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.
Continue Reading
So what could you get a guy who has everything? How about a USB boob lamp. That’s right, a LED light in the shape of a single boob, nipple and all. The USB boob lamp will activate upon touch [of course] and illuminate a soft glow to brighten your surroundings.
This is the first I’ve heard of this product, and interestingly enough, I found it just near Father’s Day. Granted, it’s not something you’d like to receive from your kid, but maybe a great joke to plan on “conservative” Dad.
At just $11 USD how can you resist?
So here is the kicker, to make the LED turn on, you simply brush the nipple. To turn it off, brush the nipple again. Hmm, sounds about right.
It’s very common these days to see a media player with a USB port. Whether it be a Blu-ray player or a set-top box, chances are, a USB port is somewhere in the front or back.
At first glance you say to yourself, “sweet, a USB port so I can play content off my flash drive” but then you think a bit more and wonder if you can hang a wireless dongle off the media player and stream content to your media box from a source computer?
Well, Home Server Technologies Inc is one step ahead of you. Their new Wireless Media Stick will do exactly that; stream digital content to your media player.
Whether it’s a laptop, TV, DVD player, Stereo or game console the Wireless Media Stick can stream the content and your media player will play it. There is no limit to the type of format, music, audio or video.
Currently the USB Wireless Media Stick will only stream saved content from the source computer, but future updates will include the ability to stream internet content to your wireless setup, so now you’ll have the best of both worlds.
The Wireless USB Media Stick is $99 USD.
Continue Reading
The love for Linux is that with a bit of tweaking you can do just about anything. Case in point: Sven Killig took the Nexus One, loaded up some code to control the USB host controller and is now running a full work station.
Now this sounds awesome. Sven can run a digital camera off his phone, stream video from a USB stick to his screen or even run a printer off the USB port. Check out the screen-shot of his work station…
So if you’re like me, this project would be in the advanced level of Instructables for DIY mods, but thanks to Sven’s recording skills, we have a video to tell us how.
The best part of all this? He’s got the whole thing demonstrated for you on video, but not only that, you can hit up the down-loadable binaries from his website. And while he tried all of this on Android 2.2, which means its the only version of Android it’s been successfully tested on (at the moment), Sven believes that it will work on Android 2.1, too.
Source: SlashGear.com.
Continue Reading
GetUSB has reported on monitors which connect via USB, but now Samsung has fine tuned this product to include connection AND power to be exclusively through USB. The Korean electronics giant made this possible by including two USB connections to the host so that one transmits data and some power and the 2nd USB connection is designated to power only. We’ve seen this before in USB hard drives, so it’s nothing new.
In addition, Samsung says that this was made possible by improving the transmittance of the panel and the luminance efficiency of the back-light used in the monitor, which ultimately reduced the power consumption to as low as 6.3-watts.
The new USB monitor by Samsung has a shorter life span than a traditional monitor [30,000 verse 50,000] but hey, it’s just growing pains and, as with everything, expect it to get better.
Source:Â TechnaBob.
Continue Reading
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.
Continue Reading
There is nothing more satisfying for a finger work-out then using a laboriously slow old school typewriter. Or on those cloudy days where you feel a bit melancholy and in the mood to write the start of a novel you’ll never finish, you may need to punch down on those exhausting keys of a manual typewriter to get the creative juices flowing.
Today I present you that possibility and better yet, with a touch of technology to make your craving a bit more current.
A well known steampunk modder [Jack Zylkin] has taken the traditional typewriter and transformed it’s key punching into a digital conversion of letters and numbers. Using some customized PCBA, a USB connection and a bit of code it’s now possible to sync your great grandmother’s typewriter with your computer, or in this video, your iPad.
Your craving wont go without some minor cash flow issues, as you can purchase a pre-made [or pre-mod I should say] USB typewriter or you can buy a kit and down grade your very own typewriter and keep the family air loom alive and kicking.
To get more details visit the Etsy Shop to make your purchase or gather more information.
Continue Reading
In today’s digital age, it’s very common, in fact – expected – that everyone own a USB flash drive. Flash drives are the easiest and most convenient way to store data, transfer files and keep that ever changing data near you. If you are like me, you have a favorite flash drive. It’s not necessarily because of the way it looks, but rather – over time – all of your important information has accumulated to one stick. You get to a point where saving data can only be done on that one, favorite USB drive.
This is where RecycleUSB.com comes in, if you have extra sticks lying around, which aren’t gett’in the love – donate them. Recycle USB is a USB recycler service that partnered with Sugar Labs to turn unwanted flash drives into portable learning computers for kids.
What do I mean by portable learning computers?
Well Sugar Labs created a Linux distro [based off Fedora] which boots directly from a flash drive. The distro is a customized learning platform for kids to learn, interactively, on a computer. The great part about Sugar Lab’s approach is that it doesn’t leave a footprint on the host PC.
The USB Recycler service will take your drive, load it with the latest version of Sugar on a Stick and send it to Sugar Labs for global deployment.
Sure you can do this yourself or just drop the USB stick in the mail and not worry about it. If you’re looking for the weekend project here is the link to Sugar Labs.
Recycle USB mentions that if you are really in the mood for donating, you can get a tax credit for larger donations [say your company had a couple hundred extra flash drives from a trade show which are no longer being used].
Continue Reading
The 2010 World Cup of Football starts this Friday. To support the once every four year event, grab yourself a USB football themed 4 port hub from USB Fever.
For me, we start off with our hardest game which is England verse USA on Saturday. Friday should also be packed with excitement with Russia verse Mexico.
To get the football USB hub, jump to USBFever’s website. It’ll only cost you $12 + a little bit in shipping.
At one time in most guy’s life, they are nuts for lego’s. It’s usually the 4-8 year range, but for some it continues on. Here is a great example of how this guy never let go of the dream. “Squirrelfantasy” created a felt-tip pen printer out of Legos, motors, a USB print driver and a pile of creativity.
The “Lego Felt-Tip 110” was designed and coded from scratch. Unlike your typical ink-jet printer, when the ink goes dry or begins to fade, just replace with a new felt-tip pen. Granted it’s only one color, but we all print blank anyway.
Not the most accurate printer, but an extremely accurate Lego printer.
Check out the video. Very entertaining.
Source: PCWorld.
Continue Reading
James Bond could use a gadget like the USB cuff links. How else could you slurp GBs of data from a secure area then waltz out without anyone knowing. Ok granted that’s a poor example of how you could use the USB cuff links, but it makes you wonder, they would be kinda cool.
Designer Ravi Ratan is looking to up your geek look with the expensive $195 links and with storage to 4GBs no less. For those seriously considering this, also consider the possibility for engraving of up to eight letters.
Now this is a great USB gadget which you could have a ton of fun with, especially with summer coming up. USBFever released a new underwater video camera which is compact in size and good with resolution.
The underwater video recorder is small enough it can strap to your wrist or versatile enough to mount on your bike helmet, skateboard bottom, mountain bike, you name it!
The video recorder includes a powerful LED spot light to increase visibility under water or ideal for low light situations [cruising through the brush or forest on your mountain bike].
If you can blow the $190 then it would be a great gift for the kids to use while at the pool all summer.
Here are the bullet points worth considering:
Continue Reading
Well, Home Server Technologies Inc is one step ahead of you. Their new Wireless Media Stick will do exactly that; stream digital content to your media player.
Whether it’s a laptop, TV, DVD player, Stereo or game console the Wireless Media Stick can stream the content and your media player will play it. There is no limit to the type of format, music, audio or video.
Currently the USB Wireless Media Stick will only stream saved content from the source computer, but future updates will include the ability to stream internet content to your wireless setup, so now you’ll have the best of both worlds.
The 
