know where you’ve been?

Well in any case, for the DIY folks, here is a nice tutorial on taking a standard PS/2 and converting it into a USB keylogger.  What I like about it is the simple fact the average computer user wouldn’t notice.  We all see the PS/2 on the back panel, so why investigate it to see if there’s mod to it?

The full tutorial can be found at Instructables.  Only tip is that you need some good soldering skills.  Other then that, not a hard task at all.

The Eggbot is an open-source art robot that can draw on spherical or egg-shaped objects from the size of a ping pong ball to that of a small grapefruit.

The Eggbot is super adjustable, and is designed to draw on all kinds of things that are normally “impossible” to print on. Not just eggs but ping pong balls, light bulbs, mini pumpkins, and even things like wine glasses. The egg-bot is ideal for Easter and a fun way for kids to make elaborate designs on their eggs.  The egg-bot is recommended for ages 10 and up with parent supervision at 13 and under.  In the photos, you can see just a few of the things you can do with eggs.

The Eggbot chassis is made of tough fiberglass, with integrated heat sinks for the included motors. The pen and egg motors are high-torque precision stepping motors, and the pen lift mechanism is a quiet and reliable servo motor.

The Eggbot kit is easy to assemble in a couple of hours, and only requires a couple of basic tools like miniature Phillips-head and flathead screwdrivers. You’ll also need a computer with an available USB port (Mac, Windows or Linux).

The EBB allows your computer to directly control the stepper and servo motors. The onboard 16X microstepping driver chips along with the 200 step/revolution stepper motors give a combined resolution of

GetUSB.info has reported on making a bootable USB with nt60 boot sector, and here is another post about bootable USB, but this time for making the boot device for any Windows OS…or should I say from any Windows OS.

WinToFlash is a slick little tool I came across which allows you to make a bootable USB from any source Windows installation CD or DVD.

WinToFlash will slurp out the boot sectors required to make a bootable USB from your source CD or DVD.  Simply pop in the Windows disk, get a 4GB stick [8GB is better] that can read/write faster than a promo give-away drive, and run WinToFlash.

Here is a list of items you can perform using WinToFlash for bootable USB devices:

How To: Fix MacBook Air and USB Ethernet Adapter

If you are one of the few who rushed out to purchase the MacBook Air, you might have found yourself in a bit of a pinch.  How to get the USB Ethernet Adapter working?  If this is you, or a friend you know, here is a quick fix until a new Apple update is published.

First, it appears that some have luck plugging the adapter into different ports on the MacBook Air, but it’s not a universal solution.

After a bit of investigative work sifting through the Apple forums, you can do the following for a sure thing fix:

How to turn off autoplay Windows 7 for USB flash drives.

Some may want to turn off the USB auto play so that when a USB device is connected the auto pop-up window doesn’t appear.  I don’t mind the pop-up window as it usually defaults to the area or program I’m trying to get into anyway, but for some, I could see the frustration.  So on that note, here is a quick USB tutorial on how to turn off the USB auto run function.

First, click START > RUN and type in gpedit.msc  then click RUN.

Next you’ll want to navigate to the location shown below.  That would be:

Computer Configuration > Admin Templates > Windows Components  Once there you would double click Windows Components

That will take you to the following area where we can select the menu to edit the USB autorun functions.  Double click the AutoPlay Policies

Next select the Turn Off Autoplay by double clicking it.

Do you see something odd about this picture?  Maybe the fact an LED is illuminating from a USB connector with no PC in site?  Ya that’s it.  Good job Sherlock.

So what we have here is a How To or USB Hack on running an LED from a Super-capacitor.  If you are non-technical, then we basically mean a very short lived battery to run the LED.  A super-capacitor has the ability to store energy for longer periods of time over traditional capacitors – yet still not long enough as with batteries.The concept of this tutorial is to wire a super-capacitor to a USB socket whereby your computer can charge up the capacitor and when disconnected you’ll get about 10 minutes of LED illumination.

Granted there isn’t much day-to-day use with this USB hack, but just a fun little project if you have the time.

Over on the Instructables website there is an updated USB tutorial which includes