Customers Make VoIP Calls On American Airlines Flights

August 26, 2008 by 13 Comments


Less than a week after American Airlines introduced in-flight internet, hackers have already figured out how to use the system to make VoIP calls in a few easy steps with Phweet, a Twitter application. While the network blocks most VoIP services, Phweet can connect two people using a Flash app. Aircell, the company responsible for the system, is aware of the oversight, but it remains to be seen whether this little loophole will be fixed in a timely manner. Meanwhile, we encourage those of you who do fly on American Airlines to avoid making those phone calls; your neighbor would probably appreciate it.

[via Digg]

World Of Warcraft On A Treadmill

August 25, 2008 by 17 Comments


[Aaron Rasmussen] and his friend [Eli] slapped together this setup to see what it would be like to run as much as their World of Warcraft characters. They used a couple old treadmills to spin some tires with makeshift mouse sensors on them. As their speed increased, so did their character. There was a decent amount of math done to figure the average speed of a World of Warcraft character, and ultimately they settled on 12 miles per hour. Not surprisingly, they found that too difficult due to the resistance in the rig as well as being out of shape. They ended up lowering the speed required to make their character go full sprint to 6 miles per hour.

Their final conclusion was that they could never run as much as their digital counterparts. Even if they were in really good shape. [Aaron] does say that it was fun enough to consider doing it regularly as a workout plan. He should wear the costume every time he uses it.

Monster Truck Lawn Mower

August 25, 2008 by 23 Comments


It’s no secret that we’re gear heads at heart. Our transportation hacks category is full of unfortunate machinery like [Steven Laurie]’s motor art, weed whacker bikes, and electric motorcycles of all types. Even we have trouble justifying the existence of this monster truck style lawn tractor though. We haven’t found a project site for it and can’t help but wonder what kind of person would build such a thing? It’s obviously the type that would own a car sized American flag. We just need to realize with the popularity of lawn mower racing, this sort of thing was bound to happen.

[via Toolmonger]

James Powderly Released

August 25, 2008 by 10 Comments


Graffiti Research Lab’s [James Powderly] along with 9 other Tibet supporters were deported from China during the Olympic’s closing ceremonies. Detained on the 19th, the activists were to serve a 10 day sentence, but the Chinese government buckled under international pressure and deported them early. This brings the total number of deported activists to 53 since the start of the games.

Graffiti Research Lab is well known for its laser tagging research.

Wiimote Head Tracking In Processing

August 25, 2008 by 3 Comments


[Manuel] has been playing around with [Johnny Lee]’s Wiimote head tracking code. He’s posted a preliminary port outlining the code in the Processing environment. It relies on darwiinremoteOSC so you won’t see this outside of OSX, but it should help you out if you’re trying to do this is in Processing on another platform.

[via Create Digital Motion]

[photo: nicolasnova]

SparkFun Arduino Pro

August 25, 2008 by 6 Comments


SparkFun’s new Arduino Pro is an updated version of their Skinny. The board comes populated with the running gear of an Arduino, but without all of the connectors in place. It’s targeted at people building integrated systems around the Arduino and not just prototyping. The board is 3.3V with an 8MHz bootloader just like the LilyPads and is fully certified by Arduino. It has a small side mounted power switch, but you have to supply your own DC jack (if you need it). There is no USB hardware on board and you’re expected to program it via an FTDI breakout board or cable. We definitely like the stripped down approach, but it would have been nice if the price had dropped more.

[via Make]