Jerry Beck of Cartoon Brew says:

I received several old issues of Cracked magazine over the holidays and noticed this article predicting life in the 21st Century had become surprisingly accurate.

"Today's Swinger is Tomorrow's Square," illustrated by John Severin, appeared in the 1974 annual Super Cracked (It was most likely a reprint from a 1970 issue). In it, the writer predicts that young people will embrace the "skinhead" look, home computers ("Electronic Home Teacher") and even the ipod: as "electronic brain stimulators" and a "musical computers" that young people are hooked on.

I've attached one image from it... but check the whole piece at Cartoon Brew.

It's well known that the Great Firewall censorship brigade in China employs tens of thousands of people monitoring what's said across the internet -- but perhaps far more effective has been the fear factor imposed on various ISPs by the government threatening them with punishment, if they don't ban unacceptable content. Of course, the government doesn't define what exactly is unacceptable, leading the ISPs to over-ban in order to protect themselves. Mostly, this effort has focused on internet access providers, but it looks like the government is now expanding it to search engines as well, after the government publicly named and shamed both Google and Baidu for failing to prevent access to "undesirable" content such as pornography.

This may prove to be an interesting test for Google, which was widely criticized for its original move into China, whereby it agreed to block content as designated by the Chinese government -- while alerting users to the fact that the content is blocked. That was Google's way of striking a compromise, while trying to call attention to the censorship (perhaps in the hope that it would eventually cause the policy to be changed). However, if Google is now getting pressure to be more proactive in determining what's "unacceptable," rather than just blocking specific content designated by the government, things could get a lot trickier for Google. Of course, some might point out that this was the slippery slope that Google put itself on when it first made the deal to get into China.

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Hugh Pickens writes "BBC has an interesting article on the long-standing issue of how to power the 'climber' that would ascend a space elevator into space. Previous ideas have included delivering microwave or laser power to the climber beamed from the Earth's surface, but now European Space Agency ground station engineer Age-Raymond Riise has demonstrated a device that could provide a "lift into space" for cheaper space missions along a 100,000-km long tether anchored to the Earth. Riise demonstrated sending power mechanically by providing carefully timed jerks of the cable at its base with a broomstick to represent the cable held in tension, an electric sander to provide a rhythmic vibration to the bottom of the stick, and three brushes representing the climber with their bristles pointing downwards allowing the climber assembly to slide upward along the broomstick as it moved slightly downward, but grip it as it moved slightly upward. 'It would be possible to make a suspension system that completely decouples the cabin where the passengers are,' says Riise. 'For them it would be a linear movement with very little disturbance.' Riise says that he has been approached by commercial elevator companies, who are researching new ideas for elevators in superscrapers where the simplicity of the approach makes it attractive when compared to other ideas for powering lifts, such as compressed air."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Senator Al Franken zings the everloving crap out of Ann Coulter in this sweet little clip. Funniest 1:22 I've seen all day.

Ann Coulter and Al Franken at The Connecticut Forum (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

An inspiring how-to for turning an ugly plastic clock into a nice-looking wood-cased object. Inspiring!

Turn a generic plastic gadget in to something a little more beautiful (Via MAKE blog)

If you aren't in the mood for McDnoald's, how about Pizza Huh?

Fake brands shopping center set to open in China (Via Michael Dolan)

From the MAKE: Flickr pool

Instead of tracking down and buying a lens cap for that unprotected cam, consider the incredibly affordable DIY alternative - and enjoy the simple pleasure using what you've made. Flickr member safoocat did so, following instructions she found here

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Posted to the Apple web site on January 5, 2009:

Letter from Apple CEO Steve Jobs

Dear Apple Community,

For the first time in a decade, I’m getting to spend the holiday season with my family, rather than intensely preparing for a Macworld keynote.

Unfortunately, my decision to have Phil deliver the Macworld keynote set off another flurry of rumors about my health, with some even publishing stories of me on my deathbed.

I’ve decided to share something very personal with the Apple community so that we can all relax and enjoy the show tomorrow.

As many of you know, I have been losing weight throughout 2008. The reason has been a mystery to me and my doctors. A few weeks ago, I decided that getting to the root cause of this and reversing it needed to become my #1 priority.

Fortunately, after further testing, my doctors think they have found the cause—a hormone imbalance that has been “robbing” me of the proteins my body needs to be healthy. Sophisticated blood tests have confirmed this diagnosis.

The remedy for this nutritional problem is relatively simple and straightforward, and I’ve already begun treatment. But, just like I didn’t lose this much weight and body mass in a week or a month, my doctors expect it will take me until late this Spring to regain it. I will continue as Apple’s CEO during my recovery.

I have given more than my all to Apple for the past 11 years now. I will be the first one to step up and tell our Board of Directors if I can no longer continue to fulfill my duties as Apple’s CEO. I hope the Apple community will support me in my recovery and know that I will always put what is best for Apple first.

So now I’ve said more than I wanted to say, and all that I am going to say, about this.

Steve

Good stuff from the Collins Kids. (via PCL Linkdump)

surely_you_cant_be_serious writes "A nationwide survey finds that most companies consider their systems vulnerable to attack. Historically, crime rates increase during recessions — and some believe that cybercrime may well follow suit, especially given massive layoffs and the dim prospects many laid-off employees face in finding a new job. 'One thing companies can start doing is monitoring their networks on an ongoing basis so that they understand the normal pattern of data flow and usage, Brill said. In many cases, companies may not have the internal capability to do this, but outsourcing options are available. Kroll Ontrack, for instance, will be rolling out a 24/7 monitoring service for its global clients manned from a US location by professionals in early 2009.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

EMI's lawsuit against Michael Robertson's MP3Tunes has never made much sense. MP3Tunes isn't distributing any MP3s. It just lets you upload and store your own music, or, if the songs are publicly available elsewhere, to access those tunes. EMI threatened MP3Tunes if it didn't remove all EMI music, and then eventually sued. Yet, in MP3Tunes defense, it's pointing out that EMI, itself, has flooded the internet with its own free MP3s, thereby authorizing others to link to those tunes (exactly what MP3Tunes was doing). So, the argument goes, how is it okay for EMI to authorize the MP3s for everyone to link to except MP3Tunes? Given cases in the past that deal with the legality of deep linking, this seems like it could be a pretty strong argument...

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Pierced and be-fanged woman demonstrates how she can wiggle her split tongue.

My friend Thomas Edwards, Dorkbot DC founder and former Overlord (now living in LA), wrote to tell us about the next Dorkbot SoCal meeting on January 10, featuring three bio-inspired artists.

Deborah Aschheim (above) creates works that blur biology and technology, exploring concepts of memory, architecture, and neural networks through drawings, sculpture, writing, installation and sounds.

Brian Evans explores the intersection between reductivist sculptural form and the aesthetics of behavior, where structure and thought are fused. He creates simple moving objects with seemingly life-like qualities- electromechanical life forms with motivations only just beyond our understanding.

David Guttman (above) creates interactive works that generate unique colors and shapes from sound and EEG.

More details at:
http://www.dorkbot.org/dorkbotsocal

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Pentax has also launched the Optio P70 digital compact camera. Sporting a 12 megapixel image sensor, 2.7" LCD and 4x optical zoom that starts at 28mm equivalent. It also features Triple Anti-Shake protection (digital image stabalization), advanced face detection of up to 32 faces and HD video recording. There's also an interesting Vertical Snap Mode whereby all icons on the LCD automatically rotate vertically for easier operation of the camera in a portrait mode.

Pentax has released the Optio E70 digital compact camera. This 10 megapixel camera features a simple to use interface with large buttons. Continuing the simplicity theme, it also includes Pentax's 'Green' shooting mode, where the camera tales control of all the key shooting settings. Although the camera promises simplicity, it is packed with features such as Triple Anti-Shake Protection, Super-Fast Face Detection and 7 shooting modes.

From the MAKE: Flickr pool

5Volt shares info, schematic and video on this simple yet fun/interesting project -

This is my simple light to sound converter. It simply converts light variations into sound. Listen to remote controls, TVs, burning flames, light bulbs and anything that emits either visible or infrared light.

