How to make a war driving box – “It’s very easy, but this is not a step by step HOWTO, only a guide to build your own box. To start, you need a small up and running OpenBSD System on an Intel based System. This Sytem can run on in VMWare or on a older PC System (I use a 500 Mhz Pentuim System with 4 GB HD and 128 MB Ram)” – Thanks Jason! Link.
For years I’ve tried to create “AIM bots” little buddies you’d add to your instant message list – to interact with, to fetch useful information and deliver via your IM window. Back in the day there was a company called ActiveBuddy and they a great developer kit so you could make your own too (not sure if that’s still possible). As of today AOL has a new effort here so I think we might see a few interesting ones. Ideally, these bots could use RSS and anyone with a feed could create their own bots that their visitors could add and use. Would you use a MAKE bot? You could ask it “how do i solder” and it he’d return text and links to our pages on this online and in the magazine… [via].
John writes “Stereo From the Air – I just finished a short tutorial on how to take 3D stereo photographs from on board of an airplane and thought I’d share it with you guys. It’s a fun little project for when you’re pretty much bored out of your skull and stuck in a tiny seat at 33,000 feet.” Link. Here’s another how to I wrote awhile back on making 3D images too. Testing for cosmic rays also passes the time.
Nick writes “In reference to Xeni Jardin’s mention of the “American Inventor TV Series” on Boing Boing, I thought you might be interested in a TV series that runs on the Australian national broadcaster called ‘The New Inventors’ – It’s a revival of a late 70’s series called ‘The Inventors’ and each week features three makers and their projects which are assessed by a panel of design and engineering experts. The linked page doesn’t reference more recent episodes, but should give you some idea of the kind of ideas presented.” Link.
Here’s more about the DIY cell phone project – ” Surj Patel is building his own cell phone, bit by soldered bit. It’s not easy. It starts with parts that cost around $400. Then Patel and his partner, Deva Seetharam, have to write code to run on the tiny Linux-based computer that he’s hoping will serve as the brains of his new phone. So why bother? After all, it’s not like cell phones are hard to find or terribly expensive.” [via] Link.
Brian sent this along, something to consider if you’re working on small form factor devices…It’s good for the environment, good for your batteries, but it’s weird to think about an algorithm’s energy efficiency (it’s not just CPU cycles they look at, but memory access as well) “PowerEscape has added a new utility to its development toolsuite. “Insight” aims to reduce power consumption by improving the “data efficiency” of C-language code. The company says improving data efficiency in the initial stages of development yields higher performance for the same amount of power.” Link.
Great news, not only does the nano play