New Zealand's stupid new copyright law that would cost you your Internet connection if you were accused of copyright infringement three times (without proof of any wrongdoing) is officially dead. Massive, global interest in the law, as well as a series of savvy Internet- and meatspace-protests convinced the government to climb down off the ledge that the American movie and music companies had lured it onto.

"Allowing section 92A to come into force in its current format would not be appropriate given the level of uncertainty around its operation," said Commerce Minister Simon Power in a statement. "These discussions have exposed some aspects of section 92A which require further consideration. While the government remains intent on tackling this problem, the legislation itself needs to be re-examined and reworked to address concerns held by stakeholders and the government..."

Users and ISPs were most concerned that the rules would apparently disconnect even huge businesses after a few employees downloaded illicit files. A high-profile judge raised concerns that the procedure could run afoul of contract law in New Zealand. ISPs weren't keen on disconnecting their own customers for the benefit of one set of industries, and they couldn't believe the law provided no indemnification from lawsuits; the ISP could be sued both by users and rightsholders if they didn't like the way it was handling the three strikes program. And users wanted some form of third-party or judicial arbitration before any Internet disconnection...

As for all those worries about false positives and the quality of evidence? RIANZ has never taken them too seriously, since (like the RIAA) it insists that its detection methodology is basically foolproof. In a recent interview posted on the RIANZ website, CEO Campbell Smith was asked if he would "eat his hat" if music industry copyright notifications turned out to contain numerous errors.

"3 strikes" strikes out in NZ as government yanks law

In the Make: Online Toolbox, we try to focus on tools that fly under the radar of more conventional tool coverage: in-depth tool-making projects, strange or specialty tools unique to a trade or craft that can be useful elsewhere, tools and techniques you may not know about, but once you do, and incorporate them into your workflow, you'll wonder how you ever lived without them. And, in the spirit of the times, we pay close attention to tools that you can get on the cheap, make yourself, refurbish, etc.

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We've covered the basics of getting started in soldering, basic soldering tools, and other aspects of beginning soldering a lot here on Make: Online. We've also covered some of the ways that makers improve their soldering experience by making their own helping hands, fume extractors, iron-controllers, and other tools and benchtop hacks. Here are some of our faves from over the years.

Funky-fresh homemade soldering stand

How-To: Variable temperature soldering iron controller

Hacker's soldering station

Mint tin fume extractor

DIY Solder fume extractor

Here's the "solder cup" set-up I use for capturing all of the desolder I suck up with my desoldering tool.

Extra Hands For Soldering

Round up of some other Third Hand tools.

USB powered soldering iron helps you do projects on the road

"Insanely hot" DIY hot air soldering iron

More:

Soldering Tutorial - Make Video Podcast

Maker to Maker - Soldering on Make: television

• Make: Online Toolbox: Jigs, clamps, and helping hands
• Toolbox: Ten tools you won't want to live without
• Toolbox: Benchtop power supplies
• Toolbox: Portable lighting
• Toolbox: Portable workbench
• Toolbox: From "miserable old box" to workshop showpiece

In the Maker Shed:

<a href="http://www.makershed.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=MSBUN1&Click=19209
">Learn to Solder Bundle
Our Price: $59.88
Our Learn to Solder bundle includes a bunch of great products that will get you well on your way to becoming a soldering pro.

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Many lawyers are taught (or learn from experience) to approach any legal issue by going to an extreme position, on the assumption that eventually there will be a negotiation with opposing counsel and a settlement will get worked out somewhere in the middle. That often made the most sense in many cases, but it doesn't work very well in lots of situations online today. And that's part of the reason we see, time after time, companies reach for the legal nastygram solution when an open conversation would work just fine. The latest example of that: Boing Boing alerts us to news that the site Apartment Therapy was the recipient of a DMCA takedown notice (actually, to be accurate, the NYT's lawyers went over their head and straight to their hosting company). At issue were blog posts on the AT site, which linked to the NY Times articles, but also used images from the Times' site.

There may be a fair use claim that could be made, but even if we ignore that and assume that this is, absolutely, infringement, the entire approach by the NY Times doesn't make much sense, and is representative of that "attack" line of thinking. As AT notes, if the NY Times had just approached them and asked them to stop using its photos, it would have. But, instead, the lawyers had to send a DMCA legal nastygram. Even then, it's difficult to see how this makes sense. The AT posts were designed to get people more interested in the NY Times' articles, by giving them a taste and sending them to the site. Why would anyone at the NY Times want to stop that? And that's especially true after the NY Times was just on the opposite end of a recent lawsuit. If people had just looked at this reasonably, rather than taking the default legal position, the NY Times might have realized that this site benefits rather than harms them, and even if they had felt otherwise, realized there was a much friendlier way to approach the situation.

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Makeblog has the story of Julia Suits's stupendous hardware-store chessmen made from nuts, bolts and flanges. I like chess sets more than I like chess -- I've always made them out of bits and pieces, but it never occurred to me to try nuts and bolts (though we've blogged a similar set before, I think this one's nicer).

Headed toward the light-bulb aisle in my local hardware store a few years ago,I stopped to admire the bins of nuts,bolts and the like. This is not unusual for me who likens this kind of scene to a candy store. I love metal,and have cast and welded all types as a sculpture major in graduate school. When I saw the little bin containing two different types of castle nuts,I immediately thought of rooks. At the time my three sons and I hosted a weekly chess club,so chess was on my mind a lot. With my boys in tow,I returned with graph paper and we computed what sorts of bits we might want (we didn't know for sure) for each type of piece and how many in total. An hour later, after poring over numerous bins and waiting for the clerk to saw the threaded rod into measured lengths (for kings, rooks,and bishops), we went home with about fifteen pounds of loot, including spray paint for the black pieces. We created a set not far different from what is pictured here. Since then we've added washers to some and added a flanged hex nut to each of the bases to make the set uniform and even more stable. The hardware chessmen were a huge hit and the other boys built their own sets.

Hardware store chessmen

As we speculated a couple of weeks back, it has come to pass. Reader mknewman writes to tell us that comedian Stephen Colbert has won the vote to have his name immortalized (or at least until it crashes) as the moniker on NASA's newest addition to the International Space Station. We can but wonder what NASA will do now. "NASA's mistake was allowing write-ins. Colbert urged viewers of his Comedy Central show, 'The Colbert Report' to write in his name. And they complied, with 230,539 votes. That clobbered Serenity, one of the NASA choices, by more than 40,000 votes. Nearly 1.2 million votes were cast by the time the contest ended Friday."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We're super excited and honored to share a streaming preview of new work from a Boing Boing hero, the legendary and wonderful Mister David Byrne. He's teamed up with the Grammy-nominated Brazilian Girls to release an English-language version of the song "Losing Myself."

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Listen to the track here.

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Byrne duets with lead singer Sabina Sciubba on the new version of the song, available through iTunes on March 24. Here's more:

Sciubba explains that the song is "a journey through New York City’s subway, streets, crowds, nights and clubs. Everywhere you go, you leave something behind: your scarf, a shoe, a memory, your money, an ear, your friends, your head ...until you end up being light as a feather and you have nothing left but your freedom."

The original version of the song, recorded in French, was released last summer on the Brazilian Girls latest full length album New York City (Verve Forecast). The Grammy-nominated album was applauded by critics, with the New York Times declaring it “a benediction, or a prayer, from an analog limbo," and Variety proclaiming them “the only dance band that matters."