Get more details on how to build your own from his blog - Light to sound converter

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Delightful sets, characters, and music in this 1970s Japanese kids' show, Kure Kure Takora.

From Wikipedia:

Kure Kure Takora (クレクレタコラ, Kure Kure Takora? unofficial translation: "Gimme Gimme Octopus") is a tokusatsu children's comedy show from Japan. Produced by Toho Company Ltd., the show aired on Fuji TV and its subsidiaries from October 1, 1973 to September 27, 1974 with a total of 260 episodes.

However, Episodes 223, 252 and 255 never materialised. The show was rebroadcast over CS digital satellite television, except for episode 220, which was censored due to problematic show content. The reason behind the censorship being that the main character, Takora is beaten by his neighbors to the point of being brain damaged, and it was considered much too violent to be rebroadcast. Laserdisc and VHS versions were sold, but currently only the DVD version (which includes episode 220) is on Japanese market.

It was a new type of program for children. TAKORA, a central character coveted for everything saying "KURE! (I want it)" all the time. Each episode was absurd, strange, violent, surreal, indescribable, and ran exactly 2 minutes and 41 seconds.

More excerpts available at Mt. Holly Mayor's Office: Kure Kure Takora - Amazing Japanese Kids Show from the '70s

UPDATE: Jack found banned episode #220. He said it "Looks like a cartoon version of COPS."

An anonymous reader writes "Wired has the inside story of Max Butler, a former white hat hacker who joined the underground following a jail stint for hacking the Pentagon. His most ambitious hack was a hostile takeover of the major underground carding boards where stolen credit card and identity data are bought and sold. The attack made his own site, CardersMarket, the largest crime forum in the world, with 6,000 users. But it also made the feds determined to catch him, since one of the sites he hacked, DarkMarket.ws, was secretly a sting operation run by the FBI."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jeremy of ToyCyte writes:

As part of our custoMONDAY series, we're giving away a custom made toy. Today's feature is Lana Crooks, who has a gallery on TOR, and does cephalopods. (Her tentacled plushes have been on BoingBoing before.) She's giving away a large handmade plush skull to the reader who can come up with the best name for her series of skulls.

"Win a Custom Skull Plush by Lana Crooks"

From the MAKE: Flickr pool

Pauric shares techniques for redesigning/improving consumer devices in need of a makeover. His example project, a 'sunrise alarm clock' -

One of the first things I do with device I buy is take it apart to see how it works, see if there's anything interesting going on inside. There's a lot to learn from doing this and as the Maker Mantra goes - if you cant open it you dont really own it.

Inside this alarm are all the standard parts you get in any $10-$20 alarm clock so I was a little peeved to realize I paid 4 times that for an alarm clock WITH a light bulb that wouldnt look out of place on a Christmas tree. Now I'm super motivated to remake it.

He also includes a nice video rundown of the power tools used in the process - Turn a generic plastic gadget in to something a little more beautiful

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thepacketmaster writes "The Star reports about a new power generation model using smaller distributed power generators located closer to the consumer. This saves money on power generation lines and creates an infrastructure that can be more easily expanded with smaller incremental steps, compared to bigger centralized power generation projects. The generators in line for this are green sources, but Hyperion Power Generation, NuScale, Adams Atomic Engines (and some other companies) are offering small nuclear reactors to plug into this type of infrastructure. The generator from Hyperion is about the size of a garden shed, and uses older technology that is not capable of creating nuclear warheads, and supposedly self-regulating so it won't go critical. They envision burying reactors near the consumers for 5-10 years, digging them back up and recycling them. Since they are so low maintenance and self-contained, they are calling them nuclear batteries."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The entertainment industry has a long and sorry history of treating customers like criminals, despite plenty of evidence that suggests that treating customers like criminals makes them more likely to act like criminals, rather than less. SteveD writes in with an example out of the UK, where the proprietor of a small shop decided that his store should be open the day after Christmas, but he didn't want his employees to have to work -- and he didn't want to work either. So, he opened up the shop, put up a note and a box for people to put money in and left the shop entirely unstaffed. It actually worked out well. He made a fair bit of money and didn't find any damage or products stolen.

This reminds me, quite a bit, of the Freakonomics story about the "Bagel Man" who delivered bagels to a variety of office buildings around Washington DC and left out boxes for people to pay. On average, he ended up with around 90% of the money requested, and some interesting lessons in which types of people and companies were more likely to be honest. There's also a scene in the Kevin Smith movie Clerks where the lead character Dante does the same thing -- though his explanation for why it works is: "Theoretically, people see money on the counter, and no one around, they think they're being watched." And, as his girlfriend notes, this is "honesty through paranoia." I'm not sure which it is, but it seems that there's ample evidence that honest people don't need to be "kept honest" and treating your customers like criminals isn't necessarily a very good idea.

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Disney artist, Stef Kardos, showing off Brushes, an iPhone sketching app. Be sure to watch the video to see how it's done. With zooming in and out and various brush weights, the results are pretty amazing. #

The Internet has many wonderful applications, but I doubt if people think of it as a romance platform, but it is.

Case in point. I was looking for some music to play for my friends on Twitter the other night, and I don't remember how I stumbled on this wonderful recording of Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong singing Gershwin's Cheek To Cheek, but it is something else. I recommend putting aside a bit of time later if you don't have time now, and play it on a nice sound system, and get ready for your heart to go to heaven.



But that's not the end of the story.

I remembered seeing the same song sung by Fred Astaire with Ginger Rogers, in the movie Top Hat. Now Fred's not really a singer like Louis & Ella -- but boy can he dance. The yin and yang! Cheek To Cheek reaches places with Fred & Ginger that you're just going to love.



So the Internet is a history and heart machine. It's love and life. Flirting, dancing, swing, and yeah kisses.

phyr writes "The European Space Agency (ESA) has released its Next ESA SAR Toolbox (NEST) freely as GPL for Linux and Windows. It provides an integrated viewer for reading, calibrating, post-processing and analysis of ESA (ERS 1&2, ENVISAT) and 3rd party (Radarsat2, TerraSarX, Alos Palsar, JERS) SAR level 1 data and higher. ESA has chosen to distribute the software as fully open source to allow the remote sensing community to easily develop new readers/writers and post-processors for SAR data with their NEST Java API. The software provides both a command line interface and GUI for all features including data conversion, graph processing, coregistration, multilooking, filtering, and band arithmetic."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Concentrate sells pre-chewed pencils for £1.50 a pack. (via Michael Leddy's Orange Crate Art)

After a long day on Tatooine fighting off Sandpeople and haggling over the price of power converters, Obi-Wan and Luke Skywalker walk into a droid...

BaR2D2 is a radio-controlled, mobile bar that features a motorized beer elevator, motorized ice/mixer drawer, six-bottle shot dispenser, and sound activated neon lighting. The robot is driveable so you can take the party on the road! It was created in my garage using standard hand/power tools and readily available parts and materials.

BaR2D2's creator, Jamie Price, sent us a link that includes all the construction details, as well as a few photos of the droid with C3PO, R2, Vader, and some Stormtroopers at the Dragon*con convention.

Build A Mobile Bar - BaR2D2

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MAKE Projects Editor, Paul Spinrad, sent me a link to this project and the following message:

Some CS / Game Development students hacked a Lord Of The Rings pinball machine, taking full control of its sensors, actuators, and display, and reprogrammed it to play Pinhorse -- like the basketball game, but you try to match your opponent's pinball shots in a certain amount of time, guided by the playfield lights and display. Control comes from a Linux PC and a Parallax microcontroller. Here's the project page with a video and academic paper. Naturally, they had to do some heavy-duty reverse-engineering.

The video narrative is a little hard to follow, but it does look like an interesting, challenging project.

Project "Programming Pinball Machines" [Thanks, Paul!]

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This will come as no surprise to anyone, of course, but the only significant area of the music business that is struggling is, once again, CD sales. Bloomberg has noted that album sales in the US declined 14% in 2008. Of course, digital sales continued to grow, and, as recently noted, the concert business is booming. Oddly enough, sales of vinyl records continue to rise -- a trend we noted last summer. To be honest, the fact that album sales only dropped by 14% seems rather surprising. If I were in the business of selling mostly obsolete plastic discs, I'd be thrilled they only dropped that much.

