Jul
25

Scratch. Programming For Kids

scratch

Scratch is a new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art — and share your creations on the web.

Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also gaining a deeper understanding of the process of design.

Scratch is available free of charge, go to Download.

Currently available for Mac OSX and Windows (system requirements)

Learn more here.

Jul
24

Hidden Lake Could Be Key To Helping Darfur

Africa

There may be a massive lake beneath Darfur detected by a team using a satellite participating in a search for water from space. The team is led by former NASA Apollo lunar participants, they’re using the satellite equipment to put together pieces of a puzzle that compose a picture of the 12,000 sq. mile mega lake in the western Sudanese province.

Although the lake drained years ago, researchers believe groundwater might still exist. And that just might help to bring a close to the clashes that have left hundreds of thousands dead due to war and strife if they’re successful in digging wells in the correct locations.

Link to Terra Daily with the details.

Jul
24

Unusual Computer Mice

Computerworld has a nice collection of pics of some pretty wacky mice, like this one…at least I’m assuming this thing is a mouse:

PC Mouse

Link to the collection on ComputerWorld

Jul
24

Matrix Ping Pong

This is genius and hilarious.

This is simple and artistic.

Kudos to these guys.

[youtube 3R8_wUaziqc]

Jul
23

World’s Smallest Hydrogen Car

H powered mini car

From the Gadgets.Infoniac blog today I learned of some cool toys running on hydrogen that will soon be marketed towards us regular geeks (as opposed to the hard core science geeks that may have already established themselves as masters of tapping into the technology).

Shown here is the ‘H-Racer’, the smallest and coolest hydrogen fuel cell car in the world and it fits in the palm of your hand. It operates on 100% clean fuel produced by a miniature solar powered hydrogen refueling station that converts water to hydrogen using energy captured by the sun.

Although simpler in design, this palm-size fuel cell car contains all the necessary technology to make it run.  It includes an on-board hydrogen storage tank, a fuel cell system connected to the car’s electric motor and a hydrogen refueling valve system that can connect the car’s storage tank to an external hydrogen refueling station.

Get your kit from Carl’s Electronics for just US$99.95 or get it from Amazon for a few cents less.

Car plus solar plus H storage tank