I just received a curious and lovely new book, titled Mushroom Magick, by artist Arik Roper. It's a collection of Roper's paintings of various species of hallucinogenic mushrooms. BB pal Erik Davis contributed an essay and famed mycologist Gary Lincoff provided notes on the various kinds of 'shrooms pictured in the book. From the book description:

For centuries hallucinogenic mushrooms have participated in a sublime relationship with humankind, thanks to their psychoactive chemicals that shift and modify the human mind. Arik Roper's exquisite painted portraits of magic mushrooms illustrate more than 90 of the known hallucinogenic species from around the world. He captures their powerful auras, adding to a tradition of Mushroom art that stretches back more than 400 years.

Mushroom Magick (Amazon)
Mushroom Magick sample pages (Abrams Books)

With Oracle purchasing Sun, there's been some fretting over whether or not the company will harm MySQL (which Sun bought a few years back), as it's certainly a competitor to Oracle's core database product. My guess is that Oracle's a lot more interested in owning Java than harming MySQL, and am hopeful that Oracle recognizes the benefits of supporting MySQL. But, even if the company does go in the other direction, it's difficult to see much to worry about. The demand and opportunity for an open source database is so big, that others would quickly pop up (and, of course, there are already other open source databases out there -- some of which are already considered superior to MySQL). However, even more interesting is the news (pointed to us by Tim Lee) that many of MySQL's main developers have left the company (or are planning to), and one of MySQL's founders is already looking to hire other key MySQL developers to fork the software and keep on developing the software. Sometimes it's pretty difficult for a fork to get the attention it needs to survive, but certainly it can work, especially if there are concerns about the direction of the original product.

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David Zax of Seed magazine wrote a piece about social scientist Ben Ho who is applying what he knows about behavioral economics to climate change, and how people might be "tricked" into reducing their carbon footprints.

Residents of a community were shown how their energy use measured up against the communal average. If they consumed more than the average, most reduced energy in the months ahead. If households saw that they consumed less energy than their peers, however, their energy use actually rose, except when the frugal households were given the merest of rewards: a smiley face on their bill.

Can we trick ourselves into saving ourselves?

Two men attempted to carjack Ted Mazetier, 84, of Tacoma, Washington. So he beat the crap out of them. Very Gran Torino. From KOMO NEWS:

Mazetier was driving down South Proctor Street Wednesday night when he spotted a car on the curb and two guys standing nearby. He thought they needed help, so he stopped...

"When I opened the door, he started toward me and I kicked him in the balls," he said.

When the other man charged, Mazetier put his feet up and kicked him in the belly.

"He kind of bent a little and went down. And I went around the guy and I'm in the street, and I'm waving for cars to stop and, you know, help."

The two men fled, not having gotten whatever they were looking for.

"Don't you mess with grandpa, sonny" (Thanks, Carlo Longino!)

Ian Lamont writes "An advertising company that runs a 'targeting marketplace' and partner AT&T are playing down the telecommunications giant's use of its services after AT&T's chief privacy officer told a House subcommittee yesterday that the company does not engage in behavioral advertising. The AT&T executive testified (PDF) to the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet that AT&T would not use behavioral advertising methods without informed customer consent. However, AudienceScience, a company that records 'billions of behavioral events daily' has apparently worked for AT&T since 2005. After the hearing, AudienceScience removed a client testimonial relating to AT&T from its website, so 'all the appropriate parties [have] consistent messaging,' its CEO said. An AT&T spokesman also said that the testimony was talking about AT&T's role as an ISP, not an advertiser."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

So Time Warner Cable has supposedly backed off its metered broadband until it can figure out how to do a better job presenting it (though, it's also threatening to delay upgrades if people don't accept caps or meters). Yet, as reader Matthew Henry alerts us, it appears that Time Warner Cable has instead just started kicking "unlimited" users offline without much warning. Apparently, when the user called to ask what was up, he was told he shouldn't have used so much of his unlimited broadband account. This is the sort of stuff Comcast used to do years ago and which helped contribute to its awful reputation. Nice of Time Warner Cable to try to fix its own reputation by going down the same bad path.

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From Rock Cookie Bottom. (Via Andrew Sullivan)

In a recent report, a team of scientists from Spain claims to have isolated and treated the parasite causing honey bee depopulation syndrome. Their hope is to prevent the continued decline of honey bee populations in Europe and the US. "The loss of honey bees could have an enormous horticultural and economic impact worldwide. Honeybees are important pollinators of crops, fruit and wild flowers and are indispensable for a sustainable and profitable agriculture as well as for the maintenance of the non-agricultural ecosystem. Honeybees are attacked by numerous pathogens including viruses, bacteria, fungi and parasites."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Derek Erdman made this fine painting titled "Fortunate Teens Party With Morrissey, 1994." Here's Erdman's background on the piece:

There is a seldom told story that Morrissey's tour bus broke down in small town Ohio in the autumn of 1994. A full day was necessary for the repairs to be completed and Morrissey and his band delighted local teenaged fans by stopping by a house party to drink beer and smoke marijuana. "It was the time of my life," remarks Tamara Marshall, who was hosting the party. "My parents were out of town and I was told not to have a party, but once Morrissey showed up I knew I wasn't going to be a secret for long." When asked what she remembered most about Morrissey's visit, Tamara answered, "He didn't like Rolling Rock beer".

Fortunate Teens Party With Morrissey, 1994 (Thanks, Richard Metzger!)

MAKE subscriber FrankG sent us this nice, sort of mesmerizing, video tutorial on turning an old truck leaf spring into a basic, but effective machete. Kind of a long and involved process, but I can only imagine how gratifying it would be to forge/machine your own tools and then use them on a regular basis.

