We love the Pandora Internet Radio. If you haven't heard of Pandora before it's a "free" Internet radio station that plays music based on the kind of music you already like listening to, with a technology that matches music genes, sort of like DNA fingerprinting. In all the while we have used Pandora it has kept us entertained well with music that we love listening to with just one small problem - the browser window that remains on the desktop glaring at us.
But finally we have found the answer to that problem as well - an interesting Task tray application hack for Pandora by Daniel Mackey that keeps Pandora running as a taskbar icon instead of a browser window. Highly recommended if you use or plan to listen to Pandora. It can be downloaded from here.
Being a geek it's almost pretty much impossible to be not excited about things you can build. Here's a slick one that caught our eye.
The project is to build a compass with a CD and a small magnet. At last something old CD's can be used for isn't it? :) Grab the instructions from here.
"Have an old hard drive that no longer works? As long as it still spins up chances are you could build a clock out of your old hard drive!". That's right, here's way to finally put those old megabytes to use. It requires a bit of electronic experience, but it's a pretty cool thing to build. Here's a video of it working.
Searching for extraterrestrials and alien life isn't an easy job, but if you don't have a university funding and want to have go at it without spending a gazillion bucks, check out how to setup an amateur SETI station from SETI League.
If you want a quick homemade hack & don't want to spend some bucks n buy an Infrared webcamera like the Kinemax infrared webcamera then here's an easy way to convert your existing webcam into an infrared camera and take videos & stills in nightvision mode. The process is not very complicated but it does require a little bittle of disassembly.
A great idea for some neat shots, like the rainbow in the picture above, which is barely visible in the normal camera mode but appears as a big bright line with the IR modification.
If you want to surf privately and anonymously at pretty much any place without installing any software try TorPark.
Download Torpark, put it on a USB Flash keychain/drive, plug it into any internet terminal whether at home, school, or public and run Torpark.exe to launch a Tor circuit connection, which creates an encrypted tunnel from your computer indirectly to a Tor exit computer, allowing you to surf the internet anonymously, without any one knowing which sites or locations you are visiting. The Tor service also allows you to reach sites that are blocked by your corporate/school firewall & access control systems.
The software and the anonymizer service "Tor" is completely free for use.
