Bitshift

I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge two companies that have provided me with outstanding customer service in the past few weeks. Poor or nonexistent customer service seems to be rampant these days, so when a company goes out of its way to make something right for a customer, I believe that company deserves recognition.

First, Harman-Kardon. A few months ago I bought an AVR435 receiver/amplifier, and fell in love with it. Over the course of time, however, it began dropping audio feeds and freezing up, requiring a power-cycle to recover. I scoured the net for solutions, applied the recommended firmware upgrade, all to no avail. If anything, the problems got worse. However, a quick phone call to their technical support folks yielded a replacement unit at no cost, in near-record time. Hurrah!

Second, Nintendo of America. I've owned a white Nintendo DS Lite since shortly after their launch. I love it as well, even though upon unpacking it and turning it on for the first time, I noticed a dead pixel in the upper screen. "No problem," I thought. "One or two stuck pixels are normal for LCDs these days." And I went about my business. However, the same screen sprouted two more dead pixels a short time ago, apparently on the same row but spaced somewhat far from one another. Newly-appearing dead pixels aren't a very good sign and don't bode well for a display's continued use. So, I picked up the phone and called Nintendo's customer support. After verifying a few pieces of information, I'll be shipping it off to Nintendo's repair center for a repair or (more likely) replacement, free of charge. To top it off, the clock on my one-year warranty will be reset, so the new unit will have a new one-year warranty.

Too often these days, repairs or replacements--even under warranty--seem to have become an area many companies don't wish to address without much wailing and gnashing of teeth. It's refreshing to see a few companies acknowledge that these things happen, and take steps to correct the problem.

I did not expect a replacement in either case. That they occurred (or in the latter case, may well occur) simply cements my relationship with each company as a customer again in the future, because I know that should something go wrong with a future purchase, the company will do right by me. That is the kind of thing that wins my hard-earned dollar.

The next time someone takes a look at all my electronics and declares me insane, I'll just point them at this guy, and then explain what a stalwart bastion of sanity I truly am.

Those of you unfamiliar with Graffiti Research Lab probably haven't seen their latest project: using laser pointers to spraypaint graffiti on the sides of buildings. I'm not talking about a corner off in an alley somewhere. I mean the entire side of a 20-story building!

Watch the video and be amazed.

When you're done with that, head over here and learn how it's done, with complete instructions and software so you can put together your own guerrilla laser-graffiti machine.

Last week, a co-worker lamented to me the difficulties of finding a Wii in this console-crazed age. Since I've had a Wii since launch (neener!), I knew just how much love he was missing out on, and wanted to lend a hand.

So, I sent him over to this site, which will show you exactly which Target stores have Wiis and select Wii accessories in stock. Just put in the ZIP Code you're interested in, and go!

After sending him the URL, he and another co-worker had Wiis in-hand within the hour.

What's that, you say? How does this magic happen? It's fairly simple if you know how these things work. It's using the same inventory-checking system that Target's website uses, but it's bypassing the Target website to do it. This is quite handy, because often these items are just not linked on the Target website, so you can't check the current inventory for them.

If you're anything like me, you're trying to cut back on energy usage. In today's world, we've all got more gadgets sucking lifeblood from the wall sockets than we know what to do with, and our electricity bills reflect this.

If you're wondering just how much juice your XBox 360, Wii, or PS3 is drinking under various circumstances, wonder no more.

Over at Steampunk Workshop, they're unhappy with the current keyboard offerings, so they decided to make their own. But when steampunks DIY, you know the result's going to be spectacular.

Such was the case when they set out to whip together a steampunk-style keyboard (mirror site, since the Steampunk Workshop page seems to have fallen under the heavy traffic load.)

The fine folks over at Make: Magazine have pointed me towards a wonderful site on decorative and functional knot-tying. The tutorials are detailed and include setpwise animations to make sure you get it right the first time.

A must-read for all you knot nuts out there.

I am one of the unfortunately souls that has an iPod FM transmitter, but not the Griffin iTrip. Any of you that own one of these FM transmitters knows my pain: Thanks to the hyper-paranoid FCC, these things put out just a smidge less power than a static-charged hairbrush. Which is to say, practically none.

That's all fine and good, until you realize that the things are so weak, you can't broadcast to your own radio, less than a foot away, without interference, even on supposedly clear frequencies.