Theworkshop.ca

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nandemoari writes "With only a few weeks until Microsoft's Windows 7 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) is released, Microsoft is already looking for people to help with Windows 8. An April 14th job ad posted by Microsoft says the upcoming version of Windows will have new features like cluster support and support for one way replication. Apparently the Windows 8 kernel is being reworked to provide dramatic performance improvements. Windows 8 will also include innovative features that, according to Microsoft, will revolutionize file access in branch offices." Relatedly, several users tell us that both 32 and 64-bit versions of the Windows 7 release candidate have been leaked into the wild via p2p networks. The current leaked version shows little change beyond bug fixes, so it would seem what you see is what you get. This all comes as Microsoft posts quarterly sales that have fallen for the first time in the company's 23-year history. Seeing a 6% drop in revenue and a 32% drop in earnings, some within the Redmond giant expect the downward trend to continue.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

nandemoari writes "With only a few weeks until Microsoft's Windows 7 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) is released, Microsoft is already looking for people to help with Windows 8. An April 14th job ad posted by Microsoft says the upcoming version of Windows will have new features like cluster support and support for one way replication. Apparently the Windows 8 kernel is being reworked to provide dramatic performance improvements. Windows 8 will also include innovative features that, according to Microsoft, will revolutionize file access in branch offices." Relatedly, several users tell us that both 32 and 64-bit versions of the Windows 7 release candidate have been leaked into the wild via p2p networks. The current leaked version shows little change beyond bug fixes, so it would seem what you see is what you get. This all comes as Microsoft posts quarterly sales that have fallen for the first time in the company's 23-year history. Seeing a 6% drop in revenue and a 32% drop in earnings, some within the Redmond giant expect the downward trend to continue.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

nandemoari writes "With only a few weeks until Microsoft's Windows 7 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) is released, Microsoft is already looking for people to help with Windows 8. An April 14th job ad posted by Microsoft says the upcoming version of Windows will have new features like cluster support and support for one way replication. Apparently the Windows 8 kernel is being reworked to provide dramatic performance improvements. Windows 8 will also include innovative features that, according to Microsoft, will revolutionize file access in branch offices." Relatedly, several users tell us that both 32 and 64-bit versions of the Windows 7 release candidate have been leaked into the wild via p2p networks. The current leaked version shows little change beyond bug fixes, so it would seem what you see is what you get. This all comes as Microsoft posts quarterly sales that have fallen for the first time in the company's 23-year history. Seeing a 6% drop in revenue and a 32% drop in earnings, some within the Redmond giant expect the downward trend to continue.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A bunch of folks have sent in this story about a copyright lobbying group in Finland that is threatening to sue a website that helps people rent textbooks, oddly calling it "The Pirate Bay for textbooks." That makes no sense if you understand what the site actually does. It's not hosting ebooks. It's literally connecting people who own textbooks to others, so they can rent their physical textbooks. It's difficult to see how that could be considered copyright infringement at all, let alone anything similar to The Pirate Bay. But, in this day and age, where the copyright lobbyists see almost anything as infringement, perhaps it's no surprise they'd freak out about this as well.

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Maggie Koerth-Baker is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. A freelance science and health journalist, Maggie lives in Minneapolis, brain dumps on Twitter, and writes quite often for mental_floss magazine.

My friends' 3-year-old son, Will, asks, "Do cockroaches have a penis?" This turns out to be a surprisingly difficult question to answer.

First off, most basic sources will just try to give you some fluffy answer about how to tell a boy cockroach from a girl cockroach, which doesn't have anything to do with penises (or lack thereof) at all. In fact, apparently, the easiest way to sex your cockroach is to count the number of of segments on the underside of its abdomen, according to roach expert Joseph Kunkel, a biology professor at the University of Mass., Amherst. Girls have more segments. Boys have fewer

Second, there appears to have been a lot more research done on female cockroach reproductive anatomy. And for good reason: It is more noticeably freaky. Female cockroaches carry their fertilized eggs around in these pod-like sacks called ootheca. Some cockroaches will tote the ootheca around attached to their bodies until the babies hatch. Other species, however, simply drop the ootheca off in some hidden corner, where the babies can incubate safely while you beat their mothers to death with a shoe. Stumble upon enough ootheca in the basement, and its liable to be the first thing you take to the lab.

But, while useful, this information does not answer the young man's question. For that, I had to turn to Cockroaches, a 2007 book by William J. Bell, Louis Marcus Roth, Christine A. Nalepa, and (yes) Edward O. Wilson. Their description of the male cockroach junk helpfully explained why I'd been getting so much confusing (and conflicting) information from other sources. To wit:

A number of intromittent structures in the male cockroach have been called a penis ... Although these structures may be associated with the ejaculatory duct ... penis-like organs function in some capacity other than to convey sperm directly

So there you have it. Cockroaches: They have no penis. But they do have a lot of things that are frequently called a "penis". Many of these bits and pieces seem to actually be used for cockblocking, so to speak. Let me explain. Instead of the familiar-to-us method of copulation, male cockroaches produce a hard, little packet full of sperm, called a spermatophore, which they transfer into their favorite gal. But, unless it's her first time around the block, there's a decent chance that somebody else's spermatophore is already in there. A male cockroach has a better chance of passing on his genes if he can get rid of the competing sperm. Whether hooked, whip-like, barbed or spiny, those not!penis structures are likely used by male cockroaches to clear out rival spermatophores, according to the august authors of Cockroaches, the book.

Beach-bunny cockroaches provided by kthypryn.

The Register writes "Sun invited Oracle president Charles Phillips and chief corporate architect Edward Screven to an employee-only town hall this Wednesday, where they took questions on what's coming. They said they'd be 'crazy' to close Java, that Oracle 'needs' MySQL, and all Sun's processors look appealing. They hedged on OpenOffice — Phillips said he couldn't comment on any product line — and on Sun's work in high-performance computing. Screven made it pretty clear the Sun vision of cloud computing does not fit with Oracle's; Oracle sees itself as a provider of infrastructure like virtualization to make clouds, not a provider of hosted services. As for who's staying and who's getting cut at Sun: Phillips said Oracle needs Sun, but warned 'tough decisions' will be coming. Don't forget, this is the company that couriered pink slips to the PeopleSoft staff it cut following that acquisition."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Joe Bowers sends this in:

I set up an Arduino to read the notes on Guitar Hero and flash an LED to that corresponding note. I used this ambient light sensor, from Sparkfun to read the changes in value on the screen. When something bright flashes in front of it, the Arduino will turn on an LED for as long as that brightness is there.

I love the stands he built to position the sensors in front of each fret on his TV; they're modified plant sprinkler stakes from the hardware store!

Joe's ultimate plan is to have this play Guitar Hero for him.

OhBowz

You can pick up an Arduino Duemilanove, an Adafruit ProtoShield, and a breadboard and jumper wire in the Maker Shed.

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There have been plenty of questions about YouTube's fingerprinting system and how it works, and the EFF notes that an enterprising YouTube user figured that with a little experimentation, he could perhaps figure out how the system worked. Basically, he uploaded 82 different versions of a song, to see what YouTube caught... and what it didn't. He's put together a list of what he found out that's worth reading through, noting that it could still "catch" plenty of distorted content and that it reviews every video as soon as it's uploaded. But perhaps the most interesting (and surprising) bit: it seems to only look at the beginning of the video. He found that if he left the first 30 seconds blank, the system didn't catch anything. But if just played the first 30 seconds of a song, the video got flagged... There are some other interesting findings as well, that pretty much highlight how questionable some of these fingerprinting systems are in terms of accurately identifying the content in question.