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Kodak has announced the Z980 mega-zoom digital camera. This 12 MP camera sports a 26mm wide angle lens with 24x zoom, a detachable vertical grip with shutter release and is capable of HD recording. Kodak has also announced the addition of three new models to its EasyShare M series. The M380 features a 10 megapixel sensor, a 2.7" LCD and 5x optical zoom. The 10MP M340 and the 9MP M320 feature 2.7" LCDs and 3x optical zoom.

Lorin Ricker writes "Back in the dark ages of windows-based GUIs, corresponding to my own wandering VMS evangelical days, I became enamored of a series of books jauntily entitled Xxx Annoyances (from O'Reilly & Assocs.), where "Xxx" could be anything from "Windows 95", "Word", "Excel" or nearly piece of software which Microsoft produced. These were, if not the first, certainly among the most successful of the "tips & tricks" books that have become popular and useful to scads of hobbyists, ordinary users, hackers and, yes, even professionals in various IT pursuits. I was attracted, even a bit addicted, to these if only because they offered to try to make some useful sense out of the bewildering design choices, deficiencies and bugs that I'd find rampant in Windows and its application repertory. Then I found Keir Thomas, who has been writing about Linux for more than a decade. His new "tips" book entitled, Ubuntu Kung Fu — Tips & Tools for Exploring Using, and Tuning Linux, and published by Pragmatic Bookshelf, is wonderful. Having only recently wandered into the light of Linux, open source software, and Ubuntu in particular, this book comes as a welcome infusion to my addiction." Read below for the rest of Lorin's review.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Phenomenal artist James Jean has posted a slew of scans from his 2008 Moleskine sketchbooks. Jean has a show of new work opening at Jonathan LeVine Gallery on January 10 and the paintings are truly mind-blowing. I'll link to the online gallery once the show opens. James Jean (via DRAWN!)

Zillij by Chris K Palmer, (modified from a traditional design by his student Elizabeth Ager), 2009, 12" diameter. Cut on the Craft ROBO Pro and assembled by Jeffrey Rutzky.

While teaching architecture at the University of Colorado-Boulder, Chris K Palmer developed Rhinoscripts to calculate intersecting ribs. Using several variables, such as material thicknesses, the script automatically generates vector-based files that, in turn, are used to drive CNC machines (laser and Craft ROBO cutters, 3-axis routers). Not only has Palmer expressed his favorite traditional Middle Eastern patterns, but he also has built, with his students, life-sized domed structures. All models assemble without external fasteners or adhesives, and use only the flat parts themselves, much like sliceforms.

Creating forms using the box slot connection began with work by Akio Hizume, who wrote custom software to calculate patterns, as well as scale and life-sized towers.

[via Bre Pettis' I Make Things]

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We like both of these ABC sets for very different reasons. The modern design deck by Jen Renninger is hip, modern, retro, and old school, all at the same time. Love it! And the Star Wars characters set by Michael Fleming appeals to our sci-fi, geek sensibilities.

Jen Renninger's Etsy Shop
Michael Fleming's Tweedlebop

(Modern Design Deck via Whorange)

(Shawn Connally and Bruce Stewart are guest bloggers)

Jetdaisuke performs symphonies with a gadget orchestra consisting of a DS Lite, iPod Touch, iPhone, and other assorted bits of gear and software. Brandon has video over at Boing Boing Offworld. "Jetdaisuke conducts the gadget orchestra"

Architext Teddy Cruz is planning low-income housing developments in San Ysidro, San Diego, California and Hudson, New York that are inspired by shantytowns in Tijuana, Mexico. From GOOD:

Homes will be jammed together, with any leftover space commandeered by taco stands, market stalls, and gathering places...

Behind the precariousness of low-income communities, says Cruz, there is a sophisticated social collaboration: People share resources, make use of every last scrap, and look out for each other...

In collaboration with the nonprofit Casa Familiar, the San Ysidro development will include 30 housing units alongside spaces where residents can run small businesses. The model also accounts for sweat equity, allowing people who help with construction to gain rent credits for their work.

Shantytown, USA

I'm still working my way through James Boyle's excellent The Public Domain, but it's chock full of examples of ways that copyright holds back cultural expression -- and that comes to mind in reading the saga of a movie called Sita Sings the Blues. It was brought to my attention by Rich W, who saw the film at a film festival a while back and loved it. After that, the film disappeared off the radar, but was brought back to some attention right before Christmas, when Roger Ebert wrote a glowing review of it. He, like Rich, didn't expect to like it, and didn't even plan to watch it -- but after being convinced to check it out, he loved it. But, what he discovered is that the film was unlikely to get any distribution because, despite being an animated reimagining of a classic Indian love story, it uses the songs of popular jazz singer Annette Hanshaw, recorded in the 1920s.

To clear the rights for the music, apparently more money than the entire movie cost was required. As Ebert noted:

"Don't the copyright owners realize they are contributing to the destruction of their property by removing it from knowledge?"

Exactly. Meanwhile, the creator of the film, Nina Paley, has been actively blogging about the ordeal. The attention brought about by Ebert's endorsement has resulted in the copyright holders lowering their demands, but including some pretty onerous strings that will make it nearly impossible for her to ever profit from the movie (from which she's already in debt). Basically, if she actually sells copies of the movie, she'll owe a lot more -- but that doesn't apply to promotional copies of the movie. In response, she's worked out a convoluted plan, whereby she'll pay the awful initial fees, but, knowing she'll never get direct profits from it, she's working hard to free the film up as much as possible -- by putting the entire movie up as a "promotion" on the Internet Archive, while putting it under some sort of open and free license.

From there, she goes on to list out a whole bunch of ways that she hopes to still make money, indirectly, from the success of the movie -- even as she's going into further debt to pay off the music copyright holders. Many of her suggestions for business models will sound quite familiar to folks around here (ancillary products, special limited edition signed products, sponsorships, etc.). It's a shame she needs to go to these levels just to pay off the copyright holders on these compositions from nearly a century ago -- who would only be helped by the success of this movie. Hopefully the other business models she's testing out will be able to cover those costs, but she's already in a deep hole, which is a huge shame. Of course, at the same time, this experience appears to have turned her into something of a convert when it comes to understanding the damages brought about by copyright. Separate from the movie, she's decided to copyleft an old comic she created years ago (though, she's asking for help to get them online).

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Anonymous Coward writes "A new method of DNA sequencing published this week in science identifies incorporation of single bases by fluorescence. This has been shown to increase read lengths from 20 bases (454 sequencing) to >4000 bases, with a 99.3% accuracy. Single molecule reading can reduce costs and increase the rate at which reads can be performed. 'So far, the team has built a chip housing 3000 ZMWs [waveguides], which the company hopes will hit the market in 2010. By 2013, it aims to squeeze a million ZMWs [waveguides] onto a single chip and observe DNA being assembled in each simultaneously. Company founder Stephen Turner estimates that such a chip would be able to sequence an entire human genome in under half an hour to 99.999 per cent accuracy for under $1000.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Furries are a fave on BB. We appreciate the fun these folks have dressing up like stuffed animals. Bizarre's Tom Broadbent attended RBW 2008, billed as the "largest furry convention in the UK," and returned with an excellent gallery of photos. From his photo essay:

There were loads of people there – from full fursuiters to tail-wearers. The selection of animals included fearsome wolves, big dogs, fuzzy foxes, a cool meerkat, a brilliant boar, a blinking dragon, an awesome lion and a few bears. It’s surreal being in a room full of oversized animals playing musical chairs. One of the best things about the day was getting loads of hugs from furry folk.

Furry Convention

Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our Joel's spotted this half-ton Rube Goldberg corkscrew by artist Rob Higgs:

Rob Higgs is an artist who makes extraordinarily convoluted machines — or at least one: the "Corkscrew", a self-cast monstrosity for gears and levers which does, unbelievably, actually work as a half-ton corkscrew for a bottle of wine.

