theodp writes "In a move that would do pre-makeover Ebenezer proud, Amazon.com's 1-Click lawyers put the USPTO to work on Christmas Eve. On Dec. 24th, the USPTO acknowledged receipt of yet another round of paperwork submitted by Amazon's high-priced legal muscle, the latest salvo in Amazon's 3-year battle to fend off a patent reexamination triggered by the do-it-yourself legal effort of actor Peter Calveley. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' 1-Click patent is also under attack on another front — on Dec. 23rd, the USPTO received $810 from Amazon's attorneys together with a request that the agency invalidate Patent Examiner Mark A. Fadok's final rejection of 1-Click patent claims on the grounds of obviousness. On the bright side, patent clerks — unlike Bob Cratchit — get the day after Christmas off!"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Happy holidays from Boing Boing tv! Continuing in our retrospective of favorite episodes from our first year:

Each year, David Silverman (director of the Simpsons Movie, and longtime director of the TV show) illustrates holiday cards for friends and family. Xeni visits him in his home studio for a re-enactment of the craziest years in holiday cheer, complete with tuba carols.

( Flash embed above, and here's a direct MP4 download link. )

Over at Boing Boing Offworld, Brandon considers what a "childhood Christmas" exhibit might look like in a videogame museum. From his delightful post:

Part of my work this year has been helping with the launch of the UK’s National Videogame Archive, and it’s meant having a lot of interesting conversations with interesting people about what a game museum might look like. My favourite suggestion so far was that we recreate a childhood Christmas - that childhood Christmas, when whatever it was that changed your life arrived.

So you’d book your ticket, and pay your money, and there when you arrived - alongside the Big Trak or the Tracy Island or whatever it was your sister wanted - there’d be a box with your name on it, wrapped in that papery paper you don’t seem to get any more - and you’d be allowed to rip it open and turn it over and over and over and look at the pictures of Rygar or Pole Position or whatever it was, before taking a deep breath and letting rip on the flaps. At which point a security guard would probably escort you from the premises.

As an idea for a museum exhibit, I admit, it needs a little work, but I’d still love to do it. My big box - my big boxes - would have an ST and a monitor in them, and the tiny, shiny screenshot that I’d pour over would be of Ranarama...

One More Go: Ranarama

Yesterday, I posted that oddity auction scout Michael-Anne Rauback has been seeking unusual vintage chairs this week (just for kicks, not to buy). Here is the second of her top three online finds: A chair fashioned from a child's drum, circa 1940s. Child's Drum Chair

Yesterday, I shared some scanned hand-drawn Christmas cards from children (and their parents) in a K'iche' Maya village in Guatemala -- people who participate in the work of an international nonprofit I volunteer with there, along with family and friends.

This year, we included two additional elders in the foundation's Christmas festivities in the Guatemalan highlands, which brings the total number of participating elders in our Ancianos de Honor program to 22. Two of the most recently honored ancianos are blind. You can see them in the photograph below. They both completed their hundredth birthdays this month. They were brought to our foundation's center by some very caring young people.

Above, the elders receive their gifts from our local director in Sololá, Don Victoriano. It's the first time in the lives of these two new elders that they have received a gift or been honored in this way. Upon receiving his gift, centenarian Don Juan expressed thanks to Ajaw (the Mayan creator god) and to the givers of the gift who had "the good conscience to remember the forgotten elders."

The Christmas gift baskets they are receiving typically include bread, dried pasta and rice, chocolate and candies, corn flour for making tortillas or tamales, dried beans, fruit, and household necessities.

These elders are among the most at-risk and neglected members of the community, and often suffer malnutrition and health problems related to a lack of food, water, and protection from the elements. They live literally on the fringes of the village, and fall through the cracks -- they become invisible. Our foundation works to reach out to them, document their existence and their needs, and provide basic support, bringing them back into the center of the community where they belong, with honor and respect.

We are working toward establishing the same ongoing support system within the community for these elders that we are providing for the children of the village.

- Happy holidays to all of you from the people in our communities in Guatemala and Nima Mam Ajq'ij, Dr. M. X. Quetzalkanbalam, international executive director, and our international staff of directors: Anamaria de To and David To Quiñones, Guatemala; Jolon Bankey, Costa Rica; and Xeni Jardin, Mike Outmesguine, and Mar Doré, USA.

