Vigile writes "News is circulating about Microsoft setting hardware limits for the Windows 7 Starter Edition rather than sticking to a 3-application limit. With just a few simple specifications, Microsoft has set the tech world spinning — not only is Microsoft deciding that a netbook is now defined as having a 10.2-in. or smaller screen, but by setting a 15-watt limit to CPU thermal dissipation they may have inadvertently set the direction of CPU technology for years to come. If Microsoft sticks to that licensing spec, then AMD, Intel, VIA, and maybe even NVIDIA (who might be building an x86 CPU) will no doubt put a new focus on power efficiency in order to cash in on the lucrative netbook market."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

lkcl writes "A clean-room RTMPE specification has been created using the source code of rtmpdump-v1.6 for guidance. Adobe recently issued a DMCA take-down notice against SourceForge, resulting in copies of rtmpdump hitting quite a few bittorrent sites worldwide."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There are kits you can purchase to help you extract DNA. Here's an interesting way you can do it with ingredients right from your kitchen cupboard! Check out these detailed instructions on the ingredients you'll need and how to get started with your own DNA experiments.

Strawberries, bacteria, humans--all living things have genes, and all of these genes are made of DNA. How do scientists take DNA out of a living thing? It's not that hard--there are lots of ways to do it! You can follow the directions in the video above to get DNA out of a strawberry.

Other DNA projects @ MAKE:

• Make Talk Episode #11 with DIYBiologist Tito Jankowski - Link
• Extract DNA In Your Kitchen - Link
• DNA Hacking - Link
• HOW TO - Extract DNA from anything living - Link
• Art from your DNA - Link
• DIY DNA Explorer Kit - Link
• Coffee shop offers DNA testing - Link
• WEB2DNA - Convert your website into DNA art - Link
• New X PRIZE - A race to a better human genetic map - Link

In the Maker Shed: Genetics & DNA Kit

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An anonymous reader alerts us to an interesting development that Kaspersky Labs stumbled across. They purchased a new M&A Companion Touch netbook in order to test a new anti-virus product targeted at the netbook segment, and discovered three pieces of malware on the factory-sealed netbook. A little sleuthing turned up the likely infection scenario — at the factory, someone was updating Intel drivers using a USB flash drive that was infected with a variant of the AutoRun worm. "Installed along with the worm was a rootkit and a password stealer that harvests log-in credentials for online games such as World of Warcraft. ... To ensure that a new PC is malware-free, [Kaspersky] recommended that before users connect the machine to the Internet, they install security software, update it by retrieving the latest definition file on another computer, and transferring that update to the new system, then running a full antivirus scan."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Daniel Reetz must be one happy maker! Not only did he create this fantastic DIY book scanner, but he won an Epilog Zing 16 Laser for his efforts! From the press release:

Epilog Laser, the leading producer of CO2 and fiber laser engraving and cutting systems, and Instructables.com are pleased to announce Daniel Reetz, Fargo, N.D., is the grand-prize winner in the Epilog Challenge. Reetz will receive a new Zing 16 Laser engraving/cutting system for his innovative and eco-friendly "DIY High-Speed Book Scanner from Trash and Cheap Cameras". Reetz's winning instructable was one of 478 entries in the Epilog Challenge.

Daniel says:

"I have strong 3D modeling skills, and I'm planning to use the Zing to do all kinds of rapid prototyping. The Zing will allow me to rapidly make stencils and solder masks, and to prototype new camera mounts quickly. But I'm most excited about using the Zing to pursue an exciting new field of imaging called computational photography," Reetz said. "Really, without Epilog and Instructables, none of this would have been possible."

I've been test driving a Zing myself, which I'll be doing a full review of soon, and I have to agree with Daniel: having a laser cutter at your disposal is a game changer when it comes to quickly realizing your designs in the physical world. Great job, you lucky son of a gun!

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[Photo via ESPN]

If you want to drive like a rocketeer, or maybe you just don't want to be bothered with checking your air pressure, then take a look at the Tweel.

Airless tires could solve a number of problems associated with pneumatic tire technology. cnn

The Tweel, an experimental tire and wheel combination developed by Michelin, is designed to replace today's air-filled tires. Flexible polyurethane spokes deflect over obstacles.

The technology has been under development for a few years.

Recently, I had a flat on my vehicle, and left the spare off of the holder while the repair was being done. I realized how heavy the tires on the car are every time I opened or closed the back gate. Tires weigh at least a couple hundred pounds of the vehicle's weight, decreasing fuel economy through inertia. I doubt that the tweel as configured would work well in snowy driving, it looks like the snow and ice would jam into the gaps and throw the balance way off, making for a very bumpy ride. Certainly, there are people working up solutions to that problem.

