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Use your Powerbook with EVDO

Use your Powerbook with EVDO

evdo.jpgAs some of you noticed I was offline for a couple days this week, at the peak of depression (wireless deprivation) I considered grabbing a EVDO card, but since I use a Mac for some of my work, the card I was considering didn’t seem supported. No longer! The folks over on EVDOinfo.com have posted the instructions on using the Novatel v620 from Verizon. If anyone tries this out and can confirm that it works the comments it would be much appreciated.

MAKE Suggest a site and Flickr group!

MAKE Suggest a site and Flickr group!

eraser.jpgA lot of MAKE blog readers requested an easy way to suggest a site, so we made a suggest a site form you can send DIY stuff, hacks or projects you think we should know about. You can also click the “Suggest a site” link on the main page or on the blog. In other MAKE news we just surpassed 200 members in our MAKE Flickr group pool! If you haven’t already, join the group and check out the DIY-ity. Where else could you see a powered super-whiteboard eraser in action.

MAKE on with Triple H!

MAKE on with Triple H!

Hallerinnew.jpgMAKE will be on the Hallerin Hilton Hill show on Friday, April 15th at 9am EDT on WNOX Knoxville, TN AM 990, FM 99.1, FM 99.3 or live on the web if you want to tune in. We’ll be talking about MAKE, some new projects we’re working on and whatever happens to come up with live calls and more. The more we’ve been talking with folks around the country, the more it seems everyone is up to some type of interesting project or invention! Year of the Makers!

Turning your mobile phone into a magnetic stripe reader

Turning your mobile phone into a magnetic stripe reader

mag.jpgHere’s a great project with lots of uses from the deepquest blog“Exploring my new Siemens MC 60 mobile I discovered an interesting feature. It has the ability to record small pieces of sound with its integrated microphone and store them as WAV files, so that you can use them later as personalized ring tones, etc…The recording feature made me think that I might use the mobile as a magnetic stripe reader, just like I did with computers with soundcards. After some tests I had successful results, so here is the process in case you are interested in doing the same”. In our 01 issue we show how to make one for your PC as well.

Low-cost infant incubator

Low-cost infant incubator

infant.jpgMaker Jus2in posted this in our /talk section, but I wanted to get it on the blog…“I’m putting together the plans of a low-cost infant incubator that an Indian physician has developed. She’d like to distribute the plans of the device to other doctors in developing countries. Is there anyone out there who would like to help out on the project or could point me to a place where I could find interested engineers?” Post in the comments if you’re interested.

Make a LEDMeter

Make a LEDMeter

ledmeter.jpgJohn writes in with a handy link from his bookmarks- this site shows you how to create a LED display to show all sorts of information about your PC like CPU utilization, memory utilization, network bandwidth, hard drive usage, OS information, program information to monitor CPU, memory, and other resources used by individual threads or processes. I have an old PC with a parallel port and extra drive bay that this would look very sci-fi prop-ish blinking away.