Jerry Smith was among a large number of readers letting us know that the 11th Doctor Who has been named. It's Matt Smith, 26, who will be the youngest actor to play the time-traveling Doctor. The head of drama at BBC Wales said this about Smith's audition: "It was abundantly clear that he had that 'Doctor-ness' about him. You are either the Doctor or you are not."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AOL has been shutting down its free Web services, in some cases with little or no notice to users, and they are not the only ones. This blog post on the coming "datapocalypse" makes the case that those who host Web content should be required to provide notice and access to data for a year, and be held strictly accountable the way landlords are before they can evict a tenant. Some commenters on the post argue that you get what you pay for with free Web services, and that users should be backing up their data anyway. What do you think, should there be required notice and access before online hosts take user data offline for good?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Timothy R. Butler writes "Much to the chagrin of owners of various 2G cell phones on AT&T Mobility's network, including the highly visible (and originally highly expensive) first-generation iPhone, we have discovered that AT&T has been quietly adjusting its network in ways that degrade 2G network performance as it has sought to build out its next-generation 3G network. Many of the phones affected, including BlackBerry devices, are still well within their two-year contract period."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

UnknowingFool writes "As a followup to the Zune New Year's Eve meltdown, Microsoft has issued a workaround for what some users have correctly guessed was a bug caused by a leap year. To recover from the problem, let the Zune drain the batteries and restart it after noon on January 1, 2009. Many sites are reporting that Microsoft has 'fixed' the issue, but technically all Microsoft has done is to ask users to wait out the conditions that triggered the bug. Unless a software patch comes out, Zunes will suffer the same problem again in four years." Reader ndtechnologies adds, "According to posts in the Toshiba forum at anythingbutipod.com, the same bug that shut down millions of Zune 30's also affects the Toshiba Gigabeat S. The Zune 30 is based off of the Gigabeat S series and was co-developed by Microsoft with Toshiba."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The first episode of MAKE: television debuts on public television today. But you can watch the show now by visiting makezine.tv. Here's the "Maker-to-Maker" segment featuring my friend William Gurstelle.

Louis Gray offers some noble help to FriendFeed, filling in as the marketing department they don't have. Of course it would help if they did do some marketing. They may not be aware of it, but Twitter didn't just wait for people to come to them, they put up displays all over SXSW in 2007 to boot up with that community, who already knew them from Blogger days, to be the first core group of users of the service. I could see it happen, even though I wasn't part of the service then, and I wasn't at SXSW. FriendFeed hasn't done anything like this as far as I know.

Anyway, I think I know what they should do, and it isn't on Louis's list. But I wonder why I should give them the idea. This goes back to the point Arrington made a week ago, and then made again in his scolding of Scoble -- why are you working for these guys for free? It's a good question and one that bothers me, a lot.

Instead, I'd like to ask another question. Does anyone really think that a company-owned platform is going to win here, that it won't be swamped by an open federated system of servers that peer, like email? If so, I'd like to hear why. We went through this exercise repeatedly in the tech industry; the lesson of history is clear -- closed systems have their place and time, at the beginning of a new layer, when users need simplicity over everything else, they serve as training wheels when everyone is a newbie. Eventually we grow out of the need to have our hands held and the freedom of open systems becomes attractive, and we jump. It happened with mail, with the web, maybe not so much with IM (that's probably what they're counting on).

I'd much rather give the idea to the ether, not to a company. Let's have competition.

In the meantime, the clue is in the piece I wrote in early December. (I can't help it, I have to share ideas, it's the way I'm built I guess.)

ofcourseyouare writes "The Independent is a UK newspaper which has been pushing hard for cuts in CO2 emissions for years. It recently polled a group of 'the world's leading climate scientists,' revealing a 'growing support for geoengineering' in addition to cutting CO2 — not as a substitute. For example, Jim Lovelock, author of The Gaia Theory, comments: 'I disagree that geoengineering the climate is a dangerous distraction and I disagree that on no account should it ever be considered. I strongly agree that we now need a "plan B" where a geoengineering strategy is drawn up in parallel with other measures to curb CO2 emissions.' Professor Kerry Emanuel of MIT said, 'While a geoengineering solution is bound to be less than desirable, the probability of getting global agreement on emissions reductions before it is too late is very small.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Well, thanks to Andrew Burton I got access to a MediaWiki installation with the API turned on, and I was able to make a couple of trivial calls successfully, but I hit a wall when it came to doing the thing I set out to do. I have no doubt from reading the docs that it's possible, I just can't figure out what the dance is.

