Computers & Mobile

The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for digital gadgetry, open code, smart hacks, and more. Processing power to the people!

HOW TO – Screencasting

HOW TO – Screencasting

Screencast“A screencast is a digital movie in which the setting is partly or wholly a computer screen, and in which audio narration describes the on-screen action. It’s not a new idea. The screencaster’s tools–for video capture, editing, and production of compressed files–have long been used to market software products, and to train people in the use of those products. What’s new is the emergence of a genre of documentary filmmaking that tells stories about software-based cultures like Wikipedia, del.icio.us, and content remixing. These uses of the medium, along with a new breed of lightweight software demonstrations, inspired the collaborative coining of a new term, screencast.” Link.

Mac to PC Mod – The SE3000 Assembly

Mac to PC Mod – The SE3000 Assembly

Se3000MainAttila writes “This is my first computer mod ever. I wanted to build a compact gaming PC using an old Mac SE case. For my case window mod I took the old built-in black and white monitor, cut it near the end using sand-blasting technology…I designed all my logos in Illustrator; I had vinyl stencils cut out. I used those stencils to spray-paint the logos on my case, PSU, after it dried I used clear-coat to finish the case off.” Link.

HOW TO – Write iSync Phone Plugins

HOW TO – Write iSync Phone Plugins

SyncGreat article on making iSync phone plugins from The Tao of Mac “Given that there seems to be a lot of misconceptions about exactly how iSync detects and understands the capabilities of mobile phones and pretty much no written documentation about the whole process, I thought it was about time I published my notes on the matter.” Brian reminded me that you can use’screen’ to talk to serial ports (for example, ‘screen /dev/tty.Bluetooth-Modem’), so you don’t need ZTerm to do this…Link.

Run Minix 3.0 under Virtual PC

Run Minix 3.0 under Virtual PC

Minix303T“The original Minix was an educational operating system – that actually served as the inspiration for development of Linux. MINIX 3 is a new open-source operating system designed to be highly reliable and secure. It is based somewhat on previous versions of MINIX, but is fundamentally different in many key ways. MINIX 1 and 2 were intended as teaching tools; MINIX 3 adds the new goal of being usable as a serious system on resource-limited and embedded computers and for applications requiring high reliability.” One of the nice things about Minix 3.0 is that unlike previous versions of Minix – it installs and runs just fine inside of Virtual PC. Thanks Brian! Link.

Make your own AOL Instant Message bot

Botlibrary AolbuddyRbils writes “Release 7.0 of ColdFusion added several different IM Event Gateways that make creating IM based bots extremely simple. The developer version of ColdFusion is free and can be downloaded from macromedia.com. The ColdFusion community has already released several bots, including one for use in looking up ColdFusion documentation (try cflivedocs in Yahoo Messenger for example).” See our previous post about a MAKEbot…Has anyone made one of these? Let us know… Link.