USB Typewriter Replaces the Keyboard in Your PC

The clickety-clack of manual typewriters have long been replaced by PC keyboards and even that is now disappearing with touchscreens. But for those nostalgic about old-school manual typewriters, a hack lets you update and make them compatible with PCs.
Jack Zylkin worked for nine months to create the design and schematics for a USB-based typewriter that can replace the keyboard on your PC.
“Typewriters are a lasting marvel of classic engineering and design, which are now a casualty of our disposable whiz-bang techno-culture,” says Zylkin who created this project at Hive 76, a hackerspace in Philadelphia. “I wanted to do something to make these beautiful machines relevant and useful again. I have seen machines that are 100 years old and still functional as the day they were made, why should I let them go to waste?”
Zylkin estimates it can take five to 10 hours to mod a manual typewriter, if users follow his instructions. But it seems pretty easy to do.
“Its a weekend project for when you are snowed in with no TV,” he says.
Zylkin posted the step-by-step guide to creating the USB typewriter on Instructables.com and his post is now featured as part of the site’s ongoing back to school contest.

Hub Prediction Roundup: New iPods, Apple TV Expected This Week

Steve Jobs introduces the iPhone 4's videoconferencing feature FaceTime at WWDC 2010. 

Apple will hold a press conference Wednesday, where Steve Jobs is expected to announce the birth of new stars in his product galaxy, including (probably) new iPods and (possibly) a successor to Apple TV.
As is always the case, Apple has been careful to guard its announcements. The result has been the usual widespread guessing game among Apple worshippers and members of the press. But given the timing of the event, we can make some easy guesses: Apple’s annual September event has always revolved around iTunes and iPods.
Based on a handful of credible reports and some evidence, this time around we expect some interesting upgrades. A touchscreen iPod Nano and an iPod Touch with dual cameras are almost to be expected. It’s also possible that Apple will introduce a complete do-over of the Apple TV.
Wired.com will be attending the Apple event Wednesday, which begins 10 a.m. PT, so check back at Gadget Lab for live blog coverage. To stay plugged in 140 characters at a time, follow @bxchen or @gadgetlab on Twitter.

Hub-Techie : Chrome 7 Shows Off Hardware Acceleration, ‘Tabpose’

• By Scott Gilbertson

Google’s Chrome web browser will soon gain hardware-accelerated graphics — the latest trend for web browsers that has already shown up in early builds of Internet Explorer 9 and Firefox 4.
Hardware acceleration allows the browser to offload intensive tasks like image scaling, rendering complex text or displaying scripted animations to your PC’s graphics card. It has the benefit of freeing up the PC’s main processor and speeding up page load times.
Today’s faster graphics cards have created a new playing field for hardware acceleration. Microsoft has been trumpeting IE9’s accelerated capabilities since the first developer preview was released, and Firefox 4 will also take advantage of the new technology. Both of those browsers should be released before the end of this year.

Hub Tech News : Phones, Calculator Give a Glimpse of Mobile Tech in Afghanistan

A mobile-charging stall in Mazar-e-Sharif carries a number of battery chargers.

A 20-year-old Sony calculator wrapped by a carpenter-made casing and still in use 

by its one owner — a Mazar-e-Sharif cloth trader.

Afghanistan’s vibrant cellphone ecosystem is one of the country’s economic bright spots. There are about 12.5 million cellular subscriptions in the country of 27 million people.
Jan Chipchase, executive creative director at Frog Design spent some time in Afghanistan recently for a research study on mobile banking.
In Afghanistan most cellphone users have pre-paid mobile accounts but not ATM cards (only 3 percent of the country has bank accounts) so mobile banking will take the form of SIM cards that are pre-loaded with credit and distributed to re-sellers. But that presents some major challenges. In most other countries, transporting the SIM cards and securing them would be a simple matter. That’s not the case in a war-torn environment not known for its safety, says Chipchase

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Hub Tech-News : Firefox Mobile Alpha Lands on Android

The first official pre-release version of Mozilla’s mobile Firefox browser for Android devices has arrived, the company announced Friday.
Curious users with phones running Android 2.0 and above, or with Nokia N900 devices, can download and install it right now.

Hub Reviews : Sony Ericsson Xperia X10

 

Sony's Newest Android Phone Is a High Dose of Can-Do

With the kinks ironed out of early versions of its latest smartphone and custom Android skin, Sony Ericsson's Xperia X10 finally reveals itself to be a contender in the blood-soaked gladiator floor of the smartphone world. And this model should have substantial appeal for a younger, socially focused demographic.
Primary among those fixes are massive improvements in performance and battery life that turn the X10 from a clunky brick into a surprisingly capable handset.

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Hubotech : Vintage Circuit Boards Create Stunning Sculptures

At first glance, electronic circuit boards may seem as far from art as you can get. But look closer, and the boards have patterns & mdash; horizontal and vertical grids that have a strange, precise beauty to them.
It's the kind of beauty that we perceive in the whorls of a seashell or a grain of wood, says Theo Kamecke, an artist who is taking vintage circuit boards and transforming them into pieces that can adorn homes and galleries.
Kamecke has harvested the etching from the boards, then affixed them to hardwood to create the effect of polished metal on stone.