Month: June 2005

I don’t think this is real, but I’ll check it out- In a suburb of Toronto, Canada, a small company called Rothman Technologies, Inc., has in fact discovered not one but two viable methods for breaking down ordinary water into hydrogen and oxygen. Neither method involves the need to spend a billion dollars. They are simple answers. The existing engines in our automobiles could work with these systems with very little alteration and no need for an external support infrastructure like the one now provided by gas stations, and which would be required by fuel-cell technology. Link.

Jeez, IBM is publishing up a storm of articles…LinuxDevices rounds them up. IBM has published the following technical articles, tutorials, and downloads on its DeveloperWorks website. They cover a range of interesting (though not necessarily embedded) technical topics, primarily related to Linux and open source system development. Link.

Wow, next week might be really interesting…On May 22, Apple chief executive Steve Jobs said that iTunes would debut within 60 days of May 22; however, sources tell AppleInsider that iTunes 4.9 is reportedly nearing the final stages of development–about three weeks ahead of schedule. The company now plans to unveil the software at the end of June or by the first week of July. Link.

While attention has been focused on developing pollution-free hydrogen-powered cars, Intelligent Energy and some others have turned instead to two-wheeled transportation. The firm, which is relocating to Los Angeles from London, says the motorcycle’s fuel cell develops the equivalent of eight horsepower, good for speeds up to 50 miles an hour. The cycle has a range of about 100 miles on a tank of fuel. Currently, a hydrogen fill-up would cost about $3, says the cycle’s project director, Andy Eggleston. Link.

Super Mario Pac is a fusion between JetPac, a ZX Spectrum game by Ultimate who later became Rare, and Nintendo’s Super Mario universe, taking selected graphics specifically from Super Mario World and themes and ideas from Super Mario Sunshine. The game idea was inspired an image posted on videogames satire site UncleClive. It was featured as a game we will now never see due to Rare finishing their second party development agreement with Nintendo following a buyout by Microsoft. Link.

Have a Treo? Hate the Cingular branding, and all their extra unnecessary programs? Tired that they drag their feet to issue a system update? Want to use your phone on another carrier? Here is a step by step guide to unlocking your Cingular Treo, and making it unbranded. (This will also give you the option of choosing another GSM provider if you are to do so at a later date). Link.

Here’s how to build a webcam that can be viewed and controlled from the web: user clicks on one of three links: left, center, right, a script written in PHP makes a socket connection to a listener program (written in C++) running on my home PC, indicating the direction of movement requested, the listener program executes one of three scripts (written in Visual Basic), one for each direction of movement, the Visual Basic script opens the COM2 serial port and sends one of three signals (L, C, or R)... read more.