Laser-etched cases…
Make proto author David sent me a link to this interesting new service “Etchamac.com custom laser etches PowerBooks and iPods. A full PowerBook case (top or bottom) runs $200 while iPods are around $40. Pretty slick.” I think in the future the tattoo artist and their shops will add nice laser cutters to their businesses. You’ll go in with your ibook/powerbook/ipod/laptop thingie and either choose a design, or bring in your own. Perhaps they’ll even pierce that USB port too. [via] Link.
Here’s a simple HOW TO on adding a LED to an Apple keyboard. Arkku writes “I opened up the keyboard (three screws in the bottom), located the +5v and ground leads (red and black wire in my keyboard) and soldered a 3.3v/30mA 5mm bright blue LED to them, with a 68ohm resistor. To make the light reach the clear base of the keyboard, I also made a small hole in the white plastic that touches the clear acrylic at the bottom of the keyboard and taped the LED in that hole with electrical tape.” 
Last week the free VMware player was released. It lets you run virtual machines, but not create them. Here’s a HOW TO for creating your own virtual machines. In this example, a usable VMware image using the VMware player and FreeDOS. I think one day I’d like to make an OS jukebox, you’d put in a quarter and it would “play” any OS you want and then you access the net, etc… 
The 
Front Row is a new media center application from Apple, it’s shipping on the new iMacs and you use it to manage movies, photos, music, DVDs and more from your couch – with a slick interface. No word if Apple will sell or distribute versions for that Mac you already have, but a couple folks have already hacked up a version of Front Row and have it working. Here’s a 
Old phone, with new cell guts, and functional. This project is a working cellular push-button telephone. The phone is an old telephone from my kitchen growing up that I modified into a working cellphone. The old bell ringer functions. You can talk and listen on the old handset. The phone is dialed with the buttons on its front. And it can be powered via a power cord spliced into the phone jack at the back. No text messaging, phone book, or camera phone junk. Smile. [
The 8th annual Vintage Computer Festival is being held on November 5th – 6th at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. The highlight of this year’s event is a Homebrew Computer Club retrospective featuring a panel of original members of the Club including Steve Wozniak, Lee Felsenstein, and others. [
