Make AOL Instant Message bots?
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.”
Nick writes “In reference to Xeni Jardin’s mention of the “
Here’s more about the
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.”

Formerly iPodder, here’s the latest version and information for this great open source podcatcher – “Juice has evolved from its basic beginnings as the world’s first podcasting software to a mature, fully featured application. Donation-supported Juice has been downloaded over 1 million times since its debut last year, making it the world’s most popular podcast receiver.”