Firefox: If you love the screen coverage full screen mode provides, but you rely on the toolbar too much to have it constantly popping in and out of existence, this simple tweak will keep it in sight.

It seems counter productive to willingly give up some of that screen space you gained by switching to full screen mode, but if you rely on the toolbar or you just like having the address and search boxes visible, all it takes is a single right-click tweak. When you’re in full screen mode, move the mouse up to the top of the screen to bring the address bar and toolbar down, right-click and uncheck “Hide Toolbars”. From then on, you’ll still get the expanded view in full screen mode but you’ll also enjoy a compacted address and toolbar interface.

Here is something for the skiing fans out there. Nostalgic for those snow covered slopes? no fear – here is something that will keep you “cool” till the winter.

DIY Soft iPhone and iPad Stylus from adam kumpf on Vimeo.

Whether you’ve got an an iPad, a different snazzy tablet, an Android phone, or some other touchscreen device, sometimes your fingertip isn’t the ideal input device. With a few common materials, you can make an effective and inexpensive stylus for your touchscreen.

User adamkumpf at DIY site Instructables explains that if you’ve got a regular old pencil, a sock, and a pair of scissors, you can make a really simple but useful touchscreen stylus for next to nothing. The key is in the socks. You’ll need socks with anti-static material (socks with this material in the foot contain conductive silver thread that conducts well enough to work with touchscreens)—basically you’re wrapping the pencil in this anti-static, conductive material to make it touchscreen friendly.

I happen to be wearing anti-static socks at the moment, and sure enough, the material works nicely when pressed against my phone. We’ve featured other homemade styli in the past, but this soft stylus seems like the best version we’ve seen.

The guide also suggests you’ll need some remedial stitching skills, but if you’re really against pulling out the needle and thread, some tape would probably do just as well.

Like the rest of the world, we’ve been drooling over multi-touch here at Lifehacker, but now DIY web site Instructables has a guide to combining that with our other favorite hobby: building stuff.

This isn’t your typical Lifehacker weekend project; you’ll have to shell out quite a bit for the materials (about $2500, or $1500 if you already have a computer lying around). However, if you have need (or want) of a multi-touch surface in your home, making it yourself will still cost you quite a bit less than buying it. You’ll need quite a bit of tech, such as a projector, computer (any recent one will do), a PS3 Eye Camera, as well as some acrylic sheets for the surface itself. You’ll also need some software for this project, but it’s our favorite kind of software—free. The project is pretty involved, but you can’t argue with the final product—it’ll certainly be the coolest piece of furniture in your house. Hit the link for the full how to, and if you’ve ever pulled something like this off, tell us about it (and show it off) in the comments!

Let’s face it, the Toyota Tacoma has a long way to go before being considered glamorous, or even remotely cool, but jacking an iPad into its console might be a good start. That’s what the good people of SoundMan Car Audio over in California have done with a little bit of elbow grease and knowhow, and we’ve got video of how it all came together after the break. They’ve yet to wire it up to the Audison Bit One sound processor and McIntosh MMC406M 6-channel amp that are intended to receive the iPad’s audio goodies, but the important stuff of fitting and molding the dash to its new 9.7-inch centerpiece is all done. Alright, so the glossy black screen and the demure grey plastic don’t exactly sing in harmony, but surely the funky aesthetics can be forgiven for the sake of accessing all your media on the move. Right, dawg?

Those you you who’ve been following the CrunchPad project since we first announced it in the summer of 2008 weren’t too happy to hear about the recent…hiccups…that we continue to fight through.

But never fear, while we continue to clean up the mess that our Asian contractor left behind we’ve been hard at work on a new project that lets anyone create an iPad like device from any laptop screen. It’s called the CrunchPad Kit and it goes on sale now. Best of all, we’re selling this for just $49 as an introductory price. Once 800 have sold, or about $44,000 in revenue, we’ll be moving to a higher price.

The CrunchPad team has been working around the clock here at our Palo Alto headquarters to get the kit ready for full production in time for the delivery of the iPad on April 3.

We know you want an iPad, but you aren’t as excited about that $499+ price tag. With the CrunchPad Kit, you can turn any laptop screen into a device that’s just as good, for a fraction of the price.