Brazilian Girls are Sabina Sciubba (vocals), Didi Gutman (keyboards) and Aaron Johnston (drums). More about the collaboration here. (thanks, Danielle Spencer!)

snitch writes "In a recent interview at QCon SF 2008,Tim Bray talks about why he is not convinced with the buzz surrounding Rich Internet Applications and shares his ideas on Cloud Computing. He also expresses his opinion regarding the debate REST vs. WS-* and the future directions web technologies will be taking. Tim Bray also addresses the way web technologies are affected by the current economic turmoil and gives his insight into which paradigms he sees going forward in these challenging times."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We've talked about the ridiculousness of the various music collections societies being involved in the discussions on new music business models. To them, the answer is always the same: add another license and let us collect it. They're middlemen and they take in tons of money and would only be all too happy to take in more. Some got upset with us in the comments, by noting that some of these collections societies are non-profits. In fact, the new Choruss offering, which we've already explained why it's a bad idea that's more of a bait-and-switch than anything useful, has been described as a similar "non-profit" collections group.

But, as we've noted in the past, supposedly nonprofit collections groups such as SoundExchange (a spinoff of the RIAA) are notorious for not finding artists to pay -- even some of the biggest names in the business. Oh, and did we mention that if the royalties go "unclaimed" the recording industry (via SoundExchange) often gets to keep the money? Given that bit of info, it's perhaps no surprise at all that P2Pnet is noticing that SoundExchange's own tax returns note that the nonprofit was sitting on over $100 million at the end of 2007, a pretty significant leap over previous years, and a somewhat startling sum for a supposed "nonprofit" in charge of both collecting and distributing funds.

It seems like those musicians sure are difficult to find.

The P2Pnet report also points out that it will be interesting to see how much SoundExchange has spent on lobbying efforts. SoundExchange is actually barred from lobbying the government, but has been ignoring that for years by funding musicFIRST, a recording industry lobbying group that's trying to add a new license for radio stations to pay (collected by SoundExchange, of course) by claiming that radio is actually a form of piracy.

So, even if Choruss or these other collections societies seem to be designed with the best intentions in mind (and I'm sure they are), it seems that they're wide open to abuse -- which is yet another reason to be quite worried about simply handing over the entire industry's business model to such an operation.

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A recent shooting in Germany has raised the ire of many politicians and officials, and they're turning to video games as a scapegoat after it was revealed that the shooter was a fan of Counterstrike and played Far Cry 2 the night before the rampage. First, a major retailer decided to drop mature-rated games altogether, and then the Minister for Social Affairs suggested restricting "addictive games," such as World of Warcraft, to adults only. Despite an unfavorable reaction from gamers and game developers alike, the chief of Germany's national police union has now spoken out against violent games as well, saying, "The world would be no poorer if there were no more killergames."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "A Princeton senior has found a bug in the hardware design for the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In the hardware used to record and capture events in the LHC, she discovered errors that were leading to the appearances of double images because of particle streams known as jets. 'Xiaohang Quan '09 was working on her senior thesis when she found a miscalculation in the hardware of the world's largest particle accelerator. Quan, a physics concentrator, traveled to Geneva, Switzerland, last week with physics professors Christopher Tully GS '98, Jim Olsen and Daniel Marlow for the annual meeting of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). This year, however, they also came to discuss Quan's discovery with the designers of the hardware for the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment, which, as part of the Large Hadron Collider, has the potential to revolutionize particle physics.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Clark Little takes photos of "The Most Beautiful Waves... Ever." Pitted... so pitted. (Thanks, Shawn Connally!)

The shortages that accompanied the launch of the Nintendo Wii weren't too surprising, since they seem to be par for the course for any new game console these days. What was a little surprising was just how long the shortages lasted after the Wii's late 2006 introduction. If you still haven't had a chance to find a Wii in-stock, your wait should soon be over, as an exec from the retailer GameStop says they "finally have enough inventory on the shelf" (via Engadget), and the shortage of Wiis should be letting up. Clearly the Wii has been a huge hit, but it would seem that Nintendo could have gotten a handle on its production output in less than, eh, two and a half years. There's also speculation that the weakness of the dollar was leading Nintendo to send Wiis to places like Europe with stronger currencies (and hence more profits when Nintendo converts foreign currencies back into yen). Or did Nintendo just leverage the scarcity so it would contribute to the Wii's appeal?

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.

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An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft, inspired perhaps by the ease of selecting and installing iPhone apps, has taken a similar approach to gather back market share of its IIS web server in a predominantly Apache/PHP market. 10 open source CMS, gallery, wiki, and blog tools were chosen to populate the eco-system, dubbed Web App Gallery. Developers must agree to principles and can now submit their PHP or .NET application for inclusion. Once an application is in the gallery, Windows users use Microsoft Web Platform Installer, released in a keynote at MIX this week, which inspects the the local system, and installs and configures dependencies like the IIS webserver, PHP, URL re-writers, and file permissions. Screenshots show this to be quite easy for the typical computer user. This could provide some real competition for WAMP and Linux shell install processes."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

UK designer Giles Miller makes these laptop cases (and a number of furniture pieces) from recycled cardboard. I love the way he's altered the corrugations to create designs in the cardboard.

Corrugated Cardboard Laptop Case

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Over at Boing Boing Gadgets, Rob has the details on how to cut credit cards to make an iPhone stand that (duh!) fits in your wallet!

Whenever we talk about the importance of freeing the infinite and charging for the scarce when it comes to music, we end up having people try to simplify that down to "make money on concerts." That's never been true, however. While we do think performances are one scarcity that is worth exploring, and which has proven to be quite lucrative for many performers -- both large and small -- we've never thought that live concerts alone would suffice as the business model. There are other, more important scarcities, such as access and attention, that can be much more lucrative. Still, it's worth exploring how well live concerts alone could do in replacing recording industry revenue, and in a long (80 pages) and thorough paper by Mark Schulz (a law professor), exactly that exploration occurs (thanks to the anonymous reader who sent this in). It's well worth reading, as there's plenty of food for thought. Basically, he points out that free file sharing can help many artists in numerous ways, but he's not convinced that touring alone can help. He goes through a pretty thorough explanation for why touring alone isn't enough -- including the fact that a disproportionate amount of the profits from live performances tends to go to a rather small number of artists, just as the number of musicians creating music is exploding.

While I think the paper is worth reading, and makes a ton of good points, there are a few problems with it. First, I don't know many people who seriously think that touring alone would be the new business model. Most people think that it's one component among a variety of new business models that are available. And, indeed, Schulz is good about mentioning some of the alternative additional business models out there. But, then he sort of ignores them in going back to discussing how touring alone isn't enough. It's sort of a nice strawman, but it's besides the point, since almost no one really believes that touring alone is the model. Then, there's the issue of extrapolating out from the existing "touring" market, most of which really looks at bigger tours, rather than at the market for local bands playing local shows. And, while he does include a discussion on making the live performance business "more productive," I'm not sure he really takes into account some of what's been happening -- such as the efforts Jonathan Coulton puts into building up a critical mass in a certain area before parachuting in for a live performance. The ability to do such things only will grow over time, and not enough attention is paid to them. In fact, we're already seeing live music bring in more money than recorded music in some markets.

So, while it's a very good paper, and I agree with the overall strawman conclusion (touring alone isn't enough to replace the entire recording industry revenue), I'm not sure that's meaningful or really tells the full story. Touring does and will continue to work incredibly well for some bands, it will be a component of other bands' business models, and it won't be a part of others'. But there are plenty of different business models that can deal with that.

