Sam Town

I have talked about the uber geeky and cool motorcycle suits that the UD Replicas company makes before. One of my all time favorites was the Tron suit that came out around the time the film was in theaters. One of the most popular suits of all time for the company was the Batman suit that was based on the newer film The Dark Knight. Those suits have so far sold out in two releases.

The company has announced that if you want your own Batman suit, you will have a short time to order one since they are re-releasing the suit right now. The release is set to coincide somewhat with the film due next summer called The Dark Knight Rises. The suit is a real motorcycle suit that will protect the wearer in the event of a spill on their bike.

It has CE-approved body armor inside, Kevlar plates, and glove liners along with other safety features. The line includes full suits with a jacket, pants, and boots. There are also two stand-alone jackets in the line. The price for a full suit is $998 and the company offers a 3-month payment plan on the site. The re-released suit is limited to 450 units, orders will close on December 9, and a second edition of the Batman Begins suit is on order until October 31 with a Q1 delivery.

Relevant Entries on SlashGear.com

• UD Replicas TRON: Legacy Movie Replica Motorcycle Suits Now Available
• The Batman replica cuffs for all your geeky needs
• UD Replicas Iron Man 2 Mark V suitcase motorcycle suit hits pre-order
• UD Replicas to offer Wolverine motorcycle suit from X2 film
• Turbine-powered replica 1989 Batmobile hits eBay for $620,000
• Fully Functional Mini Replica of the Leica M3
• Batman Collapsible Desk Clock
• Entertainment Earth’s Iron Man 2 Mark V Briefcase is Expensive Accessory

Picking up your iPhone 4S tomorrow? We’ve got some Siri related sorrow to go with the mirth from earlier: we’ve learned that not only are navigation look-ups US-only, but local directory searches won’t work in the UK either.

One of the much-hyped features of the Siri voice assistant for iPhone 4S has been its ability to look up stuff around you. As iOS boss Scott Forstall demoed at Apple’s press conference earlier this month, you can ask it to find nearby restaurants, or even show you the way home.

That’s great, except new owners of the iPhone 4S are in for a shock. They will find that they can’t. As Stephen Fry touched on in his review for the Guardian, maps and direction Siri requests are US only for now.

To be fair, Apple has flagged this up in small text right from the start: it was on a slide during the conference, and is mentioned on Apple’s website. More of a blow however is that we’ve learned there is no UK partner for local look-up.

Yell provides the answers for these Siri searches in America, but we’ve heard from those lucky enough to try an iPhone 4S on British soil already that there is no equivalent in Blighty. Forget those requests for a nearby kebab, boozer or even a taxi home.

Hopefully Apple will soon fix this and ink a deal that opens up Siri for those of us on British turf, but for anyone set on upgrading tomorrow it’ll come as a bitter blow nonetheless.

Is this a deal breaker for you, or will you be picking up an iPhone 4S to shout at anyway? Let us know in the comments.

Related posts:

1. Unusual Siri answers: See them all here!
2. Siri for iPhone 4S revealed: Smart voice control spells death for the keyboard
3. iPhone 5 voice control: Siri to be reborn as Assistant

MAKE friend and founder of iFixit Kyle Wiens is traveling with a crew through the slums of Kibera, Cairo’s infamous Garbage City, and Cairo’s electronics markets revealing how and why fixers do what they do. They’re working on a documentary film about repair titled Fixers.

There are superheroes in our midst, and they’re not wearing capes or costumes. They live in unassuming places, performing miracles with the most humble of tools. They bring ancient machinery rumbling back to life, fabricate new radiators from metal scraps, and repair minuscule circuitry with simple hand tools. They are brilliant hackers, tinkerers, mechanics and repair technicians, transforming our unwanted junk into coveted treasures — genius “fixers” with a preternatural ability to rip apart a piece of hardware and give it a new soul. Fixers are doing more than repairing things. They are the solution to an environmental problem poisoning our planet.

Kyle and crew are posting travel logs on The Atlantic as their journey progresses. The first installment is titled “Why Fixers Will Save Our Planet.”

Hive13 hackerspace’s glass block matrix, built with ShiftBrite modules, now has an Android tablet app that controls it. Sweet!

Root Cases launches wood iPad 2 duo, ditches the plastic for $79 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 11 Oct 2011 10:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Shop opens next door

Samsung has opened up a smartphone shop just metres away from Apple's Sydney store, with the aim of selling its Samsung Galaxy S II at the knock-down price of $2; conveniently coinciding with the launch of Apple's new iPhone 4S.

