40Tech » Problem solving

My Daughter Ate My Stylus — So I Learned How to Make a New (and Even Better) One

Bobby Travis — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 14:08:26 +0000

My little girl is three. Three-and-a-half, to be exact — and before now, we never had to worry about her putting things in her mouth. I’m not sure what changed, really, but now we have to watch her like a hawk. And we do — but, unfortunately, it was already too late for my iPad stylus. For both of them…

The first one, she chewed on. It was pretty much a write-off. The second one, she decided it would be fun to see what the business end tasted like. Now I’m down two pens. They were the cheap kind, thank the tech gods, but that’s still about $40 down the drain! So I decided: the next stylus will be one of my own making. One that will cost me nothing to make, and that I can easily repair. And thanks to the wonders of the internet, making that happen was easy peasy.

There are several articles on the subject of the DIY touchscreen stylus. The ones that caught my eye were those talking about using a real pen. The basic touchscreen stylus isn’t exactly known for it’s ergonomic feel, so working one up from a real pen seemed like a good idea. I found a few iterations, but the basic concept can be traced back to a video on Make Magazine’s Makezine Blog. All you have to do is connect some light-gauge wire to some conductive foam — which can be found in the packaging of computer and electronic components such as microchips and CPUs — feed it through the empty body of a comfortable pen, and then wrap the wire around the outside, where your hand will come into contact with it. Trim the conductive foam tip to desired size and shape, and voila: instant iPad stylus.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The whole project can be done very quickly, and you can spruce it up a bit by drilling small holes to lock the wire inside the body of the pen, so that you don’t have to use tape. If you happen to have a pen with a metal body, even better. All you’ll need in that case is the conductive foam and you’re good to go! The wire method isn’t so bad, though. It’s not always pretty, but it works.

Here’s a (somewhat blurry) shot of my rough prototype:

I made this on a whim, entirely from things I had on hand. I was able to use the original stylus head for the conductive foam, which was nice — we caught her before she swallowed it. I also used some very light speaker wire (all I had, at the time), and the head of an old 1/4 audio jack to provide support for the tip. It fit snugly into the point of the pen, once the pen’s original head was taken off. Note that the wire is only on one side of the pen. I did that because speaker wire is ugly, and wrapping it all the way around would have been a total atrocity, potentially involving metal splinters. The way I hold a pen would have me almost always in contact with it, anyway, and the next round will be prettier.

Looks notwithstanding, due to the ergonomic grip of the pen, I’ve already found that the DIY iPad stylus is much more accurate than those that are up for sale. I’ll never go back.

Looking for a fun, easy project? Make your own stylus! Then tell us all about it. Post pictures, even!

Collin’s Lab: DIY iPAd Stylus [Make]

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App of the Week: Use JavaRa to Update Java and Get Rid of Old Versions

Bobby Travis — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 06:20:56 +0000

Java is a bit tricky. A lot of applications use it, and many of them come bundled with their own version of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) — which they happily and oh-so-helpfully install on your system. This leads to multiple and redundant installs of Java on your computer, each of which may contain potential security threats, and may well leave you scratching your head as to whether you can or should delete them. Wonder no more… JavaRa is a free, light-weight utility that will clean up the redundant versions of the Java runtime, as well as update you to the latest version — and it has a few other tricks up its sleeves, besides.

There is no installation for JavaRa. It’s just a simple executable with some language options (English, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, French, German, and Finnish). Just click and go — though you may want to run it in Administrator mode for Windows Vista and Windows 7. The buttons are fairly self-explanatory: Search for Updates will search for the latest Java version, and Remove Older Versions will clean up your system.

If you’re looking to do a little bit more, click on Additional Tasks. You’ll get a pop-up that allows you to remove startup entries, other useless Java bits like logs and temp files, as well as get rid of the Sun Download Manager, and a few other goodies.

JavaRa is a great little tool and can be found for free on SourceForge.