My problem may stem from not being a MediaWiki user. I'm doing this job for Doc Searls, who wrote a passionate plea to be able to edit his wiki with the OPML Editor. From a quick glance at the MediaWiki API docs I was pretty sure I'd be able to put something together. I like writing glue for XML-based APIs, it's fairly rewarding work, cause when I'm done there's another cool thing I can do with my outliner, even though it's not likely that I'll use it, personally.

I had hoped today to be writing a piece about how I got it to work but no luck. It's actually a plea for help. Here goes.

1. What I need is the equivalent of the Metaweblog API. Calls to create a new document (in wiki terms probably a "page"), to get and set the text to an existing document. That's basically it. For bells and whistles there are categories and media objects, but Doc probably doesn't need those so much as he needs to be able create and edit pages on his wiki.

2. I understand that I need to login and get a token. I have the call to login working, so I don't need help there. I probably can figure out how to get a token, but what to do with it? Oy. The docs really assume you know what you're doing before you read them.

3. I think the docs they have get pretty close to getting me going, but I won't be sure until I'm actually going.

If you can shed any light on what's happening here, it would be much appreciated. Assume in advance that I know I'm a pathetic dork with no life, if you skip that part of your advice it would be much appreciated too.

Some of you asked "Can I watch Make: television on YouTube?" - Of course! Here are all 4 parts of the premiere, in HD, on YouTube!

• Maker Profile - Bicycle Rodeo (YouTube HD).
• Maker Workshop VCR Cat Feeder (YouTube HD).
• Maker to Maker - Nibbler (YouTube HD).
• Maker Channel 101 Screambody, Laser Harp, Cupcake Carts, TV-B-Gone (YouTube HD).

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On January 24, 1984 a couple thousand people were present at Flint Center in Cupertino at the birth of something with real lasting value, the Macintosh.



It's corny for sure -- but it was exciting.

Hard as it is to believe -- that was almost 25 years ago!

My company rolled out a product that day too: ThinkTank 128. Thanks to Guy Kawasaki and Mike Boich. Guy was Apple's first evangelist and Mike was the head of their developer program. And there were many other great people involved in the Mac in the early days.

As Archie sang to Edith, those were the days!!

It would be great if, over the next 21 days, we could connect with people who were part of that day. Apple's remembrances have (understandably) focused on the Apple people who made the Mac work. But it would be interesting to know who else got their start then and what they went on to accomplish -- where they are now.

Update: Here's someone selling a shrink-wrap copy of ThinkTank 128.

An anonymous reader writes "NASA's Mars rovers have been on the red planet for five years now. The rovers were originally planned to stay operational on the planet for only 90 days, but it has turned into a much longer mission than anticipated. NASA has put together a video to celebrate the anniversary. The rovers have made important discoveries about wet and violent environments on ancient Mars. They also have returned a quarter-million images, driven more than 21 kilometers (13 miles), climbed a mountain, descended into craters, struggled with sand traps and aging hardware, survived dust storms, and relayed more than 36 gigabytes of data via NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter. To date, the rovers remain operational for new campaigns the team has planned for them."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

markmcb writes "My development team was recently brainstorming over finding a practical solution to the problem that's haunted anyone who's ever used a framework: convention vs. customization. We specifically use Rails, and like most frameworks, it's great for 95% of our situations, but it's creating big bottlenecks for the other 5%. Our biggest worry isn't necessarily that we don't know how to customize, but rather that we won't have the resources to maintain customized code going forward; it's quite simple to update Rails as it matures versus the alternative. What have your experiences been with this problem? Have you found any best practices to avoid digging custom holes you can't climb out of?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Introducing Cyclecide, an inventive band of Bay Area performance artists who make creations out of materials from the junkyard. These Makers create everything from amusement park rides to outrageous bicycle contraptions to found-object sculpture. Plus, we take a historical spin through the origins of the modern bicycle. Check out Cyclecide's website at cyclecide.com.

