Vtol's added some unique built-in effects to his hollow-body electric
Digital Noise guitar is a custom project based on HT-8950 voice changer chip. Small circuit was mounted right in the body. It can process sound like lo-fi ring modulator, 8-bit pitch shifter or simple guitar synth. Mad Selfoscillation is possible too.Be sure to check out the self-oscillation demo to hear the effect on its own. More pics and video - Noise guitar [via Matrixsynth]
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In-guitar effects kits
Tom Jozwiak is a crazed robot and sci-fi movie prop builder who's built dozens of bots from Lost in Space, Star Wars, Buck Rogers, Short Circuit, Dr. Who, and more. He's currently working on a life-size Gort (from the original The Day the Earth Stood Still) and Wall-E. Below is a link to his YouTube channel where he's documented many of his builds.
[BTW: Tom was one of the Star Wars bot builders featured on the cover of MAKE, Volume 02 (he's the geek on the left)]
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MAKE Volume 2 Digital Edition.
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Brad Robideau of American Public Media says:
Leveraging—or borrowing—has been cited as one of the contributors to the financial crisis. In this Marketplace Whiteboard, Marketplace Senior Editor Paddy Hirsch explains how the move to deleverage—or reduce debt—is prompting wild market swings and concerns about deflation.All of “The Marketplace Whiteboard” videos can be accessed at www.marketplace.org and are part of "Fallout: America's Financial Crisis," Marketplace's comprehensive coverage of the current financial crisis.
Check out TiTON's IRON MAN PC mod...
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"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Xo9_Z_mhUpw&en&fs=1&rel=0&fmt=18
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Goes perfect with the recent Iron Man suit powered by BeagleBoard and Arduino!
Ed. Note: Boing Boing's current guestblogger Clay Shirky is the author of Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. He teaches at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU, where he works on the overlap of social and technological networks.
In light of Sam Zell's Tribune newspaper empire filing for bankruptcy today, I was reminded of Ron Rosenbaum's piece beating up on Jeff Jarvis -- The Good Life of a New-Media Guru -- for being unfair to journalists who "have been caught up in this great upheaval" of the print business model. (The piece is sub-titled "Is Jeff Jarvis gloating too much about the death of print?") That in turn reminded me of something I'd written back in 1995 called Help, the Price of Information Has Fallen, and It Can't Get Up. It's not my best writing, but having just re-read it, there's not a conclusion I would change:
The price of information has not only gone into free fall in the last few years, it is still in free fall now, it will continue to fall long before it hits bottom, and when it does whole categories of currently lucrative businesses will be either transfigured unrecognizably or completely wiped out, and there is nothing anyone can do about it.
and
Newspapers make an enormous proportion of their revenues on classified ads [...] however, this arrangement is something of a kludge, since the things being sold have a much more intricate relationship to geography than newspapers do.
You might drive three miles to buy used baby clothes, thirty for a used car and sixty for rare coins. Thus, in the economically ideal classified ad scheme, all sellers would use one single classified database nationwide, and then buyers would simply limit their searches by area. This would maximize the choice available to the buyers and the cost able to be commanded by the sellers. It would also destroy a huge source of newspapers revenue.
This is happening now.
I don't post this because I think I had some unique vision back then. In fact, I'd only arrived on the net in '93, a complete newbie, and most of my opinions about newspapers came from talking with Gordy Thompson of the NY Times and Brad Templeton of Clarinet. Instead, what struck me, re-reading my younger self, was this: a dozen years ago, a kid who'd only just had his brains blown via TCP/IP nevertheless understood that the newspaper business was screwed, not because this was a sophisticated conclusion, but because it was obvious.
Google, eBay, craigslist, none of those things existed when I wrote that piece; I was extrapolating from Lycos and it was still apparent what was going to happen. It didn't take much vision to figure out that unlimited perfect copyability, with global reach and at zero marginal cost, was slowly transforming the printing press into a latter-day steam engine.
And once that became obvious, we said so, over and over again, all the time. We said it in public, we said it in private. We said it when newspapers hired us as designers, we said it when we were brought in as consultants, we said it for free. We were some tiresome motherfuckers with all our talk about the end of news on paper. And you know what? The people who made their living from printing the news listened, and then decided not to believe us.
So I'm calling bullshit on the Rosenbaum thesis, because no one has been "caught up in this great upheaval." Caught up? That makes it sound like a tornado. This change has been more like seeing oncoming glaciers ten miles off, and then deciding not to move.
By the turn of the century, anyone who didn't understand that the business model for newspapers was a wasting asset was caught up in nothing other than willful ignorance, so secure in their faith in the permanence of their business that they assumed that those glaciers would politely swerve at the last minute, which minute is looking increasingly like now.
Tribune Co. Files for Bankrupcty Protection | The Good Life of a New-Media Guru | Help, the Price of Information Has Fallen, and It Can't Get Up
Vimeo user Tony gives us a taste of the action at this past weekend's Blip Festival with a performance by Sulumi.
The NYTimes Jenna Wortham also ran an article profiling the event -
The third-annual Blip Festival kicked off its four-day showcase Thursday night. Hosted by 8bitpeoples, a New York art and tech collective, and The Tank, a local nonprofit, the event features nearly 40 artists from China to Switzerland.- Turning Game Boys Into Synthesizers Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Events | Digg this!
[...]
Although chiptune musicians prefer to play on older consoles -- the more obscure and archaic, the better -- and can only produce a handful of notes, the range of styles and genres can be dizzying. For example, Graffiti Monsters cranks out punk-influenced chiptunes on Sony PlayStation Portables and Game Boys. Mr. Johnson, one of the earliest known chiptune performers, who goes by Nullsleep, describes his sound as leaning towards ambient electronica bordering on romantic pop.
Kitschy Kitschy Coo scanned the instructions from the first issue of Good Housekeeping Needlecraft magazine (1968-1969) for making this nightmarish pixie pajama bag.
In this week's Boing Boing update on BBtv (Here's a direct MP4 Link, 05:33 duration)...
? Remember that project we blogged about a few weeks ago -- Donate Your Used Digital Camera to LA's Skid Row Photo Club? Well, many of you did. The gadgets went to good use at the Skid Row Photo Club, and project participants join us today, live from the heart of Skid Row, to tell you why it mattered (and still does). They're still accepting used camera donations, and project founders Michael Blaze and Dave Bullock encourage likeminded nerds to start similar clubs in other cities.
? Clay Shirky is guestblogging on Boing Boing, and they've been terrific, debate-inspiring screeds.
? Mark is into all things "down home" of late -- including chickens. He shot a time-lapse video of his chickens frolicking around in the back yard, and we did what any responsible viral video producers would do. ADDED YAKETY SAX.
? Pesco found some awesome Claymation Splatterpunk movies from a guy in Japan named Takena. He's a genius. Enjoy the montage in today's ep.
IMAGES BELOW: Courtesy Skid Row Photo Club.
Former drug office Barry Cooper has launched an online reality TV show that sets up corrupt cops who conduct illegal drug raids.
KopBusters rented a house in Odessa, Texas and began growing two small Christmas trees under a grow light similar to those used for growing marijuana. When faced with a suspected marijuana grow, the police usually use illegal FLIR cameras and/or lie on the search warrant affidavit claiming they have probable cause to raid the house. Instead of conducting a proper investigation which usually leads to no probable cause, the Kops lie on the affidavit claiming a confidential informant saw the plants and/or the police could smell marijuana coming from the suspected house.On the Agitator blog, Radley Balko says:The trap was set and less than 24 hours later, the Odessa narcotics unit raided the house only to find KopBuster’s attorney waiting under a system of complex gadgetry and spy cameras that streamed online to the KopBuster’s secret mobile office nearby.