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Three Low-Cost, DIY Ways to Use Your Smartphone While Wearing Gloves

Bobby Travis — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 03:45:15 +0000

So I’m in Winnipeg now. Winnipeg, affectionately referred to as Winterpeg, and thought by some (possibly me) to be a window into the truth behind the colloquialism “when Hell freezes over.” Okay, so I’m being a bit dramatic — but it can get freaking cold here in the depths of winter, man! Minus 75 degrees Celsius in the wind isn’t uncommon here. I have no idea what that is in Fahrenheit, but I’m sure you Americans will agree that anything north of Fargo has got to be cold.

In any case, my new location has me continuing my investigation into how to use my tech while freezing my butt off. Previously, I talked about winterizing smartphones, tablets, and laptops. My latest quest has been how to use my capacitive touch screen devices without having to take my gloves off just to answer the phone. And we all know I’m into doing things on the cheap, so we can squash any thoughts about buying those fancy-schmancy touchscreen gloves. It’s DIY or die, baby! This is what I found:

Perusing the Google brought forth three methods from three different, and trusted sites — Lifehacker, Make, and Instructables.

Sewing Conductive Thread

Instructables has a nice tutorial on sewing about a foot of conductive thread into the fingertip of a glove. The idea is to sew just a few close-set stitches (3-5) on the touchy-feely side of the glove, keeping things to about 1/4″ (6mm) in diameter. Smaller is bad, as your iPhone or other smartphone will pretend you don’t exist, and too big will sacrifice accuracy. Why all those inches of thread for just a few, small stitches? Because you want to leave a rats-nest of the special thread on the inside of the glove’s finger, to make sure you get good conductive contact. You may also want to save some for other fingers so you can do multi-touch gestures and the like.

The whole operation costs less than $5 (not including the gloves of course).

No-Sew Method 1: Snap-Fastener

Make Projects has a slightly different take on the subject. They take the complicated sewing out of the equation and shove a brass or nickel-plated snap-fastener right through the fingertip of a heavy glove so it can go clickety-clack on your screen. Now, one might be concerned about scratching or cracking the glass, but if that is the case then I say to you, this: how hard are you tapping your screen anyway? Are you angry? Calm down, guy… seriously.

In a way, this method is more complicated, as it requires more tools than just some thread abd a needle. There is little in the way of precision required here, however, and you get to hit things with a hammer (when you set the snap-fastener’s rivet).

This method costs about $5 to $7.

No-Sew Method 2: Thermal Compound

Leave it to a Lifehacker contributer to come up with a clever and cheap (albeit messy) way to get the job done. Easy, too. This method would work better for thinner gloves, I should think, but be that as it may, it’s pretty cool — and there is not even a dream of a pun intended there. All you need here is a little CPU thermal compound rubbed in to the fingertip of your glove, and voila! No fuss connectivity. Well… no fuss until you need to rub some more in — and maybe a bit of increased screen cleaning.

This is by far the easiest method, though it lacks permanence. The cost of thermal compound (available at most computer stores) is about $7. You can even get it at Radio Shack.

Those were the best — and cheapest methods I found to use your touchscreen tech in the dead of winter. Which one’s your favourite? If you have any other suggestions, I’d love to hear them!

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Winterizing Your Portable Tech

Bobby Travis — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 16:32:24 +0000

I find myself spending an inordinate amount of time in the soon to be frozen hell that is central North America. This has led me to consider things that, heretofore, I had no inkling about while hanging out on the often wet but nearly always mild Northwest coast. Things like: how to touch my smartphone or iPad screen in the freezing cold weather, should I even bring the damned things out in the freezing cold weather and, oh, what about my tech and the, you know, freezing cold weather? So I did a bit of looking around, and here are the best tips that I found…

The biggest — and most obvious — suggestion was to just never take the things out when it’s truly cold, and to make sure you never forget them in your car. This sort of silliness can lead to cracked screens (especially for the glass ones, like iPhones, iPads, and other smartphones and tablets), and dead batteries. That’s not all, though. Condensation is also a concern. Nothing like little droplets of water forming inside your electronics. That’ll make for a fun and expensive day, yes?