Get the m4v or subscribe at iTunes.

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John Park poses a kitty conundrum: Who's going to feed the cat while you're on vacation? Using a motor from an old VCR, he creates an automated feline feeder. While building this Make: magazine project, John learned that newer VCRs have safeguard technology, limiting access to the motor. Watch John as he demonstrates his solutions to this challenge.

Get the m4v or subscribe at iTunes.

Download the PDF for instructions

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This 'Toolbox' segment finds William Gurstelle showcasing "The Nibbler," a handy, compact, toothy device perfect for cutting and shaping sheet metal. Do you have any cool tools that do the same job, or can you suggest other uses for The Nibbler? Makers want to know; post your thoughts.

Get the m4v or subscribe at iTunes.

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ScreamBody - Kelly Dobson wears her voice-activated scream machine.

Laser Harp - Stephen Hobley's amazing musical instrument produces different tones by interrupting various laser beams.

Cupcake Cars - Paul Ozello's small go-kart type cars are shaped and decorated like dessert--sweet!

[Trouble Maker] TV Be Gone - Mitch Altman's secret remote control hat can turn off any TV, anytime.

Submit a video of your own project at makerchannel.org.

Get the m4v or subscribe at iTunes.

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jjohn_h writes "Two guys at VentureBeat have managed to take the source code for Google's Linux-based operating system for mobile phones, Android, and compile it for an Asus netbook. Immediately, speculation began that Android will soon be running on PCs and laptops. '... we discovered that Android already has two product "policies" in its code. Product policies are operating system directions aimed at specific uses. The two policies are for 1) phones and 2) mobile internet devices.' Though some remain skeptical, I surely hope it is going to happen. Since Android does not rely on X11, but has its own framebuffer graphics, that would indeed be a cosmic shift."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

nandemoari quotes a story at Infopackets: "2009 has gotten off to a great start for a team of iPhone enthusiasts with little regard for Apple's licensing requirements. They've finally figured out a way to get the phone to work with any cell phone carrier (and not just AT&T). The iPhone Dev Team is best known for their work on 'jailbreaking;' the technique of altering an iPhone so that you can run any applications on it, not just those approved by Apple. Given the company's questionable vetting policy for entry to the official App store, it's not surprising many users approve of jailbreaking."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tiger4 writes "CNN reports on a simple test to determine the presence of genes linked to Prostate Cancer. These five genes, if present, can increase the risk of prostate cancer up to nine times. 'More than 25,000 American men will die from prostate cancer this year. But prostate cancer can be treated successfully if the disease is caught early. A blood test that can detect whether a man is at high risk for developing prostate cancer is on the horizon. The study was published in the February 28, 2008, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.' It turns out the company actually wants to test saliva, making the test significantly easier and more convenient. Compare this to the tests available for BRCA, the so called Breast Cancer genes. Finding you have the gene can be devastating, but knowing well in advance of developing cancer allows many more options to be considered."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "ZeroPaid has a fascinating roundup of news stories surrounding the latest surveillance laws passed in India, including a first-hand account of someone writing from inside India. The legislation in question is the Information Technology Act's amendment bill 2006, which was recently passed in the Indian parliament. Things you can't do with the new legislation include surfing for news in Bollywood and looking up porn on the internet. The legislation also allows all transmissions over the internet to be monitored for any form of lawbreaking and permits a sub-inspector to break into your house to make sure you aren't browsing porn on your computer."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Big Bopper's casket is to be auction on eBay in the next few weeks. The Big Bopper spent the last 50 years in the casket but was transferred to a new one last year. The metal casket is apparently in decent condition with just a bit of rust and water damage. It's currently on display at the Texas Musicians Museum. From the Beaumont Enterprise:

Jay Richardson, the Bopper's son, plans to sell the empty casket on eBay to raise money for a musical show about his father and to keep the Bopper's memory alive. Born three months after the crash, Jay, who lives in Katy (Texas), never met his father in life - but saw him for the first time at his exhumation.

