Satellites on a Budget – High Altitude Balloons
Universetoday.com on DIY high altitude photography – “Paul Verhage has some pictures that you’d swear were taken from space. And they were. Amateur Radio High Altitude Ballooning allows individuals to launch functioning satellites to “near space” at a fraction of the cost of traditional rocket launch vehicles. Paul’s balloons have been as high as 35 km, and the photographs he’s taken are out of this world.” Thanks Fraser! Link. In Makers we also profile folks who take high altitude ballooning to the extreme (DIY)…
Peter writes “Korg has kept its OASYS Linux PC – synth hybrid closed, but not Open Labs. Their Windows-based synthesizer keyboard slash DJ/VJ workstation slash home entertainment center (with remote control) has an open hard drive bay, four PCI slots, and hinged access to the PC innards, all with a fully-customizable Windows install. Sure, it’s preconfigured for music production with a 15″ touchscreen and software bundle, but you could go inside the machine and reconfigure it into whatever you wanted. One idea: control games from the music keyboard.” 
Fsteele writes in to confirm you can stream purchased video with the new iTunes – “Thanks for the link; it works just fine with store content. That’s actually how I noticed it. I’ve successfully imported content I captured via EyeTV, as well, but it looks like it only works if it was imported via iTunes 6.02. My wife has a couple of videos she bought with 6.01 that aren’t available. What really makes this cool is that there’s now a video streaming server inside every copy of iTunes, so it will be interesting to see what people can do with that.” 
Stefan writes “A nice detailed description of Oregonian Adrian Carbine’s record-setting amateur rocket flight. Powered by twin “N” motors, the two-stage model soared to over 40,000 feet. Dimensions: Length: 17’4″, sustainer dia: 4.25″, booster dia: 4.6″. Pad weight: 96.5 lbs. Weight without motors: 43.5 lbs (including parachutes, tubular nylon, electronics, avionics bays, CO2 systems, etc.). The entire airframe weighed 28 lbs empty.” 
Monopole writes in about an open source 3D camera – “Stereoscopic Camera and Camcorder Synchronizer using the commonly available LANC camera control ports. Based on the Atmel ATMega8 microcontroller. Both the software and the hardware is open source, with board layouts on the website.” 