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University of Washington ecologist Joshua Tewskbury spends much of his time on a quest for wild chili peppers. Fueled by coca leaves, he is seeking answers to questions about the evolution of the plants, specifically why wild chilis are hot. In central Bolivia, Tewksbury is exploring the natural function of capsaicin, the heat-generating chemical found in the plant. Smithsonian's Brendan Borrell recently went into the forest with him. From Smithsonian (Wikimedia Commons photo):

Bolivia is believed to be the chili's motherland, home to dozens of wild species that may be the ancestors of all the world's chili varieties—from the mild bell pepper to the medium jalapeño to the rough-skinned naga jolokia, the hottest pepper ever tested. The heat-generating compound in chilies, capsaicin, has long been known to affect taste buds, nerve cells and nasal membranes (it puts the sting in pepper spray). But its function in wild chili plants has been mysterious.

Which is why Tewksbury and his colleagues have made multiple trips to Bolivia over the past four years. They're most interested in mild chilies, especially those growing near hot ones of the same species—the idea being that a wild chili lacking capsaicin might serve as a kind of exception that proves the rule, betraying the secret purpose of this curiously beloved spice...

"Capsaicin demonstrates the incredible elegance of evolution," says Tewksbury. The specialized chemical deters microbes—humans harness this ability when they use chilies to preserve food—but capsaicin doesn't deter birds from eating chili fruits and spreading seeds. "Once in a while, the complex, often conflicting demands that natural selection places on complex traits results in a truly elegant solution. This is one of those times."

"What's So Hot About Chili Peppers?"

New Scientist is reporting that twenty years to the day since the initial announcement of a cold fusion discovery another Utah-based team is trying again. This announcement is being taken a little more seriously than the original, although some might say it is just more available wishful thinking. "Some researchers in the cold fusion field agree. 'In my view [it's] a cold fusion effect,' says Peter Hagelstein, also at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Others, though, are not convinced. Steven Krivit, editor of the New Energy Times, has been following the cold fusion debate for many years and also spoke at the ACS conference. 'Their hypothesis as to a fusion mechanism I think is on thin ice ... you get into physics fantasies rather quickly and this is an unfortunate distraction from their excellent empirical work,' he told New Scientist. Krivit thinks cold fusion remains science fiction. Like many in the field, he prefers to categorize the work as evidence of 'low-energy nuclear reactions,' and says it can be explained without relying on nuclear fusion."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New Scientist is reporting that twenty years to the day since the initial announcement of a cold fusion discovery another Utah-based team is trying again. This announcement is being taken a little more seriously than the original, although some might say it is just more available wishful thinking. "Some researchers in the cold fusion field agree. 'In my view [it's] a cold fusion effect,' says Peter Hagelstein, also at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Others, though, are not convinced. Steven Krivit, editor of the New Energy Times, has been following the cold fusion debate for many years and also spoke at the ACS conference. 'Their hypothesis as to a fusion mechanism I think is on thin ice ... you get into physics fantasies rather quickly and this is an unfortunate distraction from their excellent empirical work,' he told New Scientist. Krivit thinks cold fusion remains science fiction. Like many in the field, he prefers to categorize the work as evidence of 'low energy nuclear reactions', and says it can be explained without relying on nuclear fusion."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We're excited about our Make: MINImarketplace section, which premiered in MAKE, Volume 17. Got something cool you want to sell, have a service to offer fellow readers, looking for some precious widget that only another maker might have stashed away in the garage? The Make: MINImarketplace offers a place for you to reach the maker community for a very reasonable price.

MINImarketplace Classified Ad Specs:

Ads are $40 per line
40 characters per line
Minimum 4 lines, Maximum 16 lines

If you're interested in placing a MINImarketplace ad in MAKE, Volume 18, send email to classifieds@makezine.com. You will be returned instructions on how to sign up for an account at the Maker Shed, and from there, you'll have access to our Classified Ad Order Page.

Our first deadline for materials is March 26th, so act quickly, if you want a spot.

And we have a drawing to encourage folks to sign up for more information. If you email classifieds@makezine.com and ask for more info on classifieds, you'll automatically be entered to win one of three Maker Shed gift certificates. We will be giving away two $25 Maker Shed Gift Certificates and one $50 Certificate to three people drawn from the list. Our ad deadline is fast approaching -- March 26th -- for placing the ad and for the Gift Certificate giveaway. Act now! Robot operators are standing by!

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There are three vaults in Arizona that store contraband nabbed by US port inspectors and customs agents on Arizona's 370-mile border with Mexico. A reporter from the Arizona Republic visited one of them, in Nogales, where racks are packed with 27,000 pounds of marijuana, boxes of speed, coke, and guns. A file cabinet holds half-a-million dollars in cash. From the Arizona Republic:

The Nogales vault, the largest of three such facilities in Arizona, represents just one stop in the government's enormous disposal network. Security is tight at the facility, which is surrounded by fences topped with razor wire and signs warning, "Restricted Area."

There is a lock on the gate, two more on doors leading into the main room. All who pass through must sign successive log sheets as they enter and again when they leave.

A trio of port inspectors arrives from Lukeville with freshly seized marijuana. The men unload sealed boxes and remove tire-shaped bricks of marijuana, removed from the wheels of a pickup truck. The scales are tested for accuracy. Each curved block of pot is cross-checked with a shipment sheet showing the precise total weight: 59.4 kilograms.

"At border, seizures an endless job" (via Dose Nation)

Skype has made a new foray into the business front with their announcement of "Skype for SIP." This allows businesses to migrate to Skype without having to move off of their old PBX systems. "Skype has long had a business unit, but that version of its service required computers and software, which is how most users make their Skype calls. With Skype for SIP the company seeks to lower the pain barrier by requiring no hardware installation whatsoever, and the re-configuration of a SIP-enabled PBX to an established codec that presumably is within the skillset of whoever maintains it already."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Longtime Techdirt readers may remember Alex Halderman, who conducted influential research into the problems created by CD-based DRM during his time as a grad student here at Princeton. He's now a professor at the University of Michigan, and he's working on a new project: seeking a DMCA exemption for security research related to defective DRM schemes that endanger computer security. We've seen in the past that DRM schemes can open up security vulnerabilities in users' computers, and Halderman argues that the public would benefit if security researchers could examine DRM schemes without being threatened with litigation under the DMCA for doing so.

The DMCA gives the Librarian of Congress the power to grant three-year exemptions for DRM circumventions that are perceived to be in the public interest, and one of the exemptions granted in the 2006 triennial review was for CD-based DRM schemes that create security problems. Alex points out in his filing that the most serious security vulnerabilities created by DRM since that rule-making have come not from CD-based DRM but from video game DRM, which has not been adequately studied by security researchers. A ton of prominent security researchers (including Alex and my mutual advisor, Ed Felten) have endorsed Alex's request, arguing that the threat of DMCA liability hampers their research. We hope the Librarian of Congress is listening. If you live near Palo Alto or Washington, DC, you can sign up to testify about Alex's proposal (or others) by filling out this form.

Timothy Lee is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Timothy Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Tom Hobson posted an enticing Instructables HOWTO on building a stereo tube amplifier. I haven't built the project, but I love the bonus video he linked to, a 1942 RCA promo for vacuum tubes titled "Electrons on Parade." From Tom's Instructable intro:

Ever wanted to build a highly dangerous, inefficient, and essentially obsolete piece of electronics? Well, I have. That's pretty much what a tube amp is. Vacuum tubes are old electronic components that act like transistors, controlling a lot of current with a little current. You usually hear about tubes being used in guitar amplifiers, because they distort in a way that suits guitar playing. However, tubes can also be used to amplify a stereo signal from another audio source such as a CD or MP3 player. Tube amps, unfortunately, aren't the most practical things in the world; they consume a great deal of power, get very hot, and are big. That being said, they look damn cool, and some people seem to think they sound pretty nice too.

You can learn a lot about electricity and electronics from a project such as this.