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Signum Ignitum writes "Safari 4 comes with a slew of cool new features, but extensive data generation combined with poor cleanup make for a data trail that's a privacy nightmare. Hidden files with screenshots of your history, files that point back to Web pages you've visited and cleared from your history, and thousands of XML files that track the changes in the pages in your Top Sites can add up to gigabytes of information you didn't know was kept about you." Some of Safari's bloat is kept in quite obscure locations; it takes a fairly knowledgeable user to find it and clean it up. You can avoid some of the worst of it by disabling Top Sites.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

viyh notes that President Obama has named former astronaut Charles F. Bolden Jr. as NASA administrator. Obama's campaign space adviser, Lori Garver, will be Bolden's deputy. Bolden flew four shuttle missions, two as commander, as well as 100 combat missions over Viet Nam. If confirmed, Bolden will take over an agency uncertain of its direction. The shuttle Atlantis's landing will mark the end of the servicing era — it was the last planned mission to repair any satellite. Some inside the agency are less than happy about how NASA's future looks from here.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

(Rudy Rucker is a guestblogger. His latest novel, Hylozoic, describes a postsingular world in which everything is alive.)

I've always been fascinated by ants. Look at these guys taking apart a dead fly.

I found a (somewhat slow) website called AntWeb with a lot of ant pictures, like, of all 28 different genera of the ant subfamily called the ponerine ants.

There's a striking similarity between ants and motorcycles, I've always thought---maybe there's something about that rear ant bulge (known as the gaster) resembling a gas tank.

I like insects of all kinds, really. The ubiquitous roly-poly or pill-bug or woodlouse is a good pal.

In the early 1990s, when the notion of Artificial Life was big, I wrote a Windows program called Boppers: Artificial Life Lab, which incorporated a kind of virtual ant farm. I did the work at Autodesk, and now you can get the program as a free download.

In my usual "transreal" fashion (here's an essay called "A Transrealist Manifesto" that explains that word), I wrote an SF novel about my stint at Autodesk, including some virtual ants that take over the world.

[California artist Robert Arneson's ceramic sculpture self-portrait, "California Artist," in which the dark lenses of the sunglasses are in fact holes. (I think he did this as an in-your-face gesture towards his critics, saying something like, "You say I'm an airhead, but can you make a sculpture like this? And can you fathom the meaning of Emptiness?")]

I just noticed that on Google Books you can find part of the text of my Autodesk ant novel, The Hacker and the Ants, Version 2.0. Why 2.0? Well, the book first came out in 1994, and when I republished it in 2003, I upgraded some of the tech and gave it a slightly happier ending.

(Rudy Rucker is a guestblogger. His latest novel, Hylozoic, describes a postsingular world in which everything is alive.)

If it was for some reason hard to see clouds, can you imagine how much people would pay for the privilege? Like, if there was only one spot on Earth that had clouds, everyone would be going there and having these big spiritual experiences just from seeing the clouds.

This is a cloud I saw in Big Sur. We get so much beauty for free in life.

I always enjoy photos of weird and unusual clouds, and I found a cornucopia of them on the over-the-top image site, "Dark Roasted Blend".

destinyland writes "A science magazine asks an MIT professor, roboticists, artificial intelligence workers, and science fiction authors about the possibility of an uprising of machines. Answers range from 'of course it's possible' to 'why would an intelligent network waste resources on personal combat?' An engineering professor points out that bipedal robots 'are largely impractical,' and Vernor Vinge says a greater threat to humanity is good old-fashioned nuclear annihilation. But one roboticist says it's inevitable robots will eventually be used in warfare, while another warns of robots in the hands of criminals, cults, and other 'non-state actors.' 'What we should fear in the foreseeable future is not unethical robots, but unethical roboticists.'" The new movie got off to a good start, drawing $13.4 million in its first day. I found it reasonably entertaining; pretty much what I'd expect from a Terminator movie. If nothing else, I learned that being able to crash helicopters and survive being thrown into the occasional wall are the two most valuable skills to have during a robot uprising. What did you think?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Milojo Productions (brainchild of Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos) is now casting women with fabulous ideas and great personalities from across America for a new series. The show, set to air on TLC, takes a selected female inventor through the journey of realizing their dream. It's an opportunity to get your product developed, manufactured, marketed, and finally sold on The Home Shopping Network.

The show's casting directors will be accepting submissions through GotCast until the last week of June.

Here's what the video app needs to be:

30-Second Verbal Pitch - Briefly introduce yourself and your product with an intriguing couple of sentences that lets us know what your invention does without having to physically demonstrate it.

---

Component II: 2-minute Demonstration - Show us your product invention anyway you like, but it must include the demonstration of a working prototype, and it must be done in two minutes or less!

---

Component III: Bio - give us a little bit about you and perhaps the history of your invention! This is a chance to really let your personality shine through.

