Like VoIP hacks and all things telephony? Check out out O’Reilly’s new Emerging Telephony site – ETel for short – “…covering VoIP, Asterisk, voice and mobile applications, as well as the policy and regulatory issues that impact these important technologies. In addition to daily blogging and the exclusive in-depth articles you’ll find here, we’ll be spotlighting the new related O’Reilly books, like Switching to VoIP and Asterisk: The Future of Telephony and Skype Hacks. We’ll have these authors chiming in on the blog from time to time, too.”Link.
A Make reader is wondering about using “Plastex” – “Have you heard of ‘Plastex’? I’m interested in the home casting materials of plastex and friendly plastic – the former, in particular, anecdotally seems like it make have enough structural integrity to actually make useful items from and not just use it for gap-filling repair work as it is sold, yet seems much easier to work with than the entry-bar for other types of molding. I have not experimented with these items on my ‘to do’ list. (actually I did use friendly plastic as a kid – it melts however at high temperatures which could be a liability).” Have any Makers out there used this stuff? I’ve only see it here and here.
Arno writes “Just like the Yamaha papercraft site you wrote about earlier, this site has some nice 3D papercraft in different categories such as: animals, science, buildings of the world, seasons, holidays, games, kids, etc.” [via] Link. The Science section is my favorite. As paper becomes smarter, with micro-ink technology, these papercrafts will become 3D models that can also dispense code and information.
Greg Smith’s kids started a company that makes costumes for Roombas. The company is “myRoomBud” and they’re currently selling a few different variety of Roomba skins. Mooba Cow, Roor the Tiger, Zeb the Zebra and Spotty the Leopard. They’re motto is “If you don’t dress up your Roomba, it’s just a naked vacuum.” [via] Link.
I think Quanta makes Apple’s Powerbook too, I wonder if they made the eMate…“The One Laptop per Child (OLPC) organization, which hopes to bring a $100 laptop championed by MIT’s Nicholas Negroponte, has selected Quanta to serve as its original design manufacturer, or ODM. ODMs typically manufacture products, but also participate substantially in the final design. Although not many U.S. consumers know the name, many own Quanta’s products. The company produces systems for Hewlett-Packard, Dell and others. It is engaged in a long-running rivalry with Compal, also based out of Taiwan.”Link.
Paolo writes “Here’s a project developed by the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne to build insect robots that are able interact with cockroachs communities.” On the site there are photos, videos, PDF schematics and software to download. Link. In MAKE 02 we had a Made on Earth with a roach controlled robot…something for these little guys to look forward to I suppose.
Robie from Pirateweather writes about a new service called Feed2Podcast that will turn your RSS feed (or any RSS feed) into a audio player so you can listen to the feed “They/we use new text to speech engine and your rss feed and turn your blog into a podcast instantly” It’s a pretty good text to speech engine – here’s what it sounds like with their preview audio player, click here to listen. Neat!
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