Building A Stereo Tube Amp

enactd writes "I feel life is a constant juggle, for every task in hand you have another to react to or let drop. The Age of Speed helps you chart your tasks to keep the important goals in sight while recognizing and reacting to distractions. Being a geek on the cutting edge of technology gets one acquainted with speed quickly, but being able to handle it is another matter and streamlining is an ongoing effort. The goal of the book is to help you decide what is important in your life and extract as much pleasure from those things while minimizing the time spent on the mundane." Keep reading for the rest of Chris's review.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mstmrnd's Kevin McLeod emerges from the sea of critical thinking and pop culture to say:

"In my research for a game, i began writing a guide to The Shining, which i discovered is a part of a glyphic continuum.

It's something Kubrick no doubt was aware he was building. Kubrick was essentially transforming English into meso-american visual cognition, but in a process that leaps over thousands of years of schism. I have now roughly the length of a book but i placed a beginning on our log.

"Physical Cosmologies: The Shining"

Moments ago, our partner John Battelle and the team at Federated Media launched the beta of ExecTweets, a new service for folks to find and follow business execs on Twitter. It's an interesting model, essentially a lens on Twitter that's further organized by specific industry, like tech, media, healthcare, etc. While the content isn't necessarily up my alley, I can easily imagine a slew of other Twitter lenses I'd appreciate. I'd wager that ExecTweets is just a hint of what's to come. Congrats, JBat and FM! ExecTweets

Stanford University posted seven video lectures from professors whose research explores the frontiers of human health, specifically the brain. A good place to start is Brian Knutson's fascinating explanation of how brain scans are illuminating the neurology of desire, financial decisions, and mental health. Stanford videos: The Future of Human Health

The PING))) ultrasonic sensor in the Maker Shed provides a low-cost and easy way of measuring distance. This sensor provides all the data form just a single pin connected to your favorite micro-controller. I have used these in several projects, and they work great. Check out the link for a lot more information on this cool little sensor.

Features:

• Range - 2cm to 3m (~.75" to 10')
• Supply Voltage: 5V +/-10% (Absolute: Minimum 4.5V, Maximum 6V)
• Supply Current: 30 mA typ; 35 mA max
• 3-pin interface (power, ground, signal)
• 20 mA power consumption
• Narrow acceptance angle
• Simple pulse in / pulse out communication
• Indicator LED shows measurement in progress
• Input Trigger - positive TTL pulse, 2 µs min, 5 µs typ.
• Echo Pulse - positive TTL pulse, 115 µs to 18.5 ms
• Echo Hold-off - 750 µs from fall of Trigger pulse
• Burst Frequency - 40 kHz for 200 µs
• Size - 22 mm H x 46 mm W x 16 mm D (0.85 in x 1.8 in x 0.6 in)

More about the PING))) Ultrasonic range finder

Related:

More about the Hitachi compass module

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Al writes "Scientists have taken a step toward developing a cure for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) by successfully treating the condition in dogs using a novel genetic technique. The scientists used a method called exon skipping, which involves adding a genetic 'patch' to blocks transcription of a portion of the gene involved in DMD. This puts the remaining genetic sequence back in order, essentially creating a much less severe version of the condition. The scientists recorded some remarkable video footage showing the resulting improvements in several dogs with naturally-occurring DMD. More work is needed before the treatment can be given to humans, however, because DMD sufferers often have different genetic mutations."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last week, in response to Clay Shriky's wonderful look at journalism business models, I wrote a post about the fact that you can't wait for the perfect business model. I was amused to find some comments pushing back on this -- including one that specifically pointed out that Twitter and other social networking companies could never make any money. In response, I pointed to both Google and Craigslist as companies that were once in the same spot, but the commenter insisted that was ridiculous, because both had business models.

This is retrospective thinking. It looks back on things and pretends that it was obvious how Google and Craigslist would make money. It was not.

Craigslist was mainly a hobby for Craig Newmark for a while -- and every part of it was "free." It was only later that a business model was developed. And the situation was even more crazy with Google. I have admitted in the past that I never thought Google could make enough money to survive -- and it was something I was very, very wrong about. But, at least I wasn't alone. Howard Lindzon points us to an article from 2000 in Business Week fretting about Google's ability to come up with a real business model. Business Week wasn't the only one. I remembered a similar article in Wired, and just dug it up. It ran in October of 2001, and pointed to the huge dilemma Google had in proving to its VC backers that it was a good investment. Some quotes from both articles:

But how will Google ever make money? There's the rub. The company's adamant refusal to use banner or other graphical ads eliminates what is the most lucrative income stream for rival search engines. Although Google does have other revenue sources, such as licensing and text-based advertisements, the privately held company's business remains limited compared with its competitors'. -- Business Week

The dilemma? Behind the anti-corporate facade, Google is in fact a company - even worse, a venture-backed company - and these days that means it must find a route to profitability fast or risk failure. Given that its far more commercial competitors, from AltaVista to Ask Jeeves, have been unable to come close to positive territory (the one moneymaker, Yahoo!, started as a directory), Google's prospects might seem bleak. -- Wired

This doesn't mean, of course, that sites like Twitter and Facebook will definitely find business models. But, it should give you pause before assuming that they can't. Business models often seem obvious in retrospect, but at the time, it's not clear at all. I wouldn't put it past the team at Twitter to come up with something that works (I'm a bit less sure of the team at Facebook... but we'll see).

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Tokina's US distributor, THK, has announced the long-awaited AT-X 16.5-135mm DX F3.5-5.6 will be available in the summer for Canon and Nikon mounts. The lens, which gives an unusually wide angle of view for its class, has regularly appeared at trade shows as far back as the P.I.E 2007 show in Japan. It gives a field of view roughly equivalent to 25-200mm in 35mm terms (dependant on system), and will be available in Nikon mount from June this year, with the Canon variant following a month later, according to THK.

Tokina's US distributor, THK, has announced the long-awaited AT-X 16.5-135mm DX F3.5-5.6 will be available in the summer for Canon and Nikon mounts. The lens, which gives an unusually wide angle of view for its class, has regularly appeared at trade shows as far back as the P.I.E 2007 show in Japan. It gives a field of view roughly equivalent to 25-200mm in 35mm terms (dependant on system), and will be available in Nikon mount from June this year, with the Canon variant following a month later, according to THK.

In the last four months, more two dozen portable toilets at construction sites have gone up in foul-smelling flames. Now, Oakland-based Clorox has put up a $5000 bounty and a year of free cleaning supplies for tips that lead to the arsonist's arrest. Conversational marketing that, er, seems to be working. From the Associated Press:

The Oakland-based chemical company says it plans to deploy a "potty patrol" team in the city Tuesday to make residents aware of its offer marrying marketing and community service.

Company spokesman Dan Gagen jokes that the patrol service is "a crappy job, but somebody's got to do it."

Clorox offers $5K to wipe out SF 'toilet torcher'

Lucas123 writes "In what could be the start of a national health information exchange system, the Social Security Administration became the first federal agency to go live with a public-private electronic health records information exchange that will cut wait time for 2.6 million Americans who apply for benefits each year by weeks or months. The electronic exchange runs on a database operated by a non-profit organization in Virginia and open-source software deployed at the Social Security Administration. 'The goal of the NHIN effort is to enable secure access to health care data and real-time information sharing among physicians, patients, hospitals, laboratories, pharmacies and federal agencies ... regardless of location or the applications that are being used.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

So much natural gas is leaking into a Fort Lupton, Colorado couple's water well that they can light it on fire as it flows from their bathroom sink. From CBS4Denver.com:

The Colorado Oil and Gas Commission leaders say it's tried to find the origin of the leak. Director Dale Neslin says "We've looked at well compilation reports, taken gas samples to look for a match, done pressure testing and we've not been able to find the well that appears to be causing the problem."