Introducing The CrunchPad Kit

The kit contains everything you need to convert any laptop screen into a fully functional touch screen device. The key piece of technology is a transparent resizable modular touch screen overlap material that you add to the screen after removing it from the rest of the laptop. You then install the remaining electronics, as well as a power supply, and the device is ready to go. Also included in each kit is a 4G module that you can optionally activate and add to the device for always-on connectivity.

There’s real technology here, particularly in the touch module, that we’ve developed with our new partner. A number of patents have been filed around this new research, which we’re calling the F.U.J.J. With the F.U.J.J. you can convert any laptop screen of any size, up to 17 inches, into a CrunchPad.

There’s more information in the video above, including a complete walk through of the five minute installation process. Order your CrunchPad Kit now, we expect to be completely sold out within 48 hours.

Here’s one last picture of the Asian team we hired to help us build this product working on the F.U.J.J. from our office in Palo Alto after we sponsored their immigration visas to get them over here.

Prime View International — the company responsible for pumping e-ink screens into Amazon’s Kindles — has recently shown off some color and video screens at a trade show in Shenzhen, China. The company has been showing off the displays in 6 and 9.7-inch varieties, one of which could fit perfectly into the 6-inch Kindle, of course. While there’s been no real indication that Amazon is interested in transitioning to color or video-boasting readers, but it’s not completely inconceivable considering the recent competition it’s facing. Hit the source link to check out a video featuring the color displays that were on show.

I like the iPad somehow. Somehow means I like the shape, the way it performs but I don’t like the limitations imposed by Apple so I’m pretty sure I won’t buy one anytime soon (or preorder it). There are a lot of people out there like me, so there’s always the solution of building yourself your own iPad from better and more capable hardware. That’s what a guy at InsanelyWind, a forum for MSI Wind netbooks has done, turning his own device in something that resembles the iPad.
What he did is pretty simple: he removed the screen and keyboard, attached the former to the bottom part, did some rewiring, installed a hacked Mac OS X version with a theme that makes it look almost just like the iPad interface and that’s it. Sounds simple, I know but it’s clear to me that you need some skills to perform this ’surgery’ on your own. Maybe he’ll make a business from this in the future (except the Mac OS X install part as we all know what happened to Psystar).

original source – engadget.com By Joshua Topolsky

The ASUS Eee PC 701 is back yet again with yet another slate tablet mod purposely made for those occasions where the modder wanted to verify actor roles at IMBD in front of the TV. He bought a used Eee PC 701 and touchscreen kit off of Ebay and proceeded to hack the innards with details that go over my head. He is going the Linux route and I’d be pretty interested to see that how goes with a touch screen.

Just a couple of pictures for now but I’m hoping he’ll add some more stuff to see.

Source: Eee User Forums and MikeJose

We’re going to assume that Mary Lou’s bravado-filled “It’s only slightly more difficult than changing a lightbulb” is in reference to working with OLPC. In fact, in Mary Lou Jepsen’s most recent Pixel Qi blog post she makes quick reference of the fact that there will be DIY kits for replacing your own laptop screen (most likely a 10-inch module) with the sunlight-friendly, switchable magic of Pixel Qi, but she spends the rest of the post talking about how in Nigeria some schoolgirls started up a laptop hospital where they’d repair their XOs by swapping out parts or reseating cables. We doubt most of our laptops will be so resilient when it comes to ripping off the bezel and swapping in the Pixel Qi part, but we’re dying to void our warranty and find out.

Bottle Hanger

Cuckoo Wrist Clock

Plastic Bag Lamp

Bike Valve Key Rack

Bird Shape Scissors

E-ntancle

Sofa Bunk Bed

Rug Cum Hut

Hanger Tea

Glass Pool Table

Finger Bookmark

Oops Cabinet

iTable

Sicko Tissues

Runny Nose Tissue Box

Underfull Table Cloth

Blood Puddle Pillow

Does the web need yet another how to post on making your own light tent? There are certainly other good options out there for DIY light tents.

But using just paper and binder clips it’s possible to make an even cheaper and even simpler light tent. And if for some reason you get beet juice on it, it can be recycled.