To clarify just a bit, according to Cooper, there was nothing illegal going on the bait house, just two evergreen trees and some grow lamps. There was no probable cause. So a couple of questions come up. First, how did the cops get turned on to the house in the first place? Cooper suspects they were using thermal imaging equipment to detect the grow lamps, a practice the Supreme Court has said is illegal. The second question is, what probable cause did the police put on the affidavit to get a judge to sign off on a search warrant? If there was nothing illegal going on in the house, it’s difficult to conceive of a scenario where either the police or one of their informants didn’t lie to get a warrant.Kopbusters reality showCooper chose to bait the Odessa police department because he believes police there instructed an informant to plant marijuana on a woman named Yolanda Madden. She’s currently serving an eight-year sentence for possession with intent to distribute. According to Cooper, the informant actually admitted in federal court that he planted the marijuana. Madden was convicted anyway.
A couple of jolly good chaps show how to play "Bye Bye Blues" on the Mellotron, "on two fingers, and nothing up my sleeve."
Wikipedia: The Mellotron is an electro-mechanical, polyphonic keyboard originally developed and built in Birmingham, England in the early 1960s. It superseded the Chamberlin, which was the world's first sample-playback keyboard. The heart of the instrument is a bank of parallel linear magnetic audio tapes, which have approximately eight seconds of playing time each. Playback heads underneath each key enable the playing of pre-recorded sounds.(Via Orange Crate Art)
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Police in Great Britain kicked in the front door of this house and ransacked it because they smelled marijuana growing. Turns out the sharp-nosed officers mistook phlox flowers in the garden for marijuana. The 77-year-old homeowner doesn't want any more trouble, so he dug up his phlox.
Drug raid over smelly flowers
"Bill presented a business plan that said he owned the rights," says John Picard, an environmental consultant on the team, "like it was his intellectual property. He was asking for an obscene amount [of money]."And that resulted in the company parting ways with McDonough:
"The issue is that some of the things he thinks he originated no one owns. These are things that need to be blown up, not sequestered down with a patent." Interface went on to develop its recyclable carpet, now a nearly $1 billion business, without McDonough. The company confirmed the accuracy of Picard's account.Next up, was his supposed "success story" with Nike:
McDonough, who includes a Nike shoe in his standard slide show, recalls the period fondly. "The great thing about working with Nike was it had tremendous interest in communicating with its supply chain, and it took cradle-to-cradle ideas to heart and developed its own strategy for communicating across an immense supply chain, over 3,000 vendors," he tells me. "Incredible. It inspired us. A lot of what we do today is inspired by our clients."Once again, in his demand for ownership of ideas, he's actually shut down. Finally, perhaps the most ridiculous and damning story of all involves a non-profit that McDonough himself tried to set up to promote the term "cradle-to-cradle," which he has trademarked as a description of his process. Of course, he didn't actually coin it:
The folks at Nike remember the collaboration a little differently. "It was devastating that we couldn't go forward with it," says someone who worked closely on the project and requested anonymity. When McDonough's team finished building a list of approved materials for manufacturing, after two years and a hefty consulting fee, Nike told McDonough the time had come to share the details with its thousands of vendors. To the company's shock, McDonough responded that he owned the list -- it was proprietary. "He wanted to charge us for every supplier we rolled it out to. We didn't own it after we paid all this money, which made no sense," says the person from the Nike team. "You can develop lists until you're blue in the face, but if you don't have effective ways to roll that out to the supply chain, it's not going to change it." Nike, which went on to improve its supply chain independently, confirmed this account to Fast Company and said that, given the huge amount McDonough was demanding, it decided to terminate the relationship. The company adds that "neither Bill nor MBDC designed materials for Nike."
Even the term cradle to cradle, for which McDonough has applied for a trademark, isn't his at all. According to Hunter Lovins, cofounder of the Rocky Mountain Institute think tank, "Walter Stahel in Switzerland actually coined the phrase 25 years ago, long before Bill started using it."The whole nonprofit, called GreenBlue was supposed to be used to promote "cradle-to-cradle" and build up McDonough's reputation. And, in what appeared to be a contrary move to his earlier "ownership" position, McDonough announced GreenBlue with a plan to "give away the cradle-to-cradle protocol freely." Except, he didn't. The first employee at GreenBlue grew disenchanted, noting that McDonough did nothing to make "cradle-to-cradle" info publicly available. So, he pleaded with the board to jettison McDonough -- which eventually happened. And then, after McDonough left, GreenBlue became a success:
It wasn't until McDonough left that GreenBlue, specifically its Sustainable Packaging Coalition, took off. The coalition now includes 190 companies -- Procter & Gamble, Kraft, and Starbucks among them -- that are working to develop environmentally sound packaging practices. "Many people still think of the Sustainable Packaging Coalition as a project that has succeeded because of Bill McDonough, which is simply not the case," Pearson stresses.Even better? Now that GreenBlue is a success, McDonough, who started it is demanding that GreenBlue pay lots of money to use that "cradle-to-cradle" trademark:
Earlier this year, his materials firm, MBDC, told GreenBlue it would have to license the term cradle to cradle if the nonprofit wanted to use it. "Our respective lawyers went back and forth at substantial cost to GreenBlue," says Pearson, now GreenBlue's executive director, "[but] I don't have the financial resources, nor the strong motivation, to stop them." By 2010, the very nonprofit that McDonough founded will be obliged to use terms such as "green chemistry," "closed-loop material systems," and "industrial ecology" to describe its work. Thanks to McDonough and his lawyers, Pearson says, "we will eliminate the phrase cradle to cradle from any of our materials."So, in his quest to "own" all of these ideas, he's created a bunch of failed projects, and done little to actually help create successful environmental solutions. Yet, when he gets out of the way, and others are able to more freely share ideas, stuff gets done. Maybe he shouldn't focus so much on owning ideas, and be a little more open to the fact that if he shared more freely, and there were actual success stories built around his work, the demand to hire him in the future would be much, much stronger.
Pin-up sensation Bettie Page is in intensive care after having a heart attack.
The 85-year-old former model remains "critically ill," her agent says. She is reportedly in a coma.Albeit years after her new life in Christianity, Page helped rock the 60s into a sexual revolution with her classic pin-up bikini and lingerie photos. Before that in 1955, she became Playboy's second ever Playmate, following Marilyn Monroe.
Probably the best way for you to make rapid effective progress on your project is to have a good idea of how you want the project to end up, and then identify the Simplest Problem that you can solve Quickly. In computer science, almost every first program is some variation on Hello World. Essentially, it is a surefire way to just show that it works. You know that you are not making some basic mistake. Once you can do something really basic, then you can work on doing something less basic. Hopefully the next thing you do won't be too crazy hard, or you are likely to just sit there frustrated and annoyed.
Quick Simple Problems
Quick Simple Problems may seem too easy, and may seem like they don't get you to your destination. What they will do, however is to get you moving. If the problems are truly quick and simple, you will have rapid successes on your project. You won't be sitting there wondering if it will work, you will know whether it works or not, and what the conditions that cause success are. One of the greatest asset you can create for yourself on a project is to feel good about the likelihood of the outcome. If you feel good about it, and feel like you are moving forward, you will have more ambition to try new experiments, which will also move the project forward.