Condensation can form inside your device if you turn it on while it’s still cold. The best advice I’ve found to avoid this is to wait until your toy — or essential life device (ELD) as the toys are fast becoming — reaches room temperature before turning it on. Other management options are to try and keep the things warm in the first place. There are laptop warmers out there, and someone is probably bringing heated iPad cases to market as we speak, but the tried and true option is to keep the device close to your body. This only works if you dress warmly, however — and it really only works for smartphones or little wee-tablets.

If you do see condensation, don’t turn on your device. Wait! You’ll want to check if it’s still working but that is an incredibly bad idea! Instead, stick the thing in some uncooked rice — cover it! — and let that attempt to draw the moisture out. It may or may not work, but it’s your best chance, even if you drop your device in a puddle or something.

The phone doesn’t stop ringing just because it’s cold. You can always purchase (or make) some gloves with removable or conductive finger-tips, but a better option in extreme cold weather is to just keep the thing in your pocket and use a good earbud with inline mic and call answer buttons. Something with music track-changing buttons doesn’t hurt either.

Here’s something I didn’t know: I had no idea that leaving your device in sleep mode can increase the potential for problems and damage in cold weather. I read this on a couple of different sites and, while no one ever said why, they all said that turning off your device completely — at least in regard to laptops and netbooks — is always a good idea before going out into the frozen outside world. Better safe than sorry, I say.

Some sites also advised wrapping your device up in a scarf or something if you have to leave it in your car. If you use it often, this could work, as it will help to keep the device’s generated heat from dissipating. If you leave it out over night — or even for an hour — in really cold weather, however, wrapping it up won’t do a thing. Not unless what you wrap it in has it’s own heat source.

So what do you do to protect your portable electronic devices — smartphones, tablets, laptops, et al — in extreme cold weather?

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LapGuard Protects Your Tender Parts From Harmful Heat And WiFi Radiation

Bobby Travis — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 08:31:49 +0000

Contrary to the current arc of techno-loving crazy flying about the internet, the laptop is not dead, and tablets — though awesome — have not yet taken over the world. In fact, millions of people are using laptops right now. They’ve got them sitting on (surprise!) their laps, whirring away, blasting their tender parts with heat and WiFi radiation. Apparently, recent reports are saying that’s a bad thing; that it can mess with your baby-having potential. Having just had another cute little baby, I can’t really speak to that — but I have been following reports that WiFi radiation can be harmful, and it’s well-documented that heat is no friend to the business of making tiny humans.

Whether you believe in the dangers of WiFi radiation or not, I think we can all agree that comfort is a good thing. That’s one of the reasons the lap-desk was invented, and — heat and WiFi blocking powers notwithstanding — Digital Innovations’ LapGuard is one of the best I’ve come across.

In the interests of full disclosure, this is the part where I tell you that Digital Innovations sent me two LapGuards (a regular and a Portable one), with a request that I take a look at them and give a fair and honest review. We did the same thing a while back, when we looked at their SkipDr disc repair and cleaning kits. As then, the contents of this review are unbiased and contain only my real, ever-so-honest opinions.

Functionality

The LapGuard scores well on three fronts: it’s comfortable, it’s quiet, and it’s pretty. It also has some nice features. For example, the Portable LapGuard has a nice spot underneath to wrap up and lock away the USB power cable. This makes storing and packing the thing around much less annoying. The regular LapGuard, which is a bit bigger, also handles the USB cable well — but it’s power cable is retractable. To make things more fun, the regular LapGuard also has a handy fan-speed control dial for the dual fans that can help you conserve battery power while still keeping things chill.

I’m not entirely sure why the Portable LapGuard doesn’t allow for variable fan-speed. It should be possible, considering that the only real difference between it and the regular LapGuard is that the regular one has an additional block of padding at the top that allows for some angled ergonomic comfort while working. Ergonomic comfort doesn’t slide into a backpack very well, though, hence the need for the Portable design.

The fans on both models are, as I said, pretty quiet, and I found that they did a good job of pushing the heat away from me, and keeping my Toshiba cool. And that’s saying something — anyone who has a Toshiba laptop knows that heat can be a problem.