The Ellsworths say they approached Noble Energy and Anadarko Petroleum - the two companies that operate the nearby wells - and begged for help. They say the companies initially refused to do anything. But, at the urging of the Oil and Gas Commission, they have now agreed to put in a water treatment system at the home.

Flammable Water Found In Ft. Lupton Home (via Fortean Times)

An anonymous reader writes "Richard Stallman has published an article which warns about the 'Javascript trap' posed by non-free AJAX-based applications. The article calls for a mechanism which would enable browsers to identify freely-licensed Javascript applications and run modified version thereof. 'It is possible to release a Javascript program as free software,' Stallman writes. 'But even if the program's source is available, there is no easy way to run your modified version instead of the original ... The effect is comparable to tivoization, although not quite so hard to overcome.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Yes, it’s true that a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can’t operate in an environment like that. I’ve grown tired of debating such minuscule design decisions. There are more exciting design problems in this world to tackle.

#

A bunch of folks have been sending in the story from Ad Age, where a bunch of media giants have apparently been demanding that Google change its weighting algorithm, because they're upset at how low they appear, compared to other sites, including blogs. This is pretty amusing for a variety of reasons. A big part of the reason those media sites appear so low in the Google rankings is their own damn fault. For years, they tried to lock up the content behind paywalls and registration walls, and made their sites as un-user-friendly as possible. Thus, no one linked to them, they weren't a part of the conversation, and Google treated them exactly as it should. It's only now that those publications have realized the importance of the web that they're demanding that Google change to work with them? It seems more reasonable to simply point these media giants to an explanation of how the algorithm works, and tell them to get back to work creating a site that is more user friendly, with great original content, such that more people link to it. And then they'll be fine. But, apparently, that's just too much work.

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Julian Bleecker sends us "a short, pictorial essay on the arrangements of science fact and science fiction and the possibility of design shaped by both. The essay looks at how science fiction can be used to inform science fact, both in terms of the stories that science fiction tells and the actual production of props for science fiction film. Mostly it is about design and the way it can tell stories about future worlds and do so particularly well when it becomes entangled with science, fact and fiction."

Design Fiction: A Short Essay on Design, Science, Fact and Fiction (Thanks, Julian!)

Dan Woods, Associate Publisher of MAKE tipped me off to Julia Suits' chess pieces made from nuts and bolts. She writes:

Headed toward the light-bulb aisle in my local hardware store a few years ago,I stopped to admire the bins of nuts,bolts and the like. This is not unusual for me who likens this kind of scene to a candy store. I love metal,and have cast and welded all types as a sculpture major in graduate school. When I saw the little bin containing two different types of castle nuts,I immediately thought of rooks. At the time my three sons and I hosted a weekly chess club,so chess was on my mind a lot. With my boys in tow,I returned with graph paper and we computed what sorts of bits we might want (we didn't know for sure) for each type of piece and how many in total. An hour later, after poring over numerous bins and waiting for the clerk to saw the threaded rod into measured lengths (for kings, rooks,and bishops), we went home with about fifteen pounds of loot, including spray paint for the black pieces. We created a set not far different from what is pictured here. Since then we've added washers to some and added a flanged hex nut to each of the bases to make the set uniform and even more stable. The hardware chessmen were a huge hit and the other boys built their own sets.

Make sure you add felt or cork to the bases if you plan on using a board whose finish you wish to protect. If you do this, you will need to glue the flanged hex nut base to the shaft before you glue your padding as the nut and shaft tend to screw up or down with use. Otherwise, note: none of the pieces are glued!! This is so they jingle (yes,they jingle, like cowboy spurs!) and so you can take them apart and rearrange them.

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Happy Ada Lovelace day! This is the day that bloggers all over the world post about women in science as part of a global day of awareness and appreciation for the (often underreported) role that women play in the sciences.

My contribution is this fantastic presentation by physicist Lisa Randall at the Origins conference in Tallahassee Florida, broadcast last Friday as part of NPR's Science Friday show. Randall is the author of Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions, a popular science book that addresses fundamental questions about the nature of the universe. On this show, Randall explains what an expanding universe is expanding into, the relationship of gravity, magnetism and hidden time-space dimensions, and other mind-benders about the origin of the universe (she also talks a little about the role of women in science).

Physicist Lisa Randall on Space, Time, and Hidden Dimensions (broadcast Friday, March 20th, 2009) (MP3 link)

See other Ada Lovelace Day posts

phobonetik writes "The New Zealand Prime Minister announced his Government will throw out the controversial Section 92A of the Copyright Amendment (New Technologies) Act and start again. The proposed law changes contained 'guilty upon accusation, without appeal' clauses and heavy compliance costs to ISPs and businesses. The changes were hours away from being signed but a series of online protests, a petition on Government grounds, as well as public rebuttal by a large ISP and by Google contributed to the Government changing course and respecting the wishes of the IT industry."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From the MAKE Flickr pool

Matt the Modulator shares some key solder points on the SX-150 analog synth PCB, allowing for -

• envelope triggering
  
• frequency to voltage output
  
• self oscillating filter
  
• LFO to filter cuttoff

To see the specific points in question, check out the photo's notes on Flickr. He also points out that the SX-150 can be easily controlled via the output of a Gakken Mini-Theremin kit -

The gakken theremin can be used to control the SX-150 which has a much better tone and a LFO for that Violin / cello effect. The ext input of the SX-150 is a Frequency to voltage converter and so any synth can be used to control the pitch of the SX-150 but a signal with a high amplitude is needed (about 3v+)

I too have used these in combination and can attest to their awesomeness =]

In the Maker Shed:


SX-150 Analog Synthesizer Kit & Mini-Theremin

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Considering that the Justice Department has hired a bunch of the RIAA's favorite lawyers, it was widely expected that the Justice Department would weigh in on the Joel Tenenbaum case -- despite the fact that folks in the Obama administration aren't supposed to be involved in situations that relate to work they did recently (oops). So, of course, the Justice Deparment has filed an amicus brief supporting the constitutionality of the statutory fines for copyright infringement. As Ray Beckerman notes, the Justice Department seems to have conveniently ignored numerous other precedents -- and doesn't bother to explain why earlier cases that upheld damages of 116 and 44 times damages means it's okay to have damages pushing hundreds of thousands of times over potential damages (and an argument can be made that there were actually no damages at all solely due to Tenenbaum). So while this is hardly surprising, it is a bit disappointing that the DOJ filed this brief, given the obvious conflicts of interest concerning its recent hires.

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suraj.sun writes "A pair of Argentinian researchers have found a way to perform unveil a BIOS level malware attack capable of surviving even a hard-disk wipe. Alfredo Ortega and Anibal Sacco from Core Security Technologies — used the stage at last week's CanSecWest conference to demonstrate methods for infecting the BIOS with persistent code that will survive reboots and re-flashing attempts. The technique includes patching the BIOS with a small bit of code that gave them complete control of the machine. The demo ran smoothly on a Windows machine, a PC running OpenBSD and another running VMware Player."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There's only a few days left to submit projects to Inhabitat's Spring Greening contest. Deadline is midnight March 27th.

Repair and reuse have been hot topics as of late, with everyone from technology renaissance man Saul Griffith to Worldchanging editor Alex Steffen advocating a shift towards repairable, long-lasting heirloom products. We've been covering reclaimed design for quite a while here on Inhabitat, and love to see objects given new life through smart reuse. Taking care of objects also makes good economic sense, and a little bit of TLC goes a long way towards producing a personalized object that you'll cherish for a lot longer than the cheap store-bought variety.

