Month: March 2013

By (author unknown), Cool Tools – October 01, 2010 at 09:00AM

I found the Stormtec Stormbags at my local hardware store last fall. Basically, they’re burlap sacks with water absorbing polymer crystals inside. You soak them in fresh water and the polymer crystals expand to create an alternative to a sandbag. They’re lightweight (a pound when dry), easy to transport to the disaster site, and simple to soak and set in place. I’ve never used them for flood control, but they look like they’d work quite well. When exposed to water they increase 33 pounds in weight in about 5 minutes.

I have used them to soak up an intermittent leak in my husband’s garage. We laid it down where the puddle usually forms, and it slurped up all the water, keeping it in one place. They will eventually dry out if set aside in a dry, well-ventilated area, so they can be reused. I put ours up on our plant shelf outside, where it got air on all sides. I expect there’s a limit to their reuseability; mostly because they’d get really disgusting after a while.

The Stormbags cost $7.00 each at the Stormtec website, or $340 for a box of 50 bags. They also sell door protection kits that will fit various sizes of doors. They’re expensive, compared to regular sandbags, until you consider how easy they are to store and transport and their alternative uses. If you have a small leak having a couple of these on hand is a real time and money saver.

— Amy Thomson

[Note: Updated price. — OH]

Stormtec Stormbags
$7 per bag or $340 for 50

Available from and manufactured by StormTec

Alternatively, they are available in cases of 50 from Costco for $280 with shipping included.

By Adam Dachis, Gizmodo – September 30, 2010 at 05:59PM

Previously relegated to the Google Toolbar and Feedburner, Google URL Shortener finally has a web site of its own. More »

By Adam Dachis, Lifehacker – September 30, 2010 at 02:00PM

ManyEyes is a neat tool that produces compelling visualizations based on user-defined data sets, with data types ranging from statistics tables to any old block of text.

Making your own visualization is pretty simple. You can use data already on ManyEyes to play around with it, but it is, of course, more useful when you create your own data set.

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Creating a data set is pretty simple. You can paste in all kinds of data—even the contents of a spreadsheet without worrying about formatting.

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After pasting in your data it’ll be interpreted in real time. Take a look at it to make sure it’s what you expect.

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When you’ve approved the data set, you’ll then be able to click the Visualize button to create your data visualization. You’ll have lots of options and you can try as many as you want.

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You’re not stuck with just numerical data visualizations, however. One of the more interesting visualizations comes from blocks of text. I put Jason’s article on IP Webcam in ManyEyes and created a Word Cloud. The largest words are the most commonly used and they give a pretty good idea of what the article’s about.

ManyEyes is a free tool and can create compelling visuals that you can use in presentations, reports, or just for fun.

By CmdrTaco, Slashdot – September 30, 2010 at 10:41AM

bazzalunatic writes “Digitally remastered footage of the moon landing, including high-quality and brighter images of Neil Armstrong stepping off the ladder will be shown for the first time ever to the general public at an awards ceremony in Sydney, Australia. The magnetic data tapes seem to have all been lost — erased — by NASA, so all that’s left are VHS recordings, which have been restored, giving the best-ever film of the whole moon landing. The publicity over this seems to be pushing NASA into releasing the whole 3-hour recording.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

By Jason Chen, Gizmodo – September 29, 2010 at 07:20PM

Services like Gazelle and ecoNew are great, because you can sell them your old, unwanted gadgets for a decent price, and they’ll be recycled, which is better than just throwing them in the trash. Ecosquid makes this process easy. More »

By (author unknown), Core77 – September 29, 2010 at 04:32PM

The Hesco Bastion we showed you yesterday was a sort of flat-pack building system; Concrete Cloth is similar in that it stores flat but can be ballooned into a much larger structure, for disaster relief and the like.

Called “A building in a bag,” the material is essentially cement-impregnated canvas that can be stored flat, and inflated on site using a compresser. Then the builder simply sprays it down with a hose, and after the concrete sets, you’ve got a waterproof and fireproof shelter. Here’s a vid of the process in action:

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By christian, Defense Tech – September 29, 2010 at 04:14PM

By Kevin Coleman — Defense Tech Cyber Warfare correspondent

Almost three years ago here on DefenseTech we blogged about cyber assassination and received some ‘interesting’ feedback on and off the blog. Some events that were made public recently demand we revisit this topic.  Just recently, a news article appeared in the Daily Sun – Voice of the Nation that prompted a flood of conversations.  The article, “Cyber Terrorism Hits Nigeria” openly disclosed a cyber assignation of a mob boss that took place not that long ago. 

In Italy, not too long ago, a mob boss was shot but survived the shooting. That night, while he was in the hospital, the assassins hacked into the hospital computer and changed his medication so that he would be given a lethal injection. He was a dead man a few hours later. They then changed the medication order back to its correct form, after it had been incorrectly administered, to cover their tracks so that the nurse would be blamed for the “accident.”

In March 2009 Joseph Weiss, a control systems expert and Managing Partner of Applied Control Solutions, testified before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee stating that networks powering industrial control systems have been breached more than 125 times in the past decade, with one breach resulting in American deaths.

Clearly the evidence is mounting that cyber attacks are not only disruptive, but deadly.

By Adam Dachis, Lifehacker – September 29, 2010 at 01:30PM

Teambox is a neat online project management app that integrates what works with social networking to try to make a more enjoyable and effective collaborative experience. Plus it’s open source, so you can fully customize it, too.

While the idea of bringing a Twitter-like experience into a working environment doesn’t really sound too appealing at first, it’s actually a more speed-appropriate channel for communication (which we like). It’s good for reducing email volume, plus project communication is heavily status updates anyhow. While I found the idea off-putting at first, it really looks to be an effective means of communication in the workplace.

Teambox works a lot like most project management software, but with a better flow of communication and overall organization. While that’s the main draw, there are a couple of notable features. Projects can have permissions, so you don’t have to give everyone access to the project. Teambox also works a a mobile app so you can use your smartphone for updates when you’re away from the computer.

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Teambox provides 3 projects and 50MB of storage for free, but pay accounts can bring you up to 2,000 projects and 250GB (so there’s room to grow if you need it). Because Teambox is an open source project, you can also https://teambox.com/public/teambox/installing on your own server for free for no limits and full customization.

If you’re looking for something a little more personal, be sure to check out the hive five best project management tools.

By CmdrTaco, Slashdot – September 29, 2010 at 12:48PM

evanism writes “A hotel in Las Vegas is accidentally designed to be a massive parabolic dish that focuses the suns rays into a death ray! Burns hair, plastic and causes pain.” It apparently lasts for several minutes during afternoons of bright sunlight, but if you need to perform science on it, you better hurry since they plan to ruin/fix it.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

By Soulskill, Slashdot – September 29, 2010 at 02:50AM

An anonymous reader writes “Have you ever visited a website and been so frustrated by the content, layout, or adverts that you’d love to destroy it? Well, now you can. If you head on over to the erkie GitHub page there’s a JavaScript bookmarklet you can drag and add to your bookmarks toolbar. Then just visit any website and click the bookmarklet. An Asteroids-style ship should appear that you can move around with the arrow keys. Press space and it will start firing bullets which destroy page content.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.