Who would you nominate? What would you like to see invented?

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Spooky McSpookster writes "Microsoft has turned off its Windows Live Messenger service for five countries: Cuba, Syria, Iran, Sudan, and North Korea. Users in these countries trying to log in get the following error: '810003c1: We were unable to sign you in to the .NET Messenger Service.' Why now, since this flies in the face of the Obama administration's softening stance on Cuba? This isn't the first time the US Trade Embargo has had questionable outcomes. US-based Syrian political activist George Ajjan created a web site promoting democracy in Syria, only to find GoDaddy blocked anyone inside Syria from seeing it. The article argues, 'Messenger is a medium for communication, and the citizens of these countries should not be punished from such a basic tool because the US has problems with their governments' policies.' What does this say for the wisdom of non-US citizens relying on US companies for their business or communication?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

gabrlknght writes with this excerpt from Science News: "Because nanoparticles are small, a large proportion of their atoms are near the particle's surface. Having fewer neighbors, those relatively unconfined atoms can link in unusual ways, giving materials made of nanoparticles novel properties. But the same characteristic that makes nanostructures useful — size — also makes working with them no small task. Engineering on the nanoscale is like building a ship in a bottle while wearing mittens. It would be far cheaper and easier, researchers agree, if nanoparticles could just arrange themselves into nanomaterials — like dropping the pieces of the ship into the bottle and then sitting back to watch the ship build itself. What scientists are working on now is finding the right chemistry — creating just the right conditions so that natural properties such as charge or magnetism direct the pieces of the ship to come together just so, with the mast above the deck and never below or to the side. This idea, called self-assembly, isn't exactly new. Examples range from the simple separation of oil and vinegar in a bottle of salad dressing to the complex movements of proteins and enzymes — themselves nanosized — reacting in living cells. Scientists have long been inspired by these naturally self-assembling systems. But designing self-assembling systems in the lab, with nanoparticles, presents its own scale of difficulty. And making self-assembled nanomaterials grow large enough to actually be useful is even more challenging."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jake von Slatt sez, "Holy Mother of Zod! My arch nemesis Jake-of-All-Trades Hildebrandt has created what has to be the most definitively Steampunk casemod EVAH! Behold the Telecalculograph, Mk. II!"

It's a promo for the forthcoming game Damnation, and you can win it! Be sure to check out the "making of" video for lots of sweet little notes, like the spring-loaded tug-knob that works like a pinball launcher, which turns on the machine and spins up a flywheel, making the whole thing feel mechanical rather than electric.

Damnation Hildebrandt!

Making Of video

Norsefire writes "The FBI and US Marshals were forced to shut down part of their computer network after being hit by a 'mystery virus.' FBI spokesman Mike Kortan said, 'We are evaluating a network issue on our external, unclassified network that's affecting several government agencies.' Nikki Credic, spokeswoman for the US Marshals, said that no data has been compromised but the type of virus and its origin is unknown."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

jamax writes "According to the BBC, 'Russia is making plans to detach and fly away its parts of the International Space Station when the time comes to de-orbit the rest of the outpost. ... To facilitate the plan, RKK Energia, the country's main ISS contractor, has already started developing a special node module for the Russian segment, which will double as the cornerstone of the future station. ... Unlike many Nasa and European space officials, Russian engineers are confident that even after two decades in orbit, their modules would be in good enough shape to form the basis of a new space station. "We flew on Mir for 15 years and accumulated colossal experience in extending the service life (of such a vehicle)," said a senior Russian official at RKK Energia...' Is Russia the last country where engineers are not (yet) forced by corporations to intentionally produce designs that fail two days after warranty expires? There used to be a lot of equipment manufactured by various countries (Germany is the first one that comes to mind) that lasted virtually forever — old cars or weapons systems, but one rarely sees anything of the sort these days."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

[Photo from AIDG on Flickr]

XelaTeco is an organization that helps gather and distribute technologies in the communities of Guatemala.

Xeni Jardin covered the story with photos and audio on NPR's Day to Day.

Xela Teco builds environmentally friendly technology that can be used to bring survival basics to poverty-stricken villages in the Mayan highlands: clean water, electricity and fuel.

[Photo from AIDG on Flickr]

XelaTeco is supported in part by the sustainable design brain trust of AIDG, Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group.

The Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group (AIDG) helps individuals and communities get affordable and environmentally sound access to electricity, sanitation and clean water. Through a combination of business incubation, education, and outreach, we help people get technology that will better their health and improve their lives.

---

XelaTeco opened its doors in Quetzaltenango (Xela), Guatemala in the summer of 2005 after an intensive search for engineering talent at local universities and engineering schools. The highly skilled team that came together was comprised of 10 Guatemalan workers, of which 3 were women. The combined skill sets of the team ranged from accounting and civil engineering to electronics and metal casting, many of the essentials for completing the varied projects they would soon undertake.

