Great Wired article about our Squid pals! …This group came straight out of MIT, and its members don’t do guitar and vocals; they do patents and prototypes. They make up Squid Labs, self-billed as “a design firm that does differential equations,” and they’re already picking up the hits: solar panel driveways, swarming parachutes, a SourceForge for hardware and a comic book series for kid engineers. Link.
Excellent interview over at Gizmodo – Among certain fetishistic subcultures of the consumer electronics world, there seems to be a common credo: “If it’s not hackable, it’s worthless.” Putting this saying to the test is Roger Ibars, a designer-slash-researcher based in London. Ibars’ work involves hacking into and “modding” vintage console game controllers and other devices such as alarm clocks and calculators. Link.
Matt Campbell found got a CVS disposable camcorder, took it apart and mounted it inside the nose cone of a model rocket. The very impressive resulting videos show the launch from the rocket’s point of view. Richard Baguley interviewed one of them about how they did it here…Link.
We profiles Natalie in MAKE 02, here’s another interview! From releasing packs of Feral Robot Dogs that sniff out chemical contamination, to teaching Yale engineering students socially responsible design, from creating pollution-detecting Clear Skies Masks for bicycle riders, to co-authoring Biotech Hobbyist Magazine, Natalie Jeremijenko’s work merges engineering, biology and art to explore socio-political hot spots along the fault line where design meets information meets society. Link.
Richard Giles has posted an audio interview with William Foster, Lead Ascent and Entry Ground Controller for Mission Control at NASA. Richard explains: He gave a fairly detailed overview of the communications that they use with the Shuttle from launch to landing. Bill’s has done launch and landing for the last 23 missions, including the last mission. [via] Link.
Clint Sharp interviewed me at the Apple store last week or so after their awesome HOW TO video blog talk they gave. We talked a bit about what’s in MAKE 03, showed the rotary phone, some gadgets and chatted about hacking, making, the usual. Video is over here- Link.
MAKE pals Squid Labs hit CNN! High-tech is not a word often used to describe a piece of rope, but add a data sensor to its fibers and you have what its creators call electronic rope technology. The intelligent rope is the brainchild of California-based Squid Labs, an “early stage research and development company” made up of mostly MIT Media Lab graduates. Link.