Solve lots of Quick Simple Problems.
If you want to get further along, you can solve lots of problems. If you get impatient, and decide you want to chuck the whole project, then maybe you are just trying to make leaps between successes that are too large. It could be that you just need more information than you are stuffing into your brain, so you are making mistakes that research could help you avoid. Perry has distilled the idea down to Think Solve Do in his process of creating Frankenstien Prototypes.
Set goals, but keep them realistic
One thing that often happens with people new to an idea or subject is that they see advanced work and think that they can just 'do that'. What they often don't realize is that to attain such a level of complexity you see in a mature product requires the solving of many many Quick Simple Problems, and is often done over large blocks of time by groups of very dedicated people. Some times you need to start as simple as, 'can you get an LED to light between two contacts?' If you can, then you could probably put a motor or something else between those contacts.
Make photos and video
As you work, it is also helpful for you to take photos of the process you are developing. Think about how you would explain what you are doing to somebody who is not there. What would somebody need to know if they were going to do what you have just done? A lot of this will be you answering your own questions that came up as you did the work. What were you wondering as you opened something up, or securing two things together? Were there certain tools that were useful or needed?
In pretty much every operating system, there is at least one way to make a screen shot, which can be cropped later for tighter reference. If you make these photos or screen shots while you do the project, you can often look back at the pictures later and the ideas behind them will come back and you can write up the process. The photos or video will help you remember.
How do you solve problems? Do you like to solve many Quick Simple Problems, or do you like to go after the big fish? Do you have examples of problems you have solved and process you have used to get through them? Add your ideas to the comments, and put your photos and videos in the Make Flickr pool.
From the MAKE Flickr pool
The Swooftronic SB instrument creates some sweet signals courtesy of light-controlled filter & frequency. The demo gets particularly interesting @ about the 2 minute mark. - SwooftronicSB5 on Flickr
From the pages of MAKE
The MoofTronic Mini Synth - MAKE: 15: Music, Page 70 Subscribers--read this article now in your digital edition!
Our pals at MAD Magazine have given us a preview of this year's "MAD 20 - the 20 Dumbest People, Things and Events of the year." They asked if we wanted to leak one of 'em in advance of publication on Dec 16 and of course, I picked this delightful commentary on
Roy Doty has been illustrating books and magazines since the 1940s. I first came across his work around 1970 when I acquired an old stack of Popular Science magazines from the 1950s. He did (and still does) a regular comic strip called "Wordless Workshop," which showed you how to make something cool without using any words to describe how. That's difficult to pull off, but Doty's clear and precise drawing style was (and is) up to the task.
When we started MAKE in 2004, I was overjoyed to learn that Doty was still illustrating. I wrote him and asked if he'd like to illustrate our puzzle page. When he said yes, it was a dream come true. At age 86, he's still going strong.
Every year, Doty hand draws a new Chrismas card to send out to his friends and associates. I'm lucky to be on that list!
Hogan’s Alley has posted this amazing archive of cartoonist Roy Doty’s legendary annual Christmas Cards. The highly imaginative collection, dating back to 1950, features puzzles, contraptions, and other creative twists. 2007’s was even presented as a möbius strip.(Via Drawn!)
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Cantor Fitzgerald has filed an application with regulators to launch an exchange that will allow users to hedge and speculate on the financial performance of movies.Cantor speculates on box office entertainment (Thanks, Max!)Cantor says that subject to approval from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), its exchange's first traded product will be "Domestic Box Office Receipt" contracts.
The contracts - expected to be listed in the first quarter of 2009 - will offer film finance professionals and traders an opportunity to hedge and speculate on the ticket sales of major film titles.
At "The Daily Beast", Tina Brown raises what may be at the heart of a lot of America's troubles -- a business run by "feckless zombies" who can't tell a good idea from a bad one, where innovation loses out to short-term gains.
The public rage towards the Big Three reflects in part the rage many employees feel today about the way their own companies have been so messed up already they were in no shape to survive a market collapse. Only now are we hearing how the innovative engineers who wanted to get into hybrids and electric cars were cut off when the accountants decreed that there was more and quicker profit in churning out gas guzzlers.
What do cars, debt risk, and collapsing television networks have in common? The suits running them all lose sight of what they condescendingly call "product"--i.e., whatever it was that motivated the company's spirit of excellence in the first place. The trouble is, those guys and their appointees don't seem to be the ones who are leaving, do they? Indeed, the recession is giving many of them air cover. "It's not my fault, it's the times we live in."
I am hoping -- and I know that it's a long shot -- that the economic collapse will give birth to new kinds of companies -- ones truly committed to making excellent products again. Let's run the zombies out of town.
link: Kill The Media Zombies by Tina Brown
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Seth Kinman (via Geisha Asobi)
California hunter whose presentation of an elkhorn chair to the President on November 26, 1864 attracted wide publicity. Kinman, with a penchant for western buckskin clothes and eastern publicity, Stanley Kimmel wrote that after presenting the chair and explaining the seven years of hunting that went into its production, Kinman told "the President that he had another little keepsake with him in the form of a fiddle made from the skull of his favorite mule, which, when alive, appeared to have music in his soul, for he would always look around the camps on the plains when he heard music. After the mule had been dead for some time, he passed his bleached bones one day and the idea struck him that there might be music in the bones, so he made the fiddle. Later he took a rib, and some hairs from the tail, and made the bow. Much to the amusement of Lincoln and other spectators, he played 'Essence of Old Virginia' and 'John Brown' on the bones of the mule. Lincoln said that if he could play the fiddle he would ask him for it, but since he could not, the fiddle would be better off in Mr. Kinman's hands."
Most Likely to Succeed: How do we hire when we can’t tell who’s right for the job?(illo by Joost Swarte) Eric Hanushek, an economist at Stanford, estimates that the students of a very bad teacher will learn, on average, half a year’s worth of material in one school year. The students in the class of a very good teacher will learn a year and a half’s worth of material. That difference amounts to a year’s worth of learning in a single year. Teacher effects dwarf school effects: your child is actually better off in a “bad” school with an excellent teacher than in an excellent school with a bad teacher. Teacher effects are also much stronger than class-size effects. You’d have to cut the average class almost in half to get the same boost that you’d get if you switched from an average teacher to a teacher in the eighty-fifth percentile. And remember that a good teacher costs as much as an average one, whereas halving class size would require that you build twice as many classrooms and hire twice as many teachers.
Hanushek recently did a back-of-the-envelope calculation about what even a rudimentary focus on teacher quality could mean for the United States. If you rank the countries of the world in terms of the academic performance of their schoolchildren, the U.S. is just below average, half a standard deviation below a clump of relatively high-performing countries like Canada and Belgium. According to Hanushek, the U.S. could close that gap simply by replacing the bottom six per cent to ten per cent of public-school teachers with teachers of average quality. After years of worrying about issues like school funding levels, class size, and curriculum design, many reformers have come to the conclusion that nothing matters more than finding people with the potential to be great teachers. But there’s a hitch: no one knows what a person with the potential to be a great teacher looks like.
From Like Cool:
The Super-Secret Spy Lens ($50) is basically a periscope that attaches your SLR's zoom lens... you can shoot left, right, up, or down, all while appearing to shoot straight ahead.