If you have experience working with sustainable technologies in communities, share them with us in the comments.

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theodp writes "TechFlash takes a look at Amazon's evolving government cloud strategy, reporting that the company is quietly building an operation in the D.C. area ('Amazon Government Solutions') as it aims to become a key technology provider to federal and state governments and the US military. According to Input, the federal government market for cloud services is projected to grow to $800 million by 2013, and the state and local cloud market is expected to reach $635 million by that year."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Repurpose", an awesome little documentary short by Jack Oatmon. The video is centered around Montreal's Foulab hardware hacking group and aims to introduce the hackerspace concept to newcomers.

Why are more and more hobbyists experimenting with hacks and circuit bends? What relationship does this imply about consumer society and technological advancement? Is this a real-world analog of 'user generated content'?

hmmmm ... why hack/mod/make your own tech... Because it's incredibly fun! Ok, perhaps my view is a bit too subjective to give a completely accurate assessment of hacker motivation. Handmade and high tech have been valued cultural qualities for a while - it's now simply easier than ever before for those two to overlap. ... like I said -- fun!
[via Create Digital Music]

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bahstid writes "The NY Times reports that Microsoft and the European Commission have canceled the only hearing planned in an antitrust investigation into the company's tying of Internet Explorer into Windows because of a dispute over the attendance of European regulators serving as advisers. As a result, the commission will reach its decision and levy a fine based on written statements from Microsoft and its adversaries. Microsoft decided against the opportunity to give oral evidence in the case after it was unable to persuade the commission to move the meeting, scheduled for June 3rd through 5th, so that it did not conflict with a global antitrust conference in Zurich that draws European antitrust regulators."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Media literacy builds an understanding of the role of media in society as well as essential skills of inquiry and self-expression necessary for citizens of a democracy. (Source: Center for Media Literacy)

Photo credit: Kristina D.C. Hoeppner Inside this Media Literacy Digest:

• CCK08: Socialization As Information Object - ...an overview of the CCk08
• The Social Data Revolution(s) - Our generation suffers more under abundant information than previous generations.
• Videos of Recent Presentations - Videos of two recent presentations
• Public Engagement. Public Empowerment - Open tools will produce open conversations and open thinking
• Social Media In The Enterprise - 35+ examples of corporate social media presents a brief overview of how various organizations are beginning to use social media
• Technology Trends - Techcrunch reviews conference discussions of technologies trends for 2009
• Course to Dis/Course Recordings - From Courses to Dis/Course recordings are now available
• News and Content - The news industry continues to suffer under the impact of freely available content

If you're looking for a more critical approach to making sense of how new technologies and media are affecting the way we learn, study and work, this weekly digest may help you recognize the forest from the trees. Here all the details:

eLearning Resources and News

learning, networks, knowledge, technology, trends by George Siemens

CCK08: Socialization As Information Object

I finally got around to capturing a few thoughts on CCK08. I’ve posted an overview of the course (as well as an earlier rudimentary attempt from 2002) on my connectivism blog: Socialization as information objects. Now, to get ready for CCK09…

The Social Data Revolution(s)

The Social Data Revolution(s):

“In 2009, more data will be generated by individuals than in the entire history of mankind through 2008… The second data revolution brought about a new dimension to data creation: users started to actively contribute explicit data such as information about themselves, their friends, or about the items they purchased. These data went far beyond the click-and-search data that characterized the first decade of the web.”

The discussion of social data and expectations of consumers / end users resonates with my experiences. I no longer seek information for information itself. Whether looking for a hotel or purchasing a product online, I seek social information such as ratings, comments, or event communities. However, I doubt the opening throw-away statement of more data being generated in 2009 than in all previous history. Journal of the History of Ideas (access likely restricted) has an issue on on early information explosion that challenges assumptions that our generation suffers more under abundant information than previous generations.

Videos of Recent Presentations

Videos of two presentations I recently delivered in Iowa and New York:

• Iowa State University’s ComETS symposium: The impact of connectivism and networked learning
• Empire State College’s CDL conference: Social and Connected Learning

Public Engagement. Public Empowerment

Talk of technology quickly turns into talk of power. Who has it (power)? By what means did they attain it? By what means do they hold it? What are they attempting to do with it? Technology embodies ideologies, and the choices made by its designers influence what its users will be able to do (or not do). Learning management systems (LMS) - in contrast with personal learning environments / webs / networks - enable certain approaches to learning while discouraging others. An LMS also supports and fosters a certain relationship between the educator and the learner. The ability to open or close a discussion forum or to grant and deny course access is fundamentally imbued with power. It is little surprise, therefore, that governance and public engagement are influenced by technology. Open tools will produce open conversations and open thinking. Public Engagement. Public Empowerment addresses the relationship between tools / technology, ideology / governance, and power:

Direct engagement in politics has been the purview of an educated and powerful few until recent times. Indeed, the role of the politician, and the executive that serves him or her has largely been to tell us, the sheep-like masses, what is good for us and to expect us to blithely follow along. We change our minds only in the face of corruption and excess, and exercise our democratic rights to switch to a lesser evil at times of election. But oh, my! How the world has changed. …In a hyperconnected world, our ability to readopt these denser forms of association, made sustainable by tools such as social networks, become reality. We become the true global village, as much the neighbor to the bloke next door as some geographically remote but by association, close, neighbor with whom we share an interest.