(Photos: Christmas in the pueblo, 2008, courtesy Don Victoriano).

thefickler writes "The last major supplier of VHS videotapes is ditching the format in favor of DVD, effectively killing the format for good. This uncharitable commentator has this to say: 'Will VHS be missed? Not ... with videos being brittle, clunky, and rather user-unfriendly. But they ushered in a new era that was important to get to where we are today. And for that reason, the death of VHS is rather sad. Almost as sad as the people still using it.'" At least my dad's got the blank-tape market cornered.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ecolect, a great sustainable materials resource, has created their GreenBox. It's a subscription to eco-friendly material samples so you can check out physical samples of materials you might want to make something with:

Every 3 months, we release a sampling of 12 cutting-edge materials, packaged in a durable box that can also function as a catchy display. The criteria is that the materials must be innovative, environmental solutions ideal for design, engineering, and marketing teams. The chosen samples will highlight trends that other material producers are setting, and serve as inspirational and informational reference for you when initiating new projects. After an entire year subscription, your studio will have their very own eco-materials library of nearly 50 different products.

GreenBox from Ecolect

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the_kanzure points out ths AP story on amateur genetic engineering, excerpting: "The Apple computer was invented in a garage. Same with the Google search engine. Now, tinkerers are working at home with the basic building blocks of life itself. Using homemade lab equipment and the wealth of scientific knowledge available online, these hobbyists are trying to create new life forms through genetic engineering a field long dominated by Ph.D.s toiling in university and corporate laboratories." Reader resistant has a few ideas about how to use this sort of lab: "Personally, I'd like to whip up a reasonably long-lasting and durable paint made with dye based on squid genes that glows brightly enough to allow 'guide lines' to be daubed along hallway baseboards, powered by a very low trickle of electricity. Plus, a harmless glowing yogurt would make for a cool prank."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

subcomdtaco writes with this snippet from a story in the NYTimes: "Dr. [Robert] Gaskell, with software he developed over a quarter-century of trial and error, can process hundreds of images in a few hours, slap them atop one another electronically like coats of paint and produce a topographical map so detailed that you often need a pair of 3-D glasses to appreciate what he has done. At 63, Dr. Gaskell has become the Captain Cook of space. Dr. Gaskell calls what he does 'stereophotoclinometry.' [PDF] Ideally he needs at least three images of the target landscape, usually taken by an orbiting spacecraft or a probe on a flyby to another destination. Only in rare cases can telescope images provide enough detail. The sun angle must be different for each exposure so each image shows different shadows. By comparing the shadows, the software calculates slopes, which yield the altitudes of target features. The computer solves the equation in three dimensions, producing a patchlike topographical maplet."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

My favorite: half-eaten gingerman ornament

Our friends at Treehugger have a few solutions to unreciprocated gift-giving. Why not make some in case you get a present from somebody you didn't expect?:)

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An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Nextgov: "The Homeland Security Department has announced plans to expand its biometric data collection program to include foreign permanent residents and refugees. Almost all noncitizens will be required to provide digital fingerprints and a photograph upon entry into the United States as of Jan. 18. A notice (PDF) in Friday's Federal Register said expansion of the US Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology Program (US VISIT) will include 'nearly all aliens,' except Canadian citizens on brief visits. Those categories include permanent residents with green cards, individuals seeking to enter on immigrant visas, and potential refugees. The US VISIT program was developed after the Sept.11, 2001 terrorist attacks to collect fingerprints from foreign visitors and run them against the FBI's terrorist watch list and other criminal databases. Another phase of the project, to develop an exit system to track foreign nationals leaving the country, has run into repeated setbacks." Reader MirrororriM points out other DHS news that they're thinking about monitoring blogs for information on terrorists.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's just a concept, but I love to see interesting ideas on using the Chumby. Designer Bruno Fosi imagines it this way:

Inspired by the form of a Heart and featuring one social network that enables you and your friends to interact with each other fish, using the Chumby's hardware! It's possible now to fully robotize one aquarium and bring it online!
With a colorful touch screen, that enables you to feed your friend's fish and maintain the aquarium healthy, using sensors on the robot that monitors the habitat data and reports it online back to you. It got a menu for automation and tasks, one for configurations and one menu for real-time webcam watching your friend's fish.
With the built-in Chumby's Accelerometer, Compression sensors and Microphone, it's possible to do real-time online interaction with your friends fish, using the captured shake and tap movements to simulate it with vibrations and air bubbles on your friends aquarium! Plus heat and light mood transfer, using the captured compression feelings made with the Chumby, simulating affects and emotions. Also it's possible to sound interact with the fish, emulating it with vibrations transmitted by the robot to the aquarium.

