Jason Bradbury, DIY tech guru from across the pond, has many projects under his belt. However, his latest DIY build is simply fantastic. He has been chronicling his progress as he attempts to build (the first?) rectangular hoverboard - in the true “Back to the Future” fashion. Any old sap can put together a roundish hovering device because physics likes it when pressure is equally distributed. Making a hoverboard with corners however, apparently takes some finesse. He is actually a little ways off from the final product but still has plenty of information to read about it.

DIY Hoverboard: It works!
DIY Hoverboard: Propulsion

and World’s First Hoverboard Accident

UPDATE: This is what I get for not checking Digg first. Here is a much more detailed explanation of his build.

This interesting hack involves the modding of a disposable camera into a portable ‘light graffiti’ projector able to display any image or words you so choose. The site contains a video of the defacing in action and lots of info on how to build your own. Supposedly this graffiti projector will be able to last 2 days - plenty time for advertising that rave at your local abandoned warehouse or for any other sticking-it-to-the-man type message.

link - Hacktivist.com [via]

From the same brilliant mind that brought the multi-input touchscreen I posted on last week, comes the LED touch sensing project. The creator, Jeff Han, has several projects on his site dealing with new, revolutionary computer interface systems. This one in particular caught my attention as I was browsing his site. The video looks like a basic version of the touchscreen from last time only this interface is simply made of LEDs. I really wish there was more information on this because this would be something that I would love to try to implement. However, the only info the site gives is the following cryptic message.

Two scalable techniques for enabling ordinary LED matrices to simultaneously act as multi-touch input devices. In 1977, Forrest M. Mims reminds us in one of his “Engineer’s Notebooks” that LEDs can also be used as photodiodes…

Maybe I’ll have to find this source myself but I am now determined to experiment with LEDs in this way.

link - site with video

Jeff Han’s home site

Seems like the life of a Japanese consumer just got alot easier. Coca-Cola Japan has just announced that 200,000 of their vending machines across the country are going to be given RFID reading functionality.

The new vending machines will allow consumers to buy a coke using RFID-chipped wallet phones (and other kinds of digital wallets). The vending machines will also have networking capability to gather data from vending machines for inventory management purposes.

This technology has virtually unlimited applications and I nervously look forward to its unveiling here in the U.S. Like anything, these RFID tags have the potential to be used for both good and evil. I am hoping against the latter. Buying drinks with the wave of your cell phone = good; having your global position monitored every second of every day = bad. Feel free to use this as a guideline for future RFID use.

link - RFID in Japan

if you would like an interactive lesson in how to swipe your phone, go here and click on a button that looks like this: