Robert Boroffice, head of the NASRDA, the Nigerian space agency. (Yup.)

Several jokes are made about the unlikelihood of Nigeria having a space agency. He then makes a 419 scam joke. There are lots of environmental problems in Nigeria. They hope to use space technology to help stimulate the economy to address lots of other issues.

Gully erosion, desertification, deforestation, land pollution, forest fires, fire, water pollution, degradation.

In 2003 they launched NigeriaSat-1 [pictured], a low-earth orbit satellite. In 2007, NigComSat-1. NigeraSat-2 to be launched in 2009. NigeriaSat-1 medium-resolution satellite cost them $13 million. He estimates it would have cost $300 million. (More details on NigeraSat-1's capabilities. It was launched by Russia, not Nigeria. It is part of an international disaster warning constellation.)

Nigeria intends to use their satellites for a variety of purposes, including communications and infrastructure planning, disaster response, drought forecasting, etc. NigComSat-1 will be used for tele-medicine and tele-education. They have a bus-based mobile clinic with satellite communications from hospitals that they will be moving from village to village. There is also a boathouse hospital with the same dishes for use on the rivers.

(Much of the things that Nigeria is doing with these satellites could be done with others countries' satellites, but that's not the point. These are Nigeria's for Nigeria. In the Q&A, he mentioned that renting time from LandSat might take 3 months to get their response; they can do their own sensing in real-time.)

(Many of the people in the room I'm in that are more familiar with satellites seriously questioned the need for these satellites, intimating they are more political statement than anything else.)

Image: Gunter's Space Page

Cary Fowler, Director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust. (My comments in parantheses.)

All life shares the quality of biodiversity. That is, the ability to evolve into new directions. He shows a slide of a bunch of beans. (The variety in the coloring is really pretty.)

There are 120,000 varieties of rice. There are about 400 breeds of dogs, for perspective. Over the 12,000-15,000 years of agriculture, these varieties have sprung. Showing "potted corn," where each kernel is covered in a leaf. Varieties of sorghum! (Plants are so amazing.)

The "crook-neck" sorghum has a bend in the neck bred into them by farmers to make them easy to hang on a rope in their house.

When every other crop dies, Lathyrus&dmash;a plant—continues to live. That's the good thing. On the down side, it has a neurotoxin in it that will eventually paralyze you from the knees down. But there are varieties of low-neurotoxin Lathyrus. It's important to keep all these varieties.

Seed banks are basically just big freezers. They think there are 1-1.5 million distinct agricultural crops. The Trust's goal is to save them all.

Agriculture takes 70% of fresh water supplies, putting it in competition with cities.

Slide: In Greenland, a worn down church, where a Norse settlement lived. The Norse died because of climate change to which they were unwilling/unable to adjust.

Slide: Average temperature of growing seasons over the last 100 years. In Bangladesh, the warmest 5% seasons will be in the future be the coldest. "Even colder than the coldest. There actually is no overlap."

"This is unprecedented...I don't know if we're ready to cope with it." We're moving towards a global agriculture environment that has never been seen since the Neolithic era.

Our choices; Modify the environment to the crops. "We've already tried that," he jokes. Or we modify the crops.

In the next four years, the Trust will rescue 165k different crop varieties. They'll be placed in seed banks in multiple areas, as well as publish the information. Funded by an endowment.

"Our Plan B. I love Plan B." As far north as you can fly on a scheduled plane is Svalbard, Norway. They're building a safety backup for seed banks. Two seed banks were recently in Iraq and Afghanistan due to war; another lost in the Philippines due to hurricane.

If we lose plant varieties, we lose traits and tendencies in plants that may be useful to deal with climate change.

Svalbard is getting warmer, but they hope it will stay under freezing even in the future. Its glacier is melting. The upkeep costs of the Svalbard facility will be about $125k a year. (Pretty cheap.)

Svalbard is a fortress-like facility carved into a mountain. It has three bulk rooms in the mountain. It is currently being constructed. (It looks like a place that would serve as a goal in a movie or videogame.) The lip of the facility is slightly off the ground to help prevent snow from piling. [Pictured above; more here]

There is a concave wall at the end of the tunnel, so that a rocket or explosion at the front would be blasted back towards the tunnel, preserving the seed vaults.

(I've heard of this project before, but seeing the pictures, hearing Fowler's homespun talk, makes my stomach drop out.)

The New York Times tech troubadour David Pogue has published a list of questions to which he has no answers. In part with answers:

* Do shareware programmers pay taxes on all those $20 contributions? They're supposed to.
* Why don't public sinks have foot pedals? Because it adds extra expense and maintenance costs yet little additional cleanliness.
* Five billion dollars a year spent on ringtones? What the? Convenience > *
* Why doesn't everyone have lights that turn off automatically when the room is empty? Motion sensors are imperfect and lightbulbs can't count.
* What's the deal with Palm?

Doomed.

Pogue's Imponderables [NYTimes.com]

Waving your hands around and saying "I think all this shit is bullshit" isn't the best way to meet lefty progressive girls. But while I was busy being too toothlessly punk as fuck, the first real horseshit presentation I'd seen at Pop!Tech was on stage, courtesy of Sheila Kennedy and her "Portable Light" project.

So...flashlight, right? But because some people have never seen a gadget they couldn't turn into a beacon of social change, Kennedy is pushing her fancy LED flashlight project as a transformative landmark.

Here's the pitch: A white LED hooked up to a flexible solar panel that charges a standard cell phone battery. In fact, all the parts are standard, "sourced" from parts that Kennedy says were chosen because they were easy to buy in bulk, inspired by other products like crosswalk signs, dishwasher switches, and "nanotechnology."

By chance I sat next to Kennedy at a party Wednesday night as she explained her project to rapt admirers. Kennedy described the power generator of her project as a "special material" that used "nanotechnology to generate energy while [its] wearer moves."

I was impressed. This sounded like a major breakthrough. It was sure to be the crux of her project presentation.

What she was describing turned out to be a stock-standard flexible solar panel, which she demonstrated to awkward effect on the Pop!Tech stage by walloping one with a hammer. It was dented but intact; a glass panel shattered under the same hammer.

The rest of the "portable light" is constructed simply, from cheap parts. The solar panel charges the battery. The battery powers the light. The light reflects off of a shiny fabric, which can be bought for "pennies per square meter." There is certainly a switch.

There is also something inside the Portable Light that Kennedy described as "digital intelligence" which lets multiple units, when strung together, to equalize power. Anyone with a cursory knowledge of electronics knows that's how all batteries wired in sequence behave. Nothing digital or intelligent about it.

Prototype Lights have been distributed to the Huichol people of the Mexican Sierras. Kennedy showed a short clip of Huichol women receiving the lights via lottery, interpreting a gesture from a woman—a hand modestly placed over her smile—as an exclamation of primal joy.

These lights change lives, we were told. Women will now be able to spot scorpions in the kitchen. They'll be able to cook "more nutritious meals" by dint of more time spent in the kitchen. Huichol kids will be able to do their homework.

All this may be true, but none of these benefits are inherent to the Portable Light itself and would apply equally to any flashlight that could be powered by the sun or other off-grid sources. And with Portable Lights priced at forty to fifty dollars in lots of 500, the project hardly seems like a prudent use of money. Hand-cranked flashlights can be purchased at retail for $7 or less. Solar-powered flashlights, albeit with a shorter operation time than the Portable Light's 8 hours or so, can be found online for $20. Those are retail prices; a concerted effort to develop a similar product from major suppliers could surely be built and sold for even less, especially since there appears to be no plastic housing mold needed. (The parts are woven into the fabric pieces, sometimes by the women who use the lights.)

Kennedy is an architect. Her firm, Kennedy & Violich Architecture, heavily promotes its "KVA MATx" team, a self-described "pioneering materials research unit." As far as I can determine, MATx buys flexible from other sources and did not design, develop, or construct them themselves.

A heavily emphasized aspect of the Portable Light project is its use of a standard lithium-ion cell phone battery. We were told that the cell phone battery was selected because of its inexpensiveness, piggybacking on an economy of scale. Kennedy's appeal to Nokia, one of the sponsors of Pop!Tech, to integrate the Portable Light into its products, may indicate another benefit of using a cellphone battery. (Nevermind that everyone with a cell phone already has a flashlight, however poor.)

I think it is safe to say that Kennedy and her team are well-intentioned. An inexpensive, durable solar-powered light would be fantastically useful in many scenarios. Yet this project is not inexpensive. The parts alone, as described by Kennedy, should be cheaper than $40, and if they are not, the team should consider if the intended recipients would benefit more from a $40 light or $40. When asked in the Q&A, the only financial infrastructure Kennedy suggested for distributing the lights was given as a Kiva.org-like donation system, or a "buy one, give one" program. The Pop!Tech crowd, programmed to respond to any reference to Kiva with applause, applauded. What they all seemed to miss was that Kiva, as a micro-finance organization, injects money into the economies of developing nations which is then returned to the lender. Buying expensive flashlights on a web site is not "Kiva-like."

The Portable Light smacks of remedial design as pet project, an expensive solution in search of a problem. It's exactly the sort of project I was afraid Pop!Tech would be soaking in. I'm happy to report that the Portable Light, if nothing else, has reinforced my positivity about the other projects that seemed legitimately innovative.

Image: Other90.CooperHewitt.org

Scott Hansen talks about the Bang & Olufsen Beogram 6000, designed by Jakob Jensen* in 1974. I share Hansen's take on B&O these days, who I find insultingly inaccessible and willfully queer:

I really can't say I am as impressed with their work in recent years. It seems as if industrial designers are always trying to "evolve", which is fine as long as your idea of evolution is turning into an alien. When I look at a classic example of design like this I really see a human element missing from a lot of it's modern counterparts.

He has more pictures of the Beogram 6000 on his site.

B&O Beogram - 1974 [Blog.iso50.com via Monoscope via Coudal]

* Scandinavians love Scandinavian design!

According to Reuters, a few NHL players are trying out heated skates that are designed to cut down on friction on the ice.

A resistor in the blades is powered by a rechargeable battery and regulated by a microprocessor located in the heel of the skate. The resistor heats the blade to 5 degrees Celsius (41 degrees Fahrenheit), or just above freezing point, and thickens the film of water between ice and blade that acts as a lubricant and makes skating possible.

NHL players to try out new heated skates [Reuters]

These "Cougar Paws" roofing shoes have Velcro pads at the bottom to make it easier to swap in new fibrous-mat soles, the better to stay up on a roof instead of sliding off the shingles to your death.

Cougar Paws Velcro Roofing Shoes [Toolmonger]

Image: MilitaryPhotos.net

While it's more general malfunction than aggressive A.I. out for revenge, a computer-controlled anti-aircraft gun went haywire in South Africa, killed many soldiers nearby. (The one picture above is the same model, but not the same one.)

The anti-aircraft weapon, an Oerlikon GDF-005, is designed to use passive and active radar, as well as laser range finders, to lock on to "high-speed, low-flying aircraft, helicopters, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and cruise missiles." In "automatic mode," the weapon feeds targeting data from the fire control unit straight to the pair of 35mm guns, and reloads on its own when its emptied its magazine.

Robot Cannon Kills 9, Wounds 14 [Danger Room]

From BusinessWeek:

The Skype cell phone, developed with a software outfit named iSkoot, is equipped with multimedia capabilities and high-speed data for mobile Web browsing. But its most prominent feature is a big button right above the regular keypad to activate Skype's popular service for long-distance and international calls. A press on that button triggers an iSkoot-developed application that brings up a list of a user's Skype "buddies" and regular phone contacts. A click on any entry in that list dials the call.

In essence it sounds like 3 is willing to give up its international call revenues to Skype in exchange for the subscription and local call money, a surprisingly sensible compromise.

If you're wondering why you've never heard of the horribly-named carrier "3," it's because they don't exist in the United States.

Skype Goes Mobile [BusinessWeek.com]

Speaker: Adrian Bowyer, RepRap project. (My comments in parentheses.)

Right after chipping flakes off flint and setting fire to little piles of wood, humans invented breeding. We've been making molecular genetic changes almost since the start of civilization.

Chickens: "Can't run; Can't fly; taste good. Usually a recipe for evolutionary disaster." Because of their symbiotic relationship with us, they're the most successful bird species ever.

Which leads to: RepRap, a self-replicating rapid prototyper. "The REPlicating RAPid Prototyper," capable of fabbing, or three-dimensional printing. "A computer-controlled glue gun." (You guys know all about rapid prototyping, right?)

(I actually saw a RepRap presentation at DorkBot NYC a few months ago. I wonder how much farther they've gotten.)

RepRap can't make every last part of itself, but outside parts have to be very simple and cheap to obtain and available all over the world to anybody—a few nuts and bolts, as well as metal rods.

60% of the current RepRap parts can be made by a RepRap itself.

(It's odd to talk about a plastic extruder machine going to poor countries will previously hearing about all the plastic waste we create here.)

RepRap is open source. You can't sell a RepRap, Bowyer explains—you'd only need to sell one! It won't evolve out of random selection, but deliberate decisions by users, passed back into the project that others can use to upgrade their own RepRap. The total cost for the very first machine is $400. (Commercial machines are $30k and up.)

The original polymer was biodegradable, but the new material will be "poly-lactic acid," which can be made from vegetable starch. (They're one step ahead of me!) It will allow manufacturing to come to the poorest communities that will be capable of growing their own renewable polymer crops. (Freaking awesome.)

Speaker: Paul Polak; Profile in the Times. (My comments in parantheses.)

"90% of the people who work on design try to solve the issues of the richest 5 to 10% of their customers." 1.2 billion live on less than a dollar a day. 3 billion live on less than two dollars a day.

Polak's precursors to good design: 1. Go to where the problem is. 2. Listen to what they have to say. 3. Understand the context.

Polak has talked to hundreds of "one-acre farmers" about their needs. IDE == International Development Enterprises, Polak's company. "Helping people move out of poverty is helping them earn $500 a year." (I don't think I got that quote word-for-word correct.)

Don't bother: "If you haven't had conversations with at least 25 poor people before you start." "If it won't pay for itself in the first year." "If you can't sell a million of them."

The products that IDE have sold to people at full price. It's not charity. Their products pay for themselves. They are affordable, divisible, and infinitely expandable. Many of the Western products are too large and expensive for small farm plots. Yet the IDE products can be added to as the needs expand, "like a LEGO set."

There are three great poverty eradication myths, according to Polak: 1. We can donate people out of poverty; 2. We can end poverty through national economic growth; 3. Multi-nationals as they are now will end poverty. Most of the rural poor are passed over by economic growth in urban areas of countries, as in in China or India.

Of the 525 million farms in the world, 85% are less than 5 acres. Average farm size in Africa are 4 acres. Agriculture in most of the world is a discipline of small farms. Small farms are actually getting smaller due to population growth.

IDE has 550 staff in nine developing countries. They've helped 17 million dollar-a-day people moved out of poverty in 25 years. 150 more out by 2025 is their goal.

Example products from IDE: Treadle pumps for $25-35 dollars that allow farmers to grow a third crop by drawing up more water in Bangladesh. They are advertised by a troupe of musicians who travel villages singing a song about treadle pumps. They also financed a movie with a leading Bangladeshi director that shows a love story between two young people who can afford to get married after they use a treadle pump. They've sold 2.1 million treadle pumps to great success.

Drip irrigation system. Women carry water for their households all over the world. This is designed that a second bucket or two will irrigate a 250 sq. ft. kitchen garden. Retail price is $3.

(That Times article linked above has several more examples.)

Polak has handed over to IDE to others to run and started D-Rev, an institute that intends to revolutionize how design is taught in rich and poor countries. (I can't find a web site for D-Rev.)

He's showing a cell powered by a thimble full of water and salt, powered by a rechargable lithium battery, that will make enough chlorine dioxide to purify a liter of water in 90 seconds. They're also working on a "$15 information device."

(This all sounds very dry but he's made some amazing products that have made some real impacts. And the idea of selling for-profit gadgets that have an immediate, tangible affect is where it's at.)

See also: PopTech: Paul Polak Inspires [EthanZuckerman.com]

Speaker: Jessica Flannery, founder of Kiva.org. (My comments in parantheses.)

(I am a tremendous fan of Kiva and have a few hundred dollars wrapped up in microloans myself. It is one of the only things I do in my life that I actually feel good about. I've been putting money in Kiva for about a year and have yet to have any bad experiences, yet several positive ones.)

Flannery's presentation begins with a clip from Oprah describing microloans and Kiva. 99.7% of the loans have been repaid in full. Flannery intends to give a behind-the-scenes look and some plans for Kiva's future. (This is goofy, perhaps, but Flannery is one of the major reasons I agreed to come to Pop!Tech.)

Microcredit == small loans for the poor. Average credit borrowers are women and the amount is around $500. That re-payment rate of 99.7% is generally consistent around microfinance organizations, not just Kiva.

Flannery is from Pittsburgh. A self-described "white, middle-class girl." She travelled around to villages and talked to goat-herders and farmers about the microloans they had received before she started Kiva. "If other people could have face-to-face experiences with the people I was meeting... If you take one person and connect with them and hear their story the world would be a different place." Her husband is a tech geek and wanted to move to Silicon Valley and do tech start-ups, while Flannery wanted to do microfinance in Africa. Kiva is the product of compromise.

Kiva allows their partner microfinance outlets to keep their interest and only re-collect the principal. Kiva is a non-profit, though they "could be a for-profit." They raised money from grants from foundations and individuals to bootstrap Kiva. They are now funded by additional donations given by individual loaners. They try to generate enough money to function within the old system without getting loans.

Statistics about poverty often made Flannery feel "paralyzed." Unlike some charities, where archetypes are presented—"Help someone like Jane"—Kiva tries to actually connect you with the recipient of the loan. "Help Jane."

Most lenders are individuals. Funds have moved some operations to Kiva. (For charity, not money-making, obviously.) Businesses are trying to create "socially responsible movements in a box" using Kiva. Schools are pooling money to sponsor microloans though Kiva.

There are 400 million people who could put a microloan to use right now, estimated. 300 volunteers log in from around the world and give free translation services. The interest rate is usually 1 to 1.5% for the borrower. (I presume on a yearly term.)

There are "9,000-some microfinance institutions." Kiva tries to work as a meta-layer over many of these local institutions.

Kiva has been around about three years. When they started they worked with institutions that may or may not have been so great just to get started, but they've been able to track and rate those people and focus on the ones with good returns.

Bad photographs from potential loan recipients can make it take longer for their loan to be raised. A proud Bulgarian with his taxi cab looks perhaps too affluent compared to an Africa fruit vendor.

$13 million out in loans. They're the first non-profit to get free Paypal processing. (Paypal has a history of being bastards to charities and non-profits.)

See also: Ethan Zuckerman

Image: Christian Nold

Speaker: Christian Nold, http://biomapping.net/, Softhook.com. (My comments in parentheses.)

"London only has enough food for three days." "Cities are consensual hallucinations."

Participatory sensory mapping. Nold blindfolds and temporarily deafens people, leaving them only by touch—they are led by the hand—and smell. A map of a college area with notes like "noise like car sirens" and "the wall where I hurt my finger" and "like something died" instead of roads and conduits. Almost 50% of the experiences recorded by 30-some-odd schoolchildren were positive. "We sat on a wet bench for a minute, it felt so cold because it was raining," was an example note. The entire map is just a couple thousand meters square.

He developed a device called the "Bio-mapping device," essentially based on a lie detector, based on physiological arousal, connected to a GPS unit. They participants go around for something like an hour, creating "emotional maps." Map notes such as "argument with mom"; spikes near shabby industrial areas.

Nold ends up taking all the data in aggregate and publishing printed maps showing the "emotional landscape." A "high arousal area" around a cafe that will be demolished soon, perhaps indicating that the cafe should not be torn down.

"San Francisco emotion map." (They have emotion in San Francisco?) Sample note: "Smelled really strong pee but only a second later smelled beef. Mmm!" Nold: "Lots of people felt really strong arousal walking past their old [sexual] partners' houses." Another note: "I really like the mural with the bears." (These, as Nold alluded to, would make fantastic maps for walking tours in a new city. Emotional landmarks!)

Another map did the arousal biomapping, but also allowed them to draw little figures along with their mappings. New shopping area was low arousal; old market was high arousal.

Big issue in UK is stopping kids from "hanging around." (The whole chav thing.) Young people are being marginalized. This sort of mapping may help to bring about emotionally positive spaces for kids.

(The whole thing reminds me a lot of the conversations that occured last week in NYC at a Burning Man event organized by the AIA. A woman who spoke was a architect in London, who learned about integrating "sacred" spaces into city planning from Black Rock City, which is torn down and recreated every year. In essence, it's easier to discover what's been done wrong than it is to correct it.)

See also: Pop!Tech: Christian Nold's Emotional Maps [EthanZuckerman.com]

Image: Chris Jordan; above: phones; below: diodes

Chris Jordan: Artist (My commentary in parantheses.)

(These lossy JPEGs don't do photographer Chris Jordan's "Intolerable Beauty" series justice—he's the first speaker at Pop!Tech, on right now—but you can see more at his web gallery.)

"What a thrill to be here in this beautiful setting." Jordan looks and speaks like a slightly more confident Jeff Goldblum.

"Intolerable Beauty" was the first project shown. Jordan would go out into industrial yards and photograph piles of trash near Seattle. He wants to show "the other side of consumerism."

"I knew that I couldn't convey the real scale ... because our waste stream is divided into hundreds and thousands of streams."

"The more work I did on this project the darker my experience got."

426k cell phones are thrown away every day. His latest work works to digitally composite all 426k phones into a giant image. (I don't see those images on his website, but the series is called "Running the Numbers.") One image is showing the amount of paper used in the U.S. everyday, just photocopies, and it's a wall that is twice as high as Seattle's Space Needle and many times as wide.

"We can't feel statistics." "If we're first going to make radical changes, we have to feel these issues." Trying to turn data into the "universal digital language of feeling." 2 million plastic bottles used every five minutes. (P.S. I scored some of those potato-starch-based Spudware utensils! It's the little things.)

(All this is making we wonder when people will start mining landfills. Are any companies buying landfills?)

"The individual matters." "If 300 million of us decide we do matter, the revolution happens." (He uses a lot of terms like "consciousness change" that cause me to irrationally bristle, and perhaps others to which the message is aimed outside a conference; maybe we need a new lexicon of change.)

In the Q&A, Jordan talked about making changes based on the discoveries from his own work, such as stopping using plastic bottles. At first he blamed the issue on big companies, then took it on himself to make small, persistent changes. He also is now a vegetarian and only buys clothes from Goodwill.

See also: Ethan Zuckerman; Core77; Renee Blodgett; Rob Katz

Image: 2005's Pop!Tech conference at the Camden Opera House.

I only get white guilt around white people. I missed the opening conferences for yesterday's Pop!Tech conference, but I managed to make the cocktail reception at a private club on the bay in Camden, Maine, to sip red wine among the coifed and fleece-clad attendees, who may not be here to change the world, but certainly wouldn't mind doing so if they have the opportunity.

There's skepticism and then there's pessimism. While I tend towards the latter I've been trying to reach for the former, especially since so many of the people at the conference are doing legitimately interesting and capital-G "Good" projects in both science and technology. They're why I came. I hate conferences, but know I can't remold my grim, outmoded look on life in front of an RSS reader in my apartment.

Maybe it's Camden. It's a resort town on the New England coast, with a too-precious downtown strip of art supply stores and sweater vendors, where even the cheap motel I'm at is staffed by friendly townies proud of their new set of Wi-Fi antennas hidden under whitewashed gables. But even ignoring the dread inherent in hazy russet hamlets like Camden fueled by Lovecraft stories and cult movies, there is a malaise here that pop-in conference goers may ignore but its residents cannot; Camden had for a time one of the highest teen suicide rates in Maine.

Or perhaps I'm still angry at the women in the room above me, whose yodeling orgasm woke me in the middle of the night. I was about to tip my nightcap to her and go back to sleep until I realized it wasn't midnight, but morning. Oh, God, no no no.

It is my intention to be inspired by others today. If I'm drinking my bitters before the meal, forgive me. I just hope that I'm not in the middle of another circle jerk of intellectuals and affluent activists, trumpeting multiculturalism and change while taking yacht rides through the bay. And worse, by participating in their celebration of human endeavor yet contributing nothing myself—or worse, enjoying myself*—I'm twice as culpable.

Pop!Tech's theme this year is "The Human Impact." You can watch live steams of the talks online. In fact, I'm not even sure why there is any need for bloggers to be here, except perhaps to be cranky and dubious.

* When in New England, try the local Puritan self-loathing.

Jonathan Coulton, nerd songster supreme, has posted about his experience writing the end theme to Portal, part of what might be the best videogame ending sequence ever created.

I recorded a version with some scratch vocals and we sent it to the voice actress who did that character in the game, Ellen McLain. We all went into the studio to record her vocals, then did all the fancy computer sound things they do to make her sound like a computer voice. Ellen's a classically trained soprano, and a very talented voice actress - she has this character down perfectly, and she did a great job conveying emotion in a non-emotional way. Between her and the very strong writing behind her character's dialog, it was hard for me to not end up looking good in all this.

He's posted both lyrics and chords, although no easy downloadable MP3 yet. (There are MP3s floating around though I've heard.)

Portal: The Skinny [JonathanCoulton.com] (Sorry about the missing link!)

Previously:
• Rule 34: Portal Edition [BBG]
• Portal Weighted Companion Cube Papercraft [BBG]

"MiniTissues" are hydraulically compressed tablets that expand to an eight-by-ten "washcloth" (probably more of a strong Kleenex) when hit with a little water. They're marketed as a way to store clean, contaminant-free tissues easily in a purse or pocket.

You can buy 96 of them next month for $13, plus shipping. I can't wait to use one. They're like those pills you could put in water that would expand into dinosaurs.

Catalog Page [Solutions.com via Oh Gizmo]

• Car power adapter for notebook PCs for $16, shipped. [Dealhack]

• $10 to $20 off OS X 10.5 (Leopard) at Amazon. [Dealhack]

• "Geektoberfest Sale" at Geeks.com, so items up to 80% off. [Dealnews]

• Logitech Z-10 2.0 USB Interactive Speakers with LCD screen for $60, shipped, after $30 mail-in rebate. [Dealnews]

• Today's Woot! is the Halberd 31-Piece Roadside Emergency Kit for $13, shipped.

I'm pleased to announce Boing Boing Gadgets' first contest: Make the best Halloween gadget prop, win a Neuros OSD digital set-top box and a 320GB LaCie mini NAS. I'm going to keep it simple, but there are still a couple rules:

• Create a real-life gadget prop, the more sci-fi or horror inspired the better. And it if actually works—or at least makes all the appropriate whirrs and flashes—then best. (Think a Ghostbusters ghost trap or a Wookie bowcaster. Or Spider Jerusalem's prolapse gun.) It really should be a new design, but I'll accept things you've already made if you make an honest effort to improve them for the contest.

• Send in your pictures and/or video to me (joel ATSYMBOL boingboing.net [expand BB to this site's main domain]) with the subject "Prop Contest" by midnight EST next Wednesday. Please do that subject so I can set up a filter and not miss your email. (He said threateningly.)

• I'll select the best ones and post them, let all the readers hash out their favorites, then select a winner. (Not a poll since those are too easily gamed, but I hope to find a consensus on the winner. But I'm reserving the final decision.) Friday I'll announce the winner. Then we will eat cake.

If you don't have a creative bone in your body, Neuros is also offering a 20%-off coupon for filling out a survey on their site. (You can join the mailing list or not.) That's a pretty great deal—and it's not part of our contest for me to say that!

The Neuros OSD, in case you aren't familiar, is an open PVR that lets you record from a variety of sources. Its interface and functionality can be tweaked to your heart's content. (Cory wrote lovingly about his earlier this year.)

Good luck! Have fun with it! Don't make me look like a schmuck by not entering!

IKEA has released the GLÄNSA LYSA, an LED lantern that is suitable for use outside. It's only $18, which isn't a bad deal if it came with a rechargeable battery, but it appears to be just mains power only. The problem with these types of LED lanterns, of which Candela are probably the most well known, is that they don't tend to put out a lot of light. Perhaps the GLÄNSA LYSA, powered as it is by 110 volts of rip-snorting American electrons, will be bright enough to at least read by.

Also, it appears to be in-store only. I've an IKEA trip in my near future; perhaps I'll pick one up.

Catalog Page [IKEA.com via Apartment Therapy]

MTV's games blogger Stephen Totillo shows you how the drum kit from Rock Band, the upcoming Guitar Hero successor from original developer Harmonix.

How does Totillo get access to the equipment? MTV also owns Harmonix.

I know a tear down video of a videogame peripheral shouldn't excite me, but I am totally obsessing about this game.

How To Assemble The "Rock Band" Drum Kit [MultiplayerBlog.MTV.com]

These "Herb-Savor" refrigerator gadget may not be totally necessary, but it looks like it has a well thought-out design.

With a slim design, it fits comfortably in most fridge doors or narrow spaces and its sturdy construction means it will stand up to bangs and drops. A transparent plastic case allows for monitoring, a removable stainless steel basket makes it simple to wash the herbs and a rubber plug enables you to easily refill the water base.

For $30—the price for one—I'd like about, I dunno, ten. I use a lot of fresh herbs, but I'm not paying $30 a sprig.

Prepara Herb-Savor [Cool Hunting]

I adore these new faucets from Miscea, which are controlled entirely by waving your hands in the one of six control sectors to dispense water (heated to temperature displayed on a small LCD screen), soap, or "disinfectant." (Soap works just fine to clean, so you could perhaps swap that sector with a tap for beer.) They solve that age old problem of how to wash your hands without ever touching something that's been grasped by others.

No idea what it costs, but consider you'll need a full retrofit of your cabinet to install the thing, I would imagine it isn't cheap.

Product Page [Miscea.com via Born Rich via WowBathrooms.com]

Yamaha's ridiculously fancy Disklavier player grand pianos can now be hooked up to "DisklavierRadio," an internet streaming service that sends MIDI files down the pipe to the piano to be played live or stored on the piano's 80GB hard drive. They'll even send along accompaniment parts that can be be heard from the piano's built-in speakers. I don't expect I'll be getting a review unit any time soon. Which is a shame, because I need something over which I can drape seductively, cooing pop standards in the wet silence of my dark apartment, the reflection of my nude, hairy body reflected in the piano's black finish by streetlight.

Product Page [Yamaha.com via SlipperyBrick via Technabob]

I had a chance to talk to some folks from Wizards of the Coast about Dungeons & Dragons 4.0 a few weeks ago and intend to pay more attention to it in the future, but Kieron Gillen from Rock, Paper, Shotgun does a good job explaining why the next version of the pen-and-paper role playing classic may actually bring many lapsed players back into the fold. Part of D&D4 will be the addition of computer-based tools to facilitate remote play of table-top games, with real 3D miniatures and VOIP.

What it is, is a way for people who've been defeated by the most persistent, unrelenting nemesis in the D&D Monster Manual to start playing again. Amidst a lot of people missing the point, Baylor over at the Gleemax forums has a critical hit: "I think the real target of this are people who can't play D&D anymore. Like myself. I have two kids and I don't have time to get together with friends anymore. I only have a few hours after they go to bed. I will finally be able to shelve MMOs and play the game I love again." What defeats most heroes, simply, is time and its little henchman lack-of-access. If I were to get on the GM hat again, the most likely group of people I'd like to do it for are Jim (Upstairs), Hobbes (5 minutes walk away), my brother (London) and Kid-with-Knife (Vancouver). Pushing D&D in this way is both an admission of the problems of modern (adult) living while using modernity to circumvent it.

A presentation at GenCon, embedded above, explains more.

Dungeons & Dragons Offline Online [RPS]

(Xeni) -- Boing Boing pal Kristie LuStout filed a series of cool reports for CNN International this week from Seoul, including this wrap-up of new handsets. I like the teeny tiny one shown here. Link to special feature section with her video reports from South Korea (hm, can't find a permalink for the handset video), and here are her impressions in a quick essay: Link.

If you were not able to discern at first glance that this was a watch, don't feel bad. I was several paragraphs in before I realized these 201-series watches from Urwerk, what with their "Revolving Satellite Complications" and "Oil Change gauge." Depending on what materials you choose, it will cost you around $200k to put this whirring turbine on your wrist. Don't lose it!

The URWERK 201 series: exclusive, cutting-edge [Coolest-Gadgets]

Ubergizmo played with an upcoming set-top networked video box from DivX (there is a company behind the codec) that serves essentially as cheap interface between your PC and your computer or networked drive. The as-yet-unnamed product better be cheap, because these sorts of streaming devices are available in spades, although most of them have been bundled into more expensive boxes that do more processing in the set-top box.

The user interface was quite nice. Much better than what we usually get in this type of device (think Apex, Linksys...), but the crunchy part is that all the user-interface (UI) rendering is done on the PC and sent to the player as very small DivX files! That's a good idea that enables good graphics and UI on cheap hardware.

Finally, DivX has an API that will let users create their own plug-ins/applications to handle multimedia content or to create casual games. I don't think that any other media player does this

DivX's Apple TV, but smarter [Ubergizmo]