Well, those of you with the iTrip can take heart, because there are several good articles on increasing your iTrip's range out on the internets.

For those of you with a bit of spare time on your hands this weekend, head on over to LiveScience, and read up on the top 10 ways to destroy the Earth.

If you're feeling particularly inventive, Deep Astronomy has the goods on how to blow up the planet with just a coffee can. Don't forget Angelina Jolie.

Don't feel bad; it's not like you'll be the first to try. The United States has a long and storied history of trying to do exactly this.

If your morals keep you from taking out Mother Earth, why not blow up a star instead?

If you don't have all day to waste, try scaling down one of the projects and just put Pluto out of its misery.

The folks over at Comfort Stylus have what you need: A flexible stylus for your Nintendo DS! Gone are the days of cramped hands from marathon DS gaming sessions. Just wrap one of these beauties around your finger, and game in comfort and luxury!

The fine folks over at HardMac have written up a spiffy guide to upgrading your non-Core 2 Duo MacBook or MacBook Pro to 802.11n!

Some of you may be aware that The Core 2 Duo MacBooks and Macbook Pros were shipped with 802.11n-capable cards, but Apple only recently released the update that enabled this functionality.

What you may not know is that the Airport card in these Core 2 Duo MacBooks and MBPs are the standard reference Broadcom BCM94321MC PCI Express design. You might get lucky and find the genuine Apple part (#020-5281-A) from a reseller, or you can just call up Dell and order the Dell Wireless 1500 part upgrade, since it's the exact same card. You should be able to pick one up from Dell for $56.00.

Enjoy!

Ok, I don't necessarily think these things are worth paying for, but I love the idea. Logic gates, implemented in papercraft, as nodding goats! Squee! The site has other great papercraft projects, such as Schroedinger's Cat, too.

Some of you may have noticed that DirecTV has been broadcasting various videogame competitions recently, at least for those of us receiving the High-Definition package from them.

Now, they seem to have launched an interactive videogame channel, on which you can actually play games.

I'm not about to dig out my original HR20 remote to play a poor excuse for a flash-based game, but I suppose some people might get a kick out of it.

Me, I think I'll hold out until the XB360, Wii, and my High-Def PVR all merge into one uberunit.

I've recently discovered three nice new tools, courtesy this whole "Web 2.0" thing: Stikkit, IMified, and Twitter.

Cooler yet, IMified can be used to interface with LiveJournal and Stikkit, so you can IM LJ posts or Stikkit messages to yourself.

For a while now, I've been using the FoxMarks Firefox plug-in for backing up my rather copious list of bookmarks to a remote server. I love it, and it's saved my bacon several times, not to mention making installing Firefox on a new system a piece of cake, beacuse once I install Foxmarks I can just download my bookmark list to the new installation.

My only complaint is that Foxmarks tends to completely freeze Firefox while it's receiving or transmitting data.

The folks over at LifeHacker have put up a great article on backing up your bookmarks to your own FTP server.

Some of you may be familiar with RFID -- Radio Frequency IDentification -- chips. They're passive devices that, when excited by radio waves, can respond with their own radio signal, powered by the radio waves that requested the response. They're also capable of storing small amounts of data.

I actually have 4 such devices implanted in my body for experimentation purposes. Those, however, are the size of a small gelatin capsule (but made of glass), containing the chip and a tiny antenna.

Hitachi has stepped up the game several orders of magnitude, by reducing RFID chips by several orders of magnitude. Their new chip are so small they refer to them as "powder".

They're 0.05mm x 0.05mm, smaller than the width of a human hair. Each can store and transmit 128 bits of information.

This is small enough to embed in anything, including your money, your printer ink, your food...pretty much anything.

I'm not usually a huge fan of Flash-based games. Too often they're shallow, short, and frankly, not much fun.

That's not true of Red, an addictive little game that's like Missile Command with more accurate physics and falling rocks instead of missiles.

Give it a try!

An ex-editor of Gizmodo has returned to the fold, and his first act is going to be a hard one to follow. In his first article after returning, he lambasts early-adopter gadget addicts and the websites -- particularly blogs -- that serve them.

Calling on people to stop buying "chromed robot turds", he denounces gadget mania and those that feed into it as one reason for the low quality of products currently on the market.