I'll take two. (Which may be possible; as part of the One of a Hundred project, they may actually sell these things for lots and lots of money. But probably not.)

The Corkscrew by Rob Higgs Discuss this at Boing Boing Gadgets

Here's a brief overview of non-oil light-producing options from the authors of The Carbon-Free Home. In part:

Increasing the natural daylight in your home is something to take into consideration if you find from your energy diary that you need to turn lights on during the daytime. We are fortunate that our house, designed in the 1930s, has no issues with dark rooms. Every bathroom has a window and every hall has natural light. But some condominiums, apartments, and splitlevel or ranch houses we've seen have a serious lack of daylight.

Sunlight pipes (also called tubular daylighting devices) are low-tech devices that work wonders in dark hallways or bathrooms that have an accessible roof to penetrate. Be careful: every time you make a hole in the roof there is a chance for water penetration and damage. Solar tubes must be carefully installed and the flashing and caulking checked regularly.

(via Chelsea Green)

From one of the manufacturers, here's a diagram of one such solar tube:

(Image via Sunpipe)

And, here's an article on installing solar tubes.

Has anyone created their own version of a solar tube? Other than finding a high-quality plastic dome, reflective film for the interior (mylar?), and making sure you don't create a nice water inlet along with your light tube, is there any reason not to try and homebrew this?

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National Geographic posted the winners of its 2008 International Photography Contest. All of the images are breathtaking. The photo above, by Silvia Martinez Dominguez of Spain, is an honorable mention winner in the Nature category. From the caption:

Under a beautiful light, a monkey rests on the milennary stones of the Angkor temples, in Cambodia. The image talks about animal behavior, and about the very moving feeling of proximity between us and our nearest relatives in nature.

International Photography Contest 2008

Golfers using a certain kind of titanium clubs are apparently at risk of hearing loss. According to a study in the British Medical Journal, golfers using "thin-faced titanium drivers" should probably wear earplugs. The researchers from the Norfolks and Norwich University Hospital investigated the matter after seeing a patient whose hearing damage seems to have been caused by playing with one of the clubs three times a week for 18 months. The patient claims that when he hits the ball, it sounds "like a gun going off." Interestingly, the clubs may have be designed to produce the satisfying sonic boom. From the BBC News:

"There has been a tendency to make booming clubs for drivers," (said sports equiipment engineering expert Dr Martin Strangwood at the University of Birmingham.) But if this were a problem it would be easy to remedy by filling the head of the club with foam to reduce the sound."

He said wearing earplugs was another solution, but said players use the noise as feedback to assess how they are playing and how well their equipment is performing. "So it might not work for all."

"Playing golf can 'damage hearing'"

Phase One has announced an updated service release of its Capture One 4, PRO and DB RAW workflow software. Version 4.6 of Capture One and Capture One PRO extends RAW support to the Canon G10, Nikon D3X, Olympus E-30 and Phase One P 65+ cameras. It also provides improved camera support for the Canon EOS 5D Mark II and EOS 50D. Capture One 4.6 PRO also supports tethered shooting using most of the current Nikon DSLRs.

A man attempting to burglarize an Edinburgh, Scotland home fled when faced with Thor. The home belongs to Torvald Alexander, 38, who had returned from a New Year's party dressed as the Norse god of thunder and surprised the thief. From The Telegraph:

Mr Alexander said: "As soon as he saw me his eyes went wide with terror.

"He looked like he had had a few drinks and decided to do a late night break in, but he hadn't counted on the God of Thunder living here."

He added: "I had just got back from a fancy dress New Year's party and because I have a Norwegian name I decided to go as Thor.

"It took ages making the cape, helmet and breast plate, and I must admit it was a bit chilly walking home, but when I saw that guy I just went mad and charged at him, my cape flying behind me.

Burglar scared off by Thor (via Fortean Times)

DJAdapt writes to tell us that LG has launched a new line of high definition TVs that will be capable of streaming Netflix videos with no additional hardware. This is just another in a long line of expansions from the once DVD rental service, which has expanded to the Roku set top box, Xbox 360, PC, Mac, and Linux platforms recently. "Piping movies directly to TV sets is the natural evolution of the video streaming service, said Reed Hastings, the chief executive of Netflix. "The TV symbolizes the ultimate destination," he said. That idea -- shared by Sony Corp., which already streams feature films and TV shows directly to its Bravia televisions -- is still in its early stages. Netflix's streaming service taps a library of 12,000 titles, while the company's DVD menu numbers more than 100,000 titles. Hastings expects that gap will "definitely narrow" over time, but he noted that DVDs maintain an advantage over streaming, which is that "they are very profitable" for film studios."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There are all sorts of well known investment strategies out there, but it's often difficult to find anyone who sticks to them -- even those who are famous for pitching those investment strategies, apparently. The Wall Street Journal surveyed a number of people famous for their investment strategies and found plenty willing to (somewhat sheepishly) admit they don't follow the strategies themselves, often proving that emotion overcomes rational thinking when it comes to investments:

• Harry Markowitz, winner of a Nobel Prize in economics, in part for his work on the relationship between risk and return admits that, rather than pay attention to any of that in his personal investing: "I visualized my grief if the stock market went way up and I wasn't in it -- or if it went way down and I was completely in it. My intention was to minimize my future regret. So I split my contributions 50/50 between bonds and equities."
• John C. Bogle, founder of the Vanguard funds, and the high priest of constantly "rebalancing" your portfolio, to sell what's gone up and buy more of what's gone down, doesn't actually do that himself: "I think rebalancing makes a substantial amount of sense. I don't rebalance... I leave it alone. I have not touched my asset allocation since March of 2000."
• Don Phillips, managing director at research firm Morningstar Inc., who pushes people to put certain non-equity investments, like treasuries and REITs, into tax-deferred retirement accounts, hasn't actually done so himself. "I still think of my retirement assets as meeting long-term goals and have trouble putting anything but equities in them, even though I know that I should think of my portfolio as a whole, not as pools of money tied to independent goals."
• And then there's Burton Malkiel, the Princeton economist who wrote A Random Walk Down Wall Street, which has convinced many, many people to put all of their money in index funds, doesn't do that himself: "Actually, I have a quarter to a third of my money in individual stocks and actively managed funds.... It's not necessarily because I think I'll be any better off than with indexing, but I still want to buy a few individual stocks because it's fun."

That's not to say that any of the investment strategies proposed by these guys is necessarily bad. It just shows how incredibly difficult it is to be disciplined enough to actually follow them.

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FIRST Robotics competition announced... via /.

"FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) has officially announced the 2009 FIRST Robotics Competition. This competition, started by inventor Dean Kamen, encourages high-school students to design and build robots to compete with and against other FRC teams. The competition overview video is available from NASA. This year's competition is called 'Lunacy.' The game consists of a series of 135-second face-offs during which the student-designed robots must pick up 9-inch game balls and deposit them in trailers hitched to the opposing teams' robots. The game field is coated with regolith, a slick polymer material, and special wheels are used to create a low-traction interaction with the crater's surface. Together, these combine to simulate the one-sixth gravity on the surface of the moon. For any readers who are interested in participating, FRC teams can always use more adult mentors."

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Kodak has announced the Z980 mega-zoom digital camera. This 12 MP camera sports a 26mm wide angle lens with 24x zoom, a detachable vertical grip with shutter release and is capable of HD recording. Kodak has also announced the addition of three new models to its EasyShare M series. The M380 features a 10 megapixel sensor, a 2.7" LCD and 5x optical zoom. The 10MP M340 and the 9MP M320 feature 2.7" LCDs and 3x optical zoom.

An anonymous reader writes "Twitter's been hit by a big phishing scam. Culture Crash blogger Dan Tynan says this is the end Twitter's innocence. Will tweets become like email, with two out of every three just worthless spam?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

First a caveat, this is going to be a technical post, so if you're not interested in techie stuff, you can skip it. However, I'm going to try to make it understandable to smart users who are willing to scratch their heads and read it two or three times, if you care to.

