A few readers sent this in, when you call 1800FREE411 from Skype you can use their ad-supported service to make other calls for free. When you call it, it helps you look up a U.S. person or business from their directory service and then connects the call… And the directory service bears the cost of the call as it seems to be ad-supported. So you use SkypeOut to connect to the service, and the service to connect to the one you’re calling. [via] Link.
Boingboing has a really clever Katamari Damacy hack…“This Livejournaller connected an oscillating fan to his PS2’s joystick in order to have repeat the same movements over and over again without intervention, enabling him to collection one million roses in the video game We Love Katamari Damacy.” [via] Link.
There’s a lot of zombie action going on lately – These little knit zombies are reenacting George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead [via] Link. The “stuff i made” section has some neat projects too, like an iPod cozy.
Janet sent this in and has issued a Maker challenge to build a “Plasma Pencil” – “The pencil generates a “cold plasma,” which can be used to kill germs that contaminate surfaces, infect wounds and rot your teeth. In the future, it might be used to destroy tumors without damaging surrounding tissue. Laroussi, an associate professor at Old Dominion University, hopes the beam will soon find its way into doctors’ and dentists’ offices.” Link.
On the flight to Amsterdam, for Euro OSCON and the Make Faire, there were entertainment devices in each seat, music, movies, games, etc…all on demand and all quite nice. Turns out, if you try hard, or if the system happens to crash at your seat, you can spot that it runs Linux and you might also get a free premium movie…On the way back, I’ll try and write up how to repeat it. Here’s a photo of the shell, wohoo! Link.
Digitaler Lumpensammler sent in this wonderful collection of cassette tapes – when memories were named memorex…There are hundreds on this Japanese page – and the funny thing is you can tell exactly which ones were from the 80’s. Link.
Idealog writes “Frustrated that Apple has yet to deliver a display-capable remote for iTunes, I decided to use VNC and the Palm TX to come up with my own solution.” [