@methodshop

What's more dangerous to your health? A pack of cigarettes or the laser printer down the hall from your cubicle? The answer to that question might surprise you.

A study published in the journal of Environmental Science and Technology has found that some printers can release almost as many ultra-fine particles as a burning cigarette.

The study analyzed particle emissions from 37 different office printers, including models manufactured by Toshiba, Canon, Ricoh and Hewlett-Packard.

According to the study's author, Lidia Morawska, regular inhalation of printer particles can cause a variety of health problems ranging from cardiovascular and respiratory problems to even cancer.

But not all printers are equally as hazardous. Some printers are safe and don't emit any particles including the HP LaserJet 4050 series and Ricoh Aficio models. But concerned consumers should stay away high particle emitting printers like the HP LaserJet 1320 and 4250. These models actually increased the air particle count more than tenfold.

Besides purchasing a low particle emitting printer, what else can you do to protect yourself from printer particles?

• Always place printers in well ventilated areas.
• Avoid close proximity to newer toner cartridges. They emit more particles than older cartridges.
• Keep your distance from printers printing photos and graphics. High ink documents cause the printer to emit an increased amount of particles compared to plain text documents and emails.
• If you work in the print industry or at a large copy center, you might want to start working on your resume.
  

methodshop

Labels: tech news

The Nintendo Wii is a great console. It's family friendly, fun and allows you to customize your characters, called Miis, used in many of the games.

The "Mii" is a brilliant concept. Instead of being some generic character in a game, you can be yourself. You can also make a celebrity look alike Mii. That way the next time you are playing Baseball on Wii Sports, you might end up with a celebrity Mii on your team like Oprah, Borat (pictured below), Charlie Brown (pictured on right) or even Dwight Schrute from the American TV show The Office.

This tutorial will guide you through making a Mii and sharing it on the Internet as well as give you plenty of celebrity Mii ideas.

Tutorial: How to Make and Share Celebrity Miis for the Nintendo Wii




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Labels: games, tutorial

How to you celebrate the installation of a wastewater recycling system? How about with a bag of recycled urine water? This week 3 astronauts aboard the International Space Station drank their own urine [video], officially testing the facility’s Urine Processing Assembly.

NASA has been working on a urine recycling system for years. The system is a vital part of NASA's plan to put astronaut outposts on the moon and Mars. The water recycler will also help budget strapped space mission budgets by reducing the amount of water shipped into space by Russian resupply ships.

While demonstrating the new system for the press, U.S. astronaut Michael Barratt joked "We have these highly attractive labels on our water bags that essentially say 'brought to you by ECLSS,' and 'drink when real water is over 200 miles away.'"

So how does this new $250 million dollar wastewater recycling system work? The system takes the crew's urine from the toilets and pumps it into a big tank where the water is boiled and water vapor collected.

Yummy!


methodshop

Labels: gadgets, tech news, video

Good news iPhone haters, this week, Palm announced the release date for the Palm Pre. The much-anticipated touchscreen/keyboard hybrid will be available June 6th at several locations including Sprint stores, RadioShack, Best Buy and even Wal-Mart.



So why is everyone so excited for the Palm Pre anyway? The Palm Pre has several main advantages over the iPhone. They include:

• Touchscreen / Keyboard Hybrid - One of the biggest complaints of iPhone users is the lack of keyboard. The Pre combines the QWERTY keyboard of the BlackBerry with the touchscreen easy of the iPhone.
  
  
• Synergy - Palm's new Synergy service allows you to group all your conversations by contact not service. This means all conversations with a contact - even if it's a mix of several services including phone, MMS, IM, email, or SMS - will all be grouped together on the same screen.
  
  
• Multi-App OS - Palm's new OS allows users to run more than one application at a time and quickly switch between them. In comparison, the iPhone has to shut down each app before opeing another.

The Pre was the darling gadget of CES 2009 and Palm has a lot of momentum right now. Palm is using this momentum by aggressively going after Apple. Not only are they matching the iPhone price of $200 with a 2-year commitment, but June 6th is only two days before Apple's WWDC keynote. Two days doesn't give Apple much time to calculate a response. The rumor mills have been pretty quiet, but who knows, maybe Apple has something clever up their sleeves for WWDC.


methodshop

Labels: gadgets, mobile, tech news

If you go to Napster.com, you might recognize the same old Napster logo from the Shawn Fanning days (Napster's founder circa 1999), but now there's a tiny Best Buy tag in the bottom of the homepage. Last year right before the American economy tanked, Best Buy bought Napster for a $121 million. All has been quiet on the Napster front until this week when Best Buy unveiled their new plan for the former file sharing service.



