So cruising the news today for USB updates, I stumbled upon this article about an Australian company dreaming up a giant sky balloon to carry stuff.
When you need to get heavy gear into remote places a road can’t always get you there. Sometimes the gear is so large, air lifting it in wont get you there either. So what to do? How about a ginormous sky balloon?
To give you an idea of the type of problem this Australian company [Skylifter] is trying to solve; a helicopter is the only aircraft which can float in a product of great size or weight to a remote location – but it’s got limitations. A helicopter can only carry about 50 tons of gear. What if the stuff weighs more than 50 tons?
The balloon is 150-meters wide and could carry up to 150 tons. The balloon would have a flight range of 1240 miles and would act like a parachute on decent to make a gentle touchdown. A mini RC version of the balloon is now being tested and is 9 feet across. It can carry about 1 pound with a full-size prototype set to start building in the coming three years.
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So here is my tutorial on making a great looking iPhone wallpaper design.
The concept is fairly easy, here is the high level over view: We will set the proper size, create the pattern image, upload the image to a web space, download the image and set it as the wallpaper. Sounds easy, right? Well it is.
First, the correct size for the iPhone screen is 320×480 pixels. So get into your favorite photo editing program and get a blank file with the size of 320×480 pixels for you iPhone wallpaper.
Second, you’ll need to create an image. Of course you can take a picture and set it that way, but I’m thinking more like a subtle pattern that isn’t obtrusive and is more complimentary to yourself while using the iPhone rather then having an ego trip by setting my kids best picture as my wallpaper.
For me, Photochop is my weapon of choice and I created this nice little pattern image which we’ll use for the wallpaper.
Note: With the new iPhone 4.0+ firmware you have the ability to set the lock/unlock wallpaper and set a different picture as your background image for Home when using your iPhone. I think the above pattern image is a very nice background image for the Home position.
Third, after you’ve created your pattern image, you will save it as a
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CD ripping is certainly nothing new, but if you’ve ever done it, the process is slow, boring and a massive suckage of time. For that reason, I wanted to post about it a new service I found. Rip2iPod is a CD ripping service which converts your CDs into MP3 files.
The CD Ripping service is very straight forward. Ship the discs. They rip them. They send them back on a DVD archive.
At that point it’s your job to finish the task and drop those MP3s into your iTunes or media management software.
After reading their FAQ about the CD ripper process I learned a couple things I didn’t know, for example; an average CD collection is 250 discs. The CD ripping for that quantity would take about 20-25 hours of solid work.
The CD ripping process includes meta data [tagging of songs] which include genre, album artwork when available, date, etc etc. You also have the choice on bit rate compression…or simply put, the quality of CD ripping you’d like.
The minimum order is quantity of 100. To get more details on price, shipping instructions and options, visit their site.
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Here is a time lapse of the British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico which started April 20th, just days before Earth Day. The music makes things a bit dramatic, but you’ll get the point. What a horrible disaster and with effects we will see for years.
Hats off to NASA for providing us the technology to view an event like this from an entirely different perspective. It’s important to see this imagery to understand the impact we make on the Earth. Granted, we are a spec of time in the Earth’s life span, but making matters worse for ourselves isn’t very beneficial.
Lets hope something good comes out of this horrible disaster, like it being the catalyst to really sink our teeth into new energy methods and technologies.
Source: Gizmodo.
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Once again, I am off topic of USB, but sometimes you get ultra cool products that you must mention. Today I found a great gadget from our buddies at Gizmos For Geeks. It’s the Gear Ring.
Very elegant in design and intrigues the engineering in all of us. The Gear Ring is comprised of 6 mini gears which rotate in unison as you twist the top portion.
The product is high quality stainless steel and engineer to very tight specifications. This makes for an easy and smooth feeling as you twist the ring.
Although I’m not a ring guy myself, other than my wedding ring, it is intriguing enough that I’m going to buy one. It’s not THAT much, only $165. Ring sizes include 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9.