Frank Wu sez, "Jay Lake and I have edited an anthology called "The Exquisite
Corpuscle." It's not just a random assortment of stories - it's a
literary version of the game "Telephone." An experiment in creative
groupthink. I started out doing a painting, which I handed off to Gary
Shockley (who's had a number of stories in "The Magazine of Fantasy and
Science Fiction"). Gary wrote a story inspired by the painting, and then
handed the story off to Tim Pratt (a Hugo Award winner), who wrote a
poem. And so on. So we established three separate chains of 7 people
each, and then Jay Lake wrote a story to unite all the chains of thought
together, and Matt Taggart did an endcap painting. All in all, we had 22
separate people involved in this - Kenneth Brady, Alan DeNiro, Richard
Doyle, Michaela Eaves, M.C.A. Hogarth , Michael J. Jasper, Jay Lake,
Aurora Lemieux, Kristin Livdahl, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Tim Pratt, Bruce
Holland Rogers, Benjamin Rosenbaum, Nigel Sade, Maia Sanders, Heather
Shaw, Diana Sherman, Gary W. Shockley, Christina Sng, Matt Taggart, Greg van
Eekhout, Frank Wu. Because of the sequential nature of the project, it
took over three years to complete. After this long birthing process,
it's been published by Fairwood Press."
The Exquisite Corpuscle publisher's page, The Exquisite Corpuscle on Amazon
(Thanks, Frank!)
This Tuesday, we're going to be holding the second of our joint HacDC/Dorkbot DC meetings called "Birthing Hydra," where we discuss ways that the various DC-area geek orgs can work together for out mutual benefit. The panel discussion will include myself and Alberto Gaitán, Nick Farr from HacDC, and Katie Bechtold from HacDC and Linux Chix. If you're in town, we hope you can make it.
The Debut HacDC Tuesday Seminar Series Birthing Hydra II: Building the DC Tech CommunityWhen: Tuesday, 09 December 2008 @ 8:30 PM
Where: HacDC (St. Stephen & The Incarnation Church, 1525 Newton St NW,
Washington DC)
Cost: FREEIn our first Tuesday Seminar Series, Dorkbot DC overlords and brand
new HacDC Members Gareth Branwyn and Alberto Gaitán will join fellow
HacDC Members Katie Bechtold (DC Linux Chix) and Nick Farr
(hackerspaces.org) in a conversation on building the DC Tech
Community.This is the first of a series of Tuesday Seminars designed to help
bring local geeks, dorks, makers and hackers closer together. Taking
place most Tuesdays at 8:30 PM when Dorkbot is not in session, HacDC's
TSS will feature a wide range of topics and interactive opportunities
of general interest to DC's finest hackers. (It also helps HacDC make
sure its member meetings end on time.)
First Tuesday Seminar Series with DorkbotDC Overlords: Dec. 9 at 8:30 PM
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Ah, how much I loved paging through RadioShack catalogs in the good ol' daze. That was when the Shack was a decent maker's supply shop, a temple for Forest M. Mims III disciples. The RadioShack Catalog archive celebrates those better times with catalogs dating back to 1939. Joel has his take over at Boing Boing Gadgets. Share your memories there.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
We just finished a holiday "text to sing" program for Yahoo! Messenger where I work, Colle+McVoy, in Minneapolis. Here's an open source themed maker's carol for you all.
If you want to create text-to-speech music yourself, check out the Festival project. It includes a singing mode which uses XML to describe the pitch and duration values for the syllables in your song.
The Emoticarolers
Maker's Holiday Carol
Festival Speech Synthesis System and a Singing Mode Example
See also:
Text-to-speech in PHP
Over at the Steampunk Workshop, Jake von Slatt posted this brief item:
Here's a dead simple cell phone charging station I installed next to our main entrance. It's just a pair of hangers of the sort you'd use in the garage to store a shovel or a rake. If your wall isn't made of barn-board like ours, you can screw the hangers into a block of wood and use regular drywall anchors to attach it.Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Mobile | Digg this!Note: if you have an older phone with a transformer type wall wart you'll want to add a power strip with a switch since those older supplies drew nearly the same amount of power when disconnected from the phone as they did when charging it.
That must really sting.
The lower-echelon bankers who were previously scraping by on $5 million a year are flat broke and in debt, with no way to repay.
Most 60-year-old ex–Lehman Brothers bankers likely squirreled away enough to at least scrape by on a couple of million a year. As for the 25-year-olds, they never earned enough to have much to lose. But the mid-30s or mid-40s Lehman banker who lived up to his high compensation—or beyond it—is reeling, hurting, and possibly bankrupt.Can we all take a moment and send beams of happiness and sunshine in their direction? Profiles in Panic (Thanks, Richard!)One Sunday evening in October, a former Lehmanite in his mid-30s settles into a velvet banquette at the Gramercy Park Hotel’s elegant Rose Bar. At first he’s circumspect. But after a couple of Johnnie Walker Blacks on the rocks, he opens up.
“Let’s take a guy who makes $5 million a year,” the banker suggests. “He’s paid two and a half million dollars of that in equity compensation”—Lehman Brothers stock. Plus he gets to buy that stock at a 30 percent discount, so he’s really getting $3.25 million in stock. “Plus appreciation? Over five years? That’s $25 to $30 million!
“Then let’s say a guy in that position borrowed $5 million against the $30 million in stock. It would seem a very conservative loan, right? Until the $30 million goes down to zero, which is what happened. So now he’s negative $5 million.”
True, that same Lehman banker got the other half of his compensation in cash. The banker nods. “For five years, he made two and a half million dollars a year in cash. So that’s twelve and a half million dollars. But of course he’s had to pay more or less 50 percent in taxes, so divide that and he’s got six and a quarter million. He’s probably spent that money over those five years—$1 million a year, it’s not so hard to do, right? So he has nothing—and he has to repay that $5 million loan.”
Barenaked Ladies: Snacktime!, a Free Holiday Download, and CD Giveaway (Thanks, Brad!)GeekDad: In the old days, cartoons produced for kids more or less stayed on target; but increasingly, we find that animated movies and shows include cultural references, guest appearances and humor that is clearly aimed at adults (while still appealing to kids, even if they don’t “get it”). Does Snacktime! bring a little of this approach to the children’s music genre?
ER: This is a delicate line where so many things fail. It was something we were very conscious about when making this record. Often, there are jokes for the kids (usually just fart jokes), and jokes for the adults (usually pop culture related fart jokes), and the whole thing just feels contrived, formulated, and pre-programmed. When it's done right, it's not marketed to segments of society, it's simply entertaining. Our goal with Snacktime was to make a record that was an enjoyable, and entertaining listen. Period. After you write a period, do you need to write "period"?... I don't think so. That's more of a spoken word thing I guess. BTW, while I said "Spoken Word", I held my 2 fingers up to indicate the quotes, but that's more of a visual thing I guess.
Dotter Dotter's 3D pixelcraft Discuss this on Boing Boing Offworld
More retro inspiration: there's something about how the shading softens the hard pixel lines in Tibori Design's Dotter Dotter series that makes me almost lust for either a next-gen game done up with the renderer or -- fire up your 3D printers -- figure playsets of each. Nintendo's already essentially done the latter nearly spot on with their Super Mario Bros. dioramas, so it's up to somebody now to do the former.
