Some of you were wondering how the homeless charge their cellphones —maybe they do it Chechen-soldier style and created their own wooden, dynamo-powered cellphone charger out in the untamed wilderness. Chechen soldiers devised the charger to keep their cell phones charged. Turning the crank will pull the strings and activate the pulleys. As a result, it generates electricity in the capacitor (the blue thing), thereby charging the phone. You’d probably have to put in a bit of a workout to see any results, but hey, at least it’ll allow you to phone home just like E.T. did

Ugly radiator got you down? New Italian heating brand I-Radium may very well be the answer to your yucky-looking Radiator Blues. No longer designed to be hidden away in the corner, the “Bag” and “Totem” radiators are actually more like contemporary showpieces. Scheduled to be presented at the Milan Design Festival, both models are composed of a warm wooden body that is heated by infrared technology. Aluminum detailing adds some extra modern flair. The Bag radiator features a thin, square sheet of wood that, well, looks like a fancy bag.

Charlie Miller , the security expert whose meticulously crafted exploit took over a MacBook through Safari in 10 seconds at the Pwn2Own hacking competition, says that Macs are in fact safer than Windows. Oh boy. It’s for reasons we’ve heard before —there’s just way less stuff out there attacking Macs. He told Tom’s Hardware : “I’d say that Macs are less secure for the reasons we’ve discussed here (lack of anti-exploitation technologies) but are more safe because there simply isn’t much malware out there. For now, I’d still recommend Macs for typical users as the odds of something targeting them are so low that they might go years without seeing any malware, even though if an attacker cared to target them it would be easier for them.” Whatever OS you’re running, the best thing you can do, he says, is to just keep your system up to date (then you won’t get Conficker , either). And not be stupid.

I don’t get iPhone cases . Or any gadget case. It’s like your grandma putting a plastic cover on the sofa. Things are designed to be enjoyed as they are.

As sad as it sounds, most of us experience the world through photographs. Now MIT software engineers are taking that idea literally and mapping Flickr photos to regional maps in The World’s Eyes project. By pulling GPS metadata from uploaded photos (and then skinning that data in a neat 3D visualization), users can see how photographers/tourists see a given area. There’s overlap, yes, but that’s entirely the point. It’s a project more about capturing stereotypes (like the Eiffel Tower in Paris or the Statue of Liberty in NY), than giving a Google Street View objective turn by turn of an area. Add tags like “party” to the mix, and that worldview is altered in very interesting, less predictable ways

The ISS looked this way—with the fourth and final solar panel truss—as the space shuttle Discovery undocked yesterday. It’s almost as big as a Corellian corvette , but there’s still a long to do list: As you can see, it’s still not entirely done. This photo timeline shows how the ISS has evolved since assembly started in November 20, 1998. But there’s still a lot to be done, as you can see in the following list of modules that have to go up there. • Multi-Purpose Logistics Module — Delivered by the space shuttle.

In our Hackintosh guide , we called our OS X-powered Dell Mini 9 the ultimate Mac netbook. We were wrong. This Hackintoshed Dell Mini 9 , autographed by one Steve “Quick Step” Wozniak, is the actual pinnacle. Matthew Smith caught Woz doing some press for Dancing With the Stars. He writes: I showed him my Dell Mini 9 with OS X Leopard installed on it (and an Apple sticker sloppily applied over the Dell logo.

I imagine the first thing on everyone’s mind when they return from space is “When the f%&@ can I go back!?” Today, Charles Simonyi became the first space tourist to make a second paid flight. Just short of two years ago, Simonyi spent two weeks aboard the ISS as the fifth private visitor to the station on a ticket booked with Space Adventures . And now he’s heading back on the Soyuz flight that left Kazakhstan this morning; he’ll help scientists with experiments and answer question from Earth via the web until returning on April 7. Having created Microsoft Word and Excel back in the early, early days and now having been to space twice , I think we can officially bestow a crown of ultimate geek cred on Simonyi’s glowing head. Godspeed. [NYTimes, Charlesinspace.com ]

According to rumors, next week at CTIA Research In Motion (RIM) might launch a mobile TV service that would feature full episodes of content. Other than that, there’s not much to go on at this point. The possible release would coincide with the release of its app store . [ NewTeeVee via StreetInsider via IntoMobile ]

IBM has begun notifying employees that layoffs or “resource actions” are coming. All in all, some 5000 employees, mostly from the Global Business Services division will be affected. [ Digital Daily ]