My Chumby's Fish!

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A company called Robot Services Group is running i-SOBOT soccer matches over the Internet. Using free video conferencing software called ooVoo, you control one i-SOBOT against an opponent's bot on a soccer field.

Another cool service the company provides is a robot test drive, where you can try controlling various mini-humanoid type bots. This might be a good way to get your feet wet if you're planning on investing in one of the more expensive robots in this class.

Robot Internet Soccer

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National Geographic has their best pictures of microscopic life up - my favorite is above, the Trichodina pediculus, a parasite that lives on hydras. This is magnified 600 times!

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mikesd81 writes "Eweek reports that notebook sales have surpassed desktop sales for the first time in history. 'In the third quarter of 2008, notebook PC shipments rose almost 40 percent compared with the same period of 2007 to reach 38.6 million units. Conversely, desktop PC shipments declined by 1.3 percent for the same period to 38.5 million units. "Momentum has been building in the notebook market for some time, so it's not a complete surprise that shipments have surpassed those of desktops," said iSuppli principal analyst for computer platforms Matthew Wilkins. "However, this marks a major event in the PC market because it marks the start of the age of the notebook." ... The FBI's National Crime Information Center reported that the number of reported laptop thefts increased almost 48 percent over the last two years, to nearly 109,000 from 73,700.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

dstates writes "The State of Maryland has filed a $8.5M claim against Premier Election Systems (previously known as Diebold), joining Ohio in seeking damages from the company. The claim alleges that election officials were forced to spend millions of dollars to address multiple security flaws in the machines. Previously, Diebold paid millions to settle a California lawsuit over security issues in their machines. The dispute comes as Maryland and Virginia prepare to scrap the touch screen electronic voting systems they bought after the 2000 presidential election. California, Florida, New Mexico, and Iowa have already switched to optical scanners, and voters in Pennsylvania are suing to prevent the use of paperless electronic voting systems in their state. Meanwhile, Artifex Software is suing Diebold for violations of the GPL covering the Ghostscript software technology used in the proprietary voting machines."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Here's a custom built Christmas light show that uses a BS2 to drive the entire system. The project uses 20 1 amp PC board relays and built his own relay system with 16 outlets, and a GUI written in C++ that controls the whole thing over serial. Check out the video to see it in action and see if it rivals those other crazy Xmas light videos you've probably seen on YouTube.

via Hacked Gadgets

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JumpDrive writes "I have been presented with a problem recently, which I know others have probably faced. During the last month, one of our customers accused us of providing another customer with their specification. So the question arose: how do we, or can we trace documents and find if they are being opened or used somewhere where they weren't intended. We don't want to be restrictive, because at times, we have people all over the place, but if one of our documents were opened in a foreign country, that would arouse suspicions. Most of our documents are made with MS office suite, and I have been thinking of working on a macro to ping a server, but that would require the user to enable the macros, and it would also require the insertion into about 1000 documents. But it's been difficult for me to find a solution that doesn't prevent someone in Omaha from opening a document for legitimate use and is not a solution that can easily be disabled or hacked around."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Labs beta: As part of our ten years celebration we've been working hard to bring you a beta of our next big site feature; Challenges. Anyone who has been on the dpreview forums will be more than aware of the popularity of photographic challenges. Until now these have been created primarily by a single challenge host creating a new thread in the forums to promote their challenge idea and others following up with entries. We decided to take this concept and develop a fully integrated challenge system for dpreview which will allow series of challenges to run, with a flexible range of rule sets, voting options and winner concepts. The public beta of our Challenges system will begin this coming Monday 29th December with the opening of five initial challenges created by ourselves which any registered dpreview member can enter. After this we'll be looking for challenge hosts to continue the next phase of the beta.

The entire team at dpreview would like to wish all our readers a very Happy Holidays (whichever you're observing). As always Christmas Day marks another anniversary for the site, this time it's a big one, ten years. To celebrate we have opened our new labs section as well as revealing our first public beta feature; Challenges. As a bit of a retrospective on the last ten years we've also produced two short blog entries looking back and taking stock. Whatever you're doing today, enjoy yourselves and thank you for being a part of dpreview.com!

Hopefully you have some free time over the Holidays. If you do, and you're like me, you might want to check out the new version of Fritzing. We covered it before, twice in fact, and here is the latest release. It has come a long way in just the past few months.