There's been a persistent problem in the twittersphere when developers have wanted to enhance the service but require access to the user's account. There's no other way than to ask for the user's login info: their username and password. If the developer is ethical, this is not a problem, it's much like giving credit card information to a vendor. But you can get in trouble when the developer isn't trustworthy and uses your information in malicious ways. We got a taste of this, this weekend.

Immediately people in the know say Use OAuth! -- believing that will solve the problem. I understand OAuth, I've implemented Flickr's authentication system which was the inspiration for OAuth. It's a complicated dance for the app developer, but it provides the user with an important ability that's supposedly available no other way. The user can de-authorize one app without de-authorizing all others. It's true, you can do this with OAuth, but it's not the only way to do it, and it's more complicated for users and developers than the other way, which I'm now going to explain.

I got this idea when Twitter rate-limited me yesterday. I was debugging some code, and I guess I made more than 100 calls in an hour. Now I can't make any more calls from my LAN (even though it's been almost 24 hours since the offense). This showed me one very important thing -- Twitter has the ability to block calls by IP address. That's the key.

Okay, so now assume I've given my username/password to Wimpy's App Shop, who has a neat little Twitter add-on gizmo that I love, and everything's going great until one day Wimpy, whose shop is suffering in the recession, decides to make a little extra money by selling my login to Bluto's Greasy Spoon Spamporium, who proceeds to send huge numbers of phishing messages to Chris Brogan, Kevin Marks, Chris Messina and Guy Kawasaki. This is very annoying. We must stop it at once!

Now imagine that Twitter had a page that showed all the IP addresses that have used your login in the last 30 days, with a start date for each and a count of calls made. I bet you could figure out which one was The Greasy Spoon Group, pronto. Further suppose there was a checkbox next to each IP address. You could uncheck that one, click Submit, and voila, no more spam from your account. You just did everything that OAuth promises to let you do, and no one had to implement the dance. It worked with today's simple and klunky worse-is-better authentication system.

Now IP addresses are ugly and not informative, so add a little enhancement, and have Twitter do a reverse DNS lookup for each one. If something simple came back, like appshop.com and not adsl-86-229-2-19.dsl.pltn90.sbcglobal.net, display it instead of the IP address. Now it would be even easier to spot the nasty dude.

That's it, that's the idea. I think this works -- do you see any problems??

Update:: OK, I'm an idiot. This sure seemed like the ending of the story, but apparently, they're only halfway through. Eek!

One of the most rewarding moments of my winter holiday was the morning I found to read the final installment in Fables, Bill Willingham (and company)'s long-running, brilliant graphic novel series.

Over 11 volumes (plus a few very fine spin-offs), Fables has treated us to a cracking story about the exiled community of mythological creatures living in secret in Manhattan -- a motley cadre of legendary figures who were chased from their homeland by an evil emporer bent on multiversal conquest. From Sleeping Beauty to Little Boy Blue and the Big Bad Wolf, the legends have lurked in our human society, mingling with us, sometimes acting as our friends and sometimes as our enemies.

Building from a series of clever little vignettes to an epic tale of war and betrayal, revolution and politics, Legends became one of my favorite graphic novel reads. The authors rarely strayed into the realm of the silly, playing their Big Idea as straight as a ruler, drawing me into the lives of these vividly realized, striving people who struggled to get along -- and get home. On the way, the authors fluidly change comic styles, flipping from simplistic children's comics to elaborate oil-paintings to stylized manga, choosing the style that suits the present storyline best.

With the final installment, the Fables go to war, and adopts the conventions of war comics. The story is big -- huge -- and the battles are nail-biters. Things don't go the way you'd expect, and the ending is... Well, it's just goddamned great, tying up the loose ends, resolving the emotional tension, honoring the years I'd put into following these adventures. I won't drop any spoilers here, but I will note that the resolution leaves things open for some additional spinoff books and storylines, which I'll be looking forward to.

In the meantime, if you're the kind of person who likes to banquet on a whole epic story in one setting, now's the time -- all the books are in print and available for your perusal. And if you, like me, have been following the story for years, rejoice for the end is at hand, and what an end it is.

Fables, Vol. 11: War and Pieces

List of all Fables collections

Free download of Fables 1

My pick for today's PC Mod is the Atari 800 ITX, built by Andy Huston. There is a lot of bias at work here as the Atari 800 was my first computer / gaming system, and I actually still have it sitting on my desk.

Though it is sad to see it with the beloved ANTIC/POKEY chips and other vintage 70's electronics, it's still cool to see a classic computer used in the manner.

For more info and commentary check the rest of the story...

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nandemoari writes "It seems not even Microsoft is impervious to the effects of this increasingly painful recession. According to reports, the Redmond-based company is preparing to lay off about 17 per cent of its entire workforce in the coming months. Despite its portfolio diversity — including operating systems, antivirus software, and video game consoles — Microsoft is clearly feeling the pressure applied by a tightening global economy. In fact, there seems to be a sense of emergency to the massive cuts (about 15,000 workers out of 90,000), which rumors suggest should be made official by January 15."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A bunch of folks have been submitting the story that ad exec Robert Pritikin is claiming that Tom Cruise's new movie, Valkyrie, about the plotted (and failed) assassination of Adolf Hitler, abuses his copyright on Hitler's globe. Apparently, Pritikin purchased Hitler's globe many years ago, and then somehow registered the copyright on it. He claims that he did this to prevent neo-Nazi groups from using the globe for propaganda, but it's never explained how Pritikin has the right to copyright such a globe in the first place (it simply doesn't make legal sense that buying the globe alone granted him the right to copyright it).

In truth, this actually seems like Pritikin looking for a way to pump up the value of the globe. There's no indication of any actual lawsuit -- just the complaints from Pritikin, complete with him saying he's sure it was just an "oversight" that will be fixed soon. On top of that, there's the news that Pritikin just coincidentally (uh, yeah, sure) happens to have put the globe up for sale, and (oh, look at that) wouldn't mind if Tom Cruise purchased it. So rather than a legitimate copyright claim, these complaints are looking more and more like a way to force someone to buy the globe.

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Matt Jones contemplates life by building moving sculptures that fail to replicate it. A graduate student in art at Stanford University, his investigations have led him, among other things, to use an air compressor to animate a respiratory system fashioned from old bicycle inner tubes, and to motorize a carpet of zip ties laced with LEDs to approximate a pulsing, gently respiring, furry hide. His goal: to tease out the vital essence that makes the living live.

It took a giant garbage bag full of hot air to teach him to appreciate the life coursing through his creations. To create the grandiose piece Black Cloud for a death-themed Land Art show in the cactus-studded desert of central New Mexico, Jones needed little more than a pair of scissors and a lot of tape.

He cut out black garbage bags, sealed their edges to each other, and then rigged a squirrel cage fan with ducting to fill the vessel with sun-heated air, floating it several feet above the ground. Once aloft, the Suburban-sized balloon seemed to find a mind of its own in even the gentlest breeze. Trying to steer the cloud with fishing line before a crowd of spectators, says Jones, was "like trying to drag in an orca -- an orca that insists on jumping into cacti." Long patching sessions followed each brief and otherworldly flight.

Despite the difficulties and constraints inherent in making kinetic sculpture (it has to work, after all), Jones says it pleases him more than traditional media. "Besides color, line, and solid shapes," he explains, "there are entire regions [of the brain] devoted to detection of movement, areas untouched by static art."

Certainly, Jones' kinetic works breathe life into many regions of the mind -- especially when they're cooperating. "After the showdown in the desert," he says, "I came to cherish those moments when my work wasn't broken."

>> Matt Jones' website: ojdingo.com

From the column Made on Earth - MAKE 8, page 23 - Eric Smillie.

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Build your own Burrito Blaster

We hope this series inspires people all over the country to tinker, build, repair, or invent. To help make that happen, Make: television is happy to provide DVDs for those willing to screen episodes in a meet up of their own!

We'll send you a DVD with the first 5 episodes to host a screening in your own local robotics, DIY, or crafting groups. Watch an episode (or 5!) with your group and then roll up your sleeves and get down to building. We have detailed PDFs for the projects seen on Make:, just visit www.makezine.tv, or let the show inspire you to build a project of your own.