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An anonymous reader writes "Dell is apparently suing popular online retailer Tiger Direct, claiming that Tiger violated the resale contract it had with Dell, which included false advertising, misleading representation and unfair competition. Dell has accused Tiger Direct of selling old and out-dated Dell computers that Tiger Direct purchased from other resellers and then saying they were brand new directly from Dell. They also passed the computers off as still having a full warranty, but the warranties had expired long ago."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Lisa Gold, the amazing researcher who helped Neal Stephenson get the details right in the Baroque Trilogy, is conducting a "Research for Writers" seminar in Seattle:

Research is an important part of the creative process for writers of fiction and nonfiction. Research can help with inspiration, storytelling and world building whether you are writing about the past, present or future, about life on earth or an imaginary world. The instructor will share advice about research, discuss the kinds of research writers may need to do and help students find useful sources of information in print, on the Web, in libraries and in unexpected places.

You can still register for my Research for Writers class

From the Bob Basset steampunk art collective in the Ukraine, their latest creation: a stunning black leather pilot mask. I own one of their masks and it is a goddamned thing of beauty.

Black Pilot Leather Mask. ????? ?????? ?????.

Jimmie has this followup on his announcement for Maker Revolution in Boston this Saturday and Sunday:

The event can pretty much be summed up as a two day extravaganza of makers, hackers, and artists getting together to share cool things they've made, and how to make them. There will be installation art pieces, workshops, and talks. You'll be able to both see an Arduino in use for an art piece, purchase one, and even learn how to use it. There will be workshops as well, so you can learn to circuit bend, or build your own TV-B-Gone with the inventor, Mitch Altman. The Makerbot will also make an appearance, and Bre Pettis will be on hand demonstrating rapid prototyping and how it can change your life.

A number of Boston area makers and artists will also be presenting,
showing off some of the their works. This is a good way to find out
about things going on in the area, and how you can become involved.
From building music and sound installations, to designing your own
video games, and even trying a shot of your own DNA. There is sure to
be at least one art piece or talk that you will find interesting. It
is also very conveniently located just a few minute's walk from the
Kendall T stop.

Watch here for updates! If you are going, add your photos to the MAKE Flickr pool.

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We've been anxiously-awaiting new vids in our pal Jeri Ellsworth's "Short Circuit" series, a sort of quick n' dirty video lab journey she's been keeping. In these two most recent episodes, she explores digital pots and piezo transducers with feedback electrodes.

Fat Man and Circuit Girl

More:
Jeri Ellsworth and Short Circuit #1
Short Circuit #2: Frequency multiplication with tank circuits

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Remember the urgent raids British cops conducted two weeks ago after the names of potential terrorists leaked when a top official got out of a cab, holding a top secret memo that the newspapers photographed and published?

Remember how this publication had the potential to tip off these scary terrorists about their impending arrests?

Turns out that the police didn't find any evidence, though they held the men for 13 days. Then they let them go.

All of 12 men arrested over a suspected bomb plot in the UK have now been released without charge by police.

Eleven of the men have been transferred to the custody of the UK Borders Agency and now face possible deportation.

The Crown Prosecution Service said there was insufficient evidence to press charges or hold them any longer.

The Muslim Council of Britain said the government behaved "very dishonourably" over the treatment of the men should admit it had made a mistake.

No charges after anti-terror raid (via Schneier)

Richard Simmons flips out. Warning: this video contains cussin', and large doses of a sometimes-scantily-clad Richard Simmons (Thanks, Richard Metzger).

A quote from the person who put this video up on YouTube: "This is a spot from Argentina which includes a transgender woman. It talks about tolerance and teaches us that all people are the same even if they are straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender."

(Thanks, Tara McGinley and Richard Metzger).

An anonymous reader optimistically writes that new legislation has been introduced in the Senate that would call for a nationwide adoption of electronic health records built on open source. The bill does not seek to supplant proprietary alternatives, but instead to either augment or offer a cost effective alternative. "'We need advancements in health information technology across the board to improve the quality of care Americans receive,' said Senator Rockefeller, Chairman of the Senate Finance Subcommittee on Health Care. 'To make this happen, we need universal access to affordable and interoperable health information technology - from small, rural health clinics to large, urban hospitals.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Here's the latest Klockwerks newsletter from mad sculptor Roger Wood, a clockmaker/assembage sculptor who's branching out into glorious lamps. Roger loaned me a hall full of his clocks for my wedding and they absolutely made the night.

Klockwerks

First up, a disclosure: back in college, Nathaniel Stern, one of the main characters in this post, was a very close friend of mine -- someone I hung out with a lot. After college, though, he and I mostly lost touch -- other than a random email or Facebook message back and forth. The last time I heard from him, in fact (and the first time I'd heard from him in at least two years), was when he sent out an email alerting me to the fact that he (along with one other artist) had launched a project called WikipediaArt. The idea was to create an art project on Wikipedia, but which stayed within Wikipedia's rules. Nat's become a pretty well-known artist over the years, often experimenting in new media art, and the project itself struck me as quite interesting, though I doubted it was even remotely possible, given the way Wikipedia works. You knew that it would get deleted. However, I never expected the folks behind Wikimedia to go legal on them.

But, that's what's happened.

Both the EFF and Paul Levy (who has agreed to represent Wikipedia Art) have alerted us to the news that Wikipedia is demanding the artists hand over their domain by threatening legal action. As the EFF and Levy point out, this is a rather surprising move by the Wikipedia foundation, who should know better than to make a bogus demand on a URL just because it includes Wikipedia's name in it:

Wikipedia should know better. There is no trademark or cybersquatting issue here. First, the site is entirely noncommercial, which puts it beyond the reach of U.S. trademark law. Moreover, even if U.S. trademark laws somehow reached this noncommercial activity, the artists' use of the mark is an obvious fair use. Wikipedia Art uses the "Wikipedia" mark to refer to the project: a critical comment on Wikipedia and creativity. The disputed site describes the project, provides links to media coverage of the project, and so on. It does not use any more of the Wikipedia mark than need be; for example, it doesn't even use the Wikipedia logo. Simply put, the site does not purport to be, nor does it look anything like, Wikipedia and the artists have done nothing to suggest Wikipedia endorses their work. Finally, the creators are engaging in precisely the kind of critical speech sheltered by the First Amendment.

While the EFF does note how odd it is for Wikipedia to be taking these actions, it leaves out the fact that Wikipedia is represented by Mike Godwin, (of Godwin's Law fame), who was also the first EFF in-house lawyer and absolutely should know better than this. Hopefully Godwin and Wikipedia come to their senses, apologize and back down.

