William writes “Radio Shack has made the Vex Robotics Programming kit “in stock” for online and phone orders. Word on the street is that most ‘shacks don’t have them in-store”. I think Radio Shacks aren’t going to carry these in store as they continue to move towards a consumer electronics only inventory. Link.
This week, O’Reilly’s audio magazine program Distributing the Future takes a look at the Data for Web 2.0. Tim O’Reilly explains “What is Web 2.0,” Marc Hedlund thinks about the browsers of the future that might mash up the private data on your hard drive with data that lives on the Web, NAVTEQ’s Robert Denaro explains why NAVTEQ drives so many miles each day to gather the geographic information you use in your favorite online mapping applications, Phil Torrone is already hacking the iPod nano, and our “FOO Cast” is more of Richard Giles’ Gadget show interview with John Batelle. Link and MP3.
We’ll be back with lots of MAKE audio starting next week – but do check this out, we talk about the PSP and there are some great guests covering many other topics! “Distributing the Future” is O’Reilly Media’s new weekly podcast featuring the technology and the people behind what you use now and what you’ll use next. This half hour program includes interviews and commentary on science, technology, related social issues, and just plain fun. This show is in public beta. Link. Listen to MP3.
MAKE Flickr photo pool member gkaufman posted up shots of his work area; be sure to post up yours! I have 2 workbenches in my garage. I built them both from a kit (StrongTite??) at Home Depot. The one in the back of the garage holds almost all of my tools, and is used when I need to do normal garage-type work (woodwork, grinding, auto repair, etc). The workbench up front is for computer-related activities, including any arcade stuff I might be working on. Link.
Two parts water, one part coolant, and one part guts are all it takes to water-cool your PC. It may seem a little extreme for a garden-variety desktop, but if your CPU runs hot or you’ve overclocked parts of your system, nothing beats the cooling power of classic H2O. Water conducts heat far better than air, and you don’t have to be a turbogeek to perform the conversion. Modern kits make installation little more challenging than swapping a fan or a heat sink. [via] Link.
Battle Kits are designed along the lines of the most successful combat robot ever: BioHazard. We started with some of the key features in BioHazard and developed four rugged, low-profile, high-performance, mobile platforms on which you can build the next killer robot! Thanks Doug! Link.
MADE ON EARTH – Report from the world of backyard technology: The ShopperChopper, a modded shopping cart with wheels from a wheelchair, shocks from a hospital bed, a shopping cart from the supermarket, and a 10 hp Briggs and Stratton generator motor, as read by David Albertson, MAKE Creative Director. This is an enhanced podcast; it will play audio and show the actual pages of MAKE Magazine from volume 03 when you click on them. iTunes: Click this link and click SUBSCRIBE.