Fritzing is an open-source initiative to support designers and artists to take the step from physical prototyping to actual product. We are creating this software in the spirit of Processing and Arduino, that allows the designer / artist / researcher / hobbyist to document their Arduino-based prototype and create a PCB layout for manufacturing. The complimenting website helps to share and discuss drafts and experiences as well as to reduce manufacturing costs.

Download the latest version of Fritzing

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Circuit Ben warps some holiday standards with his Casio KS303. [via Synthtopia]

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hopejr writes "The Federal Opposition says it is not surprised the Government's mandatory internet filtering trial has been delayed. The trial, which was meant to begin today, has been postponed until mid-January 2009 and the internet service providers (ISPs) who will participate will be announced at the same time. ISPs iiNet and Optus both said yesterday they had not heard anything about their applications to participate in the trial, and doubted the Government would meet its own deadline."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Route-me is an Open Source (BSD license) mapping library for the iPhone. It's written in native Objective C and can use the OpenStreetMap data layer, among others. If you're an iPhone developer, this gives you an easy way to add high-quality mapping functionality, similar to that of the built in Google Maps client, to your own applications. There's a discussion over on Slashdot of one such application, GPS Mission, which uses the route-me library to create a multiplayer location-based scavenger hunt.

This is pretty exciting—hopefully it will help enable a whole new class of location-aware apps. If you know of any other apps based on the route-me library, or if you have a good idea you'd like to share for a map based application, send us a line in the comments.

Route-me - Open Source iPhone-native Slippy Map
How To Make an App Using the Route-me Library

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iammani writes "The NYTimes runs a story about a blind man (blind because of damaged visual cortex) successfully navigating an obstacle maze, unaided. Scientists have shown for the first time, that it is possible for people who are blinded because of damage to the visual (striate) cortex can navigate by "blindsight", through which they can detect things in their vicinity without being aware of seeing them."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

iammani writes "The NYTimes runs a story about a blind man (blind because of damaged visual cortex) successfully navigating an obstacle maze, unaided. Scientists have shown for the first time, that it is possible for people who are blinded because of damage to the visual (striate) cortex can navigate by "blindsight", through which they can detect things in their vicinity without being aware of seeing them."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Larry Lessig has a piece in Newsweek suggesting that the new administration abolish the FCC and replace it with something he calls the Innovation Environment Protection Agency (iEPA) -- whose purpose is less about control, and more about getting government out of the way when not necessary. The purpose of such an agency would be: "minimal intervention to maximize innovation," with a core focus on keeping the government away from handing out favors and, more importantly, carefully reviewing any government monopolies to see if they cause net benefit or net harm. He starts off by talking about monopolies on things like spectrum, but says the agency can and should expand to cover monopolies such as copyright and patents.

There's a lot to like in the proposal, in theory. One of my big problems with pretty much any government program is how little effort there is to actually look at the basic question of: is this doing what it's supposed to do? And, if not, how do we change that? The GAO does a little bit in this area, but seems mostly powerless to actually effect change. Can you imagine if there were anyone in the government who was actually looking at some of the studies showing how much harm certain government-backed monopolies do to the economy -- and had the power to do something about it? However, it seems quite likely that, in practice, the iEPA would simply get co-opted by industry types, just as the FCC has, and the end result would be pretty ineffectual, if not downright backwards looking. A government agency designed to get the government out of the way? Not sure it's really possible...

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Today at Boing Boing Gadgets, we found an old copy of Ladybird books' How Computers Work, but we're not sure it's from this universe. British advertising regulators banned a Dyson ad they had already cleared and which they agreed was accurate. Psion finally realized that its "Netbook" trademark is slipping through its fingers. Joel found a flat HDMI cable you can embed in drywall, John spotted a surreal Windows ad from Japan, and Rob beheld Sony's new not-a-netbook -- or maybe the case it comes in. Apple's PC market share slipped due to the netbook revolution, a Fry's exec got collared on embezzlement charges, and artists designed bizarre cars for the future. Don't miss Joel and the BBTV folks' awesome CES preview vid: Tell us how you want us to cover it. Oh, yes. Merry Xmas (Or whatever!)