To host a screening event, email maketv@tpt.org and tell us about it.

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Here are some of my favorite posts from the CRAFT blog this week:

• Teacup Jewelry
• Barbie Wreath
• Fused Plastic Bag Shoes
• Security Envelope Pendants
• Hand-Warming Gloves
• Stephen King Embroidery
• HOW TO - Yardstick Coatrack

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USGenWeb, a genealogy site, has a really cool collection of penny postcards, organized by state. I love looking at the old structures - can you imagine driving on this bridge?

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P^2 captured this very awesome video of a DSLR's exposure process -

First attempt at capturing high-speed motion. This is a Pentax K200D shutter, as seen by a K100D and a high-speed strobe. Timing is provided by a few lines of C bitbanging a PC parallel port (in DOS, with interrupts disabled, natch).

Stop action and rapid recycle provided by the "winder mode" on a Metz 45-CT5, with its 90 microsecond flash duration, and <0.5s recycle time for the hundred shots it took to do this. Acquired shot-to-shot "frame period" is about 1 ms, and this is playing back at about 100x slower than realtime. The K200D shutter speed here is 1/180s.

- K200D shutter video

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Oyvind sez, "Some weeks ago, NRK - Norwegian Broadcasting - signed a deal with music rights holder organisation TONO in Norway. The new deal gives NRK right to publish podcasts of all previously broadcasted radio- and tv-programs that contains less then 70% music. Podcast containing music may be up for four weeks, while our podcast without music stay up on our server forever. One result of this deal, is that we now can publish 'Vår daglige Beatles' - 'Our Daily Beatles' in English - as a podcast. In this series from 2001, journalists Finn Tokvam og Bård Ose tells the story of every single Beatles tracks ever made, chronologically. Each episode contains a 3 minute story about each track (sadly for our international visitors - in Norwegian) and the actual Beatles tune. This is - as far as we know - the first time you can download the Beatles’ music legally. Neither iTunes nor Amazon have The Beatles in their music stores." Last ned alt av “The Beatles” - og historien om hver enkelt låt (Thanks, Oyvind!)

i4u writes "Rumors about Steve Jobs' health have been flying high again after Apple announced that he will not be holding the keynote at the Macworld 2009. Today Steve Jobs issued a letter with a rather personal update on why he was losing weight in 2008. The reason for losing weight in 2008 is a hormone imbalance that has been reducing proteins. The remedy for this nutritional problem is relatively simple and straightforward according to Jobs. Steve and his doctors predict that he will have normal weight again by Spring. So stop the rumors and enjoy Macworld 2009."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A lot of folks emailed me about our "Not New Year's resolutions - What are you going to MAKE? What we are making..." How many startups and projects are going to be doing power usage and metering in 2009? TONS - and now many of them seem to be looking at Twitter to pass the information along too.

Here's the latest, we're using a supercap, the Xbee is still parasitic (getting its power from the Kill-a-Watt). This is the one time that a supercap is actually reasonable for use in a project, a rare & very short burst of activity followed by long sleep delays. A supercap is like something between capacitors and batteries.

Oh, here's the outline of the project...

Twittering power usage device

Limor Fried and I are working on a cool project that should be done in early 2009, you take an off the shelf power usage device like the Kill-a-Watt and add an Xbee wireless module - once tapped in to the Kill-a-Watt you transmit the power usage to a local computer and that computer publishes how many watts per day you're using to your twitter account and will also add something like #mywatts so everyone can compare what they use. You could also use an Arduino with ethernet or wireless and eliminate the computer completely. The project will be open source of course and we expect someone will see it and do a commercial product.

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This remote controlled robot kit called "Tornader" spins around in every direction and seems like a pretty successful way to make your pets go crazy. Best of all it comes in a kit that you can put together in less than an hour.

Elekit Kit via DVICE

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An anonymous reader writes "Just prior to its premiere at MacWorld later this week, CNet has a review of MacHeads, the new documentary film covering the obsessive world of Apple fanboyism. MacHeads features commentary from original Apple employees, the self-confessed Apple-obsessed and girls who claim they'll never sleep with Windows users. Summed up by CNet: 'MacHeads is a superb film that will give Apple haters a few cheap laughs, and Apple fans a few cheap thrills. But it'll entertain both equally, while educating everybody else.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

(Via Ecofriend)

Cool: a company selling a calendar with pages that you plant to grow wildflowers.

Cooler: This abstract perpetual calendar:

Or, at the opposite extreme, the Martha Stewart take on a monthly tile calendar.

Coolest: a Maker creating a gift calendar with weekly seed packets that can be grown into food at that time of the year in recipient's climate. For even more eco-factor, actually recycle a 2008 calendar by marking in the holiday / date changes you care about. The days of the week for January 2008 match those for January 2009 if you move the day headers over by 2 (1/1/08 = Tuesday, 1/1/09 = Thursday),and you can embrace the hack to make a calendar that looks like a ransom note:)

If you have any Maker-friendly ways of sustainably ringing in the New Year and maintaining a semblance of knowing what day it is, please comment below!

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From the MAKE: Flickr pool

Inspired by previous examples, Flickr member pmilg celebrated his birthday with this confectionary intel mobo cake. (Hmmm ... looks like someone already nabbed the cpu)

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In the US, the FBI has been known to use various hacking techniques, such as installing spyware or a keylogger on suspects' computers -- though it's unclear if they obtain warrants before doing so. Over in the UK, police are now allowed to hack into computers of suspects without any court-approved warrant. Not surprisingly (and, reasonably) this has civil libertarians up in arms. It's difficult to understand how any country that believes in civil liberties could do such a thing without some form of checks and balances in the form of a warrant. Otherwise, you're just asking for such a program to be widely abused.

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One intrepid experimenter with a good camera, a cold night and a soap-bubble-maker creates sheer joy in this gallery of frozen bubbles: "It's very cold tonight, so we played with bubbles. If you blow them upwards enough they have time to freeze on the way down."

freezebubbles (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

A few weeks back we discussed the perspective that the economic meltdown could be viewed as a global computer crash. In the NYTimes magazine, Joe Nocera writes in much more depth about one aspect of the over-reliance on computer models in the ongoing unpleasantness: the use of a single number to assess risk. Reader theodp writes: "Relying on Value at Risk (VaR) and other mathematical models to manage risk was a no-brainer for the Wall Street crowd, at least until it became obvious that the risks taken by the largest banks and investment firms were so excessive and foolhardy that they threatened to bring down the financial system itself. Nocera explores the age-old debate between those who assert that the best decisions are based on quantification and numbers, and those who base their decisions on more subjective degrees of belief about the uncertain future. Reliance on models created a 'false sense of security among senior managers and watchdogs,' argues Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who likens VaR to 'an air bag that works all the time, except when you have a car accident.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We're posted in the past about her work, but these "Soft Sculptures" by artist Megan Whitmarsh are a soft jumble of everything from consumer electronics like televisions, cell phones, and Rubix cubes to other everyday products. Will she make a "soft Arduino" next?

Megan Whitmarsh via Design Boom

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David points out the 4bitsynth - a MIDI controllable digital synthesizer using the ATMega48 chip and a resistor ladder digital to analog converter. This simple project produces some nice NES-esque square, triangle, and noise waveforms - code is available here - 4bitsynth

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?Here's something useful for people who do a lot of electronics on the road. This hack shows how to build a USB powered soldering iron from a battery powered iron by connecting a spare cable to the iron. Check out the directions at the link below.

via GetLoFi

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Facebook has apparently sued social networking aggregator Power.com for a variety of things, including copyright and trademark infringement, unlawful competition and violation of the computer fraud and abuse act. I'm having trouble seeing how Power.com violates any of these things. Power.com, like plenty of other aggregator services, lets you bring together all your different social networking profiles in one spot. That seems like it could be valuable if you use a lot of those services. It doesn't do anything fraudulently, and it does not appear to misrepresent that it is a separate service. Users have to decide whether it's worth providing their username and password to Power.com, but it's not as if Power.com tricks anyone into doing so or does so in a misleading way. There's no confusion, so it's difficult to see what the trademark problem is about. It seems like a pretty big stretch for Facebook to also claim that showing the content from a user's profile is copyright infringement as well. Computer fraud? Please. Unlawful competition? Again, it may be (slightly) competitive, but it appears to actually improve the value of Facebook, rather than diminish it.