"Wouldn't it be wonderful to bring Dad back to life?" Jay, 49, said recently from Canada, where he was touring with a tribute act to his father, Holly and Valens.

"I have no personal use for the casket," he said. "When you get down to it, it is just a metal box. More important is what this particular metal box represents.

"In another 200 years, will people care about rock 'n' roll?" Jay asks. "Who knows? But why would I want to destroy it? Even though it was Dad's resting place for 48 years, it's also a unique opportunity to learn more about the early years of rock 'n' roll."

Big Bopper's casket a macabre marketable on e-bay

My friend Siege blogged this YouTube find and explained it like this:

On a hotel bed, Steven Spielberg talks to Andy Warhol and Bianca Jagger about TV static ghosts, picking up radio stations on his teeth, and swallowing the future.

Spielberg confesses *swallowing* a transistor after his father presented it to him, and said "son, this is the future" -- it was the young boy's first hands-on experience with technology. Or, perhaps better stated, his first technology-in-gullet experience.

My Friends Andy, Steve and Bianca Just Hanging Out

An anonymous reader writes "The world used 197 million new IPv4 addresses in 2008, leaving 926 million addresses still available. The US remains the biggest user of new addresses, but China is catching up quickly. Quoting Ars Technica: 'A possible explanation could be that the big player(s) in some countries are executing a "run on the bank" and trying to get IPv4 addresses while the getting is good, while those in other countries are working on more NAT (Network Address Translation) and other address conservation techniques in anticipation of the depletion of the IPv4 address reserves a few years from now. In both cases, adding some IPv6 to the mix would be helpful. Even though last year the number of IPv6 addresses given out increased by almost a factor eight over 2007, the total amount of IPv6 address space in use is just 0.027 percent.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Make: television debuts at 7am PST on 1/3 - over the weekend you'll be able to see it in the following locations on public television (broadcast tv). You can also visit makezine.tv and watch all 4 parts, in HD, DRM free, download them and share them! They'll also be on iTunes, you can subscribe here.

Indiana, Evansville - WNIN 1/4/2009 Sun, 6:30 PM
Ohio Youngstown, Cleveland (Akron) - PBS 45 & 49 - 1/4/2009 Sun, 11:30 PM
Texas, Amarillo - KACV 1/4/2009 - Sun, 10:30 AM
Texas, Austin KLRU2 (cable) - 1/4/2009 - Sun, 11:30 AM
Texas, Dallas-Ft.Worth - KERA 1/4/2009 - Sun, 10:00 AM
Texas, Waco (Killeen) - KNCT 1/4/2009 - Sun, 6:00 PM
Michigan, Grand Rapids (Kalamazoo) - WGVU 1/4/2009 - Sun, 7PM-8
Florida, Miami-Ft.Lauderdale - WPBT 1/4/2009 - Sun, 11:30 AM

Next up, here's a spreadsheet of ALL the listings, as we get more confirmed dates and episodes we'll update the sheet and the Make: television site.

More:

• Episode guide
• Broadcast listings
• Submit your video
• About Make: television
• About our sponsors
• Flickr photo group
• Facebook fan page
• Follow Make: television on Twitter

If you see Make: television on your local public television station over the weekend let us know, better yet - take a photo and post a picture in the Make: television photo pool, if someone posts something really clever there might be a special treat from the Maker Shed in their future.

