The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for digital gadgetry, open code, smart hacks, and more. Processing power to the people!
Nice to see articles like this from the NYTimes…Many new multimedia notebooks include built-in television tuner cards and software that let them double as digital video recorders. But you don’t have to buy a whole new laptop just to record your favorite shows… Not bad for $90. Link.
With this Google maps hack you can see the spammiest places on the planet, well- at least where a lot seems to be coming from. Mailinator is a service that gives you free, disposable email anytime, anywhere. No need to ever sign up. Send first – come to the site later. Mailboxes are created when email arrives for them. This map shows (in semi-realtime) ip addresses that are currently sending the most spam to Mailinator. Link.
Google Areometer measures areas using Google Maps – handy. Drag the map with your mouse, or double-click to center. Click on the map to place points. Once you have placed at least three points, the enclosed area will be computed. Link.
Excellent article by MAKE pal Carlo Longino – As mobile phones become more powerful and pervasive, it was inevitable that they’d spawn the same kind of homebrew hacking culture as computers and the Internet. While the locked-down nature of cell phones and the closemindedness of wireless carriers has stunted that culture’s growth, a few developments are afoot that promise to give a big boost to DIY mobile programming… Link.
Handy, I put mind on an iPod…Cross-platform Portable Firefox works by using John Haller’s excellent Portable Firefox 1.0.6 on the Windows side of things, and a little script I made on the Mac side of things. The script basically keeps two versions of all user profile files. The reason why is simple: as I am sure some of you have figured out, Windows Firefox profiles are not completely compatible with Mac Firefox, only certian files. Link.
NerdTV is out and it’s great! NerdTV is a new weekly online TV show from PBS.org technology columnist Robert X. Cringely. NerdTV is essentially Charlie Rose for geeks – a one-hour interview show with a single guest from the world of technology. Guests like Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy or Apple computer inventor Steve Wozniak are household names if your household is nerdy enough, but as historical figures and geniuses in their own right, they have plenty to say to ALL of us. NerdTV is distributed under a Creative Commons license so viewers can legally share the shows with their friends and even edit their own versions. If not THE future of television, NerdTV represents A future of television for niche audiences that have deep interest in certain topics. Link.
Apple has Widgets, Yahoo has Konfabulator, now Microsoft will have gadgets – What are Gadgets? Gadgets are a new category of mini-application designed to provide information, useful lookup, or enhance an application or service on your Windows PC or the Web. [