Author: Jesus Diaz

Frustrated after seeing his father try to make a replacement car key without the ID code, Steve Randall and Ted Schwarzkopf created the Electronic Key Impressioner. If it works, it could be great news for locksmiths. And maybe thieves too.

The Electronic Key Impressioner plugs into the car keyhole and, after aligning it properly, it connects with a computer via USB, sucking up the code after you select the car type you are trying to crack. For now, it only work for Fords.

The key cloner will only be sold to authorized locksmiths. Randall says that their device will have to connect to the Internet to work, so if it falls into the wrong hands, it could be deactivated remotely. Sadly, if history has told us anything, is that no matter how secure you think your system is, there will always be people capable of cracking it. [Popular Mechanics]

If you go out to party with your friends and leave your significant other at home, chances are that he or she wouldn’t be very happy. Fortunately, here’s the perfect solution.

The video is in Spanish, so read below to understand what’s happening before playing it

The promotional team of Andes—a very popular beer in Argentina—came up with it. They noticed that, once guys get a girlfriend, they don’t go out with their friends as much as before. The girlfriends just don’t like their men going out with their brute friends to get drunk. As a result, beer consumption drops.

To solve this, they created the Teletransporter. Granted, it’s not a real teletransporter, but it’s good enough: A soundproof booth with an integrated sound system controlled by a touchscreen. The sound system offers different ambient sounds, which get played at the touch of a button. The beer company installed several of these in bars and clubs all over the Argentinian city of Mendoza.

Now imagine that you—girl or boy—are in the bar and get a call from your wife/husband/girlfriend/boyfriend. You can a) answer the call and get crucified later, b) don’t answer the call and get crucified later, or c) go into the Teletransporter booth, choose a lie, press the option, and then pick up the phone as the ambient sound changes. Something like this:

I wouldn’t be surprised if these Transporters get installed in bars all over the world, in the style of old phone booths. [Pagina2 – Thank you, Rubén]

The math itself doesn’t make much sense, but I like the concept of this formula to calculate the real size of your gadget. One thing is clear: the Apple fanboy constant automatically sets the weigh to near-zero. [Not Quite Wrong]

Oh Pluto, Pluto… You may not be a planet anymore, but that doesn’t mean we don’t love you. Even while you look like a big moldy ball of mud in this image capture by Hubble, the most detailed to date.

And here I was, thinking Pluto was this big blue ice sphere only good to make Caipirinhas and Mojitos. According to NASA, however, its color has changed. The hue shift happens over a two year period, in which the the ice of one pole get sun light, melts, and then refreezes on the other pole. Quite the manic depressive non-planet, this Pluto. According to NASA,” the overall color is believed to be a result of ultraviolet radiation from the distant sun breaking up methane that is present on Pluto’s surface, leaving behind a dark and red carbon-rich residue.”

NASA’s images of the faraway ex-planet will help to calibrate the New Horizons spacecraft, which will pass Pluto in 2015. They will use Hubble’s images to set the exposure on board New Horizons, as it races past it. So fast, in fact, that it will only be able to photograph one of the hemispheres up close. [NASA]

Watch this crazy Chinese hacker turns his laptop into a giant touchscreen cellphone. I’m not sure if this is real or not, but I want to believe it is:

Now, if only Andre the Giant was alive. [Motherboard]

I love South African Kulula airlines’ new airplane paint jobs. Called Flying 101, it shows all the elements of the aircraft over its entire surface, from the nose cone to the tail’s rudder, going through the gallery and the toilet.

It’s not as detailed as I would like it to be, but it looks good. [PSFK via Swissmiss]

This prettyful simple bar is not a spare part from a Wipeout racer, but the Linos Portable USB vinyl record player. How does it work? Quite simply, it seems.

The bar has two parts. Take out the bottom base, place the long play album or single on top, and then sandwich it with the overarching top. To start playing, move the player arm into position.

If it weren’t just a cool concept, I would definitely get one. [Pyott Design via TrendLand]

The Ikonoskop A-cam3D is a 1080p three-dimensional video camera that seems to have been stolen from Han Solo’s Welcome to Hoth backpack. There’s not a lot of information about it, but the first specs look very good:

• Records two images at 1920 x 1080 as individual RAW files in DNG format.
• Color depth: 12 bits.
• Speed: 25 or 30 frames per second.