The winner of this year's contest will receive the fortune and fame of being showcased on Inhabitat in addition to a gift certificate for $200 in great green goods from the Inhabitat shop! Three runner ups will each receive an herb-sprouting eggling of your choice.

See the site for additional details.

SPRING GREENING CONTEST: 4 Days Left to Enter!

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Etsy seller Alexxxcastaneda makes skateboard decks with nudes painted in oil on them. Lovely work.

Oil Painted Skateboards (Thanks, Francesco!)

alaskana98 writes "Alaska's Mt. Redoubt volcano has erupted 3 times, with the first event starting at 10:38 PM Alaska standard time. The ash cloud is estimated to be higher than 50,000 feet. So far, only light ash fall is predicted for areas north of Anchorage."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From the MAKE Flickr pool

Impressionist painters on-the-go will appreciate PBNJ smurf's ARToids ultra-compact watercolor set -

A portable watercolor kit made from an old altoids smalls tin & bakeable polymer. I wanted a minimalist kit that I could take along to add color to journal pages. (I have a small travel kit already, I wanted something smaller... just the basics).

Inspired by Jean-Pierre's earlier mint tin portable, this version accomodates all the necessities - assuming you have a bit of H2O + paper handy.

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Oobject has a fun round-up of the sonic assault vehicles known as boombox bikes. And you thought that kid on the bus with the Walmart special slung over his shoulder was obnoxious.

This one comes with instructions.

Boombox bikes

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Frankie70 writes "The Tata Nano — the car that caught the world's imagination as the cheapest ever — will finally be rolled out commercially on Monday in Mumbai in a mega event organised by Tata Motors. Ben Oliver, contributing editor, Car Magazine, London test drove the car in December, 08. These were his first impressions. This was his verdict: 'CAR's first ride in the Tata Nano felt far more significant and exciting than a first drive in a Ferrari or Lamborghini, because this car's importance is immeasurably greater. It won't compete on dynamics or quality with European or Japanese city cars, but it doesn't have to. What Tata has achieved at an unprecedented price is astonishing, although we'd guess it will cost Indian consumers closer to £1700 when it finally goes on sale, six months late, in March 2009.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From the MAKE Flickr pool Flickr member Recotana brings good news for Arduino users in the form of a new code library which facilitates control via the network optimized OSC data protocol. The above video demonstrates basic functionality using the iOSC app for iPhone OS, but the library could be used with any OSC software connected to Arduino. Download the relevant software + documentation from Recotana's site. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Arduino | Digg this!

Horacio Potel, an Argentine philosophy professor at Universidad Nacional de Lanús,, faces criminal charges -- and possible jail time -- for posting unofficial translations of seminal Jacques Derrida texts to his site where his students could see them. Most of these texts were out of print, or had never been translated. Now a publisher is bringing a few of these books into Argentina, and they're trying to get this prof imprisoned for supporting Derrida while he was unavailable.

El turno de los profesores, prisión por subir obras protegidas a Internet (Thanks, Carolina!)

Before anyone gets that upset, I'll say that I'm pretty much in exact agreement with Adam Davidson from NPR's Planet Money when it comes to how to feel about the AIG bonuses that were big in the news last week. It's definitely disgusting and troubling to see the money handed out that way, but it's really a tiny sum in the big scheme of things, and there are a lot bigger and more important things that the government should be focused on. Besides, the populist anger is really misplaced -- often directed at the current management or the recipients of those bonuses, rather than those who put in place the contracts that made those bonuses required. But, the very fact that Congress spent so much time on it highlights something we warned about earlier this year: as soon as the government steps in to help a business, it's going to greatly hamstring what that company can do, since its every move will be extra-scrutinized and critiqued. That will certainly limit what many companies are willing to do.

And we're seeing that right now. With the administration spending the weekend trying to convince private firms to buy up a bunch of the "toxic assets" out there, many are (reasonably) worried that they might face AIG-bonus-style backlash. It makes them a lot less willing to act, exactly at a time when we need private firms to step up and clean up the mess.

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Here's a simple, flat stand for your iPhone, Touch, or other mobile media device, made from a cut-up office store bonus card.

DIY compact iPhone stand

More:

• Earbud cord manager
• Credit card guitar picks

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Part of my neighbourhood in London was evacuated yesterday after someone mistook a replica of the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch (cf. Monty Python and the Holy Grail) for a bomb:

Water company engineers spotted the object when they lifted up a fire hydrant cover during work on a street in Shoreditch, east London.

The road was cordoned off and a nearby pub was evacuated amid fears that the "grenade" could explode.

But after nearly an hour of analysis bomb experts realised that the cause of the scare was in fact a copy of the "Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch" used by Eric Idle to slaughter a killer rabbit in the 1975 film Monty Python And The Holy Grail.

Pub evacuated after Monty Python prop mistaken for grenade (Thanks, Frank W and Frank!)

Destiny sez, "The U.S. Attorney's office submitted e-mails they'd received from Bernie Madoff's victims to the judge handling Madoff's sentencing. And one of the emails that somehow ended up in the pile was the classic text of the 'Nigerian scam' email. The U.S. Attorneys office mistook it for a real email from one of Madoff's victims -- and submitted it to his sentencing judge!"

My Name is Mr. [redacted] but my origin is from Republic of Congo. I have an inherited fund I want to invest in a business in your country with a help of a local. I don't know about what business but I found it wise to invest the funds in your country with your collaboration with me....

Wow, I Needed That (Thanks, Destiny!)

Ian sez, "The Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust has this morning published our comprehensive new report on the UK's Database State, finding that 25% of major public sector databases are illegal under human rights and data protection law. Only 15% of databases are proportionate and necessary. Calls for databases such as National Identity Register and DNA database to be scrapped."

* A quarter of all major public sector databases are fundamentally flawed and almost certainly illegal. These should be scrapped or redesigned immediately;

* The database state is victimising minority groups and vulnerable people, from single mothers to young black men and schoolchildren;

* Children are amongst the ‘most at risk’ from Britain’s Database State, with three of the largest databases set up to support and protect children failing to achieve their aims;

* Data sharing is a barrier to socially responsible activities. It is deterring teenagers from accessing health advice and undermining goodwill towards law enforcement;

* Only 15% of major public sector databases are effective, proportionate and necessary;

* We spend £16 billion a year on public sector IT and a further £105bn spending is planned for the next five years – but only 30% of public-sector IT projects succeed.

Database State (Thanks, Ian!)

For a long time, I've been using Fireworks for the sole task of creating 8-bit PNG images that will display alpha transparency correctly in all modern browsers, while degrading gracefully to a GIF-like binary transparency on older browsers. The process works well, but it's sort of crazy to keep a second image editing application around just to save one specific image format.

Thankfully, there's a command line tool called pngquant that will convert any PNG-24 image into an alpha PNG-8. Web designer Ethan Gardner put together a decent howto that demonstrates how to use it along with Photoshop. You should be able to do the same with GIMP or your image editor of choice. Just save the original as a 24-bit PNG, then run pngquant 256 [filename.png] from the command line.

There's a similar program called pngnq which uses a different technique for quantizing images (taking a 24-bit image and reducing it to 256 colors). I started using this a little while ago and I've been pretty happy with the quality of the images produced. Similar to pngquant, just type pngnq -n 256 [filename.png] at the command line to produce an 8-bit alpha PNG from the 24-bit version. I'd recommend installing both--just pick the one that produces the better output for a given image.