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(MP4 Download here). Update: BB commenter Squeevy astutely suggests regarding this particular episode, "For best viewing (and association with what is going on) I suggest using stereo headphones and not laptop speakers or computer speakers."

Today's Boing Boing Video episode is an ambient piece by animator/filmmaker Bob Jaroc and the band Plaid.

"War Dialer," which references phone phreaking and early proto-hackery through a non-narrative, droning flow of sound and speech-babble, was originally created as an 8-channel audio-only installation in a bandstand on Brighton seafront as part of the Sonic Sea Air project, ten years ago.

Jaroc says, "Plaid and i began to use it as a visual piece around the time we started to play surround sound gigs, as it served as a good visual and sonic introduction to the idea that the images on screen were related to the spacial audio."

I suggest replaying the piece in the background a few times, and droning out to it while you work.

Music taken from Plaid's Greedy Baby album, which you can buy here.

RSS feed for new episodes here, YouTube channel here, subscribe on iTunes here. Get Twitter updates every time there's a new ep by following @boingboingvideo, and here are blog post archives for Boing Boing Video.

Shapeways, the Dutch 3D printing company, is coming to Maker Faire, all the way from the Netherlands! We're thrilled to have them on-board. To get their user-community excited, and to get some cool 3D objects to show off at the Faire, they're holding a contest. Here are the details:

To inspire people we would like to show off the best models that you can possibly make. Something that will make people go wow! Something that explains how 3D printing will change things. Something that someone will look at, hold in their hand and go..you can make this?

The Maker Faire contest is your chance to have your most amazing design made. Anything you want, anything that you think will inspire and amaze is game. The top 3 models will be 3D printed, exhibited at Maker Faire, and then sent to the lucky winners. The winning designer gets an additional $300 in 3D printing from us.

The fine print: The contest closes the 15th of May. Enter by adding the tag: makerfaire to your upload. Your model has to be less expensive than $200.

Maker Faire Contest

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An anonymous reader writes "UK citizens may soon be able to report crimes by uploading videos taken from their mobile phones. Ian Readhead, director of information for the Association of Chief Police Officers, told silicon.com that forces want to build a video reporting portal to allow the public to upload potential evidence. Checking YouTube is now a routine part of many police investigations he said and police want to build on the extra functionality that this gives them he said."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Earlier this week, the blogworld spent plenty of time analyzing a ridiculously bad WSJ "article" by pollster Mark Penn about the number of professional bloggers and how much they make. Having been in the "profession" for about as long as anyone, it took one glance to know that the number he was talking about didn't even come close to passing the laugh test. It was so silly that I didn't even think it was worth posting about it (beyond an offhand comment on Twitter. However, plenty of others went through the numbers and pointed out how ridiculous they were. Scott Rosenberg and ReadWriteWeb are two examples of bloggers doing a great job digging into the numbers and showing how Penn's number aren't even close to accurate. There's also a separate issue about why the WSJ is allowing a PR guy like Penn to write an article presenting him as if he were a regular journalist, but we'll leave that aside for now.

However, (and here's where it gets funny), another mainstream source, Bonnie Erbe, of US News & World Report, used Penn's report to write an article trashing bloggers. And yet, pretty much everything she accuses bloggers of doing, she or Penn do themselves:

They are the technology age's equivalent of reporters and columnists, but without the degree of separation that used to protect readers and consumers from being targeted for commercial or political purposes, that old-fashioned edited newspapers and magazines used to (and to a limited extent, still do) provide.

Hmm. So, it's the bloggers who are sneakily providing commercial or political messages... and not Mark Penn, a political pollster and corporate PR flack being able to write his own biased, poorly fact checked and often just incorrect article in the "prestigious" Wall Street Journal? And Erbe simply believes this professional spinmaster over those who actually have some knowledge and experience with what he's talking about... and then claims it's the bloggers who are likely to write for commercial or political purposes? Wow.

The problem is, veracity is deleted and placed in the trash bin. Unverified opinion is taking its place. Well-written, fact-checked opinion has a storied place in journalism history. But off-the-cuff, on-the-take opinion does not. Yet there is much more of the latter on the Internet than the former.

Yes, again, she seems to have gotten it exactly backwards. In this case, it was the WSJ article where "veracity" was deleted and placed in the trash bin, replaced by Penn's unverified opinion. Meanwhile, the well-written, fact-checked opinion came from (oops) the bloggers she now accuses of not doing it.

The column goes on to say that the way to generate traffic to an Internet site is to make it as outrageous as possible. "Outrageous" on the Internet usually comes in one of two forms: 1) pornography or 2) wildly unsubstantiated, extreme opinions.

Hmm... wildly unsubstantiated, extreme opinions like "Internet, Bloggers' Half-Truths Are Killing Newspapers and Journalism" (which happens to be the title of Erbe's writeup here...

The fact that, as Penn discloses, some bloggers are making as much as $200,000 per year and many of them are doing so by shilling for companies or selling consumer goods is downright scary. Consumers need a filter. They need to know if someone is saying something just to grab one's attention, or touting a product because that person is being paid by an advertiser to tout it.

How much does Mark Penn make shilling for companies? Isn't that scary?

I used to be friendly with a woman who quit a high-level job at a cable news organization because she insisted on the old "two source" rule. That rule, observed by all reputable news organizations, insisted that no one could publish or broadcast a source story, unless that story was confirmed by two independent sources. The cable network wanted to put on air stories based on information from one source and she quit rather than comply. How old-fashioned of her!

So, let's see... Erbe bases this entire article on a single source (which was proven wrong by multiple other sources) and "goes to press" with it, and then says that "all reputable news organizations" observe a "two source rule," which she totally ignores herself. How new media of her!

Honestly, reading her complaints about bloggers and realizing she commits every single one of them, while missing out on the fact that it was the "bloggers" she dismisses who actually provided the credible analysis and reporting on this story, would make me think that her piece was pure satire. But, looking over her other columns, it doesn't appear that she's the satire sort of person. Or perhaps I'm wrong. I haven't checked that with two sources, so clearly I'm part of the crew that's destroying journalism. But I'm sure fond of irony.

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In this episode of Make: Talk, we'll be joined by Nathan Seidle, the founder of SparkFun, a hobbyist electronics company, which recently held an autonomous vehicle competition. We'll also present some news from the world of making, and our favorite tricks, tips, and tools of the week. Be sure to call in for prizes that we'll award during the program! The number is (646) 915-8698.

Below is the show player, where you can listen to the live program on Friday, and to past episodes.