The new version of Napster now has a $5 monthly subscription plan (when Roxio owned Napster it used to be $15). So what do you get for your $5 a month?

• 5 MP3 downloads per month
• free on-demand streaming of more than 7 million songs
• access to the Napster music store where you can download additional MP3s priced between $0.69 and $1.29.

Can this new version of Napster really compete with Apple's iTunes? It's doubtful. The only feature Napster offers that iTunes doesn't is streaming music. But there are plenty of free services on the Internet, like Pandora, that offer streaming music. iTunes users can just buy what music they want in the iTunes Store, use Pandora for free and get everything the new Napster offers without the $5 subscription fee.

methodshop

Labels: music

Is the monitor on your Macintosh computer inverted? Are you seeing black where it should be white? Does everything look negative? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you accidentally enabled a Macintosh feature for people with impaired vision.

We've heard of people doing all sorts of crazy things to fix this problem like swapping video cards, buying new LCD monitors, attempting a monitor calibration or even replacing RAM. But there's a much simpler way to fix this inverted screen problem. Chances are, all you need to do is change a few settings in your Mac OS X System Preferences panel. There are some extreme cases where a little more fiddling is required, but we have solutions for those as well.

So don't worry. Your video card isn't broken. Now let's fix your inverted monitor problem.

Tutorial: How to Fix an Inverted Macintosh Monitor



methodshop

Labels: gadgets, mac, tutorial

It takes a lot of guts to be a Tornado Chaser. But it also takes a lot of smarts. Most "Tornado Chasers" are scientists or meteorologists who are chasing Tornadoes to gather scientific data and are pretty good about keeping a safe distance from their subjects... this guy, not so much.

video clip is of a thrill seeker inspired by the movie Twister and looking for fame on YouTube. On May 13th he decided to chase a tornado in Novinger, Missouri (USA) by himself. But instead of "chasing" the tornado, he ends up intercepting it and driving his Camero right into the center. Once he realizes his mistake, he can be heard repeatedly calling on God to save him.

"At first I got within a hundred yards and that was enough, but it was hard to judge its movement and later it caught up to me and passed over the car! This was in Novinger Missouri around 5:50pm 13 MAY 2009. I shouldn't have followed that cop to pull over...I didn't see behind me how close it was and it was too late."

The camera work is a little shaky, but he was driving 100 MPH in the rain with a camera in his hand and a tornado on his ass. Who knows, maybe this amateur Tornado Chaser has a death wish. As you might imagine, the clip is spreading like wildfire on the Internets.

WARNING: Kids, don't try this at home.

methodshop

Labels: internet, video

You can’t entirely cut food from your budget, but you can cut back by making lost-cost themed meals and being frugral with your shopping list.

Could you feed 4 people with just $30? DownsizeNYC puts a former high paid Lehman Brothers trader to the test [video].


methodshop

Labels: video

Pac-Man really is a timeless cultural icon. The 1980's classic arcade game continues to inspire people around the world from stop motion animators and sculpters to Russian explorers.

The photo above of Pac-Man and Inky (the ghost) was taken outside of Moscow. This wasn't a Pac-Man gorilla marketing campaign or publicity stunt. It's just two Russian guys doing some exploring. Maybe they'll explore the local Moscow bar scene. Who knows, after a couple bottles of Vodka, they might look like the real thing.

In case all this Pac-Man talk makes you feel like gobbling up some ghosts yourself, here's a web browser based version of Pac-Mac. Have fun.

methodshop

Labels: games, pics

Wow. Who knew NBC Nightly News anchor, Brian Williams, was so hip? On Monday, the American newscaster launched a new web-only video interview series focusing on independent music and musicians called "BriTunes."

