Last week I broke our Canon Powershot S500 digital camera.

99% of the camera is metal but the door to the compact flash memory card is plastic and notoriously easy to break (as is the one on S400/S410 models). So it was our turn – which ain’t bad because we’ve had the camera a few years now and from day one I was expecting this part to fail.

I did a quick google for the part, and up came a bunch of options to buy a new door. From $15+SH on ebay to camera dealers willing to help out at $21-25 +SH.

I thought I’d give Canon a call thinking they might be a tad cheaper, and lo and behold the part was $2.50. Yes you heard me it’s just $2.50 + Shipping.

So I went ahead and ordered a couple just in case. Shipping was very low and the job to replace it super easy, requiring a small jewelers (or eye glass) screwdriver.

Just take out the 4 tiny screws securing the metal place, slide out the rod, taking note of how the spring goes in. The hardest part is making sure you don’t loose the screws and spring which do not come with the new door.

So here’s the magic information

S500 CF Cover – CD3-2326

Canon Factory Service
100 Jamesburg Road
Jamesburg, NJ 08831
Tel.# (732)521-7230
Business hours: 9 AM to 8 PM (ET) Monday to Friday

San Francisco Technology Reporter Gabriel Slate looks at this new way to display video on air. This new technology requires no screens, monitors or other physical surfaces to be able to project and display its images.

“Heliodisplay images are not holographic although they are free-space, employing a rear projection system in which images are captured onto a nearly invisible plane of transformed air. What the viewer sees is floating mid-air image or video. These projected images and video are two-dimensional, (i.e. planar) but appear 3D since there is no physical depth reference. While conventional displays have the benefit of being attached to a physical substrate, Heliodisplay projections are suspended in air, so you will notice some waviness to the quality of the projections.”

What can you do with an unused jet engine? Ron Patrick customized his VW Beetle with one, and added an extra 1350 horsepower of explosive fun.

I love my TDI VW Bug, but wouldn’t this be cool addition….a real jet engine. James Bond eat your tofu out.

[via TechBlog]

I’ll be going to visit my mother in the UK soon and wanted to make
sure I could charge the batteries (NB-1LH) on my Canon PowerShot S500
while there.

I did a quick search on www.froogle.com and www.ebay.com,
and genuine Canon chargers cost around $50-70, however I did find some
OEM one’s for around $20 + s/h, but I still thought that was a bit much
for something we’d probably only use once or twice in the life of the
camera.

Then it suddenly dawned on me, the charger we got with the camera (CB-2LS) is rated at 110volts – 240volts. Duh!

So all I would need is a UK adapter for it. I remembered I’d gotten
one when I first moved here many moons ago, so fingers crossed it’s
going to work. I think the adapter only cost me a few dollars

Hopefully this will find it’s way into google and will save others money too.

I found all shorts of stuff I had no idea I had on my PC, some of
which I thought had long gone, some good some bad. Like a long
forgotten geocities account from 9 years ago, still sitting there on
the web – old and dated, but Google Desktop found the old passwords for
me and I was able to login and remove some things.

It also found a bunch of backup files I’ve been making of
‘important’ documents over the years. You know how things go, you get a
new PC, laptop, PDA or whatever and stach things away just in case
you’ll need it. Well I had copies of copies of ‘My Documents’ nested
deep across many drives.

What suprised me the most was how many passwords it found, even
those I thought were secure. The thing is it can search your old email
too, so when you get those account activation/creation messages which
often have the password right in them – it’s all still sitting right
there in your email archives. Sounds obvious know, but I bet ya that
you’ve got some ‘secure’ passwords exposed in your email somewhere
right now.

It also got me thinking how easy it would be for a trojan to pick
these passwords up if I was unfortunate enough to get infected. So I
just spent the last few hours cleaning up my PC

The only feature I’d like see added to Google Desktop right now is the ability to search network drives. Not much to ask.