Mulled Marc

Popular Science and Core77 sponsored a competition to design products using human power. The winner of the competition is the ReGEN – an MP3 player built into / like a yo-yo, that recharges when you play with it. The exterior of the ReGEN has an LCD touch screen exterior for the controls as well as displaying Artist information, battery life remaining, etc. The device (if ever built), would use bluetooth headphones so the user could still listen while charging….yo-yo-ing….whatever. The wireless headphones are charged by plugging them into a special port on the ReGEN and yo-yo-ing. The ReGEN fits into the headphones for easy storage.

via OhGizmo!

For those not scared out of your minds yet, the bump key is a specially designed key that, with minimal force and no trace of break-in, can allow someone to unlock your door and enter your home. Did that sound alarmist? Engadget has posted part one of an article explaining the origins and limits of the bump key. Included is a basic lesson in the pin tumbler lock so that even the layman can understand the threat and what makes it possible.

In what could be great for ratings, but will inevitably be very bad publicity CBS has announced that the next survivor will feature the following tribe designations: African-American, Asian-American, Caucasian, Hispanic. The four tribe will start the game separated by race then the normal game play and tribe shake-ups will occur. As quoted by Zap2It.com, Jeff Probst’s take on it is this:

“I think at first glance, when you just hear about it, it could sound like a stunt, especially with the way reality [TV] has gone,” “Survivor” host Jeff Probst told Smith. “But that’s not what we’re doing here. The idea for this actually came from the criticism that ‘Survivor’ is not ethnically diverse enough. … We said, ‘Let’s turn that criticism into creative for the show, and I think it fits in perfectly with what ‘Survivor’ does. It’s a social experiment, and this adds another layer to the experiment.”

Heard on The Rush Limbaugh Show
CBS’ Survivor page

1. Take Pregnancy Test
2. Setup college fund
3. Register Personal Domain
4. Purchase first cell phone
5. Ready Nursery

So, is this the world that we live in now? CNet is reporting that a report done last year found the average age of a child owning their first mobile phone is eight. That age is expected to drop to five years of age this year.

via Slashdot

This isn’t new, but I had apparently missed it before. AMD has erected billboards in Times Square and in Silicon Valley that tracks cost of power wasted by companies using Intel’s Xeon chips instead of AMD’s Opteron chips. This followed AMD and others creation of The Green Grid, an organization aiming to reduce the power used by datacenters around the globe.

via Good Morning Silicon Valley
The Green Grid

Star Trek Inspirational Posters has a collection of spoof posters using the lessons we’ve all learned from Star Trek – including to never be the ‘extra’ in a beam down party.

via TV Squad

The Solar Tower is a project from EnviroMission to create renewable, clean energy using solar power to heat air, which is then funneled up a tower to power turbine generators. As they describe it:

The sun’s radiation is used to heat a large body of air under an expansive collector zone, which is then forced by the laws of physics (hot air rises) to move as a hot wind through large turbines to generate electricity. A Solar Tower power station will create the conditions to cause hot wind to flow continuously through 32 x 6.25MW pressure staged turbines to generate electricity.

There are also plans to use pools of water or other heat-holding substances to trap some of the heat, that would then be released at night as the air temperature cools.

via CNNMoney.com

The Independent has an artile detailing science experiments that you can try at home (though not always indoors). With each experiment they have a description of the experiment, the expected results, and the scientific principles that are at work. The experiments include making clouds in a bottle, making a lava lamp, and, of course, the infamous diet coke / mentos game.
via Make

Leo Laporte has announced on his blog that the attempts to create a TechTV reunion show may lead to something else – a new TechTV-like broadband channel. The details are rather sparce right now and they are still trying to get all of the TechTV Alumni to agree to use this new platform, but it could be very interesting for anyone greatly disappointed by what happened to TechTV. They are also looking for help coming up with a name for this new venture.