By Alice Hill
RealTechNews

If the phrase Stain the Titanium Dioxide with the Natural Dye doesn’t throw you and in fact makes you tingle with excitement, then today is your lucky day. We’re going to build our own solar cell. And if you have to ask why, may we suggest skipping this one, because this is for all the alpha geeks here at RTN. (And I know you are out there!)

Stain the Titanium Dioxide with the Natural Dye: Stain the white side of a titanium dioxide (TiO2) coated glass plate. This glass has been previously coated with a transparent conductive layer (SnO2), as well as a porous TiO2 film. Crush fresh (or frozen) blackberries, raspberries, pomegranate seeds, or red Hibiscus tea in a tablespoon of water. Soak the film for 5 minutes in this liquid to stain the film to a deep red-purple color. If both sides of the film are not uniformly stained, then put it back in the juice for 5 more minutes. Wash the film in ethanol and gently blot it dry with a tissue.

Step 2 - Coat the Counter Electrode: The solar cell needs both a positive and a negative plate to function. The positive electrode is called the counter electrode and is created from a “conductive” SnO2 coated glass plate. A Volt - Ohm meter can be used to check which side of the glass is conductive. When scratched with a finger nail, it is the rough side. The “non-conductive” side is marked with a “+.” Use a pencil lead to apply a thin graphite (catalytic carbon) layer to the conductive side of plate’s surface.

Still with us? Read the Complete How-to Here Source: UC Santa Cruz Chemistry

By Alice Hill
RealTechNews

We don’t usually cover weaponry here at RTN, but most (if not all) of our greatest technical inventions have come from warfare. So today, we thought we’d get truly medieval on you and take a look at the trebuchet. Billed as the the most destructive medieval weapons ever made, I have to say, that as a longtime player of Age of Empires, the trebuchet is my favorite weapon.

So let’s take a journey back in time and look at a technology that allowed you to hurl a dead horse (shown here) into a castle and scare the living daylights out of everyone. And of course, we have link on how to build your own. And if anyone can find the story of the man who built one to shoot his garbage bags into yards all over his neighborhood, send me the link so we can add it here.

Trebuchet Resources

–The Convertible Tabletop Trebuchet
–The Projectile Throwing Engines of the Ancients
–Trebuchet Software Simulators
–Have You Hurled Today? Trebuchet T-Shirts
–Backyard Ballistics (Book)
–Build Your Own Trebuchet out of PVC Pipe
–Riding a Trebuchet
–Trebuchet for Sale ($4,000)
Source: Trebuchet.com (of course)

Thanks for the Digg!

Record your Favorite Streaming Internet Stations.

By Alice Hill
RealTechNews

This has to be THE nerdiest thing I have ever seen, but someone has figured out a way to port Wolfenstein 3D to the Texas Instruments TI-83 graphing calculator.

Wolfenstein83
Description: No it’s not one of those slow and unplayable basic games. This is a real-time 3d-raycaster based on the game by id. Also includes an on-calc map editor. Source: TICalc.org via Fark

This will get smacked down faster than you can say Booble, but here’s another Google-style search engine for cocktail making. For those yearning to bring back Absinthe, here’s your chance.

Visit Droogle Here

and don’t forget ….Booble (porn) and Gizoogle (the hip hop search engine.) < --Hilarious

Jonathon Flores
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

Amabuddy is a very unique idea that enables the consumer to call a telephone number (617-712-3574) which tells you if Amazon has a better deal on either a book or music CD.

How it works:
Lets say your at Barnes and Noble and you find a book you wish to buy. Call Amabuddy and enter the ISBN number into the phone. Amabuddy will give you the rating on that book as well as the price of the book that Amazon has available. It also has an extra feature where it stores all the ISBN numbers you’ve entered from your phone so you can log onto the site later and look at the books you’ve entered. This way you don’t have to write down the ISBN numbers to take back home with you. Enjoy your techie way to comparison shop.

By Alice Hill
RealTechNews

Here’s a tidbit I don’t usually share, but remember when people say “what are you, some kind of rocket scientist?” I actually get a tad confused because my father is actually a rocket scientist. And at age 4 he taught me how to make a kick-ass paper airplane with fold down wing flaps that would do loops and eventually scare the kids in kindergarten. So I let it go. (Sorry Dad.)

Today I found a site that embraces superior paper airplane making. So if you are doing the traditional three fold model, let me say now far out of kindergarten - time to upgrade.

“During the summer of 1950, on the outskirts of Harrisburg Pennsylvania U.S.A., my sister’s boyfriend “Skip” was sitting on the glider on the front porch of our house. He said to me - “Hey Mike… bring me a sheet of paper.” I answered why? and he responded with his make believe impatience “Just bring it!” I obeyed and he said that he was going to build the best paper airplane in the world. I was eight years old at the time and my meager knowledge of paper airplanes was the traditional flying wedge that spiraled into tight loops and fell head first to the ground.

“When he started folding the paper, I knew this was something different, something special. He never explained how he did it but every move, every fold, every detail was burned into my memory. After he finished, we walked the porch handrail and he gently tossed it horizontally towards the street. It glided like no paper airplane I have ever seen before, it was acting like a REAL airplane. It gently curved into the slight breeze and began to rise vertically without moving forward. The craft then began to lower as if it were a helicopter and gently came to rest on the asphalt below.

“Over the years, I have shown many eight year old children this paper plane. I don’t know if they will remember but I hope they pass the knowledge on.” By: Michael O’Reilly

Complete Instructions Here

Before you go…..try these popular stories we just posted:
–Gadget of the Week: The Get Off The Phone Excuse Machine
–Here Come the Podcast Viruses
–The 50 Best Mobile Video Games of all Time
–Are Pringles “Cantennas” Now Illegal?
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By David Johnston
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

I know a lot of you out there use FireFox, so I’m sure extensions are no new news to many of you. However, I’ve just discovered a recent enhancement to Adblock which should make many of you very happy. It’s called the Adblock Filterset.G Updater. For those of you who might have just gotten lost, a little explanation is in order. The extension known as Adblock has the ability to filter out various parts of webpages, either getting rid of them altogether or just replacing them with blank space. One issue with Adblock is that the user must make the rules for defining what to see and what not to see manually. This can get annoying, and creating your own rules can sometimes be dangerous if you mistakenly filter out things that you do want to see. The creator of Filterset.G has come to the rescue, however. He has created his own list which users can import into their own Adblock extension so they don’t have to create their own rules. The only problem with this system is that until now there was no approved auto-update utility for the filterset (which changes almost daily). The creators of Adblock Plus and Filterset.G have worked together to fix this by creating their own extension to automatically synchronize your local filterset with the master filterset on a 5-day interval. Now some of you may think this takes all the fun out of creating your own rules, but I think the automation is great. Beware, though, it’s still in beta.

Check it out here.

Jonathon Flores
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

Griffin Technology has announced the iFM. The FM receiver is a separate enclosed case which plugs into the iPod. It’s equipped with a digital display and the ability to act as a controller (fast forward, rewind, pause, play, volume). It can even RECORD off the FM feed (but only for 3G/4G/Photo models) It’s just too bad that iFM only works with the 3G/4G/Photo/Mini models. The iFM can be pre-ordered for $49.99.