The 555 Footstool is roughly 30 times larger than the original chip, and was made using a variety of high-tech and traditional carpentry techniques, running the gamut from CNC routing, to laser engraving, to good old-fashioned glue and spray paint.

You can’t really tell from the pictures of the completed version, but its’ actually constructed from 25 custom cut layers of plywood laminated together with glue and bolted together to clamp it in place as it set. Once dried, the bolts were removed, and the holes filled with dowels. With all that wood and glue, it just looks incredibly sturdy.

From the build notes, it all looks way too involved for me to make my own, but I’m still holding out hope that EMSL will sell these in kit form at some point.

Oh, and in addition to functioning as a perfectly good foot stool, it also works great as a cat perch.

[via Laughing Squid]

This new technology, developed by Silverbrook Research, will enable ridiculously fast desktop inkjet printers and could totally revolutionize the printing industry. Check out these amazing videos of several prototype Memjet printers in action, including photo, label and wide-format devices. As I reported earlier, the device uses a series of 20mm wide printheads joined together to form massive, page width printheads to enable lightning-fast print speeds.

The technology can print 8.5″ x 11″ black-and-white documents at 60 pages per minute, and 4×6 full color prints at 30 pages per minute. Each printhead is controlled by a specialized chip capable of calculating an astounding 900 million dots per second of data. Typical business-class Memjet printers are expected to retail for under $300. Consumables are also supposed to be significantly less costly than typical inkjets.

Memjet is definitely one to watch, and I personally can’t wait to see one of these printers up close and personal.

[Press Release]