The Apple iPhone 4S is due to launch on Friday 14 October and fans of the phone would be expected to queue up days in advance, however Samsung hopes to entice those that do with its bargain hi-end Android offering.

The offer entitles the first ten people through the Samsung store's door to a $2 galaxy S II, the deal being active up to the iPhone 4S launch day on Friday.

This move comes on the back of a run of law suits filed by Apple against Samsung, specifically with respect to the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 which allegedly infringes certain Apple patents within the iPad. The tablet is currently offsale in Australia until a decision is made.

Some reports are stating that the line is already longer than Apple's, but nevertheless the gathering could prove to be a beautiful merging of the two groups of avid phone fans - sharing ideas, finding common ground; true syncretism in action... or maybe not.

Read

Tags: iPhone 4S iPhone Samsung Apple Phones Samsung Galaxy S II

Samsung $2 Galaxy S II stunt attempts to spoil iPhone 4S launch originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Wed, 12 Oct 2011 14:35:57 +0100

Vendor RSA has disclosed new details concerning the server breach in March, saying that RSA is confident that a nation state was behind the attack. RSA president Tom Heiser also apologised for his company's information policy

This Daft Punk helmet replica is beautiful to look at, but the deeper we delve into the build process, the more we begin to think that the entire project is a piece of artwork. [Harrison Krix] has been working on it for months, and just posted his three-part build log in September. Check out the video and the links to all three parts after the break.

Now [Harrison] isn’t new to prop replica scene. He’s the guy responsible for the other fantastic Daft Punk helmet we saw last year. He’s tapped the same fabrication skills to churn out an equally impressive chromed helmet, complete with addressable flashing LEDs. He built his own mold to create the body of the helmet, reminding us of the Storm Trooper helmet replicas we saw in July. While this was off being coated in chrome, he got down to business with the electronics.

The visor of the helmet has a red LED marquee. This, along with the multicolored visor sides and ear pucks, is controlled by an Arduino yellow jacket. The lights can be controlled by an iPhone app that connects to the helmet via WiFi, letting a user push custom messages to the display, and alter the light patterns. The build shines on the inside as well as the outside with an incredibly clean LED matrix build, and clever control placement for switching each part on or off.

Build Log Links:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3

The guys from Bloomington’s Fraternal Order of Lock Sport (FOOLS) sure know how to throw a party! At this year’s DerbyCon event down in Louisville, the group put on an awesome event that combined lockpicking and drinking – what could be better?

The Rumble Challenge is lock picking game where six people compete head to head for the best time. Whenever a competitor masters his lock, the competition is paused so that each player has a chance to take a shot from their air-powered shot dispensing machine. Once everyone has imbibed, the next round starts with the competitors picking up where they left off, in an effort to be the next to successfully open his lock.

The game is controlled by an Arduino, which both times the competition and senses when the locks have been opened. The Arduino relays this data to a computer, which uses a projector to display the contestant’s scores on a big screen. As an added bonus, FOOLS member [dosman] added loud rumble motors to the locking mechanisms in order to throw competitors off their game.

The contest sounds like a ton of fun – we’re bummed that we missed it. If you want to see how the game was put together, check out [dosman’s] build log over at the Bloominglabs wiki.

[Parker Dillmann] is nearing the end of the prototyping process for his Propeller development board. He wanted a tool that let him work on projects without the need for a bunch of equipment, while still maintaining the ability to extend the hardware when necessary. His last dev board used a large piece of protoboard to host through hole components including the Propeller chip, 3.3V and 5V regultors, an SD card reader, and female pin headers. This version migrates to a PCB from a fab house and mostly surface mount components.

He decided to use a USB-stick design having been happy with some of TI’s prototyping tools. The Parallax branded development boards use an FTDI 232RL chip for easy programming and that’s what he’s gone with as well. A P8X32A chip in the QFP package was chosen for easier soldering than the smaller QFN option. There’s also a 64kb EEPROM on board to give you plenty of room for your SPIN programs. All the pins are broken out to DIL female headers and there’s a power header on the end opposite the USB plug. [Parker] plans to do a bit of testing to make sure there’s no problems with signal routing below the 5Mhz crystal footprint. This run of prototypes came from the Seeed Studios Fusion PCB servcie–he got more than 10 boards for a total of $13… that’s almost unbelievable.

Laurent Laveder is a landscape astrophotographer. No, really. That’s his job! OK, he’s also an astronomy journalist, if that makes you feel any better. But it’s his amazing astrophotography, especially his series called Moon Games, that really inspires awe… and lots of FB/G+ reposting.

Moon Games

Told ya :)