Top stories

Apple Now Accepting iPad Apps, Planning “Grand Opening” of iPad App Store

Apple is now accepting iPad apps for a “grand opening” of the iPad App Store, according to an email just sent to registered developers.
“iPad will begin shipping soon and your opportunity to be part of the grand opening of the iPad App Store starts today,” the email says.
There’s no details about when the store’s grand [...]

Security Expert: “Mac OS X Is Safer, But Less Secure”

20100319-ipwned.jpg

Tech site H-Online has an interesting story today, quoting security expert Charlie Miller about his forthcoming talk at the CanSecWest conference next week.
He says OS X is full of security holes. There are lots more than in Windows, he claims.
And yet: OS X is a safer system to use. Why? Because, in the words [...]

Apple Devotes Entire Home Page To Jerome York Obituary

20100318-york.jpg

If ever you needed a sign that Apple was a different kind of technology company, this is it.
What other computer manufacturer would remove its top-selling, hype-inducing, industry-altering new product from the prime spot on its website home page, and replace it with an obituary to an investor?
This is one of those “Here’s to the [...]

Coming Soon: Steve Jobs, the Sitcom

Fake Steve creator Dan Lyons just signed a deal to bring Steve Jobs to another small screen near you.
The half-hour series called “iCon” is billed by the presser as “a savage satire centering on a fictional Silicon Valley CEO whose ego is a study in power and greed.”
Making sure the barbs prick will be the [...]

Maker creates iPhone controlled, solar-powered Arduino death tank

As a smartphone, the iPhone is hard to beat, but as a tool capable of inflicting extraordinary acts of physical violence, the handset is less impressive… even when compared to Apple’s other products.

A MacBook Air, of course, can be stealthily drawn across a carotid artery, but the iPhone’s rounded, lozenge-like design makes it a poor weapon for either stabbing or slashing. Neither can it be dropped like an anvil upon an unsuspecting brain pan, like the iMac, or used as a blunt, aluminum club, like the MacBook Pro. In battle, an iPhone — at best — can be hurled at an opponent as a distraction while you sprint, comically hooting, in the other direction. It’s a bizarre misstep in Jonathan Ives’ oeuvre of gladiatorial product designs.

Still, where Apple may have failed to deliver, enter the makers to transform the iPhone into the weapon of mass destruction it should be. Christopher Rojas took the TouchOSC application and used his iPhone to remote control a fantastic, solar-powered Arduino Tank, built out of parts from Sparkfun.

The design has its faults: the iPhone-controlled tank does not have an armor plating to fend off the whirring buzz saws of other iPhone-controlled kill bots, not does it have a laser-precise bee cannon to pin point the sweetly stingable vitreous humor of an opponent bot’s operator. Still, upon humble foundations! Maybe in Rev. 2.

[iPhone controlled solar-powered Arduino tank]

If you enjoyed this article:
Subscribe via RSS or email, or follow us on Facebook and Twitter

About the author

John Brownlee

John Brownlee has written about a lot of things for a lot of different places, including Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker, AMC, Geek and the Consumerist. He lives in Berlin with a charming girlfriend against whom he is currently enjoying a thirteen game cribbage winning streak, and a tiny budgerigar punningly christened after Nabokov's most famous pervert. You can follow him here on Twitter.

Email the author | Read more posts by John Brownlee.

One comment

    Hello am looking for free softbank phone or vodafone for prapaid sim card plzz email me at jnk112001@yahoo.com

Add your comment

Name(Required)

Mail (required, but not published)

Website

Comment

Buy Inside Steve's Brain Buy from Amazon.com Buy from Barnes & Noble