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 – 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.

Homemade Atari 800 XE Laptop…

Homemade Atari 800 XE Laptop…

Main Pic SmallMaster modder Ben Heck has created a masterpiece “Of all the portable videogame devices I’ve ever built over the years one system has always been my “Holy Grail” to make – my “dream portable” if you will. (Yes, even more so than my Neo Geo arcade machine) And now after a couple years of tinkering it is complete! Without further ado – the Atari 800 XE Laptop!” Link.

Make AOL Instant Message bots?

Make AOL Instant Message bots?

Botlibrary AolbuddyFor years I’ve tried to create “AIM bots” little buddies you’d add to your instant message list – to interact with, to fetch useful information and deliver via your IM window. Back in the day there was a company called ActiveBuddy and they a great developer kit so you could make your own too (not sure if that’s still possible). As of today AOL has a new effort here so I think we might see a few interesting ones. Ideally, these bots could use RSS and anyone with a feed could create their own bots that their visitors could add and use. Would you use a MAKE bot? You could ask it “how do i solder” and it he’d return text and links to our pages on this online and in the magazine… [via].