The Ikonoskop A-cam3D is built using the same tech as the 2D Ikonoskop A-Cam. It’s also built to order, so it probably is prohibitively expensive. And to be honest, I don’t even know if I would like a 3D camera. Maybe it would be fun to film some home porn with it, but I’m sure the excitement would die quite quickly. Would you like to shoot your videos in 3D? Tell us in the comments. [Ikonoskop via Engadget]

I love when tech companies go to war. And this one is going to be huge. No, not huge: Gigapocalyptical. The domination of a new age of computing is at stake, and Apple, Google, and Microsoft want to win.

This is the money they can play with. First, Microsoft with $40.4 billion in the bank. That’s actual rupees plus short and long term securities. Apple follows up closely with $39.8 billion, while Google trails way behind with only $24 billion. And the almighty Intel? $18.9 billion.

Yes baby. I can’t wait for the nuclear ballistic missiles to start filling the skies. [Silicon Insider]

What do you do if you are a retired electronic and mechanical engineer with 41 years of experience, and a passion for ultra-high speed photography? Like Fotoopa, you make your own kick ass laser rig to take these cool photos:

That’s Fotoopa—photograndpa in Dutch. His setup includes his own custom shutter—which can fire at five microseconds—made around an Arduino controller and custom aluminum parts, extra lenses to search for insects in focus, and a reflected laser light system that allows him to move around anywhere to shoot his photos. The rig can work in broad daylight or total darkness, and it doesn’t need any setup except adjusting the sensitivity of the lasers depending on the ambient light. The whole thing is self-contained.

According to him, the focus range detector works from 1mm to 700mm from the camera, and the firing mechanism is capable of detecting flying objects two millimeters in diameter. Extremely impressive for a do-it-yourself machine. And the results are as good as the technology.

Fotoopa, we salute you, Sir. [Flickr via Makezine]

HT4Sight seems like something only available to rogue agents who break people’s legs and shout out their lungs every time they want to know where a nuclear head is, while nobody—except a hacker with permanent PMS—believes in them.

Except that HT4Sight is real, and available to anyone with deep enough pockets. The system allows anyone to route video signals from UAVs—or any aerial surveillance craft or satellite—to any cellphone around the world, using an encrypted data signal. The signal gets transmitted in real time to a command center. Then, HT4Sight compresses and encrypts the video, sending the stream to any phone in a cellular, Wi-Fi, or satellite network. [Helinet Technologies]

I hardly use it, but I like CoverFlow and how it allows to wander through albums when you don’t know what to play. I’m not so sure about how useful ContactFlow would be, but it’s good eyecandy. And free. [iTunes]

To open the secret entrance to the cave, try left-left-up-left-down-down-right-left then a-y-y-x-b-a and then hold the d-pad down while clicking y-y-b-b. Press start twice, and you will get in. [Flopculture]

The latest and greatest Nehalem-based Xeon Mac Pros are the fastest Apple computers you can buy. Unfortunately, they seem to have a serious problem when processing audio, a task that sucks 20% of its power while making the processors overheat.

According to Ars Technica, the problem—which happens with Early 2009 and Late 2009 models—doesn’t only happen while playing iTunes’ music or Quicktime videos, but also whenever you have USB or FireWire audio devices connected and working. Users have been reporting about it in support boards, but Apple has ignored the problem so far.

The company argues that the extra heat—which includes increases of 86ºF (30ºC)—is normal. The performance hit ranges from 15% to 20%. That is not normal at all, and users are understandably up in arms. Hopefully, Apple will start paying attention now. And hopefully, the problem won’t happen with the incoming Core i7-980X Mac Pros, which are rumored to be announced on March 16. [Ars Technica and Hardmac]

While the Lego Airbus A380 at Legoland is the biggest Lego airplane out there, this one is much cooler. To start with, there are motherf*cking snakes inside, along with five other movie scenes. And then, it’s computer-controlled, using a touchscreen.