WiFi Radiation Shielding

To be perfectly honest, the WiFi radiation shielding seems a bit gimmicky to me. Sure, sure, Digital Innovations is applying patent-pending technology here – but I have no way of testing to see if it works, and depending on what you read and who you talk to, it’s not even proven that WiFi radiation is a problem. However, if it is an issue, I admit I’d rather err on the side of caution — and if it isn’t… well, the things look pretty and currently only cost $29.99 (Portable) and $37.49, respectively. I’ve been using the LapGuards pretty heavily the past few weeks and I’m more than comfortable with those prices just for the basic use and the look of them. Unfortunately, though, those are just sale prices. The LapGuard is regularly $49.99 and $39.99 (Portable). My cheapness (and my wife) might have trouble reconciling the purchase at the regular prices.

To Sum Up

Pros

Retractable (or otherwise hidden) USB power cables
Comfortable
Variable fan-speed (regular model)
Pretty

Cons

No way to be sure if the WiFi radiation blocking is working or even necessary
No variable fan-speed on the Portable LapGuard

Would I buy it?

Yes — for myself or as a gift. Only at the sale price, though.

What’s your favourite lap-desk?

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Kickass Undelete: Portable Recovery Awesome for Permanently Deleted Files [Windows]

Bobby Travis — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 18:07:51 +0000

Computers are a constant source of fun and potential ulcer-creating stress. This is especially true — at least in the latter respect — when we find ourselves needing that oh-so-important file that we just deleted from the Recycle Bin. Or lost in a crash. Or from any other of the number of creative ways Windows can eat your work. There are several data recovery tools out there, and they come in varying degrees of complication and quality. If you are looking for something simple, though — something that you can take with you, and even use on a flash drive — check out Kickass Undelete.

Kickass Undelete is more than just a fun name. It’s portable, it’s pretty effective, and it’s big-button easy. All you need to do is select the drive you want to scan for deleted files, hit the ginormous Scan button, wait a tick, and then sort through the list of deleted files for the one you’re looking for. To help you along, Kickass Undelete allows you to sort by Name, Type, Size, and Last Modified date. Select the files you want to restore, then hit the also-sizable Restore Files button, and you’re all good!

Kickass Undelete is free and open source. Download it here.

Easily Recover Permanently Deleted Files With Kickass Undelete [AddictiveTips]

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Credit Card Sized Tech Tells You if You Have HIV in 15 Minutes, for $1

Bobby Travis — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 06:08:45 +0000

This is one time when downscaling technology isn’t a cliché. None of that “cell phone implanted in your tooth” malarkey– the mChip is serious business. Serious, potentially game (and life) changing business.

Once upon a time, getting tested for HIV involved a trip to the doctor, a bit of blood-letting, and a rather tense wait. It was months, at first, then weeks, then days, and eventually it worked its way down to minutes. That’s all fine and dandy if you live in a developed country, but if you happen to live in Africa, where HIV is running rampant, then visiting your local doctor’s office could involve something of a trek. A trek you may not be able to afford or, due to fear of results, lack of time, or whatever other reason, may not be inclined to make.

Researchers at Columbia University have found a way to help.

Using nanoparticles and microfluidics, they have taken an entire laboratory and miniaturized it in the mChip. All it takes is a drop of blood and a cheap optical sensor and the chip gives results in 15 minutes that are plain as day and require no interpretation. It can test for HIV and/or syphilis and has a 100% detection rate. There is a 4-6% chance of a false positive, as well, but that is the same margin in a traditional lab test. A false positive may be scary, but it beats the hell out of a false negative.

The best part about the mChip is the price. It only costs $1, which is amazing for a new piece of technology meant to help people. Or maybe I’m just a wee bit cynical… Either way, the price is fantastic.

The mChip also has the potential to be instantly actionable. If the user has a digital medical file, the mChip can reportedly use cellphone or satellite technology to interface with medical files and include the new record.

This is a fantastic step forward in the fight against HIV in undeveloped countries, but it’s possible technology like this will find its way into your local Wal-Mart pharmacy at some point. It would only make sense, wouldn’t it? And dating could get just a bit safer — if a bit awkward: “Just put a drop of your blood here, please. If all goes well, we can get started in about 15 minutes.”