Make: Talk on BlogTalkRadio

Tim O'Reilly and Sarah Milstein are two of my favorite tweeters, and they've just written The Twitter Book, a pleasingly-designed 240-page guide to making the most out of Twitter. The hard copy won't be out for a little while, but you can buy the PDF right now for $15.99. As Cory says on the cover blurb, "This book delivers a bunch of sensible, down-to-earth material on using and enjoying Twitter.: I couldn't agree more.

This colorful guide will teach you everything you need to know to quickly become a Twitter power user, including strategies and tactics for using Twitter's 140-character messages as a serious--and effective--way to boost your business. Co-written by Tim O'Reilly and Sarah Milstein, widely followed and highly respected Twitterers, the practical information in The Twitter Book is presented in a fun, full-color format that's packed with helpful examples and clear explanations.

The Twitter Book, by Tim O'Reilly and Sarah Milstein

The Bitcave was temporarily transformed into a video studio this week, while shooting a DVD for New Riders. I'll have much more info on the video and other fun stuff related to it, soon.

After seeing all the work that goes into setting up a simple shoot like this (lighting, sound, rigging, data transfers) I have newfound respect to those that produce motion stuff for a living. There were parts of the taping where I felt comfortable (when presenting against familiar material) and other times where it was downright grueling (talking directly to the camera for 30 takes in a row).

Major props to those that can do this kind of thing on a regular basis, and make it look effortless.

Barence writes to mention that the UK government is throwing their weight behind a broadband-for-all initiative with an initial round of £250 million in funding. Using money left over from the digital television switch, the initiative aims to have a 2Mbit/sec broadband connection or better in every home by 2012. "Analysts welcomed the proposals, but say there are still many details to be hammered out: 'The Chancellor... needs to consider how to remove the barriers that prevent the people who cannot afford broadband to get connected. They need to ensure that competition in the market remains fair and consumers are given choice rather than one or two providers.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Barnaby Ward, illustrator of the excellent Sixteen Miles to Merricks, says:

I recently started a Twitter feed to help document my work process. I'm very particular about what I put on my blog, so I figured a Twitter account would be a great way to post sketches, studies and work-in-progress shots from personal and non NDA projects. It's not quite at the tutorial stage, but if you're interested in seeing how I develop my work in photoshop, you can see the progress here.

Our Spring-cleaning sale is still going strong for another few days! We have a huge amount of new inventory arriving at the backdoor to our warehouse in anticipation of Maker Faire. The problem is, we share a warehouse with the rest of O'Reilly and we need to clear out space to make room for the new stuff.

So...we've sharpened our pencils and for the next two weeks, we are rolling back the prices on over a hundred of our existing products. Most around 50% off, but some of them discounted as much as 75% off! Once they're gone they're gone. This is a limited time spring-cleaning sale from now through midnight April 30th (midnight on our San Francisco clocks).

Use code BLOWOUT at checkout for the FREE shipping on orders over $100. (Contiguous US)

Check out all the products that are on sale now!

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Following up on the earlier story of Time Warner Cable going the political route to try to block municipal competition in Wilson, North Carolina, Broadband Reports has a story pointing out two interesting side stories:

1. During hearings about the law to ban such municipal competition, the politicians pushing the bill that would ban municipal competition were asked to clarify, and rather than answer themselves, the politicians "turned to a Time Warner staff member and an attorney who represents the industry to speak on their behalf." In other words, they outright admitted they didn't understand their own legislation and that the corporate lawyers from the company that would benefit from the legislation understood it better than they did. It's certainly no surprise that lobbyists write the legislation that politicians pass, but usually they at least try to hide it a little bit. Here they're basically flaunting the fact that Time Warner Cable wrote the bill, and the politicians just shuffled it through the process without understanding it. Isn't it great to be a servant of the people?
2. Time Warner Cable is complaining about what a huge cost municipal broadband is to the people of Wilson, but leaves out the fact that Time Warner Cable's CEO's compensation from the past two years is greater than it cost the city of Wilson (via a bond measure, so not taxpayer dollars) to fund the deployment of the fiber network. And you have to wonder if Time Warner Cable will end up spending more trying to block this competition than it would have cost to have built out a competitive quality service as well.

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krou writes "The BBC is reporting that the Rydberg molecule has been formed from two atoms of rubidium. Proven in theory, this is the first time it's been created, reinforcing the fundamental quantum theories of Enrico Fermi. Chris Greene, the theoretical physicist who first predicted that the Rydberg molecules could exist, said: 'The Rydberg electron resembles a sheepdog that keeps its flock together by roaming speedily to the outermost periphery of the flock, and nudging back towards the centre any member that might begin to drift away.' It's a sheepdog with a very short life-span, however; the longest lived molecule only lasted 18 seconds. Vera Bendkowsky, who led the research, explained how they created the molecule: 'The nuclei of the atoms have to be at the correct distance from each other for the electron fields to find each other and interact. We use an ultracold cloud of rubidium — as you cool it, the atoms in the gas move closer together. We excite the atoms to the Rydberg stage with a laser. If we have a gas at the critical density, with two atoms at the correct distance that are able to form the molecule, and we excite one to the Rydberg state, then we can form a molecule.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Steve Lodefink just shared with me the photos of his first cigar box guitar. What a beaut! Here's the headstock, here's the body.

AshboryBassPlayer writes "Ugobe has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy — i.e., not reorganization but liquidation. We first discussed the company's Pleo robotic dinosaur toy in 2006. According to the company, 100,000 Pleos were sold in 2008. CEO Caleb Chung is optimistic about the auction value of intellectual property that Ugobe holds. Pleo featured 14 servo joints, a camera, and an SD Card for storage. The final street prices were commonly between $275 and $350, much higher than an earlier hoped-for price point under $200."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This post is dedicated to Mitch Kapor, Jonathan Sachs, Dan Fylstra, Dan Bricklin, Bob Frankston, Ben Rosen, Ev, Biz, Jack, Bijan, Fred et al. A lot of people on that list, and I have had the priviledge to know most of them, and I've met all of them.

First a very brief story of what Visicalc was and how it was surpassed by 1-2-3. And please understand this is my version of the story, I'm sure all the principals will have their own versions.

Visicalc was god. It was the Twitter of the early 80s. It was credited with creating the personal computer boom led by the Apple II. The product was created by the two Dans and Bob. Mitch worked for the company. Everyone said Mitch wrote spaghetti code. The two Dans and Bob didn't take him seriously. They were gods after all and Mitch was a mere mortal.

Along comes the IBM PC. It's a private thing, but since Visicalc rules, they got early access. The two Dans and Bob and Mitch all saw it. They started to port Visicalc to it, but didn't do anything special. After all, their software is what made the PC boom. The IBM PC would be just another Visicalc machine. Mitch didn't see it that way. So he got together with a brilliant coder, Jonathan Sachs (so much for the spaghetti code!) and got money from a very smart man in NY, Ben Rosen, and started Lotus to make 1-2-3. The two Dans and Bob knew about it, but they didn't take it seriously, because they were gods and Mitch writes spaghetti code.

