Playing with revolutionary controls is not new to Nintendo. In 1984 the Nintendo Zapper light gun was introduced for the NES to play Duck Hunt and other shooting games. But now you can also use it with your Nintendo Wii to get that retro feeling. It does require some soldering, taping and steady hands. The main idea is that you remove the IR sensor from a Wiimote and glue it in the barrel of the Zapper. Connect some wires from the trigger to the remains of the Wiimote and your Zapper is Wii ready. (...)  read more

Nokia has been making great phones for years but in my eyes a big flaw has always been the Nokia pop port. It's the connector that connects your Nokia to your headset, your computer or other add-ons. The problem is you can only connect special Nokia headsets to it that use the Nokia pop-port connector. So you can't connect your own headphone, iPod ear plugs or other 3.5mm connections.The best way to solve this is to use a Nokia pop-port to 3.5mm audio jack converter. You can buy them from (...)  read more

If you saved the jewel cases of all those failed CD and DVD burns with the thought that they might come in handy one day:  you may have found that day. There's a great guide on Instructables to help you out creating this piece of art. The basic idea is that you take a picture, put an effect on it, blow it up (print over several pages) and cut it up in squares to fit CD cases. You then connect the CD cases to create a mosaic effect. And if you're tired of one picture you (...)  read more

In an earlier post we showed the magic of MIDI and how a simple protocol can control dozens of synthesizers. Now GadgetVenue shows us some YouTube videos of MIDI controller pants. Certain parts of the pants are equipped with touch sensors that work kind of the same way as the keys on a MIDI keyboard. This way you can control a synthesizer and in this case a drum computer is the perfect synthesizer for the job. Below is an example of the drum pants in action. If you still have some old MIDI equipment (...)  read more

Last Friday we reported on the newly announced Philips portable charger. But if you don't feel like waiting and do feel like building something yourself: meet the Minty Boost. It's a $20,- DIY kit to build a dual AA battery USB charger to give your iPod or other USB charged gadget an extra boost. In this example it's built in a candy box, but you can obviously build it in anywhere you like (in a back pack or jacket?). Inside a USB cable are two smaller cables that transport power. (...)  read more