Side Note: There is also an mChip that diagnoses prostate cancer that has been approved for use in Europe.

What are your thoughts on the mChip?

(via engadget, DVICE, FastCompany, Nature Medicine)

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App of the Week: Noteshelf Handwriting App for iPad

Bobby Travis — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 02:30:02 +0000

When I got my iPad back in December, I mostly used it as a means to surf the web, watch Netflix, read, and play the occasional game. Oh, I blogged on it a bit, too, and I figured it would be great for taking notes and the like, but I quickly found that extended typing on the glass surface led to aching fingertips. Besides, when trying to work things out and get creative, there is something very powerful about the old fashioned pen and paper approach. Determined to see if I could get the same power out of my iPad, I started researching handwriting apps.

After going through several, I was largely disappointed by what was out there — until I discovered Noteshelf.

Now, to be fair, I originally went with Penultimate, which has an excellent natural feel when you write — and gets extra awesome points for it’s freeness. However, I still felt like I was missing something. So, when my friend and colleague Daniel Gold recommended Noteshelf to me, I grudgingly gave it a shot, despite it’s $4.99 price tag. I’m cheap when it comes to app purchases, but I figured I could hold him responsible if it sucked.

It didn’t.

In fact, it rocked so much that I use it all the time, even though my handwriting is absolutely atrocious. Noteshelf has all of the features I could want or need:

Excellent natural feel when writing
Different pen sizes and colours
Wrist protection that works
Zoom writing
Just as functional in landscape mode as portrait mode
Unlimited undo and redo (until you leave the page, anyway)
Notebook templates for writing, drawing, task and day planning, meeting notes, shopping lists, journal writing, graphing, and music
A bookshelf view to easily organize notebooks
Dynamic line-sizing for easy and clean jumps to the next line on a page
Photo embedding and annotation
Backup and restore functionality

The kicker, though, is Noteshelf’s sharing capabilities. You can print and export notes as .jpegs and .pdfs, configuring by page or as an entire notebook — by email, iTunes, your iPad photo album, and (Yay!!) Dropbox and Evernote! That’s all kinds of awesome, right there! Nothing quite like being able to quickly scrawl down several pages worth of ideas, and then send them to your out-of-brain-brain for easy searching with Evernote’s OCR. Even writing as bad as mine gets picked up. Mostly…

I can’t say enough that’s good about Noteshelf. If you have an iPad, and have a want or need to use it as a notebook that will get you on the path to being well and truly paperless, you need to go and get it. Right now.

What’s your favourite handwriting app for tablets?

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LastPass Hit By Potential Security Breach (and Some Quick Tips On Creating a Strong, Memorable Password)

Bobby Travis — Fri, 06 May 2011 02:00:00 +0000

With all of the crazy outages and hacking going on in the digital world over the past week or two, the fact that LastPass has an issue (as of May 3rd), probably shouldn’t come as a surprise. Still, it is a bit of a shock to the system to be reminded that the “last password you’ll have to remember” is potentially as vulnerable as any other. Before panic sets in among LastPass users (of which I am one), know that the company is on it, and that those with strong, non-dictionary based passwords should be fine in any case. LastPass also admits that they may even be overreacting, but prefer to err on the side of caution when it comes to keeping your data safe — a policy that I am 100% behind.

Without getting into the technical aspects behind it all, what basically happened is that LastPass discovered at least two network traffic anomalies in their systems that they couldn’t explain. One occurred in a “non-critical machine” and the other came from one of their databases. The second matched with the first and involved information exiting the LastPass environment. The company reported in their blog post that the outgoing amount of data was large enough to have contained email addresses, password hashes, and “server salt,” but not enough to have “pulled many users’ encrypted data blobs.”

While LastPass doesn’t feel that the issue is a large one, they recognize the potential for brute force hacking on the passwords of any users that may have been compromised. This is most likely to affect those who have a master password that is lacking in strength and/or dictionary-based, which is still incredibly common, even today. To protect the integrity of their systems, and their users’ data, LastPass is requiring all users to change their master password. They are also looking for email validation from you if you happen to be logging in from an IP address that is outside your usual set. This is an added security measure, just in case your password does get compromised before it is changed.