Alpha Transparency in PNG-8 Images Without Using Fireworks
pngquant
pngnq

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Do you want to automatically translate all of the pages of your web site into the most popular languages and facilitate foreign visitors get an insight into your content without hiring a pro translator? Here is MasterNewMedia guide to the best tools and services to automatically translate your web site in multiple languages. Photo credit: Guy Erwood More than 65% of people around the world don't speak English, so having a web site that can be read in multiple languages is crucial if you don't want to lose any possible extra traffic. Also, offering your visitors to read your web content is a great way to stand out from your typical competitors. With the tools and services I have selected for you in this guide, you just need to pick your preferred web site translations solution, integrate their code into your web pages and the work is done. In most cases, your web pages will be translated on the fly when a reader will click on the language of his choice. It is also very important to keep in mind that such translations are made automatically, so don't expect them to be perfect. They should be intended to provide just a "guide" into your original content, and not certainly a formally correct translated version. So, since there is a plethora of different services to translate your web site, you have to decide first which kind of features you need. Many languages? Advanced customization possibilities? Embeddable widget? Or maybe just using a free solution against a more professional alternative? To help you make the best choice, I have identified some basic criteria you can use to evaluate and select the best automatic web site translation tool for your web site:

• Number of languages: How many languages your web site can be translated into.
• Languages supported: Which languages your web site can be translated into.
• Translated items: Which elements of your web pages are translated (just text, text and image captions, hidden texts...)
• Price: Price of the service, and premium accounts with extended features (if available).
• Widget implementation: Easiness of implementation of the widget inside the source code of your site / blog.

Here all the details:

Best Web Site Translation Tools

1. Google Language Tools
   
   Google Language Tools allows you to translate web pages or texts instantly. The service is completely free, and supports all the principal languages spoken across the World: Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Hindi, French, Italian, Spanish, and many more. You can add a gadget (Google's for widget) to your site pasting just a line of code. Your visitors will then have a drop-down menu where they can choose their mother tongue, and have your content translated automatically (just plain text, no images or hidden texts). About the text translation option, Google Translation Tools has no special character feature, or offers to upload documents from your hard-disk for immediate translation.
   http://translate.google.com/translate_tools?hl=en
   
   
   
2. Yahoo! Babel Fish
   
   Yahoo! Babel Fish is a free online tool to translate web pages or blocks of text. Powered by the SYSTRAN translation engine, Yahoo! Babel Fish allows the translation of texts up to 150 words and web pages from and to a very large set of languages (Chinese, Japanese, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, and many more.) To take advantage of the translation capabilities of Yahoo! Babel Fish on your site, just choose between two simple one-line-code widgets, depending you need to translate your own web pages or offer your readers to translate third-party web sites or a text of their choice. Translation is performed on plain text only, not images or hidden text.
   http://babelfish.yahoo.com/free_trans_service
   
   
   
3. ConveyThis
   
   ConveyThis is a free translation tool that translates your web site to multiple languages. To let your visitors read your content in their own language, all you need to do is adding one of the themed ConveyThis buttons to the source code of your web site, or grab the free WordPress plugin. Very easy to implement, ConveyThis works with a plethora of languages (English, Japanese, Spanish, French, Dutch, Italian, and many more), but does not translate other elements in your web pages outside of plain text.
   http://www.conveythis.com/
   
   
   
4. SWeTE
   
   SWeTE (acronym for Simple Website Translation Engine) is a free tool to translate web sites to multiple languages. You can add a small set of flags to the source code of your site / blog, and let users automatically get a version of your web pages in their desired idiom. The SWeTE code is very easy to implement and allows you to further customize the translations rendered on your web site, working also on links, images, or hidden texts. The service currently supports translations from / to English and some of the following languages: Chinese, French, Japanese, Spanish, Italian, Norwegian, and many others.
   http://swete.weblite.ca/
   
   
   
5. Applied Language
   
   Applied Language Solutions offers a translation tool that allows your visitors to translate your web site at a click of a button. Just register to the ALS site, select the language pairs you want to use, and grab the free customizable bar to add to the source code of your web site. Easy implementation, but plain text is translated only. The free solution from Applied Language works with the most spoken languages worldwide. Some examples: English, French, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and many more.
   http://www.appliedlanguage.com/trans/start_free_translation.aspx
   
   
   
6. ultimate website translator
   
   ultimate website translator is a free widget you can embed on your web site to have your readers translate your web pages with no effort. Translations available in many languages (Chinese, Japanese, Dutch French, Italian, and Spanish among many others.) ultimate website translator takes advantage of the translation engines of Yahoo! Babelfish, Google Language Tools, GTS, and WorldLingo. The widget though looks very poor (no flags to recognize a language at a first glance), and translation is provided only for the content, no hidden text or images.
   http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/ultimate-website-translator
   
   
   
7. SDL FreeTranslation.com
   
   SDL FreeTranslation.com is a free online translation service that you can use to translate web pages or blocks of text. SDL can convert from English to French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and Norwegian via a widget that you can add to your web site after registering to SDL services. The widget is very small and easy to install into your source code, but translates just the text on your web site (no images or hidden text). Speaking of texts, each block can be up to 4-5 pages or about 4,000 to 5,000 words, which is about 8 or 10 pages of a fairly dense document. Worth mentioning is the special character feature that lets you add characters which you don't have on your keyboard without changing its layout.
   http://www.sdl.com/en/services/localisation_services/website-translation.asp
   
   
   
8. WorldLingo
   
   WorldLingo is an online language translation tool that allows you to translate texts, documents, web pages or even e-mails from and to a language of your choice. Web sites can be translated by adding a piece of (long) code to your web site which will display the flags of 15 countries. By clicking on a flag, your readers will automatically get a translated version of your page (links included). Different pricing options available, based on geographical packages. Regarding the text feature, just submit the text or files that you need to read in another language and let WorldLingo do the rest. Text translation feature is completely free to use, but the maximum length of the text you can convert is set to 150 words.
   http://www.worldlingo.com/en/products/instant_website_translator.html
   
   
   
9. ArtistScope
   
   ArtistScope is a web site translation service that helps your reader translate your web pages in their mother tongue via a handy drop-down menu placed at the top of your page. More than 25 languages available including: Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, French, Dutch, Turkish, and many others. Easy installation on web sites hosted on Windows servers, such as those using FrontPage extensions with ASP support. ArtistScope works also with Cold Fusion, .NET and PHP but you need to modify your source code accordingly. No hidden text or other elements translated outside of plain text. Free trial avaialable and prices starting from €250 for a limited license.
   http://www.artistscope.com/artistscope_translate.asp

Other Web Site Translation Tools

1. Google Toolbar
   
   The Google Toolbar is another service from Google Language Tools that helps your readers get a translated version of your content in their mother tongue (along many other features). A good strategy to promote their content for software developers and online publishers, may be to provide a link to download the free Google Toolbar with their products or on their web sites, instead of adding a widget or a plugin to their source code. This is just another solution to provide different translated version of your web pages going the easy way. Google Toolbar translates from English into French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Japanese and Korean.
   http://toolbar.google.com/
   
   
   
2. ICanLocalize
   
   ICanLocalize is a tool that provides human or machine-based translation for your web site. Available for WordPress, Drupal, and static HTML pages. Installation of ICanLocalize requires you to add additional plugins or play with the code to make the translation facility work properly on your site. The service translates from and to most spoken languages like English, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, French, Spanish, and many others. Full translation of your content available, but no embeddable widgets. Prices start from 0.7/c per word or $5 per page.
   http://www.icanlocalize.com/website-translation.html

Originally prepared by Robin Good for MasterNewMedia, and first published on March 23, 2009 as "How To Automatically Translate A Full Web Site In Multiple Languages: Best Web Site Translation Tools - Mini-Guide".

