Entries from November 2008 ↓

In a November 4 post, we asked your help in identifying game-changing advances from computing research conducted in the past 20 years.  We primed the pump with four examples: The Internet and the World Wide Web as we know them today Search technology - Where once we filed, today we search Cluster computing The transformation of science via computation In this post, we summarize just a sample of your additions (we have grabbed text from your posted comments, without a lot of editing, so this
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Christmas Present Recommendations My buddy Nick Swan went and tagged me with one of these meme things. This time I’m supposed to come up five Christmas pressie recommendations – primarily gadgets. It was a bit tricky but here goes. 1. Sony PRS700 – electronic book reader. The Sony Reader is by far and away the best electronic book reader on the market, I’ve tried all of them. If you can live with the Sony ebook store limitations (which aren’t that bad actually, and of course you don’t hav
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Roomba iRobot 410 Vacuum Cleaning Robot Nov 29,2008 | Cute and Funny, Electronic Gadgets, Energy and Green gadgets, Robots The Roomba iRobot 410 Vacuum Cleaning Robot is an intelligent and effective vacuuming robot that cleans floors routinely so you don’t have to. Roomba’s powerful vacuum and counter-rotating brushes lift dirt, dust and debris from carpets and automatically adjust from carpets to hard floor surfaces. It is not only easy-to-use, but it also includes an array […] Roomba iRobo
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No, I did not give away my cousin Emily the track star! But I did give away the Love Means Nothing T-shirt she modeled at my Grandma’s on Thanksgiving. Yesterday I gave away 10 free t-shirts to Teecycle’s Facebook fans and Twitter followers who were staying home and celebrating Buy Nothing Day. Well, nothing that you could joylessly line up at 4 a.m. to buy, anyway. The winners got their pick of any shirt on the site or even the shirts on my Flickr page that I haven’t even posted yet. You
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UPDATED w/Scooba and Looj deals and new biography of Helen Greiner! Kitchen Daily Deal has hot deals on Roombas (40% off plus 10% off) and a lot more. LOTS of Thanksgiving/Early Black Friday sales.Also, Get 10% off Everything at iRobot.com TODAY ONLY plus free shipping over $50 via this coupon link.Amazon has the Roomba 400 for $89 SHIPPED in its Black Friday sale!The iRobot Looj is just $76.94 SHIPPED at Overstock.com via this Extra 5% off Black Friday Coupon link! Just search for “Looj” after
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Here’s my full review from The American Conservative of the Pixar film: Despite its misanthropy, the superbly crafted dystopian science fiction film “Wall∙E” will be the ninth straight movie from Pixar Animation Studios, going back to 1995’s “Toy Story,” to earn at least $162 million at the American box office. “Wall∙E” is stronger on execution than originality. Writer-director Andrew Stanton (”Finding Nemo”) sets loose a squatter version of the cute robot from the 1986 comedy “Short Circuit
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Mikey Sklar has posted a nice hack for bringing a dead Roomba back to life: I repaired my $60 Dirt Dog battery with just a AA battery and some tape. We start off with a Dirt Dog battery that has a voltage of 15.87V which is indicative of a bad cell. When we complete the repair we are at 17.12V and that is without even charging the pack. Check out Mikey and Wendy’s blog for all kinds of quality, green DIY. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in hacks | Digg this!
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Mikey’s HOW TO - iRobot dead cell battery fix… I have three iRobots which help clean our house. I bought them about two years ago. As the one year warranty was coming up I called iRobot and asked them to help with various issues. They basically replaced all three of them. Now that I am at the one year point with the replacements I’m running out of options as things break. I can either fix it myself, or buy more shit. Obviously, I don’t want to pay for anything. This morning I took apart t
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Maybe it’s the cat Roomba effect, maybe it’s just the beginning of the holiday season, but Roomba searches are soaring, according to Google Trends. (Note, I estimate that iRobot sells about 5-6 Roombas per Scooba and about 50 times the Looj, corresponding almost exactly to their Google search ratios. I expect Looj sales of about 10-15,000 per year, Scooba around 100,000.Google Trends 1 year chart at this link5-year chart here.Tags: iRobot, robot, Google Trends
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Well, that was a short week, folks, wasn’t it? See you on Monday. What? Oh, fine. Here’s a kitten riding a Roomba.
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