Don’t rush off and change your password right away, however. The sheer volume of password change requests is slowing down LastPass as a whole, which is causing server connectivity problems across the board. The company has beefed up the email verification protection as a result, and are confident that there should be little risk in waiting a day or two before changing your master password. You will have to do it eventually, however.

Creating a Strong – But Easy to Remember – Password

When you do change your password, strength should be your primary focus — but there is no reason you have to put together something that is impossible for you to remember. That may seem a bold statement, considering that strong passwords need to have combinations of numbers, symbols, and both uppercase and lowercase letters — and should avoid dictionary words — but a great post by Gina Trapani (Lifehacker) back in 2006 essentially solves that problem.

Gina advises that you use a single rule set as the basis for all of your passwords. You start with a base password that you create from something like a favourite acronym, letter/number combination, or nonsense word that you will never forget. Pad that with some symbols for extra safety, if you want, and store it somewhere offline, just in case you forget it. Once the base of the password is set, the rest comes as a result of the service you are signing up for.

For example, you could set your base password using your initials (including middle) or even your favourite pet’s initials, combined with your favourite number. In this case, you are the proud owner of Fluffy Cattington, and have a love for the number 86. Your base password could be something like FC86, or FfyCt86, etc. Add a few things to that for extra strength and you could have this: &*FfyCt86!, or #(FC86)^^. Already, we are well on our way to a secure password.

The next step is to add a standard code for the service you are using. Initials or the first few letters of the service name are good here as well. If this were to be your LastPass master password, for example, you could have something like this: &*FfyCt86!LP, or #(FC86)^^Las. Just try to make sure your password is at least eight characters long and that you are using numbers and letters. Using symbols and uppercase/lowercase letters is even better, but not all services will allow this in their passwords, so you may have to adjust for that. LastPass does, so no worries there.

Check out the Lifehacker post for even more ideas on how to choose your base password.

If you are interested in alternatives to LastPass, check out Evan’s post on eWallet vs Keypass vs LastPass. I like LastPass, though, and am pleased by the lengths they go through to protect their service and users. Evan also makes a great case for LastPass here.

What are your thoughts on choosing and remembering strong passwords?

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Memolane Finds Elusive Social Updates From Your Past

Bobby Travis — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 05:29:58 +0000

Have you ever tried looking backwards in Twitter or Facebook? It’s not easy. There was that funny conversation, link, or photo that one time that you suddenly feet the need to take a look at again, but when you tried to find it, you were faced with over a year’s worth of scrolling, waiting, scrolling, waiting, and then yet more scrolling? That’s one of the downsides of a world run by micro-updates — there are a lot of them. You could try using the built in search, or even Google, but it’ll probably be a chilly day down south before you find that elusive memory. That’s where Memolane comes in.

Memolane is a new web app that allows you to view content from multiple social media services in a single timeline that is easy on the eyes, and easy to search through. The timeline is scrollable and broken down into days, with the tweets, photos, updates, et al, that you posted online each day listed vertically in expandable memo bubbles. You can connect Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Last.fm, Trip.it, and more — and you can even add in RSS feeds to pull in custom content. I found that I was able to access Twitter updates as far back as February 2010, and Facebook updates, especially photos, all the way back to 2007. Clicking the timeline bar on the bottom of the window made for quick trips to the dates I was looking for, and the search is actually pretty powerful, so long as you don’t enter hash-tag symbols (#).

An easy way to find your old online memories isn’t all that Memolane is good for, however. You can also embed lanes into web pages (see it in action below), and connect with friends to create stories together around shared experiences. It’s a bit like an online scrapbook, really. In fact, Memolane may be adding a print aspect that will allow for real scrapbooking — digital life making it full circle back to the real world.

I like Memolane. It’s easy to set up and use, it allows me to find things that I may have never found otherwise, and it has per-memo and per-service privacy settings that make the sharing bit worry-free. I did find that, the further I went back in time, the more sparse the updates became, but it is entirely possible that that has more to do with the connected services than with Memolane itself. Also, it’s free — and awesome. That’s a good combination in my books.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What do you think of Memolane?