The PC program running on the touch screen controls eight Mindstorm NXT engines and six hitechnic servos, which in turn can retract the gear, open cargo doors, move the flaps, raise the air brakes, activate the landing lights, move the tail fin, and throttle the engines, among other actions.

As for the movie scenes involving airplanes, you can check them out in the gallery, but they are all pretty obvious.

Don’t worry, there no Oceanic-related Lost spoilers. [Flickr via Eurobricks via Brothers Brick]

This Photoshop illustration makes me cringe, but I can’t peel my eyes off it, cutting them like the blade in Un Chien Andalou. [Walee via Likecool]

This is the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly. Together with the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager, and the Extreme Ultraviolet Variability Experiment, it will capture the Sun at IMAX resolution every ten seconds. They will travel together inside NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft.

After its February 2010 launch on top of an Atlas V rocket, the SDO will capture images at almost four times the resolution of an HD TV, transmitting the results back to Earth at 130 megabits per second. Basically, this thing will be transmitting the equivalent of 500,000 MP3 per day, seven days a week. According to Dean Pesnell at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, the potential for new discoveries is giganormous:

We’ll be getting IMAX-quality images every 10 seconds. We’ll see every nuance of solar activity.

Pesnell said that this speed opens an incredible potential for discovery, using 18th century photographer Eadweard Muybridge as an example:

But when Muybridge photographed horses using a new high-speed camera system, he discovered something surprising. Galloping horses spend part of the race completely airborne-all four feet are off the ground.

To achieve all this, the three instruments in the SDO have been designed to cover three vital aspects of our home star. First, the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly—which will be producing most of the data—that you see at the opening of this post uses four telescopes together. They will be the ones photographing Sol’s surface and atmosphere using ten different wavelength filters. Meanwhile, the HMI will analyze the innards of the star, looking into the physics that govern it inside. Then, EVE will measure extreme ultraviolet light activity while getting a nice and toasty tan.

How would this data be received? Using two 18-meter antennas near Las Cruces, New Mexico, which will be linked constantly to the SDO thanks to its geosynchronous orbit. Until it gets destroyed by the mysterious flying spaceship.

As strangely sleek and prettynaff this fiberglass F1 lounge chair is, I can’t believe the designer—Hungarian Alexander Christoff—missed the opportunity to make it wheeled. What’s wrong with you, Alexander?

You are making office chair racing fans weep all around the world. Are you happy now? Fine. Be that way. [Behance via Examiner via Born Rich]

Someone has been able to break into Apple’s Cupertino headquarters and steal the document containing the biggest secret behind the iPad. [9gag]

I hate to say I told you, but I told you: The Apple iPad is exactly what I said it was going to be except for two things: Multitasking and the touch-sensitive bezel. Guess what Apple just did.

Yes, they registered a method to do the last thing. The US Patent and Trademark Office just published patent 7,656,393, which describes the use of a touch-sensitive bezel to bring hot corners up on the main screen.

An electronic device has a display and has a touch sensitive bezel surrounding the display. Areas on the bezel are designated for controls used to operate the electronic device. Visual guides corresponding to the controls are displayed on the display adjacent the areas of the bezel designated for the controls. Touch data is generated by the bezel when a user touches an area of the bezel. The device determines which of the controls has been selected based on which designated area is associated with the touch data from the bezel. The device then initiates the determined control. The device can have a sensor for determining the orientation of the device. Based on the orientation, the device can alter the areas designated on the bezel for the controls and can alter the location of the visual guides for the display so that they match the altered areas on the bezel.

I’ve included an explanation of what their invention can do in the gallery:

This is pretty much what I already proposed in my Apple tablet user interface article, both as a solution for the positioning of the home button—which, as Mark points out, is awkward to use in portrait mode—and as a way to invoke different menus and switch between running applications. Whenever the hell they enable multitasking in the iPhone OS, that is.

You can see how hot corners may work using this sensitive bezel here:

We don’t know if Apple will finally implement this patent or not, but it certainly makes a lot of sense to make the iPad more powerful, while keeping the user interface as easy to use and intuitive as it is now.

[Patently Apple]