The debuted episode of BriTunes is an interview with a band called Deer Tick from Brooklyn, NY. If you aren't already familiar with Deer Tick, their name might sound familiar. Rolling Stone called Deer Tick the No. 1 breaking band at SXSW 2009. Williams invited all four members of Deer Tick, John J. McCauley III, Christopher Dale Ryan, Dennis Ryan and Andrew Tobiassen, to a conference room at NBC's 30 Rockefeller Plaza headquarters for the interview.

According to this quote from the BriTunes homepage, Williams wants to keep the focus of BriTunes on independent musicians and up-and-coming artists.

"Okay, so I didn't name this thing, but I did come up with the idea. I have always loved identifying good music and good groups -- discovering them early (bar bands are best) and following them through their journey. While we'll interview some established musicians, mostly I'd like this to be a place where people can sample some of the great music being created every day, by talented musicians who wouldn't dream of doing anything else." --Brian Williams

methodshop

Labels: music, video

Sometimes nature can be so naughty...


PHOTOS: Porn Plants [SFW]

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Labels: pics

Part vehicle, part suitcase, the Zuca Sport is a piece of luggage like none you've probably ever seen before. Picture a small vertical sports locker on wheels that light up and you've got a good idea of what the ZUCA is all about.

This ZUCA Sport bag is for everyone who needs a sleek means of moving their stuff from place to place, especially in crowded locations where places to sit or stand are limited. Broadway actors, makeup artists, figure skaters, lawyers, fitness fanatics all come to mind.

Don't you ever find yourself clutching a load of stuff while standing on a crowded train or plane and wish you had a place to stash everything while sitting comfortably on a portable seat? Then the ZUCA is for you.



methodshop

Labels: review

All this talk about "stimulus packages" and "bailouts"... A billion dollars... A hundred billion dollars... Eight hundred billion dollars... One TRILLION dollars...

What does one TRILLION dollars look like? I mean, these various numbers are tossed around like candy, so I thought I'd take Google Sketchup out for a test drive and try to get a sense of what exactly a trillion dollars looks like.

PICS: What does one TRILLION dollars look like?


methodshop

Labels: pics

Want to download a video from YouTube? There are a ton of reasons why you'd want to save the file locally on your computer. Maybe you need to embed the video in a PowerPoint presentation, watch it on your iPod or even edit it in a video project. There's only one problem: YouTube doesn't allow you download their videos. Why? They want you to come to their site and be exposed to the adverting.

Even though YouTube doesn't make it easy, you can still download their videos if you know a few tricks. Here's a step-by-step MethodShop.com tutorial on how to download video files off YouTube.com and convert them for an iPod or iPhone.

TUTORIAL: How to Copy Files Off YouTube and Convert them for your iPod, iPhone, or Apple TV.

This trick will work on Mac or PC using Firefox or Internet Explorer.


methodshop

Labels: tutorial, video

Twitter first launched in 2006. But the social networking service only reached critical mass recently when everyone from Martha Stewart to 'Good Morning America' signed up.

Although some people are just discovering Twitter, many of us have been tweeting for several years now. What about yourself? How long have you been on Twitter? Not exactly sure? Michael from @YapplerStream created an app that shows you how many days you've been tweeting and your Twitter join date.

The Yappler app can also come in handy if you're unsure about following someone on Twitter and want to check them out. Many times spam marketers will join Twitter and follow as many people as possible. Eventually the Twitter staff will track them down and delete their account. But if you are followed by some random tweeter, use this app to see how long they've been using Twitter. If they've been using Twitter for several months or years, then congrats you have a social networking fan. But if they just joined Twitter 5 minutes ago, then beware. It looks like you have a spammer chasing you around.

Now stop wasting company time tweeting. Follow @methodshop and get back to work!


methodshop

Labels: internet, social networking

Interested in getting your hands on some slick Bond-style spy equipment without spending a mint, or working at the 'Company' (a.k.a the CIA)? Rejoice because advances in technology have made camera & video technology much cheaper and much smaller.

A perfect case in point is this stylish surveillance camera watch that hides the lens in the number '2' on watch face. This watch records at a respectable 15 FPS (frames per second) with a 352×288 resolution in AVI format and saves it onto its 2GB internal memory.



Not too shabby, right? And less than $200. There are way more such spy camera equipment embedded in some crazy devices. Of course, the downside to all of this is that it is now way easier for anyone to invade your privacy or catch you in the act of making our occasional mistake.

methodshop

Labels: camera, spy, tech, video, watch