Jeoron Wijering from the Netherlands has a Open Source flash player, jw player, that you can use to embed videos easily on your website. Its a brilliantly simple and easily implemented javascript and flash object that you can use to stream existing movie files, or even stream from various video streaming website such as youtube.

I created a simple website, video.eviljr.com that streams all the top youtube videos collected from youtube, digg and reddit. When you select the ‘channel’ a php script collects all the top youtube videos from the various site’s page and creates an XML playlist which then is played in the onscreen jwplayer.

A continous stream of silly nothingness.

Now you can watch all the top videos from the various sites at once and when someone asks if you saw a certain funny random video, you can say  ‘thats so yesterday’.

Although a bit pricey at $156, The Aqua-eye is a waterproof camera that you can embed anywhere underwater and hook up to your favorite video capture device, whether it be your tv, pc or even broadcast it to the world.

The 2.7 Megapixel CMOS Color Video Aqua-Eye also has 4 LED lights that will illuminate your viewing area.

After getting bored with your fishes swimming around, you can get creative and shove one down your throat and see your innards for kicks (maybe not)

Yes, I said, 3, cause Star Wars 1-3 doesn’t really exist.

A Dutch website showcased this R2D2 backpack with very little information, grinding the text through google translation came up with this description:

“Och poor Star true fans. Those gadget makers take into account no the economic crisis. It remains but Star true gadget to rain, tries you keep hand but on the knip. These R2-D2 are natural errug sweet, but he costs 65 dollars you”

“keep hand but on the knip?”?  Looks like an awesome product, it reminds me of the Yoda backpack from thinkgeek (which is perfect for any Luke Skywalker Halloweenies)

Ben Heck is the master of portable conversions of almost all game consoles. His latest creation is a favorite console of mine, the Sega Dreamcast.

Bask in the greatness:

Heres a video of the awesomeness:

Makes me want to dust off my Dreamcast console and play a few rounds of Crazy Taxi..

Available in Japan in first quarter of 2008, the $35 Robo-Q is a 3.4 cm high robot with built in programming that enables it to navigate obstacles and play various games.

Created by Tomy Co, Robo-Q was showcased recently at Robo-Japan, a three-day robotic convention held in Yokohama. Robo-Japan showcased over 100 different types of new robots showcased by companies and academics.

A creative musician created a program that creates a never ending stream of house music from the never ending stream of the numerals from pi

From Paul:

“The software progressively calculates the sequence of digits in pi, starting at 3.14 and progressing towards infinity. As the program calculates the digits, it feeds the results into an algorithmic music generator containing my structural criteria for house music. The resulting piece of house music is infinitely long and static and never repeats itself.

The number of processor cycles required to calculate pi increase with the number of digits it is calculated to. After months or years of playing the song, any fixed computer hardware will be unable to calculate the digits fast enough for the song to play continuously.

The rate that the number of processor cycles increase per pi-digits is bound by the formula Z*log(N); however based on Moore’s Law, processor power per dollar increases at an exponential rate - doubling every two years. BY upgrading computers regularly with market trends, the song can be played indefinitely.”

The beauty of the arts is present in mathematics, so its interesting to see how this individual tries to interpolate pi into a one of kind house music composition. Give it a listen to see if it truly is art, or just a stream of randomized boops and beeps.

Similarly, pi10k is a website where you can seed your own notes and let pi have its way with it.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if some music prodigy figures out the melodic pattern that mathematicians could never figure out and unlock the secret of pi!?

We can dream, can’t we?

From the makers of all-things-that-are-great, Sega, and currently only available in Japan, Pekoppa is a voice and sound activated plant that will respond to your moods and nuances in your voice.

Pekoppa recognizes when you are happy or when you are asking a question, and will respond in three different ways, a slight nod, a heavy nod of understanding/sympathy, or a happy fluttering of its leaf.

Heres a Movie, but all in Japanese.

Pekoppa was developed by a University Professor studying the health benefits of active human interaction with plants and interactive companions.

This seems to be a step back from the advancement of robotic friendships of pets that are available, but does address the demographics of people who have befriended plants. Seems like a stretch to think the relationship established between real plants and people can be replaced with tiny electronics, but I guess you can say the same with the robotic teddy bears and dogs.

Digital picture frames has become ubiquitously cheap and affordable to be in everybody’s home, gone are the heydays where techies with spare laptops had to hack it to create a medium to display a slide show of your digital pictures.

I had received a a Pan Digital Picture Framelast christmas, I loaded up a whole bunch of pictures, but theres only so many times you can cycle through your 1000s of pics before you bore yourself, and you cant even cycle through them once to your peers without them openly hating you.

One cool feature that seems to be underutilized in the more recent digital picture frame is its capability to play various video files.

The resolution of the pandigital picture frame is 320×234 and has slots for Compact flash and SD. With the recent plummet of SD memory cards prices, its possible to pick up a 8GB for under 30 dollars.

With the recent collection of Music Videos I created with the various playlists in my previous post, I thought it would be AWESOME to be able to watch the videos on my picture frame.

Youtube video’s native resolution is 320×240, so its pretty damn close to the 5.6 Pan Digital Picture Frame of 320×234, so playback would match the quality you view on the website.

How I did it:

The idea of having access to 200-300 of your music videos available at your finger tips on a $50 dollar digital picture frame and a 30 dollar memory card is pretty keen.

Another plus is that youtube often ‘cleans house’ and removes copywritten materials, so your playlists that you create online will become ‘gappy’ with ‘content removed’ youtube notices. With this method, your collection is forever safe on your picture frame.

Also, having a slide show of all your favorite music videos is magnitudes more interesting to casual browsers than 100 pictures of you and your friends smiling into a camera at some random location which browsers have no desire to hear the background story to.

This would also be an awesome gift for your SO, friend, family etc of their favorite videos, especially for the more untechnically inclined, having access to all their videos without having to own or know how to work a computer, all with a setup for less than 80 dollars.

Search the Google Internet index like if it was 2001. Has links to archive.org to view pages back in the day.

Only 1.3 billion pages index, versus a gazillion now. Ah. the booming age of the Intertubes.

26 Year old Canadian, Sean Aiken started his journey after graduating from college in Business Administration to seek out his dream job by trying a new job every week for one year.

His website, Oneweekjob.com solicites visitors for jobs for one week. It has taken him across the continental US, Canada, and recently, as a park ranger at Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park.

Aiken has taken on various jobs from photographer in New York, Realtor in LA, Preschool teacher in Idaho, and many others. Hes wound down his yearlong adventure as mayor in his home town, Port Moody, British Columbia.

He has a slew of youtube videos of his adventures and press coverage he received over the year.

His yearlong adventure has come to a close, but he will be writing a book on his travels and adventures of his ultimate job hopping experience, and is producing a video documentary.

Very interesting and inspiring concept, as many meander through their lives hoping to come across something they love doing, but with the constraints of time and money, most don’t have the luxury to do what Sean Aiken has done.

At least we can daydream how great it would have been to do what he has done through his documentary.