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Adults and Video Games
Younger generations tend to dominate the gaming world; however, older respondents who do play games are more avid players. Older gamers, particularly seniors, tend to play games more frequently. Over one-third (36%) of gamers 65 and older say they play games everyday or almost everyday, compared with 19% of adults aged 50-64, 20% of adults aged 30-49, and 20% of adults aged 18-29. Senior gamers may play more frequently because they have more time to play than younger gamers, as 77% of senior gamers reported being retired.
Members of Ypsilanti-Ann Arbor Area Robotics Club sorting parts for their motor controller
A Maker-centric event, particularly robot-filled this month, in Ann Arbor, Michigan:
The next GO-Tech meeting is this Tuesday, December 9, at a new earlier time, 7 pm.Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Events | Digg this!GO Tech (formerly NotBAGO) is a meeting for Ann Arbor (MI) area readers of Make Magazine, Circuit Cellar, Home Shop Machinist, Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools, slashdot, etc. That is, people who are interested in and make things using technology, whether that's a metal-cutting lathe or a Python script. A kind of generalized mixture of CerealBar, DorkBot, Oxford Geek night, and Portland Machinist Guild. We have machinists, electrical engineers, software folks, industrial control types, and so on. We share projects, information about tools and ideas, and connect with like-minded people. Everyone is welcome. We've been meeting since 7/07.
After introductions, we have 5 minute presentations by anyone who wants to talk. Available are wi-fi, video projector (VGA or video input), Mac laptop, extension cords, and copier.
This will be a joint meeting with YAAARC, the Ypsilanti Ann Arbor Area Robotics Club (http://www.yaaarc.org). So the obvious theme is ... robotics!
We'll be in our new location, A2 MechShop, which is located at 240 Parkland Plaza, Ann Arbor, MI 48103. For more directions and to sign up for GO-Tech emails, see http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/notbago/
We're all still moving in and getting settled at A2 MechShop, but as before we'll have plenty of space for meeting and even indoor space for demonstrating robots, etc.
This is our 17th consecutive meeting since the first in August 2007.
Meat Bun sells this fantastic t-shirt that mashes up a classic Judas Priest design with the space ship from scrolling-shooter vidgame Ikaruga. Brandon has the details over at Boing Boing Offworld.
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Jackson's camera has caught a man throwing himself into the side of a bus, apparently hoping to work an injury scam. It didn't work. The bus didn't stop. Viewers have also watched fights, car chases and break-ins...Adam's Block (adamsblock.com), "Front-window spy cam puts Tenderloin on the Web" (SFGate.com) (Thanks, Jason Tester!)
Jackson is now hoping to parlay that interest to a fundraising effort for (nearby church) Glide Memorial. Starting at noon on Dec. 13, he will host a 24-hour live Web fundraiser. He's hoping to pull in $5,000 to help fund Glide's programs...
What about those who say they are they an invasion of privacy? They will not get a sympathetic hearing from (police captain Gary) Jimenez.
"What's the big deal?" he said. "We may have a thousand cameras in the Tenderloin. You cannot walk down the street without being filmed. If a few more people want to jump on this, I say God bless 'em."
I live in Argentina, in South America and am an avid Heroes and House follower, but there's a problem watching those shows in our side of the world. Big network subsidiaries offer cable access to American TV shows, but for some unknown reason they can take up to six months to subtitle them in Spanish, and therefore we're stuck watching last season episodes all the time. I don't need subtitles to watch the series, since my grasp of the English language is decent enough to understand what the show is about.It's a really good point. Some of it may be due to rather old school and silly geographic "rights" issues, where certain contracts allow companies to only have the right to broadcast content in certain geographies so that the content owner can try to resell the same content in other areas as well. Yet, by now it should be clear that geographic specific content makes less and less sense, and really is detrimental to the content owners. Rather than making it easier to score big deals, all they're doing is encouraging piracy.
But every time you want to use any legal video site such as Hulu, the NBC website, Sling.com or even some bits of YouTube (Geo-restricted music videos), it will show an error message saying you're "geographically challenged." So instead of geolocalizing ads (as Google does, since I get ads for Deremate.com, a Latin American eBay clone here on Techdirt) they leave me no choice but to head over to the pirate bay to get my fix ad-free.
And even if your comprehension of English isn't good enough to watch the shows downloaded from Bittorrent, every single TV episode gets fansubbed within 24 hours of airing. I think the big networks are wasting a revenue opportunity by limiting who can watch their shows (6 months from now if you have cable) instead of letting you watch them on-line (unlimited audience potential) with some geo-located ads.
The DIY saliva test that tells if you're catching a cold...- Hmm, could be a fun kit to remake one day!
Scientists have developed a test that predicts how likely you are to catch a cold. They say that by measuring the level of a protein contained in saliva they can provide an advance warning of the risk of infection. In tests over three years on a group of 38 elite America's Cup yacht racers, the British researchers found that the amount of the bacteria-fighting protein immunoglobulin A - known as IgA - fell significantly shortly before three-quarters of the team fell ill.Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Maker Shed Store | Digg this!
The folks at Federated Media, who sell the sponsorships that keep Boing Boing (and Boing Boing tv) going, invited me to write a bunch of television and movie reviews for Fancast.com, which you can read more about here.
A disclaimer, in the interest of transparent über-sharing: I was paid to write these posts, and the site is an online video hub run by Comcast.
I wasn't told what to write about or not write about, and my work wasn't edited or modified in any way, so I picked freaky stuff I genuinely liked, and in a few cases, had some sort of personal connection with.
Each post is about something you can actually watch on Fancast, for free, no login required -- full-length movies, tv episodes, or trailers. You have to sit through ads, but IMO, it's not a bad deal.
Here are my posts so far (click on the links to launch them):
* Battlestar Galactica 1979, the original series, back when Starbuck was a dude.
* How great Matt Stone and Trey Parker are (to wit: the current South Park season, Team America revisited, and Cannibal: The Musical, a Trey Parker side project).
* The schlocky scifi television classic Lost In Space, shown at left.
* The spectacularly bad spy movie spoof Casino Royale 1967
* Transamerican Love Story , a transgendered-themed reality dating show starring two BoingBoing friends/readers/frequent link-contributors.
I'm due to contribute a few more items. I was surprised at just how much weird stuff they have available to view on the site -- stuff I'd actually watch. If you see anything really obscure and wonderful that I should write about next, nudge me in the comments here.
Radio Shack catalogs from 1939 to present via BBG.
This website is dedicated to America's technology store... RadioShack. For almost 65 years RadioShack has produced a catalog to rival no other electronics and technology company. Through the years, this catalog expanded to contain a mix of hi-fidelity stereos, amplifiers, radios, phonographs, speakers, televisions & antennas, CBs & communication equipment, computers, electronic components, electronic testing equipment, educational kits, toys, gadgets, batteries, electronic circuitry, and much more. Products from the RadioShack catalog were purchased by the everyday consumer, hobbyist, and professional. At this website you will be able to view these old RadioShack catalogs...year by year...page by page.Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Retro | Digg this!
Creative Commons is conducting a study on the meaning of “NonCommercial” and you can weigh in by answering a detailed questionnaire on the subject. We’ve extended the deadline for participation to December 14 (originally December 7) as we’re still getting healthy response via all those who blogged about the questionnaire this week.NonCommercial study questionnaire extended to December 14
This is a great development; Google is selling G1s that are not only unlocked, but that will accept unofficial builds of the Android operating system. Google's warning will be pure delight for makers and hackers: "Since the devices can be configured with system software not provided by or supported by Google or any other company, end users operate these devices at their own risk."