The article occasionally moves into the Land of Happy Hype, but the central message of increased engagement in civic discourse enabled by participatory technologies is important to share.

Social Media In The Enterprise

I have a few weeks of travel coming up (first to Senegal for workshops as part of a Soros Foundation grant & elearning Africa, back to Winnipeg for a library conference, and then to Italy for the Enterprise 2.0 forum). In preparation for the enterprise 2.0 event, I’ve been reviewing resources on how organizations are using social media. 35+ examples of corporate social media presents a (very) brief overview of how various organizations are beginning to use social media. Details are limited on the effectiveness of the projects, but it’s starting to feel like the mid-90’s when companies were proclaiming “we now have a web site!”. Underneath the hype of unrealistic expectations and attention grabbing headlines, the web developed into an indispensable part of our interaction with information. The hype of “we’re doing social media!” will likely also yield to foundational changes in how we interact with each other.

Technology Trends

Techcrunch reviews conference discussions of technologies trends for 2009. Trends presented are fairly obvious (which is to be expected when the analysis cycle is as short as a year): next generation technology users, mobile devices, digital displays, etc. The focus on unstructured data (they suggest within five years, 80% of enterprise data will be unstructured) and distributed webs (social networks) are important for educators to consider.

Course to Dis/Course Recordings

Last week, Martin Weller and I hosted an online conference to discuss the future of courses: From Courses to Dis/Course. The recordings are now available. At this stage, they are long, unedited Elluminate recordings. Which means you have to advance the recording until you get to the presentation you would like. As much as I love Elluminate, the inability to get individual recordings is a challenge. If I suddenly inherit time, I’ll chunk the recordings with Camtasia. Or if someone else is eager to do so… :)

News and Content

Education’s sibling - the news industry - continues to suffer under the impact of freely available content and increased end user control permitted by the web. But it is not a field that is going away quickly or quietly. Consider the suggestion that the internet is killing news:

But, content is not necessarily news. News is the verifiable facts that trained, responsible journalists… often spend hundreds of hours tracking down and sifting through and verifying to get to the truth. Real reporting is time-consuming and expensive. It requires a level of investment that many traditional print and broadcast news organizations can no longer afford in the face of the tsunami of free content that is the web.

The real problem is not that we have free content (as the article goes on to suggest, while classifying instances of effective amateur journalism as rare). The real issue is that free content contrasts with the existing infrastructure of newspapers and journalism. Quality “control”, vetting, and rigorous research can (and will) be a part of open content. The models will be created over time. The newspaper industry did not emerge wholly as we know it today. It evolved in response to needs of readers and members of society. Those who lament the decline of newspapers overlook the likelihood of a similar prospect for world of open content.

Originally written by George Siemens for elearnspace and first published on May 21st 2009 in his newsletter eLearning Resources and News.

About the author To learn more about George Siemens and to access extensive information and resources on elearning check out www.elearnspace.org. Explore also George Siemens connectivism site for resources on the changing nature of learning and check out his new book "Knowing Knowledge".

Photo credits: CCK08: Socialization As Information Object - ndul The Social Data Revolution(s) - ndul Videos of Recent Presentations - Antonio Balaguer Soler Public Engagement. Public Empowerment - derocz Social Media In The Enterprise - grki Technology Trends - Dawn Hudson Course to Dis/Course Recordings - picpics News and Content - lunchschen

I don't want to make a federal case about it, but I don't think the press did enough checking into Maureen Dowd's explanation of the plagiarism that appeared in her column last week.

Had it been a major political figure, say a Governor or the Speaker of the House, I doubt if a vague explanation about quoting a friend would have stopped the questions. (I'm thinking of Spitzer, McGreevy and Pelosi, just a few recent examples.)

Doesn't it beg the obvious question -- who was the friend? We should know if he or she corroborates Ms. Dowd's explanation. Clearly there was plagiarism, someone committed it. If this friend is a reporter or columnist, don't his or her readers have a right to know who they are?

And by the way, Dowd hasn't admitted to plagiarism. So if we're to forgive her, if this is one-time thing, doesn't she have to say: 1. She did it and 2. She's sorry. She's done neither.

