Here’s a quick and easy way to make wallpaper/desktops for your computer from Google maps…gMerge is a python script that merges Google Maps satellite “tiles” in order to produce a wallpaper (or even a poster!). For some reason the town I grew up in continues to not be visible on Google maps, ah well. [via] Link.
Flickr gang- congrats on your 17 millionth photo! I never expected to use a photo sharing service so much and for it to be a daily part of work, play and everything in between. The MAKE Flickr photo group has been a great meta for us, thanks again! Lastly, for Flickr fans like me- there’s a new collaborative poster you can order with thousands of others- called the Flickrverse. Link.
Neat- a story from a MAKE reader building the Marshmallow gun in issue 02– We went to the Ace Hardware store to get the parts…when we got to the counter the clerk said ‘looks like a lot of fun here.’ Spencer sort of acted out putting a marshmellow in a tube and shooting it…she got it. “Ah, you read Make magazine?” She not only reads Make, but had got the second issue before me…and wanted the store to carry it. Link.
Interesting electron based ideas for greener computing- With the average desktop power consumption cruising along at 120 watts, and laptops squeaking by with a lesser 30 watts, the global computer power load is enormous. On top of that, the shorter and shorter lifespan of computers, because of wear, and programs’ insatiable hunger for more processing power, are making tons and tons of obsolete computers into waste every year. Link.
Danny O’Brien wrote a wonderful Greasemonkey script, as mentioned in our Issue #02 column. It pings you every few minutes to see if you still really need to be surfing the web, and it’s wonderful.The idea, of course, is not to make you insane and interrupt your real work, but to ensure that you’re always aware of the task that brought you where you are—that you not allow a legitimate work search to turn into a 4-hour wikipedia party. Link.
Oldie, but goodie- XboxMediaCenter is a free open source (GPL) multimedia player for the Xbox™ from Microsoft. Currently XboxMediaCenter can be used to play/view most popular video/audio/picture formats such as MPEG-1/2/4, DivX, XviD, MP3, AAC, JPG, GIF plus many more less known formats directly from a CD/DVD in Xbox DVD-ROM drive or of the Xbox harddrive, XBMC can also play files from a PC over a local network and even stream media streams directly from the internet. Link.
I need to dust off my Pocket PC and try this out (blog companies could sell refurb’ed PDAs just for blogging)- Pocket Blog extends your weblog to any Pocket PC device. Weblog entries are maintained offline. When Internet connectivity becomes available, such as when your Pocket PC is placed in it’s docking cradle or a WiFi card is inserted, changes are automatically posted to your weblog. Pocket Blog also downloads recent weblog entries, enabling you to edit entries that were originally posted from your desktop. [via] Link.
