Month: February 2008

Time lapse photos, Sonic Fabric, RFID implants – Dorkbot

Time lapse photos, Sonic Fabric, RFID implants – Dorkbot

RfidAmal Graafstra has an excellent write up and photos from the happenings at NYC’s Dorkbot meeting – time lapse photos, sonic fabric and RFID implants “Attending a dorkbot meeting is an interesting experience to say the least. The atmosphere is quaint and inviting, with attendees waiting eagerly in their seats and engaging in friendly conversation about all kinds of technical, philosophical, and entertaining topics. The meeting took place on Jan 4th, which may or may not be Isaac Newton’s birthday, depending on which calendar you subscribe to.”

DIY virtual film contest

DIY virtual film contest

Lhmovies Logo“Chrysler in the Movies: Virtual Film Competition, a contest set to be launched Jan. 20. Entrants will create their own short film using capabilities built into Activision and Lionhead Studios’ “The Movies,” – [via] Link. They also report that 35,000 people have uploaded their films to Activision’s site since their launch. This is great: tons of user created content flowing out there with cool 3Ds. I’m tempted to try this out, but there seems to be a snag – any movie you make that has anything other 100% user-created content (which appears to be impossible according to the site Clickable Culture) is all owned by Activision and Lionhead films…

HOW TO: Building an Out-of-Band Device…

HOW TO: Building an Out-of-Band Device…

Oob Cross SectionHere’s a great article from Tom Bridge on building an out-of-band device: “When Hurricane Katrina ravaged the southeastern United States in late August 2005, telecommunications networks were interrupted in a significant fashion as switching facilities were flooded and power disrupted for days on end. Our Jackson, Mississippi office was left without a T1 when power was restored, as the route for our MCI/UUNet T1 travelled first through New Orleans. Facing days or weeks of a dark T1 was more than our company could take, so we decided to build them a fully functional dialup router using a spare 56k modem from our old dialup bank, a dialup account with a national provider, and a Netgear wireless firewall.”

The Jukebox Challenge!

The Jukebox Challenge!

JukeboxGarth from Extreme Craft writes “The Jukebox Challenge! I’m really excited to see if some people will throw down on this, because I think it’s an amazing idea, but I don’t quite have the tech chops for it yet. There are zillions of great old vinyl jukeboxes out there, but they’re incredibly finnicky to maintain. The challenge would be to create an MP3 interface for a real jukebox that would be as minimally invasive as possible…”

MAKE’s “Best of Macworld SF 2006”

MAKE’s “Best of Macworld SF 2006”

Why1We podcasted live, and we posted over 100 photos realtime via a WiFi camera + EVDO as we walked around. Now we’ve picked the top 5 products we liked the most at Macworld SF 2006. It’s safe to say our picks aren’t likely to be the same ones you’ll see in the usual “best of” lists. We gave top marks to products, services and software that we think fit the “Maker” mindset – technology on your time– and a bit of news from the future. Here they are…

HOW TO – Program a robot and control it on the web right now!

HOW TO – Program a robot and control it on the web right now!

Webcam-1Michael wrote up a special how to and guide for MAKE about a robot you can program and control over the web right now! – “Before you roll your eyes and tell me about all the other robots you’ve seen on-line and at robot shows, let me tell you why this one is different. You have to program it, or it won’t do anything. And by that I mean you ssh into the robot, write a program, compile it on the robot, and run it on the robot.” Here’s how it works and how to try it out…

DIY Mac Smart Card project…?

DIY Mac Smart Card project…?

MacosxJonas is looking to do a Mac OS X Smart Card project – “Because I fear I will never have time to do this project I was wondering if any budding smart card tinkerers would be able to hack together a low end “smart card” authentication token for Mac OS X? As some know 10.4 has built in support for the US Government Smart Card Interface Standard authentication thanks to some government agencies using it. I also saw Cryptocard bragging that Apple included their driver by default (sorry I don’t know which one it is). Interestingly they sell both smart card AND USB devices which it says are compatible with Mac OS X..”