This is all part of the problem with journalism today. Maybe it has always been this way and we haven't had the tools to communicate about them without going through them. Maybe they've always been lifting copy from other writers, and only now do we have the ability to report on them instead of reporting through them.

We haven't gotten the facts from the Times and Ms. Dowd. We ought to press for them, the way a reporter would press a political leader. We, the public, their readers, are entitled to know what happened and what their standards are for columnists. If plagiarism is okay, then who can do it, and how much. Guidelines, public, open and transparent -- are a minimum requirement. Then we can decide for ourselves how much we want to trust the Times and their columnists.

I didn't read a single report from another journal saying that what Dowd did is wrong and that her explanation is unacceptable, and that the Times is stonewalling, all of which seem obvious to me. I don't know about other readers, but it's this casual attitude, the inside-dealing I see both within the press and with the people they cover that makes me unenthusiastic for ideas meant to "save" them. I'm more into reformation. I want a new kind of journalism that sees incidents like this as bugs to fix. An opportunity to make journalism even more excellent, instead of ever more mediocre.

Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our Steven reviews the MyPressi TWIST, a portable espresso maker powered by nitrous oxide cannisters.

A typical regulator might be two inches in diameter. Much too large for the TWIST. The task of shrinking the apparatus down without losing efficiency and safety went to Gecko, a firm that collaborated on the Herman Miller Leaf Lamp and has built pneumatic devices on cruise control missiles for defense industry contractors (really).

Their creation: a regulator that's about the size of half a grown man's pinky nail. Once the pod develops its own pressure, the regulator in the handle shuts off the pressure. And there's also a secondary safety valve, in case you put in too much coffee. In time, too, their small, main regulator could be applied or licensed out to other hardware.

For now, O'Brien is focused on the TWIST. And as we continue to chat, all I'm focused on is the taste. He takes a preloaded cup, gets some hot water from the cafe, puts in 3.5 oz., pulls the trigger to release the gas (it's cold, but expands rapidly from the hot water), and begins the pour...

Hands-On With A Whippit-Powered Travel Espresso Maker

Discuss this on Boing Boing Gadgets

Anon E. Muss writes "Just because you can put a camera somewhere doesn't mean you should. Apparently, the Department of Homeland Security doesn't grasp this concept. They've installed video cameras in urinals at Houston's Hobby Airport. At least they weren't sneaky about it — they posted a notice saying 'Automatic infrared flush sensors also provide video monitoring for security purposes.' (Insert bad joke about bashful bladder syndrome here)."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Growing up, my best friend's parents had an Eames Lounge in their family room and I always loved it. Unlike most iconic modern furniture, it's actually super-comfortable. I was checking our their pricing online (too rich for my blood, sadly) and came across this terrific 1956 video of Charles and Ray Eames first introducing the chair on the Arlene Francis "Home" Show. From Wikipedia:

The backrest and headrest are screwed together by a pair of aluminum supports. This unit is suspended on the seat via two connection points in the armrests. The armrests are screwed to shock mounts on the interior of the backrest shell, allowing the backrest and headrest to flex when the chair is in use. This is part of the chair's unusual design, as well as one of its biggest flaws. The rubber washers are solidly glued to the plywood shells, but have been known to tear free when excessive weight is applied, or when the rubber becomes old and brittle.

Other creative uses of materials include the seat cushions - which eschew standard stapled or nailed upholstery. Instead the cushions are sewn with a zipper around the outer edge that connects them to a stiff plastic backing. The backing affixes to the plywood shells with a series of hidden clips and rings. This design, along with the hidden shock mounts in the armrest allow the outside veneer of the chair to be unmarred by screws or bolts. The chair has a low seat which is permanently fixed at a recline. The seat of the chair swivels on a cast aluminum base, with glides that are threaded so that the chair may remain level.

...When it was first made Ray Eames remarked in a letter to Charles that the chair looked "comfortable and un-designy" (sic). Charles's vision was for a chair with "the warm, receptive look of a well-used first baseman's mitt.

Doran sez, "The San Diego Union Tribune was recently purchased by Platinum Equity, which in turn has a $30-million investment from the pension fund of Los Angeles cops and firefighters, along with other public employee pension funds. Now the President of the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the union which represents L.A. cops, wants the editorial board of the paper to be fired because they don't like what has been written about them."

"Since the very public employees they continually criticize are now their owners, we strongly believe that those who currently run the editorial pages should be replaced," Weber wrote in a March 26 letter to Platinum CEO Tom Gores.

Weber, in an interview, emphasized that the League is not demanding changes in the paper's news coverage of the issue or in its staff of reporters. "It's just these people on the opinion side. There is not even an attempt to be even-handed. They're one step away from saying, 'these public employees are parasites,' " Weber said.

