These clever Dosogus 2.0 pillows by designers at Art Lebedev Studio are embroidered with a directory listing from everyone’s favorite command line operating system – DOS.

All your old favorites are there, including AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS. But if you look carefully, there are directories for WINDOWS and a HIBERFIL.SYS file, so this pillow must actually be running Windows XP or a newer version. And watch out for the PRON directory – you never know what’s hiding in there. The pillow also appears to have been infected with a trojan, so you might not want to actually sit your butt on this pillow.

The Dosogus 2.0 is actually an upgrade of Lebedev’s earlier Dosogus pillow, and I have to say the new model crashes a little less frequently than the original. Want one? Head on over to Lebedev’s online shop.

Does your laptop get hotter than Hades and overheat all the time? I know there are plenty of laptop cooling solutions out there, but how many of them actually look decent?

Macally’s wooden ECOFAN and ECOFANPRO stands keep your laptop nice and cool, and look good doing it . Each stand has a built-in USB powered cooling fan, and can support any laptop up to 17″. They’re made from Bamboo wood, which not only has a warm natural style, it’s eco-friendly.

While the ECOFAN features a fixed-position stand, I greatly prefer the adjustable height stand on the ECOFANPRO (pictured above). Here’s a snapshot of the simpler model:

Both stands are available over on Amazon, with prices around $32 to 33 (USD) for either model. With virtually no price difference, there’s no reason not to go PRO.

Now all I need is one of those Bamboo laptops to go with this, and I’ll be set.

Call it a case of life imitating software: a designer at Mintpass recently showed off a couple of designs for calculators that look exactly like the calculator apps in Windows and in OS X.

The Mac version has a metal case and a 2-liner LCD screen like its software counterpart, while the Windows calculator sports the classic XP color scheme, and even has menu headers. I know that these are just concepts, but what would the window buttons (maximize, minimize, close) be for in a real calculator? It would be awesome if you could actually maximize a real calculator though.

The designer is aware of the fact that it would be unlikely for either Apple or Microsoft to let any third party get away with making these calculators, so is leaving it up to the two computer makers to make real-life versions of their OS calculators, if only to give away as gifts or for marketing gimmicks. And if they decide to go ahead with it, maybe they should contact Mintpass.

America – land of the free, home of the brave, and a place where memories are made – and stored in digital files with names like DSCN00043.JPG. Whether you think this Statue of Liberty USB flash drive is a tacky souvenir or not, it definitely is one of the more unusual USB drives I’ve seen in a while.

Other than the color of the base stone, I’d say these 4.3-inch tall Lady Liberty drives from Super Talent are pretty accurate 1:421 scale replicas of the real thing – other than the fact that they get their bluish-green hue from dyed rubber instead of weathered copper verdigris. I suppose it would have been pretty hard to make a copper USB drive with a little tiny staircase and people inside. But I bet it could be done. Then you’d have to leave it out in the elements for 200 years to get that perfect patina.

The drives are available in 4GB ($14 USD), 8GB ($19.50) and 16GB ($34.45) versions over at Amazon. As an added bonus, you’ don’t have to take a boat ride and then wait in line for 3 hours to see what’s inside this version.

Why, or why not, that is the question. Wait what? Yeah that’s right; Joe Bowers is a free man in a free land, so if he wants to build a robot that plays Rock Band on the iPhone, no one can stop him! Why the hell not Joe Bowers, why the hell not. Besides, building a robot that plays video games is a lot more awesome that just playing a video game.

Here’s Bowers on his creation: “The light sensor sends data to an Arduino, which is waiting for a spike in the data. The Arduino runs the sensor data through some averaging filters, and sets a threshold for on and off.”

The robot’s fingers are servos, and its fingertips are made of copper wire embedded in foam. Everything was stuffed “into a modified Pelican case, with a lot of hot glue (non glittery)” and voila! A rockin robot that looks like an iPhone lobotomizer. Enough talk, let’s see it rock!

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

I can still hear the rhythmic squeaking.

[via Boing Boing]

Ah, software problems. We’ve all experienced them in varying degrees – sometimes it’s just a stupid online video that won’t load, and sometimes the operating system itself gives up. Now imagine a future where programs can still be compromised, or attacked, but will no longer crash or hang. A group of MIT researchers, led by Martin Rinard and Michael Ernst, are working to make that future possible. They’re working on ClearView, a program designed to fix other programs. According to the Technology Review’s Erica Naone,  ClearView doesn’t fiddle with a program’s source code; instead it “monitors the behavior of a binary: the form the program takes in order to execute instructions on a computer’s hardware.”