The Android Dev Phone 1 is a SIM-unlocked and hardware-unlocked device that is designed for advanced developers. The device ships with a system image that is fully compatible with Android 1.0, so you can rely on it when developing your applications. You can use any SIM in the device and can flash custom Android builds that will work with the unlocked bootloader. Unlike the bootloader on retail devices, the bootloader on the Android Dev Phone 1 does not enforce signed system images. The Android Dev Phone 1 should also appeal to developers who live outside of T-Mobile geographies.
Devices for Developers [via Android Guys]
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santa's on his way
goats
dadawan
busted tees
panic
ropeadope
threadless
a softer world
wordwear
Now Playing in New Rochelle, "Book, Interrupted"! (Thanks, Robert!)
Students at New Rochelle School High School are going to find it difficult to complete their next assignment: comparing the film adaptation of "Girl, Interrupted" to the best-selling book. In the book, Kaysen recounts her confinement at a Massachussets mental hospital in the 1960's.Pages from the middle of the book have been torn out by the school district after having been deemed "inappropriate" by school officials due to sexual content and strong language. Removed is a scene where the rebellious Lisa (played by Angela Jolie in the movie) encourages Susanna (played by Winona Ryder) to circumvent hospital rules against sexual intercourse by engaging in oral sex instead.
"The material was of a sexual nature that we deemed inappropriate for teachers to present to their students," said English Department Chariperson Leslie Altschul, "since the book has other redeeming features, we took the liberty of bowdlerizing."
"Bowdlerizing is a particularly disturbing form of censorship since it not only suppresses specific content deemed 'objectionable,' but also does violence to the work by removing material that the author thought integral," said Joan Bertin, Executive Director of the National Coalition Against Censorship. "It is a kind of literary fraud perpetrated on an unsuspecting audience."
Over at Global Voices, Elia Varela Serra has an item up about the role short SMS messages, and Twitter, are playing in the presidential elections taking place in Ghana.
One of the Twitter users that twittered the vote and the subsequent results almost minute by minute was Ghanaelections, a Twitter account was set up by the African Elections project, aimed at developing the capacity of the media in ICTs in order for them to use it as a tool for election coverage in Ghana, Cote d'lvoire and Guinea from 2008 to 2009.Twittering the Ghanaian Elections (Global Voices, thanks EthanZ)Other twitterers had more modest intentions and simply wanted to share their joy as first time voters, such as Kwabena, who the day before the election had announced “I'm hopin to see long queues on Sunday. Kill the apathy, Ghana”.
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Jonas Trampedach's tea bag coffin -
Where Do tea bags go to die?. Usually squashed on the side of the saucer next to the cup, or if you have a little less decorum the table will probably be just fine. Jonas Trampedach has been observing the behaviour of tea drinkers and has evidently been learning a lot. Consequently he has developed a solution to the bag dilemma that is as simple as it is ingenious. With the ‘Tea bag Coffin’, the drinker can tidily bury the bag under the cup and out of the way. RIP.
A Queensland man has been charged for re-publishing on a video-sharing site a viral video of a man swinging a baby around like a rag doll.The controversial three-minute video had already been published widely across the internet and shown on American TV news shows. The clip can still be found online today.
Chris Illingworth, 60, a father of four from Maroochydore, thought he would share it with fellow users of Liveleak, a site similar to YouTube but focused on news and current events. In two years, he has uploaded hundreds of videos to Liveleak.
His home was raided on Sunday, November 30, by Queensland Police from Task Force Argos, which specialises in combating child pornography and child groomers.
He was charged with using the internet to access and publish child-abuse material and is scheduled to appear in court in Maroochydore on December 18.
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1. Set up a large, well capitalized hedge fund. About $5B should do it.How to Pay for National Health Insurance2. The prospectus of the fund should note its purpose is to “Seek out profit opportunities via arbitraging inefficiencies in the markets and health care system of the United States.” Include standard “Socially Conscious” fund language in clauses such as Do well by doing good.
3. Launch the fund — and promptly max out your leverage. Today’s environment makes it difficult to go 50 to 1, but getting 10 or 20 to 1 should not be much problem.
4. Use the money to write Credit Default Swaps with a notational value of $3 trillion dollars. The premia on these CDS should be about 10-15% or so.
5. Rollover the cash premiums — about $350 billion dollars worth — into a national fund. Use it to buy health care insurance for all US citizens.
6. Declare that due to current credit conditions, your unfortunately must announce to your counter-parties that you will be defaulting on these CDS. Note that significant amounts of this paper are held by JP Morgan and Citi. Another trillion is held by China and Japan, with Sovereign Wealth Funds owning the rest.
7. Send out a press release announcing “systemic risk.” Tell the Treasury Secretary and the Federal Reserve Chief that your imminent collapse will wreak global havoc. Apply for bailout.
"In all cases, these remains appear to have naturally separated from the body," said the B.C. Coroners Service."Canada coroner matches pair of mysterious feet"
DNA testing linked one of the Canadian feet to a depressed man who disappeared in 2007. Investigators have also concluded that two of the five feet belonged to one man who has not yet been identified.
Experts say that when a human body is submerged in the ocean, the arms, legs, hands, feet and head usually come off the body. The Coroners Service said it is difficult to determine how long remains have been in the water.
MAKE reader James Coxon emailed to tell us about the recent Cambridge University Spaceflight project that teamed up university students with kids from the SPARKS science club to send four teddy bears aloft via helium filled high altitude balloon.
The aim of the experiment was to determine which materials provided the best insulation against the -53 ° C temperatures experienced during the journey. Each of the bears wore a different space suit designed by the 11-13 year olds from SPARKS.Read more | Permalink | Comments | Digg this!
Cambridge University Spaceflight is a student-run society aiming to reduce the cost of sub-orbital spaceflight. They have launched several payloads to near space on high-altitude helium balloons and are currently designing a system to launch a rocket from a balloon platform to outer space for under £1000 per launch. They have run several outreach events and are currently holding the UK Space Challenge 2009, as part of the University of Cambridge's 800th Anniversary. Twenty four teams of science students aged 14-18 are competing to design a scientific experiment that will be taken to near space on a high-altitude helium balloon.
Jesse Dylan and Science Commons have released an informational vide explaining the idea behind Science Commons as part of the Creative Commons annual campaign. Dylan is a filmmaker, most well known for the Obama yes we can video with will.i.am, and has also directed short films for Creative Commons and on Net Neutrality. I've blogged about it as well at Science Blogs.Making the Web Work for Science (Thanks, John!)
Japan's Star Dancers staged a ballet based on the Dragon Quest series of role playing games. Brownless posted video over at Boing Boing Gadgets!
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Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.
From the MAKE: Flickr pool
5Volt turned an old VCR's vacuum fluorescent display into a headphone amp -
VFDs are common on VCRs. I have a few of them I took from some broken VCRs. Last night I was working on how I could use them as vacuum triodes. I don’t have much experience with real vacuum tubes so I had to invent some, possibly wrong, arrangements, but I finally got something.Schematic and further details available - A Vacuum Fluorescent Display as a headphone amplifier Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Electronics | Digg this!
?Artist Gayle Chong Kwan has recreated the ancient city of "Atlantis" using recycled plastic bottles and other food packaging collected from ordinary citizens in London. The project attempts to question "notions of waste, climate change and how this is changing our planet's climate." Interesting installation made of objects that will also be recycled (again) after the show.
via EcoFriend
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Photography by Maurizio Lamponi Leopardi
If the headlamp on a classic Vespa or Lambretta scooter can illuminate a twisting Italian roadway at night, why couldn't it light up a desk?