But the one thing they didn't figure out about Mitch, that made him such a killer, was that he used the product so he knew what features would be most valuable to other users. Not saying the two Dans and Bob didn't, I'm pretty sure they did, but Mitch was really tuned in and watched users get confused and hung up with Visicalc, so he knew what to focus on for 1-2-3. I don't know for sure, but I bet the Visicalc team didn't really listen to Mitch.

When the IBM PC came out everyone wanted new software for it, and the Visicalc guys just offered the same old stuff, but Mitch's software had a sexy UI (for the day) and ran like a bat out of hell, used all the memory of the PC, and had a macro language, so everyone bought 1-2-3 and that was the end of Visicalc.

So somewhere out there is an idea for Twitter that, like 1-2-3, will represent the future, leaving Twitter to own the past. The challenge for brilliant software designers everywhere is to figure out what that is and to do it!

I've been studying it as long as anyone, I started using Twitter in the summer of 2006, and have been puzzling it out every damned day, waiting for Twitter to give me something new to sink my teeth into, and I'm convinced it's going to come from a Mitch-Jonathan-Ben combo out there, not from the original team. Probably for many of the same reasons Visicalc didn't rise to meet the needs of experienced spreadsheet users.

Here's my wish list:

0. It starts as an exact Twitter clone. Command for command. Then see item #2. I get to completely redesign the UI.

1. I want to start my own Twitter, for free. You host it for me. Anyone can join.

2. I have to be able to edit the template, fully, so I can make it look like my blog. This will allow designers, for the first time, to tinker with the look and feel of a Twitter. They played a big role in the blogging bootstrap, but have mostly been sidelined by the emergence of Twitter.

3. I want to map my domain to it, so it's part of scripting.com.

4. It's gotta be fast!

5. Lots of prefs that determine who can join, what they can do, various editorial roles. If you used Manila, I want to be able to delegate to managing editors and contributing editors.

6. Easy hooks into Disqus (and competitors) so each tweet can be the beginning of a conversation.

7. Plug-ins that hook into the UI so I can add commands to my Twitter, without modifying any source code.

8. The ability to attach a picture, movie, MP3 or any arbitrary data to a tweet, basically the same power as the RSS 2.0 enclosure element.

9. Full data portability. I've got to be able to run a script on my desktop every night to get a complete XML-based backup of my community.

I guess my point is this -- soon there will be enough Twitter users who yearn for something really new, and it seems doubtful that Twitter-the-Company will want to give it to them. With all the new users just getting started, they're going to focus on getting them up the curve. So we're really getting ready for the 1-2-3 of Twitter, the next level of power, so we can build richer and more connected networks.

See, that's what I really think Twitter is -- a Network Construction Kit for Real People. Sort of a Tinker Toys or Lego for networking. We've gone a long way with a few simple pieces. We need some more stuff to play with.

It's always like this, in every layer. At first we need training wheels, and a tech company to provide the whole package. Then we get comfortable with the technology and we want to order a la carte, to design our own meal. You can try to contain the users, lots of companies have -- but it never works. If this blog is about anything, it's about that -- documenting the never-ending cycle of tech booms and busts, bright new days, and endless platform wars, starting in 1994. It's all so predictable, you'd think one of the rising stars would figure it out and plan accordingly, but it seems they never do.

The music, design, and wildness of this commercial for Scrabble are all first rate. So much fun! More here. (via Drawn!)

Earlier this year, we took on why journalists who were quoting Thomas Jefferson's famous line: "were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate to prefer the latter" were missing the point, noting that he really meant journalism not newspapers -- and journalism isn't going away at all. However, Jay Rosen points out that the quote is actually out of context. The full Jefferson quote even more clearly makes the point that it's not physical newspapers, he's concerned about:

"The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them." -- Thomas Jefferson

From that quote, it seems likely that Jefferson would be quite a fan of the web and the fact that news on the web was free and widely available -- contrary to the point made by most old school news folks quoting it.

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stoolpigeon writes "Google has announced the now public beta for the Google Analytics API (described here). The API lets developers create client applications that can pull analytics data, to mash it up with other data or to present it in new ways. The API has been available through a private beta program for about a year, and some applications are already out there: examples include Polaris on Adobe Air and Analytics for Android."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Maggie Koerth-Baker is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. A freelance science and health journalist, Maggie lives in Minneapolis, brain dumps on Twitter, and writes quite often for mental_floss magazine.

Push away those vile stereotypes. Llamas are more than mere walking sweaters or Internet meme fodder. For one thing, they jump high enough to warrant a competitive circuit. They also make excellent guard animals for smaller beasts, such as alpaca or sheep. (No, really. Guard llamas. My aunt and uncle have one on their highly productive alpaca farm*.) Plus, they're also supposed to make a pretty good meat source. Llama meat was the first jerky; or charqui, as the Inca called it.

Back in 2006, scientists working with the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory announced another area of llama expertise: Fighting in the War on Terror.

Llama blood may one day be able to help soldiers, scientists and city officials set up an early-warning system against the tiniest weapons of terror--biological agents like anthrax and smallpox. Authorities have long worried that, were these diseases to get loose, it would be difficult to know anything was wrong until innocent people started dying. Llama blood might provide a better detection method.

How? Antibodies, the tiny molecules that float around in the bloodstreams of people and almost all animals. Antibodies keep a sort of "memory" of all the diseases, allergens and other foreign invaders your body has come into contact with. If the same infiltrator shows up again, the antibodies can match it up with their stored records and immediately know how to fight it.
For a while now, scientists have used genetically altered antibodies to help ID and treat specific diseases. But these techniques always ran into a common problem: Antibodies were just too delicate to be of much use outside a lab or hospital setting. Enter the llama.

According to news stories about the research, llamas have extraordinarily tough and hardy antibodies, capable of sustaining exposure to temperatures as high as 200 degrees F. This discovery gave the researchers the idea to develop sensors, based on llama antibodies, that could be distributed to soldiers in a war, or around cities back home. Modified to be specifically on the lookout for likely-to-be-weaponized diseases, these sensors could pick up signs of a biochemical attack before victims started arriving at the hospital.

I wrote about this research in Be Amazing, back in early 2007. Since then, I haven't seen much more on whether or not these efforts have been successful. If the Internet Hivemind has any input or updates, I'd love to hear about them.

Michael Rogalski did not harm any llamas in the making of this illustration.

