DIY cat feeder now enabled by a Cisco switch, streams food and video

You know, there are times when you have to part ways with your adorable kitties at home, and you might not be so keen on getting a cat sitter in case he or she touches your precious game consoles (even if it’s an old granny ). We’ve seen the lazy man’s solution before, but Britain’s Mathew Newton has brought us a new DIY internet-enabled cat feeder just in time for a new decade. Rather than using a CD-ROM tray to push-release unknown quantities of cat food, Mathew’s version has a motor-driven cereal dispenser controlled by signal from port status LEDs on a Cisco switch — an ingenious way to avoid expensive Ethernet relay units.

Dell, HP, and Lenovo bringing SDXC to laptops alongside 32nm Intel chipsets?

Those incredibly sexy (as far as portable storage capacities are concerned) 64GB SDXC cards coming on the horizon? You’re gonna want some hardware to work with it, and according to DailyTech , three of the largest computer manufacturers are looking to bring the upgrade with Intel’s forthcoming Arrandale CPUs

Inside Sharp’s new LCD factory, we can see our next HDTV from here

The path back to LCD leadership for Sharp begins at its just opened Sakai City manufacturing facility. Being a 10th generation facility means it can roll out more and bigger displays, producing six 60-inch LCDs from each glass substrate, 60% more than older 8g facilities. Check out the pics for a peek at where 72,000 substrates per month will be made, delivering those slim LED backlit televisions getting so much love, along with solar panels (also being installed on the roofs for that extra green vibe that’s in vogue these days) and a few of the more than 100,000 energy efficient LEDs lighting the factory itself.

Google Maps Navigation makes trip across the pond, thanks to some hackery

Apparently us Yanks have been spoiled by the warm embrace of Google Maps Navigation , forgetting that our friends in the UK don’t have the same luxury. Leave it to Electricpig to connect worlds, finding a somewhat hack-induced way to bring the app upgrade to British Android 1.6 devices . Instructions are pretty easy, so if you’re game, don your DIY hat and click over

2011 Chevrolet Volt gets taken for a test drive

The Chevy Volt is one vehicle we can really get behind. It’s hard not to be a little excited over it — we have, after all, been watching its development for quite a long time now

Praktica unleashes a slew of 10 and 12-megapixel shooters

Dresden’s Praktica brand has a long, distinguished history — but like many such brands with long, distinguished histories, stateside readers usually encounter this name attached to some pretty average consumer electronics. In this case, we have a smattering of nondescript digicams that feature the usual compliment of face detection, SD/SDHC card support, and a torrent of scene modes: In the realm of 10 megapixel cameras with 2.7-inch displays you can take your choice of either the Praktica Luxmedia 10-03 (available in black or silver, features 32 MB on board memory, voice recording, 720 x 400 video recording) or the Praktica Luxmedia 10-23 (available in blue or red, features 16 MB built-in memory, panorama mode, red eye removal in playback mode, and intelligent scene selection)

Flexio solar powered FM radio doubles as bookmark

We don’t really have much use for radio over the airwaves — hell, the closest we ever get to the halcyon days of rock’n'roll radio is the Flaming Groovies station on Pandora . But something as convenient (and as cute) as this next item just might get us back in the habit.

Xbox 360 controller ingeniously hacked for NES use

Hey, it’s just what you’ve always wanted: to use your Xbox 360 controller on your old NES. Using a Cortex M3 processor left over from a school robotics project, Francois Gervais managed to rig his wireless pad to control something decidedly less advanced than a game of Modern Warfare 2 . There’s a video of the controller in action after the break, and you can grab some of the code being used in the Google link below — perhaps one of you brainiacs will finally hack the Wiimote to control a Jaguar

Nook ship date slips to January 11th, supply chain managers weep

Hardware construction is a funny thing. Sometimes, regardless of the money you throw at something, you just can’t get products to come together any quicker. Evidently that’s the case with Barnes & Noble’s Nook , which has seen its estimated ship date slip from today to sometime after the holidays , and now to January 11th

Editorial: The Engadget style guide reaches a MILESTONE

So last week the New York Times Magazine published a piece called “Against Camel Case” which argues that intercapped product names like iPhone and TiVo are “medieval,” because they harken back to a time in which people mostly read aloud, slowly sounding out each word as they tried to understand them. Proper word spacing, says the Times , “eventually made possible phenomena like irony, pornography and freedom of conscience.” That’s sort of a crazy coincidence — while we’re not so sure word spacing and porn have anything to do with each other, we did just re-do our style guide when we launched our jazzy new redesign , and we actually thought long and hard about how to handle intercapped, all-capped, and otherwise non-standard product names

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