In the hands of Milanese artisan Maurizio Lamponi Leopardi, the polished chrome, handlebars, and headlights of the iconic 1960s motorbikes now find new uses in gorgeous halogen lamps.
Leopardi was trained as an engineer and surveyor, but decided to pursue the artist's life in the 1970s. He made high-end artworks, including lamps, but followed another passion as an art world photographer and graphic artist until the bottom fell out in 2001.
At that point, according to the broken English on his website, he decided to devote "new ideas and energies to what, since child, always has been the most important and amusing job of all his life: 'TO BUILT.'"
And what wonders he has built. The object does not exist that Leopardi cannot turn into a fantastic lamp, perhaps because his middle name sounds so much like lampioni, the Italian word for large lamps. Seltzer bottles, coffee pots, hand irons, and hair dryers are all balanced ethereally on slender wire stems. Even giant razor blades and German helmets with the wings of Mercury find themselves central players in Leopardi's whimsical creations.
"I found some old parts in a junkyard and decided to bring them back to a new life with a different function, to make light in houses," Leopardi says in an email, translated from his Italian.
All of his work is informed by another of his passions: airplanes. His lamps not only seem to float on air, but many of them also feature handles that jut from the sides like the wings on a plane. He even makes a series of lamps out of model planes, in shiny aluminum and in wood, evoking everything from the dawn of flight to the Space Age.
In the motorcycle lamps, it's the handlebars that give flight to the light. In bright primary colors, the lamps have such a realistic look that you want to grip them and feel the wind blowing back your hair as you soar above the farms of Leopardi's native Lombardy countryside.
>> Leopardi's Lamps: lamponislamps.com
From the column Made on Earth - MAKE 13, page 24 - Dan Fost.
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"Concentric Wave", permanently located at the Harley Gallery in Nottinghamshire, UK, is another cool kinetic sculpture by Martin Smith that mimics the effect of water droplets falling and splashing on a pool of water by creating a mechanical wave from rings of steel. Check out the video for the full effect of this wonder.
Concentric Wave by Martin Smith
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Best known for inventing TV-B-Gone, a keychain that turns off TVs in public places, Mitch Altman is interested in any technology that gives people more choices for improving their lives.
You don’t have to be a Buddhist monk to meditate, or a Sleeping Beauty to sleep well. Achieve these altered states of consciousness, and others, with this simple microcontroller device.Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in DIY Projects | Digg this!What would happen if you could play a recording of brain waves into someone’s brain? That question popped into my mind one day while I was meditating, and it turns out that there are devices that can do this. Sound and Light Machines (SLMs) produce sound and light pulses at brain wave frequencies, which help people sleep, wake up, meditate, or experience whatever state of consciousness the machine is programmed for. The first time I tried one was a trip! Not only did I follow the sequence into a deep meditation and then out again (feeling wonderful!), but along the way I had beautiful, outrageous hallucinations.
This interesting project by French artist Stephane Vigny, is a combination of a cuckoo clock and a giant loud speaker. When the bass is loud, the largest speaker on the bottom is released on a hinge-mechanism and catapulted into the room, retreating back to the cabinet when the sound softens. Although we're not sure if this increases the dance action of the space, it's a cool idea to allow sound to exist as a kinetic object of sorts.
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If you liked the VCR cat feeder, then you are going to love the iPod treat dispenser for dogs. If you have an iPhone, and a lonely dog, this is a must-do project.
Stephen Myers, a Ph. D student in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Florida, rigged up a webcam so he could check in on his dog while he's in school. But that wasn't enough: Myers built a motorized dog treat dispenser out of a CD spindle case, cardboard scraps, random household junk and a servo motor, then hooked it up to the internet using an ioBridge "Smart Board." He can now hit a button on his iPhone to see his dog, then hit another button to dispense a dog treat.
More about the iPhone-enabled dogcam and treat dispenser
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I really like these Maker-like shirts from GLENNZ. Here are some of my favorites... (above).
Here is another interesting piece by Bram Knaapen. This time it's a project that tries to bring even more interactivity to skateboarding, an already interactive sport. The website has more videos and pictures of these interactive skate-able objects.
As part of the "User Master Class" me and my teammates(3) got the assignment to design a "playful" object that fits in the "Open-ended play" category. The target group were "skate-boarders". Client: Area51, a skatepark in Eindhoven, duration: 3 week, this iteration: 1 week.The final design consists out of 4 box-like objects. On both ends of the boxes are distance sensors. The moment a skater jumps over a box an additional row of LEDs will go on. Depending on what side is up the row will be red or blue. When the box is on it's side both sensors will work and there is the opportunity to "battle". It's up to the skaters to think of games to play with it.
More about Interactive Skateable Objects
In the Maker Shed:
DIY Design Electronics Kit
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Photo credit: xyzproject edited by Andre Deutmeyer
Some of the online collaboration tools I reviewed share the same features, like collaborative editing or file sharing. Others are completely unique, for example one of the tools brings new meaning to the term "whiteboard". But each and every one of the them promises to do one thing: allow groups, whether geographically distributed or sitting across the conference table from each other, to work together faster and more efficiently than before.
