We recently looked at devilish automata from the 15th century; here’s Gustave Vichy’s mildly terrifying mechanical harpist, which was built in Paris in 1880. Her golden harp is invisible to the living; you can only see it on your deathbed. More
Using high-resolution scans of real human embryos, the BBC has created this somewhat terrifying animation of a fish-like, one-month-old embryo rapidly developing a face up to the 10-week mark. Yes, we all started out resembling Admiral Ackbar. More
Developer Michael Dewildt released a new plugin this week called WordPress Backup to Dropbox that will automatically create backups of your blog and upload them to your Dropbox account. About the plugin’s design and purpose, Dewildt said:
This has been created to give you piece of mind that your blog is backed up on a regular basis.
Just choose a day, time and how often you wish yor backup to be performed and kick back and wait for a zipped archive of your websites files and its database to be dropped in your Dropbox!
While not the only way to back up a WordPress site (we’ve talked about others before), Backup to Dropbox does join a short list of free WordPress backup options. With nearly 1,000 downloads yet this week, it seems to be pretty popular in the community so far.
What do you think? Will you give this plugin a shot and back your site up using Dropbox?
You just finished reading New Backup to Dropbox plugin backs up your WordPress site for free on WPCandy. Please consider leaving a comment!
More:
WPCandy: New Backup to Dropbox plugin backs up your WordPress site for free
The fact that the death of Osama bin Laden rocked the Twitterverse is very much common knowledge. Here, though, is a visualization showing just how far and fast the news spread in those first moments after the news leaked. More
SocialFlow analyzed 14.8 million public Tweets, and bitly links, posted between news about an unplanned presidential address (9:46 p.m. EST) and Obama’s address (11:30 p.m. EST) to see how dynamics of rumor creation played out during those critical hours on Twitter.
It all began at 10:24 p.m. EST when @keithurbahn tweeted that he heard from a trusted source that Osama Bin Laden was killed. Within 2 minutes 300 people had retweeted or reacted to this message. From there the news spread like wildfire. An hour in advance of President Obama’s scheduled announcement of the event Twitter had trumped mainstream media in breaking the news of Bin Laden’s death.
Link – Via Laughing Squid
Read the article:
Tweeting Bin Laden’s Death
A 4.5 billion-year-old meteorite from northwest Africa has yielded one of the earliest minerals of the solar system.
See the article here:
4.5 billion-year-old meteorite yields new mineral
For the first time, scientists have coaxed a damaged heart to regrow healthy tissues on its own. They applied living “patches” to a heart, in what is a major breakthrough for people recovering from heart attacks. More
Midlife crisis used to be for old guys, but young people today have got their own version: “quarterlife crisis.” It is hitting twenty- and thirtysomethings shortly after the enter the real world.
Author Damien Barr said that a “growing number of 25-year-olds are experiencing pressures previously felt by those in their mid-forties”:
“Plenty of people are going to say the quarterlife crisis doesn’t exist,” he said. “The truth is that our 20s are not, as they were for our parents, 10 years of tie-dye fun and quality ‘me’ time. Being twentysomething now is scary – fighting millions of other graduates for your first job, struggling to raise a mortgage deposit and finding time to juggle all your relationships.
“We have the misfortune to be catapulted into a perilous property market. We’re earning more and spending more than ever. We’re getting into debt to finance our degrees, careers and accommodation.”
He added: “The Depression Alliance estimates that a third of twentysomethings feel depressed.
“If, as we’re constantly told, the world is our oyster, it’s definitely a dodgy one. Unlike the midlife crisis, the quarterlife crisis is not widely recognised. There are no ‘experts’ to help us. We have no support apart from each other.”
See the article here:
The Quarterlife Crisis
You can buy hardware store materials of the future from these folks: Translucent concrete, rubber glass, unwetable sand, suction cup tape, etc. They primarily sell small quantities of very innovative stuff, but will work with you if you like what you tried and want it in bulk. The materials and devices are so amazing you’ll invent things just to use them.
— KK
I have used Inventables a lot. I have found them to be responsive and helpful when I have a question about a product, or when I want to get larger quantities of a sampled product for a real application. For example, when I needed some Stretch Sensing Rubber in a different diameter for a toy I was designing, and they promptly got me the size and quantities that I needed for the prototypes. When we were designing a high-volume medical device that needed a piezoelectric actuator, they put me directly in contact with the manufacturer of the material.
— Danny Hillis
Sample Products
Talking tape
Talking tape makes it possible to mechanically create sound from various objects. With one hand, you hold the top of the tape. With the other, you slide your thumbnail down the ribbon against the grooves. Do this and you hear, “Congratulations!” The ribbon has grooves just like a traditional record. When your fingernail is pulled down the ribbon, it causes sound vibrations. The card works as the amplifier to make the sound louder. You can replace the card with a plastic cup, a balloon, a greeting card, or just about anything. The ribbons can be made to play any sound you can record; however, the manufacturer claims voices work better than music.
*
Conductive thread
Incorporate this silver-plated nylon thread into fabric
This is a silver plated nylon thread that can conduct electricity. These types of threads are usually manufactured for anti-static electromagnetic shielding, intelligent textiles, wearable technology, and heating purposes. The particular type featured here is great for sewing resistors into fabric and for other general sewing applications.
*
Bendable Wood
Allows for creative applications of solid wood
Bendable Wood is a cold-bendable compressed wood that enables the creation of dramatic and unique bentwood parts using thick, solid, quality hardwood lumber. The maximum radius for bending is in the range of five times the board thickness as long as the wood moisture content remains between 20 to 25%. The desired shape/form becomes fixed and stable upon drying to 6 to 8% moisture content. Available in more than ten of the most common North American hardwoods. This product should not merely replace steam bent, laminated, or kerfed components, but it should be employed to make your work easier and inspire much more dramatic and challenging bends that could not otherwise be fabricated using solid lumber. The unique properties of this wood enable a new world of ideas, experimentation, creative solutions, fast production environments, and performance. Choose to do it yourself, or let us do it for you.
Don’t forget to comment over at Cool Tools. And remember to submit a tool!
Read more here:
Inventables
Windows: It happens all too often for no apparent rhyme or reason — an application just stops responding. If you'd like to troubleshoot the cause, freeware app WhatIsHang can provide some clues. More