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StrongestLink writes "In an intriguing twist on the recent Comodo CA vulnerability discussed here last week, security researcher Mike Zusman today revealed that three days prior to StartCom's disclosure of a flaw in a Comodo reseller's registration process, he discovered and disclosed an authentication bypass flaw to StartCom in their own registration process that allowed an attacker to submit an authorized request for any domain. During a month which was marked by the continuing paradigm shift to SSL-verified holiday shopping, the Chain of Trust continues to run off the gears, and Bruce Schneier is even commenting publicly that SSL's site validation mission isn't even relevant. What lies ahead for the billion-dollar CA industry?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Our friend Brookelynn, who btw is a terrific crafter and all-around amazing human being, says she's made up a new word, cephalerotica. She writes:

"It describes the amazing art that combines the erotic with the octopus. I have been collecting images for a few years now, and have a Flickr set of them."

Most of the images in the set are NSFW, and a couple of them actually make me feel downright Victorian in my sensibilities. At the same time, it's a fascinating collection of old and new representations of an obscure variant in human sexuality, which seems to be popular here on Boing Boing.

--Shawn

Cephalerotica Flickr Set

(Shawn Connally and Bruce Stewart are guest bloggers)

The new router arrived this evening, I charged it up, followed the minimal instructions, and it worked the first time. I'm using the router now to write this blog post.

I'll have unboxing pictures soon, but first the speed test.

speedtest.net thinks I'm in Kansas City, MO.



People ask why I lusted for this and the answer is the same reason I want one of these. A 3G battery-operated router that fits in a coat pocket, or a pocket on a knapsack, or in the glove box of a car -- very rational idea. A perfect fit for netbooks, and you know how ga-ga I am over those. For a while it looked like netbook "service plans" were going to catch on, hence the $99 netbook meme, but this is smarter. Why should the netbook have the service plan -- instead I'll use the USB modem I already have, plug it into the CradlePoint, and get on the net using wifi, which all netbooks already have. It's still a little klunkier than the Novatel approach, but this one is shipping, and it's pretty close.

If they had gotten this to me before Thursday I would have said this is the most rational product of the year for 2008, also the one that makes me the most giddy with a living-in-the-future feeling, right up there with the Eee PC. It would be hard to choose between the two. Wish I had had this at the DNC in Denver.

It has a very nice browser-based config system, so there's a web server built into the router. Screen shot of the Dynamic DNS config page.

Here's the set of unboxing pictures.

Image and article via Treehugger

Here's a call for trash to treasure ideas:

We are seeking submissions for 1000 Ideas for Creative Reuse, an upcoming book by Garth Johnson of ExtremeCraft.com, which will feature 21st Century craft and design, all made with recycled, upcycled, repurposed and reused items. We are looking for the best examples of paper and book arts, jewelry, clothing, home and personal accessories, furniture, art, and miscellanea for possible publication. We invite designers, artists, visionaries and crafters of all stripes to submit their work.

More info here. Doesn't look like you get anything other than pride of publication for your entry, but still worth checking out!

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RealityThreek sends this excerpt from an article at IT Management:"Pundits and business executives alike are predicting gloomy economic times for 2009. But when the talk turns to free and open source software (FOSS), suddenly the mood brightens. Whether their concern is the business opportunities in open source or the promotion of free software idealism, experts see FOSS as starting from a strong base and actually benefiting from the hard times expected next year. ... [Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation] sees Linux and the FOSS ecosystem surrounding it as having insurmountable advantages in any market over its main competitor Windows — advantages that an economic downturn only intensifies. At a time when a search for the lowest possible price point is happening in such areas as notebooks, FOSS is available at no cost. It is easy to rebrand and customize in a way that Windows Isn't, and is also technically more efficient."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

RealityThreek sends this excerpt from an article at IT Management:"Pundits and business executives alike are predicting gloomy economic times for 2009. But when the talk turns to free and open source software (FOSS), suddenly the mood brightens. Whether their concern is the business opportunities in open source or the promotion of free software idealism, experts see FOSS as starting from a strong base and actually benefiting from the hard times expected next year. ... [Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation] sees Linux and the FOSS ecosystem surrounding it as having insurmountable advantages in any market over its main competitor Windows — advantages that an economic downturn only intensifies. At a time when a search for the lowest possible price point is happening in such areas as notebooks, FOSS is available at no cost. It is easy to rebrand and customize in a way that Windows Isn't, and is also technically more efficient."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.