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Category Archives: Cool Tools

Data protection: firesafe that lets you use bus-powered drives without opening it

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Sheer brilliance – a bus powered drive goes inside, and you plug it into a computer on the outside and use it. In the event of a fire, your computer melts, but not the drive. Would be a ton more useful with half a dozen USB connectors or some facility for moving power inside too, [...]

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Recording broadcast quality interviews using Skype. No, really!

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Skype for InterviewsView SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: podcast interviews) via Josef

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Bruce Sterling on a forensic camera with inbuilt crypto

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Sterling has an excellent bit about “information munitions” – little cameras with cryptographic signatures and GPS to verify time and place an image was created at, and audit trails on image modification. It’s interesting that, even without all that, a camera phone can still rock the world. I left this comment on Worldchanging years ago, [...]

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Zoom H2 quadraphonic four microphone / four track audio interview recording trick

Monday, June 30, 2008

Here’s the trick: record in quad. In Audacity, invert either the front or the rear track. What happens is that the ambient noise which hits all four mics about equally is significantly subtracted out, leaving the voices (which are significantly different between front and rear mics) synchronize out. Works really well, I was amazed.

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NGO In a box

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

NGO-in-a-box offers a set of peer reviewed and selected Free and Open Source software (F/OSS), tailored to the needs of NGO’s. It provides them not only with software, but also with implementation scenarios and relevant materials to support this. http://ngoinabox.org/

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expanding goop for cracking rock

Saturday, May 17, 2008

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000BRPHQ4/ref=nosim/kkorg-20 Just add water via Cool Tools

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Pure brilliance

Saturday, May 10, 2008

http://toolmonger.com/2008/05/08/climb-chain-link-fences-the-easy-way/ – for climbing chain link fences

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Lazyweb, I also want a Solar Energy Diode

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

This is a bit more complex to describe. Here’s how it works. Take two disks of glass, one black, one clear. Let us say they are 4″ in diameter, of indeterminate thickness. Now take a ring, say 1″ thick, 4″ in diameter, made from a strong insulator. Separate the two disks with this ring, enclosing [...]

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Lazyweb I want a solar powered USB jack

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Simple: a solar panel, 2.5W, output 5V and 500 mA, with a USB jack attached. In sun, you plug your USB device (ipod, phone etc) into the solar-powered USB jack, and it charges. Pure, simple. Who’s got it? http://www.rei.com/product/770230 – $115 == $40 a watt, that’s Not Right. http://www.modernoutpost.com/gear/details/sf_solar_uno_slim.php – another candidate, fifty dollars, much [...]

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Etymotic ER-20 – Cheap Musician’s Ear Plugs – $12 a pair, good tech, recommended.

Thursday, April 12, 2007

ER•20 High Fidelity Earplugs So, what we have here is ear plugs that have three soft rubber flanges and an engineered plastic stick. Somehow what this produces is a funny thing – ear plugs you can’t hear. Things are quieter, but sound just the same otherwise. Soon, you forget that they’re there. Apart from the [...]

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