ClearView makes a list of rules based on a program’s “normal” behavior. When something causes the program to deviate from those rules, ClearView “comes up with several potential patches designed to force the software to follow the violated rules… If additional rules are violated, or if a patch causes the system to crash, ClearView rejects it and tries another.” And it does all of that without any human intervention. As a test, ClearView was tasked to babysit Firefox while the browser was attacked via ten different methods. On average, ClearView came up with a patch within 5 minutes of exposure to an attack. How’s that for customer service. If you’re tired of having programs die on you, read the full article at Technology Review. It may just make your day.

[via Slashdot]

I’m not sure about this horrible controller trend, but with the release of Brando’s dragon gamepad, I think we can officially say that it has taken hold. It’s either that, or a lot of gamer masochists are finding new and creative ways to hide their proclivities.

I have to admit, Brando’s Fire Dragon gamepad would look pretty sweet… if it wasn’t, y’know, a game controller. That bumpy texture, that angry glowing light, the slick bejeweled sticks–it’s like reading a recipe for distraction and failure. If you ever need to throw a game, this may be the controller you need to wield. You’ll only be suspected of having bad taste.

If you like dragons and hate winning, you can pick up one of these USB controllers for $29 (USD).

We can now add telepathy to the list of things that’s possible thanks to the Internet. Researchers at the University of Southampton in the UK have demonstrated that it is possible to transmit thoughts from one person’s brain to another person’s brain using nothing but pieces of tape, a couple of EEG amplifiers, some special software, LEDs, and the Internet. So… actually quite a lot of things.

The demonstration had a sender think of either 1 or 0. For some reason the person in the video didn’t directly think of either number; he had to think of moving his left arm for 0, and his right arm for 1. I wonder why. The EEG attached to the sender amplifies his brain signals, which are sent to the receiver via the Internet. The receiver’s brain picks up the 1s and 0s via a set of LEDs that flashed a different pattern depending on the digit sent.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Obviously the demo wasn’t too practical, but if this technology is improved maybe we won’t need monitors in the future; instead data will be sent directly to our brain. Then while you’re b2beeing with your friend, you could mess with his brain and make him slap or pee on himself. Awesome.

[via FreshCreation via gizmag]

Anything that starts out of a suggestion from Penny-Arcade’s Mike Krahulik & Jerry Holkins – aka Gabe & Tycho – is bound to be geeky, and this one is no exception. The duo visited the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University and ended up chatting with a bunch of students that were using a Surface, Microsoft’s multitouch wonder computer. Says Krahulik: “After I was done doodling I started sketching out a game grid and we all got to talking about how you might be able to use this tech to play D&D. I drew out some rough ideas and Tycho and I gave them a wish list of things we’d want to see it do. Stuff like selecting spells from a menu around your figure and animates effects for attacks and auras. After we got home we received a mail from them saying they liked the idea so much they wanted to make it their next project.”

Months later, the students released a video with a proof-of-concept of the D&D-Surface mashup, which they named SurfaceScapes, including a look at how combat plays out.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Virtual d20 ftw.

[via Wired via Penny Arcade]

Now in all my research of the old Apple PowerMac G4, I can’t find anything in the spec sheets that mention a 49cc, 2-stroke petrol engine. I must have missed that part somewhere. As a matter of fact, this is the first Mac I’ve ever seen that measures its speed in MPH, not MHz.

This ridiculous mod combines an old G4 with the guts of a tiny motorbike. The MOTO G4 “BURAN” can hit a top speed around 30+ miles per hour. It’s got front and rear disk brakes, and a windscreen made from a hacked up original Apple Pro keyboard.

Apparently the Buran is just the first vehicle created for the new MOTO G4 “extreme sport”, which involves turning old G3 and G4 cases into high-speed deathmobiles.

Unfortunately, they couldn’t figure out a way to keep the computer functional. I think it would have been cool if they figured out a way to do that, and mounted an LCD monitor into the handlebars. Maybe they can do that for the MOTO G4 2.0.

God, that seat looks uncomfortable.

[via MacMod Forums]

Microsoft’s weird-ass marketing campaign telling people to hold Windows 7 parties was asking for a parody, and the folks at Funny or Die are happy to oblige.

Here’s a party that millions of pirates will surely be having: a Windows 7 torrenting party! As if giving out tips on how to download illegal stuff wasn’t enough, there’s some (unnecessary) f-bombs at the end of the clip, so watch out mom & dad.

Seriously though, have you or anyone you know actually set up a Windows 7 party? Was the food any good?

[via TechCrunch]

Sure, you might have just gone off and bought yourself a brand new 27-Inch iMac this week, but if that system seems like overkill for your needs, you could can always go to the opposite extreme. This computer kit not only doesn’t run any programs that you’d ever care to use, it doesn’t let you post to your Twitter page or play Youtube videos either. Blasphemy!

This simplistic 4-bit microcomputer kit from Gakken is really designed as a retro educational plaything, and not any sort of computer you’d ever want to be stuck using. Ever. The GMC-4 computer features a 20-key keyboard with hexadecimal characters, a single red 7-segment LED display, and 7 additional LEDs. That’s it. No big-screen, no Blu-ray drive (same as that iMac), and it doesn’t run any operating system.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Still, it somehow manages to play simplistic games like “whac-a-mole” and tennis, and also offers a basic sound generator for playing monotonous music. Keep in mind that this kit does require assembly, and the instructions are entirely in Japanese – and they show pictures of components that don’t come with the GMC-4, So that should increase the challenge a little bit.

You can get your hands on the GMC-4 microcomputer kit over at the MakerSHED for $39.95 (USD).

[photo via HobbyMedia]

We’ve seen a variety of old 1980s computers get transformed into new things thanks to the wonders of casemodding. But amongst the Sinclairs, Ataris, Commodores and the like, this is the first time I’ve come across a Sega PC mod. This one in particular is an old 1983 Sega SC-3000H, that’s been converted into a fully-functional PC, running Windows XP (What, no Win 7?)

Modder Cuzza picked up this old Sega at a junk shop for just $4 bucks, and by the end of his rebuild mission had spent about $800 to gut rehab this bit of (not so) classic PC history.

Specs for the new PC include a VIA Epia Nano-ITX NX15000G motherboard, with VIA C7 CPU running at 1.5GHz, VIA IGP, 1GB of RAM, and an 80GB Hitachi 2.5″ hard drive. There’s also a slot-load DVD combo-drive that he swiped off of an old iBook G4.

He even managed to preserve the original Sega keyboard, with a bit of clever rewiring through using an X-keys matrix board. And while the guts of the Sega PC aren’t the prettiest thing you’ve ever seen, there sure is a lot of hardware crammed into such a relatively small box.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Want to build your own Sega PC? Check out Cuzza’s complete build log over on techPowerUp! Personally, I’m waiting to build the TI-99/4 or Vic-20 PC.

Yeah, yeah, Apple is probably going to announce some sort of wondrous new multitouch input peripherals when it makes its rumored product announcements this week, but does that mean that Windows users can’t have at least a little multitouch lovin’ in the mean time? I don’t think so.

With this nifty Smart Pad peripheral from Speed, you can add not only an external numeric keypad to your laptop or desktop, but one that works as a true multitouch input device. The compact Smart Pad plugs into any available USB port, and ships with software which lets you start using multitouch gestures to control window movement, mouse buttons, image zooming, scrolling, and other interactions with your computer. The touchpad can support 1, 2 and 3-finger gestures, many of which work with all programs.

There are also a number of specialized gestures that work with popular programs like the MS Office suite and Adobe Acrobat. No word on whether or  not there’s any multitouch drawing apps that’ll work with the Smart Pad, but I’m hoping that somebody will hack one together since the hardware could certainly support it.

Just keep in mind that these early drivers pictured below are in Korean, but I’m hopeful the final version ships with English software.

The Smart Pad’s specs say it works with Windows XP/Vista, though, so I’m not sure if there are any compatibility issues with Windows 7, which has native multitouch support. The device ships this November and is available for pre-order over at Brando for $40 (USD).

Man, these are smartphones indeed. The wise – and probably bored – folks at the University of Berlin made a one-of-a-kind iPhone app which they called iDriver, which allows them to control a Honda Civic via Wi-Fi. But it’s not like our German friends just coded the app and then began playing real-life Hot Wheels; the car – which has been nicknamed “Spirit of Berlin”- was modified and fitted with a ton of electronic equipment as well.

Here’s iDriver and Spirit of Berlin in action:

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Praise Apple and the iPhone! Well, not really. Upon reading about iDriver at 8bitfix, commenter Solidsnake72 took time off from sneaking about and shared the video below. It starts small, but an insane turn of events comes about 2 minutes into the clip:

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Blackberry FTW! Although RIM’s smartphone loses points for using Bluetooth, which of course has a limited range, I think we can all agree that controlling a real F1 car is infinitely more fun than controlling a station wagon, even if said station wagon has lasers onboard.

Update: as nobbi points out in the comments, the Blackberry video is (almost) certainly a viral marketing stunt. Can anyone confirm this? At least no kids on balloons  were involved. And thanks to gusto for the tip!