*Production on alpaca farm measured in bales of cuteness.

Recently Offworld has gone crafty with new guest blogger Tiff Chow digging up LucasArts inspired amigurumi for both Day of the Tentacle and Sam & Max, which also led us to home-stitched LittleBigPlanet Sack-people based on Space Channel 5 and 60s cereal mascot Fruit Brute (!), and Anna the Red debuts her most adorable bento yet making The Behemoth's Castle Crashers fully edible. We've also gone arty with Hellen Jo and Calvin Wong's faux-NES-manuals for their recent Giant Robot art show game, Ben Ross's delightful Yeti Knight adventure game tumblr, and an LA exhibition opening Saturday with 40 designers and illustrators showing Street Fighter inspired art. We also listened to (and downloaded sheet music for) the entirety of World of Goo's original soundtrack for solo piano and a chiptune sampler EP for an Ubuntu Linux release party. And we saw an attempt to bring CRT imperfections back into razor sharp Atari 2600 emulation, heard about the playful destruction coming to the newly announced Lego Rock Band, saw PopCap favorite Peggle officially integrated into World of Warcraft, and finally, played Effing Hail, a new indie browser game that makes a game of cleanly illustrated textbook infographics (pictured).

Developed by Royal College of Art students Becky Pilditch, Matt Johnson, Isabel Lizardi and Bibi Nelson, this non-toxic conductive ink, called "Bare Conductive," seems like it'd be great for electronic musicians and performers of all kinds. Via Fashioning Technology.

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NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The procedures used by the RIAA the past 5 years in suing 'John Does' without their knowing about it have never been subjected to scrutiny by an appeals court, since most of the 'John Does' never learn about the 'ex parte' proceeding until it's too late to do anything about it. That is about to change. In Arista Records v. Does 1-16, a case targeting students at the Albany Campus of the State University of New York, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has decided to put things on hold while it takes a careful look at what transpired in the lower court. The way it came to this is that a few 'John Does' filed a broad-based challenge to a number of the RIAA's procedures, citing the defendant's constitutional rights, the insufficiency of the complaint, the lack of personal jurisdiction over the defendants, improper misjoinder of the defendants, and the RIAA's illegal procurement of its 'evidence' through the use of an unlicensed investigator, MediaSentry. The lower court judges gave short shrift to 'John Doe #3,' but he promptly filed an appeal, and asked for a stay of the subpoena and lower court proceedings during the pendency of the appeal. The RIAA opposed the motion, arguing that John Doe's appeal had no chance of success. The Appeals Court disagreed and granted the motion, freezing the subpoena and putting the entire case on hold until the appeal is finally determined. As one commentator said, 'this news has been a long time coming, but is welcomed.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Noting a lack of fresh web media made by/for electronics engineers, David L. Jones recently decided to start up a video blog for EE's like himself. He's already covered some interesting topics, news, and equipment reviews like this one for the DS1052E oscilloscope -

Various industry rants, observations, and circuit analysis all show up in the mix here - including a mention of Steven W. Smith's DSPGuide, a free and rather helpful guide to digital signal processing. Check out the full archive over at EEVblog.

You may recall MAKE contributor Bruce Stewart covered Jones' µWatch project back in volume 15 -

Form and Functions  Volume 15, Page 20

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Earlier this year, we noted that with the rise of the ability to film and broadcast video directly from mobile phones, it was only a matter of time until we ran into some legal battles about fans filming and "broadcasting" a live sporting event. Now, while those who control the venues can certainly put their own restrictions about what you do while on their property, it's going to become increasingly impossible to stop people from filming with their mobile phones. The next question, though, is what happens to that footage?

A bunch of folks have sent in a story by Rory Cellan-Jones about how YouTube took down a video he had uploaded of 37 seconds of a football (soccer for us Americans) match in the UK he had attended. As he noted, he knew that the football leagues in the UK were angry over their content being webcast, but he thought it was for taking the official stream and rebroadcasting it online.

This actually raises a lot of questions. I'm not sure of the details on UK copyright law here, so perhaps it's different, but in the US, the copyright on the video would belong to Cellan-Jones, since he took the video. The league would have every right to demand he stop or to remove him from the stadium, but it's not clear if it could stop him from posting it online afterwards -- and it certainly wouldn't be allowed to file a copyright notice demanding it be taken down, as that would be falsely representing themselves as the copyright holder on the content. It doesn't sound like Cellan-Jones is looking to fight this, but this question isn't going to go away, and I'm sure eventually we'll see some lawsuits on this very topic.

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An anonymous reader writes in with an opinion piece from ZDNet Australia. "Here's what the official press release won't tell you about Ubuntu 9.04, which formally hit the streets yesterday: its designers have polished the hell out of its user interface since the last release in October. Just like Microsoft has taken the blowtorch to Vista to produce the lightning-quick Windows 7, which so far runs well even on older hardware, Ubuntu has picked up its own game."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader sends us to Popular Science for a long article on the loose, uncoordinated bands of patriotic Chinese hackers that seem to be responsible for much of the cyber-trouble emerging from that nation. QUoting: "For years, the U.S. intelligence community worried that China's government was attacking our cyber-infrastructure. Now one man has discovered it's more than that: it's hundreds of thousands of everyday Chinese civilians. ... Jack Linchuan Qiu, a communications professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong [says:] 'Chinese hackerism is not the American "hacktivism" that wants social change. It's actually very close to the state. The Chinese distinction between the private and public domains is very small.' ... According to [James Andrew Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies], 'The government at a minimum tolerates them. Sometimes it encourages them. And sometimes it tasks them and controls them.' In the end, he says, 'it's easy for the government to turn on and hard to turn off.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Make a unique one-string, electric or bass guitar out of PVC and wood.
Thanks go to Tom Zimmerman for the original article in MAKE, Volume 09.
To download The Strung Out MP4 click here or subscribe in iTunes.

Check out the complete Strung Out article in MAKE, Volume 09 "Strung Out"
and you can see that in our Digital Edition.

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From the MAKE Flickr pool

Dot wrote up a nice how-to explaining how to build a sturdy launcher for HotWheels/Matchbox sized cars -

Ever wanted your toy cars to really go? Wanna new way to race? Want an excuse to build something really cool for your kid? Or do a fun project WITH your kid? You don't have to go buy a new cheap plastic toy, make your own fun from leftovers from prior projects!

This is a not too complicated project that easily modified to use materials you have on hand. For ours we used scrap wood, scrap plastic, and a rubber band from an asparagus bunch! It does require basic carpentry skills, but nothing too usual or complex. You'll notice there are a lot of steps in this instructable, that's mostly because I was trying to be thorough, so don't let it scare you.