It looks like yet another filmmaker has realized that obscurity is a much bigger threat than piracy. Matthew Krum lets us know that the makers of the movie BLANK have decided to release the movie on all torrent sites, while also offering up a DVD version and a donation offering on their site. While I'm not a huge fan of give it away and pray business models, you have to like the attitude these filmmakers have:

No one should have to pay for a film they did not like. No one should be denied the right to enjoy the art of film.

And they actually are offering additional benefits for those who pay: access to the same group as they make their next film, allowing them to see the behind-the-scenes filmmaking process in action:

Basically the consumer pays what they think the film was worth to them. They will also have the option to sign up for a newsletter for our next film. In this newsletter there will be a username and password to a web forum so they can follow us through pre production, production and post production of our next film, a cool bonus for those who wish to follow the filmmaking journey from beginning to end first hand.

On top of that, the filmmakers seem to have convinced their whole crew to buy into this process:

The thing that makes this film unique is that it is a co-op based concept where are the entire cast and crew worked on a deferred percentage of the films gross. In other words, the cast and crew own a percentage of the films gross, so the profits are not going to Hollywood executives but instead into the pockets of the filmmakers themselves. Again the objective is to use profits from this film to make another movie and release it in the same manner.

It doesn't look like my type of movie, but if you like these types of movies, go check it out. It's great that they're releasing the movie this way, though I still think they could put in place a few more incentives to get people to actually pay for additional benefits -- similar to what many musicians are doing these days. But, at the very least, this is a great start.

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Xbm360 writes "According to data collected by Joystiq as well as Google Trends, there's been a steady rise in reports and discussion of the so-called E74 error on Xbox 360 consoles since August of last year. The E74 error is related to video problems caused by either a faulty AV connector or, more often, a loosened ANA/HANA scaling chip. This is not the first time the Xbox 360 has experienced technical issues; in recent years many people have complained about scratched discs and over-heating consoles — the 'red ring of death.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dan Gillmor is a BoingBoing guest-blogger.

At the beginning of this guest-blogging stint at BoingBoing, I posted a song from my days in music some years back. Several of you asked me to post some more. Okay, on my last post for now, here goes. 

Our music, in a band called Road Apple, ranged all over the map, from 20s jazz to rock to country to whatever we felt like. We wrote a lot of our own material. I learned the secret of collaboration: Always work (or play, in this case) with people who are better than you are.

Music was a joy, not a job. I miss it, and miss my musical compatriots and friends who are either distant in geography or who've left us entirely.

These songs reflect my folky tendencies, and are from two albums we recorded in the 1970s; you'll have to decide whether they've held up or not. I wrote the first two. The last is by David Batteau and it may be the best of all the tunes we recorded.

"I Stayed Behind" -- One day I decided to write a lonesome country song:

"California Plane" -- It can be a bad idea to go back home unannounced:

"Space Cowboys" -- A beautiful song, and I think we did justice to it:

It's been an honor and pleasure to be here, sharing a space not just with the incredible BoingBoing team but with all of you as well. Your ideas and comments reinforced what I already knew, that BoingBoing readers are a rare breed. Thanks to all...

New in the Maker Shed, the Propeller USB Proto Board. This board has all the features of a standard Propeller Proto Board with the addition of a USB programming interface. Check out the link for a lot more information.

Features

• P8X32A-Q44 Propeller chip
  
• Programming interface included on board
  
• 64 KB EEPROM for program and data storage
  
• LM1086 5 V and 3.3 V regulators provide up to 1.5 Amps with an input power supply of 6-9 VDC
  
• Three-position power switch (off, logic power, power to logic and servo ports
  
• Sockets for 4 servos
  
• Removable 5 MHz crystal
  
• Access to all 32 I/O pins
  
• Large prototyping area
  
• Unplated row of holes along perimeter to provide stress relief to off-board connections

More about the Propeller USB Proto Board

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taucross writes "ISP iiNet today confirmed its exit from the Australian government's Internet filtering trials. iiNet had originally taken part in the plan in order to prove the filter was flawed. Citing a number of concerns, their withdrawal leaves only five Australian ISPs continuing to test the filter."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

taucross writes "ISP iiNet today confirmed its exit from the Australian government's Internet filtering trials. iiNet had originally taken part in the plan in order to prove the filter was flawed. Citing a number of concerns, their withdrawal leaves only five Australian ISPs continuing to test the filter."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Just did the Sunday podcast with Jay Rosen.

Really enjoying this. Today it was more laughs and less serious.

We'll do another next Sunday, Murphy-willing.

thefickler writes "A new study by the US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) has found a strong link between air quality and life expectancy. The researchers looked at air pollution, deaths and census data for 51 metropolitan areas between 1978 and 2001, and what they found was a direct correlation between improving air quality and extending life expectancy. People lived about 2.72 years longer over that time span and at least 15 percent of that increased life expectancy was from a decrease in air pollution."

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The Netherlands' Hotel de Vrouwe van Stavoren features rooms built inside giant, 14,500 liter wine-casks:

The rooms offer two single beds as well as an attached sitting room and bathroom. These rooms have been pretty popular with tourists in the sleepy village of Stavoren. If you get tired of the in-room television and radio, you can rent a bicycle and travel along one of the many popular bike paths to see the old growth forests and beach. There is even a famous statue of “Lady van Stavoren” to keep an eye on the harbour as well as an eccentric local story to go along with it.

The wine casks are a great reuse as hotel rooms because of their ability to seal tightly. Visitors have stayed in the hotels four special recycled rooms from all over the world. Prices for the rooms range from approximately $150 USD a night to about $40 USD a night depending on the length of your stay and the season you go in. How can you afford not to?

Sleep it Off Inside a Wine Cask (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

Here's a refreshingly honest IM session between a 419 scammer and a savvy mark who's wise the game (This may be fake, don't care, still funny):

Mr Robert Dutu: Am Robert Dutu. I have very important business proposition for your consideration. Can we chat on it?

Mike Nash: Let me guess? You have millions of dollars you want to give me. But I won't get it. Instead, you will rip me off with advanced fee fraud.

MRD: You are right.

MN: Well, appreciate the honest.

MRD: You are welcome. Pleasure chatting with you.

MN: Good luck in finding an idiot.

MRD: Thanks man

Mr Robert Dutu (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

A few weekends ago I had the chance to check out the Northeast regionals for USFIRST in Boston. Above, Matt and Chris of Blackstone Valley Regional Vocational Technical High School, Team 61 tell about being involved.

Here is a segment of one round of the competition:

Norwell High School has a great robotics program mentored by teachers Ross Kowalski and Mark Herman.

Could you tell us some of your experiences with USFIRST or other engineering competitions? Add your thoughts in the comments and please contribute your photos and video to the MAKE Flickr pool.

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If you look at my twitter-like community here on scripting.com, you'll see something interesting.

There's a paragraph of text at the top of the screen. Read it.

Click on the link to the screen shot. Think about it.

It's been a while since we've had a Mind Bomb. I think this one qualifies.

Thanks to Brian Hendrickson for working with me on this.

8/26/00: "What's a Mind Bomb? An idea that's so strange or powerful that it explodes in your mind. And that's a good thing!"

Slatterz writes "A decade ago people were talking about the death of distance, and how the internet would make physical geography irrelevant. This has not come to pass; there are still places around the world that are hubs of technology just as there are for air travel, product manufacturing or natural resource exploitation. This list of the ten best IT centres of excellence includes some interesting trivia about Station X during the Second World War, why Romania is teeming with software developers, Silicon Valley, Fort Meade Maryland, and Zhongguancun in China, where Microsoft is building its Chinese headquarters."

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