Month: November 2005

Open Source at Nokia launched today…

Open Source at Nokia launched today…

Logo TopleftThis just launched today – “OpenSource.nokia.com is the first place to look for information concerning Nokia involvement in the Open Source community. The Projects link will take you to project descriptions and give you access to any Nokia developed downloadable code with an Open Source license.” They’ve got an NNTP news reader up there (source is on Sourceforge), and a few more things (Python, a SIP user agent library, and more). A web browser is coming soon (based on Apple’s Webkit). Also, “Series 60” has been rebranded as “S60”. Thanks Brian! Link.

HOW TO – Make a DIY flash diffuser

FlashPiers writes “Daylight savings has started now, and it was still quite light, but not light enough, and I really needed to use a flash. The shadows cast from my built-in flash are really harsh and especially prominent in close-up shots, so I made a makeshift light diffuser out of the top of a slide box, lined on the inside with some thin paper. It worked pretty well, as you can see, the photos have a nice soft light.” Link.

Make speakers from hard drives…

Make speakers from hard drives…

Projects Hd20 Sven writes “About a year ago, inspired by other projects like Afrotech’s Hard-disk Sound System, I built a first version of my harddisk speaker. The first one was just a very quick hack to see if it would work and was destroyed due to too much power melting the coils and cables. We hooked it up to a 50W guitar amp and pushed the volume a bit to far… Since it sounded really great, I decided to build a second one.” Link.

Make LED color changers…

Make LED color changers…

Rgb1“It’s nice to have a bit of colour in your house for style reasons, so here are some neat little PCB’s that accommodate a mixture of red, green and blue LEDs giving you the option of controlling the colour they emit. They are designed to fit into standard MR16 downlighter frames for convenience of mounting. Since this page was put up the intensity of common LEDs has risen dramatically and the matching controller project now has extremely sophisticated software that really makes these lights shine.” Thanks Rick! Link.

Make stuff with eMachineShop and Pad2Pad

Make stuff with eMachineShop and Pad2Pad

PcbDylan writes “First, eMachineShop. They are an online custom machine shop. You download their program, design the part you need, send in the spec, they machine it, and then it arrives in your mailbox. How cool is that?! They do injection molding, rubber molding, milling, turning, laser cutting, waterjet cutting, wire EDM, tapping, bending, blanking, punching, plastic extrusion, thermoforming, and casting. And the list of materials you can use is just silly. Second, Pad2Pad. Same deal as eMachineShop (it’s a sister site), but this time with custom printed circuit boards. You download the software, design your PCB, send it in, they make it, and then you get your PCB in your mailbox. These sites have got to be handy sites for people doing projects like the ones you see in Make.”