L.A. police union wants San Diego newspaper writers fired (Thanks, Doran!)

Taras sez, "British local authorities are queuing up to connect their CCTV cameras to a national system which tracks cars by their registration plates. Any camera, if high enough resolution, can be adapted to work with the software. The Information Commissioner is concerned, as ever, but under-resourced and basically powerless. People who have taken part in anti-war rallies are already having their cars stopped by Anti-Terror Units for no good reason and being questioned under threat of arrest."

John Catt found himself on the wrong side of the ANPR system. He regularly attends anti-war demonstrations outside a factory in Brighton, his home town.

It was at one of these protests that Sussex police put a "marker" on his car. That meant he was added to a "hotlist".

This is a system meant for criminals but John Catt has not been convicted of anything and on a trip to London, the pensioner found himself pulled over by an anti-terror unit.

"I was threatened under the Terrorist Act. I had to answer every question they put to me, and if there were any questions I would refuse to answer, I would be arrested. I thought to myself, what kind of world are we living in?"

Camera grid to log number plates (Thanks, Taras!)

Want to be an audiophile but can't afford the price tag? Try making your own low-inductance speaker cables, complete with "decorative oak sleeves." Via BBG.

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ruphus13 writes "Linux recently achieved 1% market share of the overall operating system market. But, does that statistic really mean anything useful? This article makes the case that it doesn't. It states, 'Framed in the "overall market share" terminology, the information (or how it was gathered and calculated) isn't necessarily questionable, it's more that it's meaningless. It's nebulous, even when one looks at several months worth of data. [How] Linux is used in various business settings answers an actual question — and the answer can be used to ask further questions, form opinions — and maybe one day even explain to some degree what 1% of the market share really means. ... Operating systems aren't immortal beings, and by rights, there can't be (there shouldn't be) only one. ... No one system can be everything to everyone, and no one system (however powerful, or stable) can do everything perfectly that just one person might require of it in the course of a day. While observing trends and measuring market share are important, the results (good or bad) shouldn't be any platform's measure of self-worth or validation. It's a data point to build on (we're weak in this area, strong in this area, our platform is being used a lot more this quarter, where did all of our users go?) in order to improve and stay relevant.'"

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Now this ought to be fun to watch. We've written plenty of stuff about the ongoing legal fight between artist Shephard Fairey and the Associated Press. And, every time we write about it, someone always points out that Fairey is often just as bad as the AP. Despite being an "appropriation" artist, who regularly uses the works of others in his own work (something we think is great), he's also been known to legally threaten others for doing the same with his own work. So, it looks like someone has decided to poke both with a stick, to see who gets provoked first. That someone is artist Eric Roth. ChurchHatesTucker alerts us that Roth has launched his "Intellectual Property Asshole Competition" where he is selling, via his website, hand-painted version of both the Mannie Garcia/AP photo and Shepard Fairey's poster... and will see who is the first to send him a cease and desist. While we never think it's a good idea to infringe for the sake of infringement, this ought to be fun to watch.

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Apple's double standards in deciding which iPhone apps to reject have hit plenty of developers. Apparently it's fine to access any sort of content through the device's web browser, but if you have an app that accesses anything Apple deems objectionable, it's obscene and therefore blocked. The latest rejection along these lines is of an e-book reader which lets people download and read books from Project Gutenberg, a trove of digitized public-domain works. One book in its collection is the ancient Indian sex guide The Kama Sutra; in Apple's eyes, the ability to access the book from the app is grounds enough to reject it. The app is simply designed to access Project Gutenberg, and users select which titles they want to read. The developer says he wasn't even aware that The Kama Sutra was in Gutenberg's archives, but he also points out that several other e-book apps can access it, while, of course, it's also available on the web. The guy has now created a version of the app that specifically blocks access to The Kama Sutra, in hopes Apple will deem it acceptable. Fair enough, since he just wants to get the app out there. But it doesn't make Apple's arbitrary approval process -- and the stupidity it regularly displays -- any better.

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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sammydee writes "I have a friend who is addicted to an MMO (Pirates of the Burning Sea). On a typical day, he will wake up around 9am, browse the forums for a bit, then go online and stay online all day, playing until about 3am the following morning, taking only toilet breaks and stopping to eat ready-meals. While the rest of the house works hard revising for exams, this friend will be playing his MMO instead. Now, I am pretty confident that this comprises an unhealthy addiction; unfortunately, I have no idea what to do about it. Any attempt to physically prevent him from playing the game would most likely result in an outburst of anger and possibly physical violence. Attempts at telling him he has a problem have been met with derision and angry retorts. Slashdotters, what would you do to help out a friend in this situation? Perhaps you are a reformed addict yourself — if so, how did you break out of the habit? Or maybe I should just leave well enough alone and allow him to continue? Any thoughts are gratefully received."