This is a pretty weak response from Facebook. Basically, it looks like Facebook trying to exert undue control over what other websites and services can do, and it's not clear that it has any real legal basis for doing so. It's a shame that a company like Facebook is becoming a legal bully at such a young age. I would have expected better. In the end, though, if Facebook keeps up actions like this, it will only hasten the shift to other social networks that don't try to limit what their users can do. Facebook might want to take a lesson from the eventual flop of Friendster after that social network was accused of being too controlling.

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It's amazing that just a few years ago a cell phone was the size of a suitcase. Now you have a camera, calendar, video and music player, all jammed into a phone that easily fits in your pocket. What's next? Well, maybe it's mobile furniture design? I really like the manufacturing process and final results. Check out the link for a lot more examples of tables deigned on a phone.

More about Designing furniture with a cell phone [Core77]

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snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister lays out his development predictions for 2009. These include further struggles from Microsoft in retooling its image, a more open source mindset for Java, twilight for Sun, the Web as platform of choice, and a dearth of innovation due to dwindling economic prospects. 'When customers aren't buying, tool vendors don't innovate — so don't expect many groundbreaking new technologies to debut this year,' McAllister writes, adding that smart companies will realize that 'process automation is one of the best ways to reduce costs in any business,' making 2009 the ideal time to 'revisit old software schemes that got shelved back when staffing budgets were flush.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Looking for a better reason to have that high powered phone on your hip? How about saving the world, or saving yourself?

The applications are designed to change people's behavior for the better, said Sunny Consolvo, one of UbiFit's creators. In a three-month field experiment, people using UbiFit with the background display kept up their workout routines over the winter holidays, a period when people typically slack off on exercise, while people without the display let their regimen slide.

The project is funded in part though a grant from the Intel Foundation.

How could your phone do more for you? Have you tried this app, or others like it? Have you created an application that makes innovative use of the iPhone or Android's robust sensors? Join in to the conversation in the comments and add your photos and videos to the Make Flickr pool!

Thanks Amon!

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One of our readers sent us a link to this very simple PIR circuit. It's a really easy way to conserve battery life on any interactive project. Check out the link for a circuit diagram and more information.

When we design lighting circuit, we would like to light up the LEDs only when there is somebody around. The PIR sensor is a motion sensor based on passive infrared sensor which senses infrared emitted by human body. I got the PIR Module "KC7783R" from local store, which includes the PIR sesnor and also the KC7783 motion detection IC.

More about a Simple PIR motion sensing

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This is a great open source MPG instrument for your car. It's based on the Arduino micro-controller along with a few other sensors. I really like all these open-source projects that are springing up all over the place. Amazing!

MPGuino is part of the OpenGauge instrumentation effort, which was created to make available efficiency instrumentation of all sorts. MPGuino specifically is a Miles Per Gallon gauge for fuel injected vehicles that is based on the arduino platform with some extra circuitry for monitoring the fuel injectors and the speed sensor in the vehicle.

More about MPGuino: Open source instrumentation

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Wastricity is the use of electricity in a way that provides no personal or public benefit.

There is no public benefit to the money spent lighting streets and the exterior of buildings during the daytime. Who should you talk to when you see municipal money being spent on electricity or other utilities for zero constructive use? How will they respond when you point out that they are burning their budget? Are they planning on going in front of the voters asking for some emergency reprieve in the budget meltdown of the year?

By having devices use electricity and providing no value in return, we are squandering a public resource of fossil fuel derived and grid delivered electricity.

In our personal lives, we use wastricity whenever we leave our phone chargers plugged in to the wall when the phone is not attached. We also use wastricity by leaving gaming systems running while we are out of the house. Leaving lights on in the room when nobody is in the room is classic wastricity.

Do you have enough money in your household budget? Could you find some more money by hunting down wastricity? Does your school system or town have a policy about preventing wastricity? How can your kids or students join the fight against wastricity? Could you create an incentive for people to reduce wastricity?

Wastricity. What can you do to stop it?

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Over the past few days there's been a lot of attention paid to the news that the RIAA has ended its relationship with MediaSentry, the highly controversial firm that the RIAA used to try to find those involved in file sharing. There have been various lawsuits questioning MediaSentry's techniques -- and the sheer number of falsely identified people certainly suggested pretty strongly that the company wasn't doing a particularly good job. Of course, with the RIAA's "new strategy" of abandoning lawsuits in favor of having ISPs be their enforcers, the record labels still need a company to come up with whatever flimsy evidence it can find. So, don't think the ending of the relationship means that the RIAA has stopped monitoring file sharing. Instead, it's simply switched to a new company: DtecNet out of Copenhagen.

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boustrophedon writes "The Buffalo News reports that QRS Music Technologies halted production of player piano rolls 108 years after the company was founded in Chicago. QRS continues to make digitized and computerized player-piano technology that runs on CDs. 'We're still doing what we always did, which is to provide software for pianos that play themselves. It's just the technology that has changed. But I would be lying to say [the halting of production] doesn't sadden me,' said Bob Berkman, the company's music director. Piano rolls can last for decades, but not forever. Volunteers at the International Association of Mechanical Music Preservationists build piano-roll scanners to scan rolls optically and convert them to MIDI files. The IAMMP archive and others contain thousands of scanned rolls."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Photograph by Thomas Hartkop

Mike and Dave Hartkop had been eyeing their father's abandoned satellite dish in the garage for years. But it took an especially productive night of brainstorming at the local pub to come up with an idea that tapped into their respective interests in coffee and solar energy to put that dish to good use. The Solar Roaster was born.

The first version of the Hartkops' solar coffee-bean roaster was built by attaching several hundred homemade plastic mirrors to the frame of the 10- foot satellite dish. Dubbed Helios, the roaster took about two months to complete and looked more like something off the set of Battlestar Galactica than a piece of equipment you'd find behind a coffeehouse.

The Hartkop brothers make a good team for a solar coffee-roasting venture. Mike is the coffee fiend, developing the organic solar-roasted flavors and handling the business details, while Dave is the designer and engineer for their unique roasters. As the solar roasters use no fossil fuels or electricity, Mike likes to claim they've found the most environmentally friendly method of roasting coffee beans in the world.

Dave has been building solar concentrators for the past five years. He's completed two solar coffee roasters and is working on the third and biggest version to date. The solar roasters are getting progressively more efficient, complex, and expensive (they retired Dad's satellite dish after the first version). The hardest part has been building the miniature drum roaster heads, which have to operate with very limited electrical power, handle vibration and wind, and operate when tipped to nearly 90 degrees when tracking the sun.

Helios 3 will be their first mobile solar roaster. The Hartkops plan to take Helios 3 on the road to festivals and shows (and to follow the sun in rainier months).

"I'm hooked on the concept of roasting coffee because the product is instantly accessible by the common person," Dave explains. "It is not an abstract figure given in kilowatt-hours, which supposedly reduces X pounds of fossil-fuel pollution. Solar Roast Coffee reduces those pounds and it tastes good!"

solarroast.com

From the column Made on Earth - MAKE 7, page 22 - Bruce Stewart.

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January 1 was Public Domain 2009 day -- the day on which the works of authors who died in 1938 entered the public domain in most countries. As in previous years, the Public Domain blog has a long and fascinating list of the authors whose works are finally free to be reprinted and spread around the world:

Some of the more interesting members of the 1938 class of deceased authors include:

Danish bacteriologist Hans Christian Gram (of Gram staining fame)
British-Canadian author, conservationist, and literary fraud Archie Belaney (Grey Owl)
Latvian-born ethnologist and musicologist Abraham Zevi Idelsohn (to whom the lyrics to “Hava Nagila” are attributed)
American cartoonist E. C. Segar (creator of “Popeye”)
American illustrator Johnny Gruelle (creator of “Raggedy Ann”)
American lawyer Clarence Darrow (of “Scopes Monkey Trial” fame)
American songwriter James Thornton (“When You Were Sweet Sixteen”, written in 1898)
Japanese martial artist Kano Jigoro (founder of judo)
American industrialist Harvey Samuel Firestone (of tire fame)

Public Domain Day 2009 (via Michael Geist)

Bruce Sterling's doing his annual "state of the world" public interview on the WELL's Inkwell.vue conference, and taking all comers, dropping science and bon mots. I could read this stuff all day.