Source:Â GizmosForGeeks.
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Engadget posted a video today about a robotic arm which looks and acts like an elephant trunk. Made by Festo’s it’s an impressive robotic machine. It appears much bigger than it is, watch the video and you’ll see the arm hand something off to a human.
It really has nothing to do with USB, but just a great video to watch.
After watching it, I do wonder how quickly it can move.
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According to some accounts, blue was the first color associated with St. Patrick’s Day, but that started to change in the 17th century. Green is one of the colors in Ireland’s tri-color flag, and it has been used in the flags of several Irish revolutionary groups throughout history. Ireland is the “Emerald Isle,†so named for its lush green landscape. Green is also the color of spring, the shamrock, and the Chicago River, which the Midwestern city has dyed green on St. Patrick’s Day for the past 40-odd years.
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TouchScreen Preschool Games has just released another iPhone app; Mister Rogers.
GetUSB.info doesn’t make it a habit of reporting on iPhone applications, but when you know the author and game publisher it’s worth taking a moment and saying “good job.”
Murtha Design had their first block buster iPhone app, ShapeBuilder and from that success Murtha Design has teamed with PBS.org to develop the Mister Rogers iPhone app.
Mister Rogers Make a Journal encourages children to identify and talk about their feelings about their everyday experiences like school, playtime, and friends. The App features an animated version of favorite Neighborhood of Make-Believe character Daniel Striped Tiger, who invites children to make a journal to help them reflect on the things they do and to express how they feel.
What is amazing about this application is the goal of establishing Emotional Development truly works. I have a 4 and 6 year old child and they both create journals about their day and from simply listening to their interaction with the program, I can learn about my child’s day without pressuring them for daily activity reports and grilling them on “how was school today?”
AT&T reports that smart phone users, which make up 3% of their market, are eating up nearly 40% of the data bandwidth on their mobile network.
To no surprise, AT&T is considering ways to free up network bandwidth so that everyone without a smartphone, isn’t effected. So what does this mean? It means AT&T might be giving a screw j_b to iPhone users. – by far the biggest consumers of bandwidth from smartphones.
iPhone users on average consume five to seven times more data per month than average wireless subscribers, according to analyst firm Sanford Bernstein. And all this usage is clogging the network, causing many iPhone users, especially in large cities such as New York and San Francisco, to experience dropped calls, slow 3G service, and issues connecting to the network at all.
So what is AT&T considering? I would think upping the usage fees, but this might not work for those who don’t care about monthly fees. Another approach are incentives.
“We’re going to try to focus on making sure we give incentives to those small percentages to either reduce or modify their usage so they don’t crowd out the other customers in those same cell sites,” said de la Vega according to a transcript of the conference. “And you’ll see us address that more in detail.”
Either way, I have a strong feeling AT&T will be limiting or slowing data usage for iPhone users.Â
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Today, a team of engineers will be recognized at the Computer History Museum for designing the first microprocessor in 1971, a 4-bit parallel CPU with 2,300 transistors. That project, from an infant Intel [3 years old], was a huge achievement and one can honestly say “it changed the world.”
The Intel 4004 was the first general purpose microprocessor that could be customized with software to perform different functions on different devices. The 4004 started a new era in both hardware AND software, along with a never ending quest of silicon integration that continues to this day.
The small team to be honored include:
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Read an interesting article on social media and how it can impact your business, blog, or audience through social media websites like FaceBook and Twitter. Granted, these terms are nothing new, and today we announce the addition of another network for GetUSB, Twitter.
The article which inspired me to sign up was from Chris Brogan and if you are looking for 50 reasons, or just one, on why to get onto Twitter – give it a read.
So now you can receive the GetUSB article title each day on Twitter, and if the topic tickles your fancy, click through and read the rest. There is plenty of good content we churn out day after day, so please follow us.
Thanks & Cheers,
Gmo
Editor in Chief GetUSB.info
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