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Romenesko points us to the news that a judge is considering barring news organizations from showing photos of a handcuffed local legislator, Roger Corbin. Corbin was arrested on tax charges, and (not surprisingly), local news sources have shown photos of him in handcuffs. This seems both accurate and newsworthy. However, the judge seems to think that these photos could bias the jury, saying that it was "troubling" to him that the news organizations used the handcuffed photos rather than photos of Corbin back when he was an upstanding legislator. Of course, as the lawyer for the news organizations pointed out: "Courts do not get [into] telling the media what to publish." The judge then apparently compared the handcuff photos to child porn in explaining that the First Amendment wasn't absolute, and the gov't could restrain the use of certain photos (apparently skipping over the incredibly high barrier normally used to justify anything of that nature). The judge hasn't made a final decision yet, but even the fact that he's considering telling newspapers that they can't publish photos of a guy in handcuffs seems troubling.

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The Palm Pre comes out in a few weeks, and many are hoping that this is finally the smartphone out there that can capably compare to the iPhone. Of course, one key to that is having a devoted developer community that makes the device more valuable. Palm is betting the business on the Pre, and some of the early reports I'd heard from developers about its WebOS platform were that it was a great development environment. Since I think it's good for the overall market to have strong competitors, I was hopeful that maybe the Pre would live up to the hype (to be honest, I'm thinking about getting one myself). However, slimcat, points us to the story of overly legalistic Palm overreacting to a minor issue and canceling a chance to work with the folks who were setting up PreDevCamp. Now, Palm had no obligation to work with the folks setting it up, but it would be a good way to support the developer community. So why did they bail out? Apparently because one of the folks behind PreDevCamp mentioned on Twitter that he was meeting with Palm, but that he couldn't say anything since the meeting was under NDA.

Now, if you've been around larger companies for any length of time, you can see why this happened. It's pretty standard that a meeting under NDA means that even the fact that the meeting exists is covered by the non-disclosure agreement. So... I can understand (at first glance) how Palm reacted. But, Palm really should have taken a step back and looked at the larger picture. Having the guy reveal the meeting was hardly a big issue. The bigger issue is helping developers feel as comfortable as possible developing for the Pre and making the device as valuable as possible. Freaking out over a harmless "leak" about the meeting is missing the big picture in a way that only hurts Palm.

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Some time last year, there was a bunch of news about how VCR tapes would no longer be manufactured. Around the same time I noticed that none of the VCRs showing up at the dump had digital tuners. Wouldn't it have been nice if those manufacturers could have dropped in a little extra circuit board to extend the life of their hardware? Even the ones with tape and DVD don't have digital tuners. Go figure. So it serves them right that now all this hardware ends up being excellent project fodder!

This looks like it would be a great school project to examine the design process. Anybody up for trying it in their classroom?

In a very short time, this video lays out the concept, shows how to get started, explains that you should save certain things, details a little of the construction, and leaves the specific details to the creative minds of the people doing the project. There are a lot of ways that we could go at this project, lights, sound, counters, programming. Do your stuff and show it off in the MAKE Flickr pool!

[Thanks, Norm!]

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Britain is working hard to maintain its place as a leading surveillance society. Building on the massive "success" of its widespread use of CCTV cameras, police are now installing a system that will use the cameras to track and log car journeys. CCTV cameras across the UK are being added to the system, which automatically recognizes and stores license plate numbers, then adds them, and the location in which they were spotted, to a central database. Police, of course, say the system's great at reducing and solving crime, and one police bigwig says that arrests are up 40% in his area since cops started using the system. But just because arrests have increased, it doesn't necessarily mean crime has been reduced. He further defends the system by saying "innocent people have nothing to fear from the way we use it" -- which all too often is used as an attempt to justify pretty nasty governmental intrusions on privacy and liberty. This system sounds like another part of Britain's attempt to record the lives of its subjects in databases, alongside its database of info on every child in the country, and details of all the internet and phone traffic there. Will people there get up in arms over all this government surveillance, or are they saving their ire only for the likes of Google Street View?

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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MojoKid writes "While many organizations are preparing for an upgrade to Windows 7, the US Army is upgrading to Windows Vista. The upgrade will include getting rid of all the Office 2003 programs and installing Office 2007 in its place, and is scheduled for a Dec. 31 completion date. Half the Army's computers (they have 744,000 desktop units) have Office 2007 so far, and 13 percent are on Vista, which was released in January 2007. Windows 7 is supposed to launch before year's end, so the Army will be fully on Vista sometime after Microsoft's next generation OS is already launched."

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My appearance on the Martha Stewart show on Monday is now online at MarthaStewart.com. To see my segments click on Inventions, 1 and Inventions, 2 on the page.