I'm in the middle of reading James Boyle's excellent new book, The Public Domain, which I'll write more about next year. In the meantime, he's got a new column up at the Financial Times (which was sent to us by Jon) where he's channeling a bit of Jonathan Zittrain's techno-pessimism about how we may be heading towards a more closed and controlled internet. While I think the fear is a bit overblown, he does make a very important point, first highlighting how, if given the chance to start anew and create the World Wide Web a second time, many people would balk at the openness, pointing out all sorts of problems with it, and all sorts of dangers that it would enable. Yet, very few people would recognize the eventual impact it would have or the overall benefits it would create. As Boyle says:

We have a bias, a cognitive filter, that causes us to undersestimate the benefits and overestimate the dangers of openness -- call it cultural agoraphobia.

I think this is absolutely true, but then I disagree with Boyle (and Zittrain) on the idea that anyone is able to stuff that openness back in a box once it's out there. It's not as easy to change those core principles as some fear. Once people have a taste for what that openness allows, stuffing it back into a box is very difficult. Yes, it's important to remain vigilant, and yes, people will always attempt to shut off that openness, citing all sorts of "dangers" and "bad things" that the openness allows. But, the overall benefits of the openness are recognized by many, many people -- and the great thing about openness is that you really only need a small number of people who recognize its benefits to allow it to flourish.

Closed systems tend to look more elegant at first -- and often they are much more elegant at first. But open systems adapt, change and grow at a much faster rate, and almost always overtake closed systems, over time. And, once they overtake the closed systems, almost nothing will allow them to go back. Even if it were possible to turn an open system like the web into a closed system, openness would almost surely sneak out again, via a new method by folks who recognized how dumb it was to close off that open system.

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detrow writes "A number of projects are working on bringing a smooth Open Street Maps Viewer to the iPhone, where smooth means as smooth as the Google Maps application. Route-Me is one of them (New BSD License, complete Objective-C native code). The GPS Mission blog reports that their application (GPS Mission) uses Route-Me and made it to the App Store as the first application using that OSM component. The map looks real nice and behaves just like Google Maps with all the well known zooming and panning available. What other iPhone applications exist that feel as smooth as Google Maps but use the Open Street Map?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

detrow writes "A number of projects are working on bringing a smooth Open Street Maps Viewer to the iPhone. Where smooth means, as smooth as the Google Maps application. Route-Me is one of them (New BSD License, complete Objective-C native code). The GPS Mission blog reports that their application (GPS Mission) uses Route-Me and made it to the App Store, as the first application using that OSM component. The map looks real nice and behaves just like Google Maps with all the well known zooming and panning available. What other iPhone applications exist that feel as smooth as Google Maps but use the Open Street Map?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

If you're at all interested in economics in general, you should read David Warsh's Economic Principals column, which is always interesting (and you should absolutely read his fantastic book Knowlege and the Wealth of Nations, which is highly relevant to many of the discussions we have around here). Anyway, his latest column shows a nice little chart of per capita GDP in the US over the past 140 years or so, which effectively shows a pretty consistent upward trajectory, where even recessions and the Great Depression -- which is noticeable -- are hard pressed to stop the eventual economic growth. The message is pretty clear: it's hard to keep economic growth down. In the midst of a great contraction and massive deleveraging, that message seems to get lost pretty quickly -- but it's worth remembering.

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If you're unfamiliar with the important history of Heathkit and its popular electronics and computer "kits," it's worth reading the Wikipedia entry on Heathkit to get some background. The company and its products were an important part of the post-WWII "tinkerers" era. However, one of our readers, Joseph Durnal, just discovered something rather disturbing. Even though the company stopped making and selling kits back in 1992, it apparently just sold the copyrights on its old manuals to another company, which is going around forcing any old manuals offline and demanding people buy them instead:

On October 30, 2008, Data Professionals of Pleasanton, CA purchased the Intellectual property of the Heathkit legacy products from Heathkit in Benton Harbor, Michigan. This rights to these legacy products also includes the copyright. All free manuals have been removed from this site in compliance with copyright laws.

So, now, anyone still playing around with decades old Heathkit products can't look online for some information from a missing manual, but instead is expected to pay up for a reprint.

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Andy King writes "The new Obama administration has pledged to deploy next-generation broadband to every community in America, but have offered few specifics. The Free Press have published a specific plan to accomplish broadband for all." I'm not sure which will be the bigger headache when my internet breaks: waiting in line at the new government internet office, or waiting on hold for cable tech support.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tim Anderson's canoe just underwent its maiden voyage, and it's beautiful:

Detailed, step-by-step Instructables are here. While you're at it, make yourself a 5-minute paddle, too:

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