The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for digital gadgetry, open code, smart hacks, and more. Processing power to the people!
I really like Firefox, mostly because you can make your own browser with all the GreaseMonkey stuff…and now check this- The Mozilla Foundation, developer of the Firefox Web browser, plans to announce Wednesday that it has created a for-profit subsidiary to pursue wider potential for the software. NYTimes story but, read Joi Ito’s post about this, it clears some things up. Link. I’m off to OSCON, I’ll find out more about this soon…
Many hobbyists are beginning to rediscover the appeal of classic microcomputers from the 70s and early 80s.
Why copy-restriction technology succeeds only in hurting the user.
“Unfortunately, Verizon Wireless cripples their phones so that you have to use their fee-based service in order to add new ringtones, or to transfer the pictures you take with the camera. The Verizon logo conceals the date display on the main screen and covers over the top portion of the background, among various other corporate silliness. Selling a device that is intentionally crippled is just plain ridiculous. Of course, the only natural thing to do in a situation like this is to hack it.” [via] Link.
Apple is moving to Intel, this is good for Makers and PC modders out there. Current Apple hardware and older hardware is about to get cheap(er) and used for all sorts of things. 2. We’ll be able to run Mac OS on PCs and Windows on Macs, granted a lot of hackery will be required to make this work for unsupported hardware- but we’ll see all sorts of fun projects, mods and mutants once the dev kit and builds start getting out in the wild. Link.
Site is getting /.’ed at the moment… a hand-made CPU, complete with hardware address translation, memory mapped I/O, and DMA, out of 200 74-series TTL chips wired together with thousands of individually wrapped wires. By using a port of Adam Dunkels’ uIP TCP/IP stack to the Magic-1, it currently serves up live web pages at an amazing speed of 3 MHz. [via] Link.
Interesting interview with Jonah Peretti, Director of R&D at Eyebeam, last statement looks promising! “We recently finished construction and are in the process of outfitting the lab with electronics benches, a 3D printer, a laser cutter, and workstations for hackers, designers, and artists. The lab will be dedicated to public domain R&D — our code will be under GPL, our media will be under Creative Commons, and we will publish DIY instructions for hardware projects”. Link.