I'm a bohemian type, so I could scarcely be bothered to do anything "financially sound" in my entire adult life. Last year was the first year when I've felt genuinely sorry for responsible, well-to-do people. Suddenly they've got the precariousness of creatives, of the underclass, without that gleeful experience of decades spent living-it-up.

These are people who obeyed the social contract and are *still* getting it in the neck. The injustice of that upsets me. The bourgeoisie who kept their noses clean and obeyed the rules, I never had anything against them. I mean, of course I made big artsy fun of them, one has to do that, but I never meant them any active harm. I didn't scheme to raise a black flag and cut their throats because they were consumers.

Topic 343: Bruce Sterling: State of the World, 2009 (via Beyond the Beyond)

A prankster in a Darth Vader suit joined the annual procession of the clergy of the Lutheran Church of Iceland. And you know what? It works.

Cult Procession Fail (via Making Light)

The record companies have fired their outsource enforcement thugs, MediaSentry (a sleazy outfit that changes its name as often as it changes its testimony). This is part of its new strategy: rather than suing fans, the record industry will confront the 21st century by asking ISPs to voluntarily spy on their customers, throttle their Internet connections, and disconnect people from the Internet on the basis of unproven allegations of infringement.

It's a measure of just how unbelievably stupid the lawsuit campaign was that this new tactic is actually marginally preferable. And, of course, it does mean that plenty of MediaSentry's goons will end up on the breadline, so that's good news.

Ray Beckerman, a New York lawyer who maintains the Recording Industry vs. the People blog and who has represented more than a dozen clients fighting the RIAA, said he considered the decision to drop MediaSentry a "victory" for his clients. MediaSentry representatives "have been invading the privacy of people. They've been doing very sloppy work," he said.

Mr. Beckerman cites MediaSentry's practice of looking for available songs in people's file-sharing folders, downloading them, and using those downloads in court as evidence of copyright violations. He says MediaSentry couldn't prove defendants had shared their files with anyone other than MediaSentry investigators.

Changing Tack, RIAA Ditches MediaSentry (via /.)

Anti-Globalism sends us to Ars Technica for Jon Stokes's musing on the falling value of Web advertising. Stokes put forward the outlying possibility — not a prediction — that ad rates could fall by 40% before turning up again, if they ever do. "A web page, in contrast, is typically festooned with hyperlinked visual objects that fall all over themselves in competing to take you elsewhere immediately once you're done consuming whatever it is that you came to that page for. So the page itself is just one very small slice of an unbounded media experience in which a nearly infinite number of media objects are scrambling for a vanishingly small sliver of your attention. ... We've had a few hundred years to learn to monetize print, over 75 years to monetize TV, and, most importantly, millennia to build business models based on scarcity. In contrast, our collective effort to monetize post-scarcity digital media have only just begun."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This made my night. As news is coming out of Minnesota that the state Canvassing Board is ready to certify Al Franken as the winner of the very close senate race there, Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo was ready and waiting with this oh-so-excellent vintage Franken and Davis clip from Solid Gold.

--Bruce (via TPM)

(Shawn Connally and Bruce Stewart are guest bloggers)

I often tell stories about companies who treat their customers or developers as if they were idiots. But that's not to say my own company, the one I started, didn't do this too -- it did. It's human nature, but it's bad human nature, it's self-defeating, it's dysfunctional.

When I heard someone say a customer was stupid, I said if that's true we're really fucked.

Here's how I reasoned...

1. We have to believe our customers are the smartest people, because they were smart enough to choose the best product.

2. If they were stupid, then they chose the wrong product and we're dead, so you'd better start looking for a new job

The only logical way to proceed is to:

1. Make the best product.

2. Find the smartest customers.

3. Treat them like the geniuses they are.

4. And earn their respect. (Which they never failed to give us, as long as we did 1, 2 and 3.)

Our customers really were the smartest people -- we made products that you had to be smart to want. But I think every company has to feel their customers are the smartest, or else why bother coming to work?

Further, we don't look for "feedback" from customers, we look to learn from them. Feedback is what you ignore. Learning is how you build.

"cheesecake"

newtley writes "Two days ago we discussed the earlier p2pnet report that the RIAA had fired MediaSentry (now called SafeNet). Now the Wall Street Journal is confirming this report. MediaSentry has been 'invading the privacy of people,' the WSJ quotes Ray Beckerman; 'They've been doing very sloppy work.' Beckerman cites MediaSentry's practice of 'looking for available songs in people's filesharing folders, uploading them, and using those uploads in court as evidence of copyright violations.' MediaSentry 'couldn't prove defendants had shared their files with anyone other than MediaSentry investigators.' The WSJ notes, 'In place of MediaSentry, the RIAA says it will use Copenhagen-based DtecNet Software ApS. The music industry had worked with DtecNet previously both in the US and overseas, and liked its technology...' "

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As 40somethings raising kids, we seem to have finally outgrown celebrating the start of the new year by getting real drunk and staying up late. We still stay up past midnight as a matter of pride, but we’ve slowly shifted the emphasis to New Year’s Day festivities, which include eating traditional meals, plus discussing the highlights of the previous year and hopes for the new one. In other words, we focus on traditions that make us feel good, not hungover.

Growing up in New Mexico, it was instilled in me that it's absolutely necessary to eat posole on January 1. And since my ancestors moved to New Mexico from Arkansas and other southern locales, it's also imperative that everyone in my family eat at least one bite of black-eyed peas on Jan. 1 to secure good luck for the new year. A few years I made a cheesecake or lemon tart for New Year's Day, hiding one almond in the pie. This is another good luck token, which I must have read about somewhere along the line. I find these traditions, almost always related to food and celebrations, to be fascinating, and I hope lots of you readers will share your traditions in the comments.

Along those lines, The New York Times put up a fun slideshow about new year's traditions from around the globe.

The highlights of 2008 for all of us were the outcome of the election and various family trips we took. Bruce loved NYC, Kindy enjoyed a couple of overnights in San Francisco, and Arlo loved spending a week hiking and swimming on the Eel River. That reminded me of one of my highlights -- seeing an albino redwood tree during a hike on that trip.

As for aspirations in 2009, Arlo, who's 6, started the conversation by saying, "I hope we do lots and lots of yoga!" This was interesting to the rest of the family; as far as any of us know, Arlo’s only ever done yoga once in his short life, but it apparently made a big impression. Kindy, 13, wanted the self-absorbed things you’d expect from a teen: a winning basketball team at school and more free time, less homework. I wanted to take more hikes and go to the beach more often, which I'm pretty sure is my declaration almost every year. Bruce was the most selfless: he hoped for fewer wars in the world, and more peaceful times for everyone. Amen to that.

--Shawn (image courtesy of Susan Beal)

(Shawn Connally and Bruce Stewart are guest bloggers)

toomanyairmiles writes "The Times of London reports that the United Kingdom's Home Office has quietly adopted a new plan to allow police across Britain to routinely hack into people's personal computers without a warrant. The move, which follows a decision by the European Union's council of ministers in Brussels, has angered civil liberties groups and opposition MPs. They described it as a sinister extension of the surveillance state that drives 'a coach and horses' through privacy laws."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Heather Moore, the talented proprietor and blogger of Skinny Laminx, recently wrote a couple of CAPTCHA security code poems that speak to the wordsmith inside me. The comments about them are pretty interesting and creative as well. Here’s one of Heather’s poems:

Aingee
Chedge criestme orstsper!
Shanesto...
Foref, myrac, munmanc,
Torse?
Hanim equin padwo?
Picar!
Mingin!
Corses aingee...

--Shawn

Skinny Laminx Security Poetry

(Shawn Connally and Bruce Stewart are guest bloggers)