Here the eight online collaboration tools I have personally selected for you this week:
- Live Mesh
Live Mesh is a great new cloud based service offered by Microsoft that allows you to synchronize files across Windows, OS X platforms, and with your mobile devices, so you always have the latest versions handy and easily accessible. Live Mesh provides you with 5 GB of free storage space to do this. Live Mesh can also serve as an online collaboration environment that allows others to access your files from any device via the web and notifies you whenever someone changes a file. Live Mesh further enhances online collaboration by giving you remote desktop functionality. Live Mesh allows you or others to connect to your other computer and access its desktop and the applications on it as if you were sitting right in front of it. Live Mesh promises to work across both Windows and OSX operating systems, but from my first impression with it, the Mac compatible side looks to still be underdevelopment. The Windows side is up and running though. http://www.mesh.com/
- VMukti
VMukti is a web conferencing solution. It combines Skype-like features (audio and video conferencing, chat) with real time data sharing and collaboration tools. VMukti has a built in whiteboard, file-sharing, presentation, remote monitoring/controlling/sharing, and scheduling features. Basically, VMukti is an all-in-one web collaboration solution that uses a p2p technology solution to deliver its web conferencing solution quickly and reliably. The free service level is ad supported. And because it is free, you do not receive any professional support though there is a support forum available for you to pose questions and receive answers. If you are looking to deploy VMukti across a large organization, VMukti offers an enterprise level option as well, complete with professional 24/7 tech support. And FYI before you jump ahead to download it, VMukti is a big program - 370MB. http://www.vmukti.com/
- Lotus Sametime Unyte
Lotus Sametime Unyte is a desktop application from IBM that connects web conferencing (audio and video) with screen sharing, document sharing, and remote desktop application control with anyone. Lotus Sametime Unyte only needs you to have the application downloaded on each computer to be connected. Unfortunately the free service level of Lotus Sametime Unyte only allows users to collaborate one-on-one, and as a free solution you do not get access to the remote desktop application control feature. But you can still easily start web conferences, and preform screen sharing and file sharing. If you want to allow multiple people to simultaneously view your desktop, share documents, and have access to the remote desktop control feature you have to sign up for one of the subscription plans. http://www.unyte.net/
- Mindquarry
Mindquarry DO is an open source, cross platform (Windows, OSX, Linux) collaborative software platform for file sharing, task management, and team collaboration via email integration, wiki editing, and forums. Mindquarry no longer runs as a cloud based web application because of lack of funding, but the desktop client can still be downloaded and used as a collaboration solution. All in all, it seems like a capable alternative to Sharepoint or Basecamp but with fewer features. http://www.mindquarry.com/do
- Dabbleboard
Dabbleboard is a collaborative online whiteboard. The interface is intuitively easy to use, so you don't have to worry about any kind of learning curve before you can begin drawing on it. Dabbleboard automatically detects basic shapes as you draw them, so you don't need to select the 'circle' button to draw circles and the 'rectangle' button to draw rectangles, etc. All you need to do is start drawing. Furthermore, Dabbleboard lets you save any of your drawings (whole or parts) to a library. Once saved, you can access those drawing from your 'Library Pane' and you can easily incorporate your past drawings into your current drawing. Additionally, Dabbleboard is social. Not only can you simultaneously edit and create drawings with other users, Dabbleboard has built in voice and video chat functions which make collaboration easy. Also Dabbleboard allows you to share your drawings publicly with others. Public drawings can be copied to your own library so that you can use them in your drawings. http://www.dabbleboard.com
- TextFlow
TextFlow takes a unique approach to collaborative word processing. Rather than try to copy what online collaborative word processing solutions - like Google Docs - do and compete with them, TextFlow creates a symbiotic relationship with them. TextFlow allows you to take multiple copies of the same document (Microsoft Word, Google Doc, or others), drag and drop them into the TextFlow environment, and Textflow then automatically looks at the changes made to those documents and instantly puts them together into one document. At which point, you can select the changes that you like best, and then export the new document back to the Word format or other document file. They call this process 'Parellel Word Processing'. I just call it useful. http://www.textflow.com/
- WriteWith
WriteWith is a collaborative online word processing platform similar to Google Docs, but with greater functionality. Like Google Docs, you can upload Microsoft Word or other word processor documents from your desktop, share, simultaneously edit them with others online, and then easily export back to Word or RTF to save your own copy of the document locally. WriteWith picks up where Google Docs falls short by adding wiki-like functionality. With WriteWith you can track changes by user and store revision history. You can also assign documents to individual users so that they know what documents they need to work on. Further enhancing collaboration is the built in text chat function. http://www.writewith.com/
- Etherpad
Etherpad is an online real-time collaborative note taking solution. It is similar to collaborative word processing solutions like Google Docs but with different functionality. Unlike Google Docs, you cannot upload and edit text documents... for that matter you cannot download what you create either. Your pad (document) is stored on the Etherpad servers. Unique to Etherpad is the wiki-like revision tracking. Etherpad saves your revision history, so anytime you want to jump back and compare your pad with past versions, you can. Also unique is the text highlighting functionality that Etherpad deploys to differentiate each collaborator's text. The text is highlighted according to user, so it is very easy to see which of your friends / co-workers wrote what. Unfortunately, because of the high amount of server-load that Etherpad is experiencing, Etherpad is in closed beta right now. http://www.etherpad.com
Here is our MAKE gift guide for the CNC hobbyist on a budget. There are literally hundreds of different types of CNC setups. We can't cover all the products out there, but we did manage to pick about 20 products that we think are great.
The NYTimes front page reproduced alphabetically with a scalpel and glue by Kim Rugg via Waxy.
OOAK Needle Felted Santa Cthulhu Figure AHA Art Doll
(via Neatorama)
Translation: a third party now monitors every request made to Wikipedia from the six ISPs that participate in the Great Firewall of Britain.
Our routers firstly check the IP address of the server that’s hosting the URL you’re trying to access. If they determine that the IP address is also used to host one of the websites on the IWF list then your request is passed to the IWF proxies. A lookup is then done and if the address you’re trying to access matches one on the list then the request is denied.
Great Firewall of Britain
(Thanks, Seth!)
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Yoko Ono has kindly emailed Boing Boing this beautiful photograph of her husband, former Beatle John Lennon, who was murdered on this day in 1980. Photographer Allan Tannenbaum took the image on November 26, 1980, just a couple of weeks before Lennon passed away.
"Please share your memories of John here at this website," Ms. Ono says to Boing Boing readers, and, "WAR IS OVER! IF YOU WANT IT. You can download the poster here. Print it out, and display it in your window, school, workplace, car & elsewhere over the holiday season."
Rare harp-piano by Dietz, Austria or Germany, ca. 1840 (Thanks, Steve!)
An extraordinarily rare harp-piano by Dietz, Austria or Germany, ca. 1840. The strings are plucked as on a harp, operated through a piano keyboard.
Company tries to get gun classed as medical device (via Geekologie)
"It's something that they need to assist them in daily living," says Matthew Carmel, president of Constitution Arms in Maplewood, New Jersey, which hopes to manufacture the Palm Pistol - now just a patent and specifications."The justification for this would be no more or less for a [walking aid] or wheelchair, or any number of things that are medical devices," he says.
The sales information reads: "It is also ideal for seniors, disabled or others who may have limited strength or manual dexterity. Using the thumb instead of the index finger for firing, it significantly reduces muzzle drift, one of the principal causes of inaccurate targeting. Point and shoot couldn't be easier."
Betamaxmas
(Thanks, Tavie!)
Forrest J Ackerman, writer-editor who coined 'sci-fi,' dies at 92 (Thanks to all the readers who suggested this!)
Among those who grew up reading Famous Monsters of Filmland was author Stephen King. Other childhood readers included movie directors Joe Dante, John Landis and Steven Spielberg, who once autographed a poster of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" for Ackerman, saying, "A generation of fantasy lovers thank you for raising us so well."Ackerman was a celebrity in his own right, once signing 10,000 autographs during a three-day monster-movie convention in New York City.
This, after all, was the man who created and wrote the comic book characters Vampirella and Jeanie of Questar and was the ultimate fan's fan: a man who actually had known Lugosi and Karloff and whose priceless collection of science-fiction, horror and fantasy artifacts ran to some 300,000 items.
(Image: Forrest J Ackerman at the Ackermansion.jpg by Alan Light, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
Instructables user action_owl created this fun keyless entry system using a classic NES, an Arduino, Processing, and a spare CD-ROM.
Once activated NoKES (NintendO Keyless Entry System) will be blinking letting you know that it is alert and keeping guard. Once the Start button is pressed on the controller, the arduino starts recording what buttons are pressed, converts them into a number and adds them together. When you press Start + Select the Arduino compares that number to the combination that you have set.
If you enter an Incorrect combination the arduino activates an attached circuit and plays a sound. It then sends a serial signal to processing and snaps a picture with an attached Webcam (so if someone is messing with your lock you have a picture of them).If you enter a correct combination the arduino sends a signal to the cd-rom to eject and thus will lock or unlock the door. Upon a correct combination a signal is also sent to processing which plays a sound.
Obviously, this one is a prototype. For anything besides securing your bedroom from nosey siblings, you'd probably want a beefier lock, and the software should check the specific combination instead of summing the keys. With a few tweaks, though, this would be a fun addition to the garage, dorm room, or a boring office space.
Raise your hand if you're thinking of the Contra code right now.
Nintendo Keyless Entry System (NoKES) [via zombie_funk]
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