Start with three A3, 11″ by 17″, foolscap, B, tabloid or similar size medium-thickness pieces of paper. Then get 4 binder clips. In a pinch paper clips will work.

Take one of the sheets of paper and fold it in half lengthwise (1). Then make a roughly one inch fold on one of the ends perpendicular to the first fold (2). Cut a roughly 2.5 centimeter slit on the other end of first folded edge (3). Finally fold a T-shape with the slitted end (4). This is the first side of your light tent.

Attach a binder clip to the folded side near the T-fold side to clip together the edges of the paper that were formed with the very first fold.

Take a second piece of paper and fold it in half lengthwise (5). Then make a roughly 2.5 centimeter fold on one of the edges perpendicular to the first fold (6). Note that folds 2 and 6 mirror each other. That is fold 2 above is to the right while fold 6 is to the left. This step isn’t critical but will result in sides that are mirror images. Once again make a roughly 1 inch slit (7) and T-shaped fold (8).

Attach a binder clip to the second side in the corresponding position as was used for the first binder clip.

Almost done. Take the third piece of paper and make a fold on one of the short ends of the page. This page will be the back and bottom of the light cube. The fold will be used to attach the paper to the sides and should be about thumb wide.

Take the two sides and position them in front of you with the T-folds away from you. The sides should be about a page width apart. The mirroring of folds 2 and 6 should be evident and in this case they fold out from the center of the light tent.

Use the last two binder clips to attach to the folded edge of the back/bottom page to the T-folds of the two sides. The folded edge of the back/bottom should sit on top of the slitted edge of the inner T-folds of the sides.

That’s it.

There are plenty of variations. More binder clips can be used to add stability. Double folds can be used if the paper is thinner. Different colored paper can be used for different colored light tents. A fourth folded page can be added as a top. I typically shoot with indirect office lighting or reflected daylight so the four sided cube is adequate.

This light tent can also be scaled up and down. How else to take photos of your new light tent but inside of a larger light tent? Cheap railboard is great for larger versions. In the intrest of brevity, instructions for matryoshka light tents will not be covered in this post. Given the wide availability of paper and paper clips it’s also quite handy to be able to construct a light tent as needed, especially when traveling, in a co-worker’s cube or on the beach. It takes me about a minute to make one from scratch. The binder clips can be removed for lay-flat storage of the light tent. The resulting images, for example the composition below, are sufficient for many uses, even blogging.

And remeber if you get beet juice on your light tent it can easily be recycled.

Ugly cords are the obvious villain in your gadget-charging clutter, but even if you put together a nice charging station, you’ve still got to sacrifice some counterspace to your charging station’s footprint. This clean, wall-mounted charging station tackles both problems.

Pam from home blog Bibbidi Bobbidi Beautiful details how she put together an attractive, cordless, clutter-free charging station with a simple ledge shelf and some picture hanging strips.

She mounted the shelf on top of her outlet (depending on how concerned you are with fire hazards, you may want to reconsider that aspect) with the help of the hanging strips, effectively hiding both the outlet and the chargers from view. The cords also remain hidden by the shelf, and all that’s left is small dongles sticking out the top for you to get your charge on. It’s simple but effective, just hows we likes it.

The head of the screw you stripped while you were hanging that shelf may not have seemed like a big deal at the time—until you needed to unscrew it, that is. Next time you’re having trouble, try a rubber band.

Home hacks and design blog Apartment Therapy offers a a few simple, smart tips for removing a stripped screw without any special equipment like an extractor—like using a rubber band:

A rubber band may aid in providing enough grip to remove, or at least loosen, the screw. Place a wide band rubber band [in between] the screw driver (we recommend bumping one size up from the screw head which caused the strip) and the screw, then apply hard, but slow force as you turn. If you’re fortunate, the rubber band will fill in the gaps caused by the strip and allow extraction.

They also suggest more obvious solutions like changing the size of your screwdriver, using pliers when possible, or just pounding the screwdriver into the screw head with a hammer, hoping you can create your own traction. If you’ve ever tried the rubber band trick—or have your own favorite method—let’s hear how it worked in the comments. If your screw’s just fine but your screw hole is stripped, a golf tee may be all you need.

source - lifehacker.com