The length of the instructable doesn't scare me, but the possibility of getting hit with a airborne hotrod does a lil' bit :D Hit up the instructable and blog entry for the action-packed details.

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Make a unique one-string, electric or bass guitar out of PVC and wood.
Thanks go to Tom Zimmerman for the original article in MAKE, Volume 09.
View the PDF of this project. and then subsribe to MAKE Magazine for other great projects
you can do over the weekend.

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You may recall last summer that we wrote about Gary Odom (as known as Patent Hawk) who has been known to stop by our site here to throw around an insult or two (nice guy!). It seems that Odom, who had previously worked with Microsoft, doing prior art research for its patents, had decided to turn around and sue Microsoft for having software toolbars that take different toolbar items and group the items together (stunning innovation, there). It later turned out that he may have violated his contracts in suing Microsoft.

That case is still ongoing, but why stop with just suing one company? Especially when that company is big and has lots of lawyers. Why not sue 28 other companies over the same patent. Amusingly, when Joe Mullin from IP Law & Business called Odom to comment, Odom refused, saying: "You're a hack job, man." Always a pleasant guy, that Odom. However, Odom had no problem discussing at length the lawsuit on his own blog -- amusingly referring to himself in the third person, and (this is great) offering his own "expert" opinion on the validity of his own patents and lawsuit. Very credible.

While it seems quite likely that the patent in question (Tool group manipulations) is invalid following the Bilski decision, Odom brushes aside those concerns saying anyone suggesting that "[doesn't] know what they are talking about" and then offers his own interpretation of the Bilski ruling, which doesn't seem to mesh with what the ruling actually said, or how the courts and the USPTO have been interpreting the ruling. Still, let's give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he's right, and that the patent is still valid. So what does he want?

Well, from his post, it appears he wants these companies to shut up and hand over 25% of their profits, based on a rule of thumb from half a century ago. Think about this back here in reality for a second. He's asking for 25% of all profits on nearly 30 different software products, because those software products happen to have toolbar menus where the buttons are in editable groups. This is an obvious minor feature on a minor feature of a minor feature. And he thinks it's fair and equitable to get 25% of all profits.

People like to point out these days that pretty much any high tech product in some way or another violates tens to hundreds of patents, thanks to the happy rapidity with which the USPTO approves any old obvious idea. Imagine if each one got to demand 25% of all profits as a license? It doesn't take a math major to recognize how the assertion makes no sense.

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Hugh Pickens writes "Can a noncommercial website use the trademark of the entity it critiques in its domain name? Surprisingly, it appears that the usually open-minded folks at Wikipedia think not. The EFF reports that Scott Kildall and Nathaniel Stern have created a noncommercial website at Wikipediaart.org intended to comment on the nature of art and Wikipedia. Since 'Wikipedia' is a trademark owned by the Wikimedia Foundation, the Foundation has demanded that the artists give up the domain name peaceably or it will attempt to take it by legal force. 'Wikipedia should know better. There is no trademark or cybersquatting issue here,' writes the EFF's Corynne McSherry. 'Moreover, even if US trademark laws somehow reached this noncommercial activity, the artists' use of the mark is an obvious fair use.' iI is hard to see what Wikipedia gains by litigating this matter but easy to see how they lose."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This article and video describe how to control a Pleo with a Nintendo Wii nunchuck and XBee modules.

How to control Pleo wirelessly using Wii nunchuck

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Aaron built an electromagnetic field detector using an Arduino board, 3.3M? resistor, LED, and wire -

I was messing around with my Arduino board and figured out how to make a cheap portable electromagnetic field (EMF) detector. It only requires a led, 3,300,000 Ohm resistor, and wire. As I approach an EMF the led gets brighter, so I can locate the source. Messing around with the code and resistor values I can change the sensitivity of the device; when I first made the EMF detector I could only find one place to stand in my apt where it didnt go off. I am working on getting a commercial EMF detector that spits out quantitative values so I can calibrate my version and have it do the same on a LCD screen.

Another crazy-simple yet fun Arduino project - anyone out there have an "official" EMF detector for comparison/calibration?


In the Maker Shed:


Make: Arduino

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CWmike writes "President Barack Obama is set to receive a high-security BlackBerry 8830 soon, The Washington Times reported today. The device is said to be in the final stages of development at the National Security Agency, which will check that its encryption software meets federal standards. It might not be ready for months. It was reported that Obama will be able to send text and e-mail messages and make phone calls on the device, but only to those with the secure software loaded on their own devices. The list includes First Lady Michelle Obama and top aides. The security software is made by Genesis Key, whose CEO, Steven Garrett, is quoted as saying: 'We're going to put his BlackBerry back in his hand.' The Sectera Edge was pegged in January by analysts as the top device choice because of its reputation for secure data communications when used by other federal workers. And there are many reasons why Obama might have been told 'no' on his BlackBerry. But Obama may wish he had chosen a Sectera if BlackBerry has more outage problems like its latest last week, which meant no mobile e-mail for hours across the US."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We are doing a Maker Faire promotional event at the Hillsdale Mall in San Mateo this Sunday, April 26th from 1-4PM.

The Hillsdale Mall is bringing in a kid's Lego Masters group for the event and we're going to set up a mini Maker Faire, with the LEGOJeep, Blinkybugs, robotic and kinetic art creations, recycled materials by Renga Arts, and a Maker Faire table. The mall is also running a promotion where, if you spend $100 at the mall, you'll get a free adult Maker Faire ticket.

If you're going to be in San Mateo on Sunday, stop by and say hi.

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Just posted! Our lens review of the Pentax smc DA 15mm F4 ED AL Limited. Following our recent tests featuring many of the wideangle zooms currently on the market, we turn our attention to Pentax's latest design: a compact wideangle prime for APS-C DSLRs. As a member of Pentax's 'Limited' range, it has the undeniable attraction of finely-engineered aluminium construction, but does the quality of the optics match the build?

Cosina has today announced a Voigtländer branded adapter to connect M-mount lenses with Micro Four Thirds camera bodies. The VM Micro Four Thirds adapter only provides a mechanical connection (no electronic data transfer) for lenses from Leica, Carl Zeiss and Voigtländer. It can also be used in conjunction with the company's M/L adapter to allow the use of Voigtländer L lenses. Click through for further infomation on the Cosina website (in Japanese) and a list of compatible lenses.

Over the years, we've had plenty of stories about companies trying to limit the ability of resellers to sell their products online, with companies claiming that reselling shampoo or cosmetics on eBay is somehow illegal because of a contract the wholesaler made with its own resellers. Usually these lawsuits don't get very far. Whatever agreement the wholesaler and the reseller had, the eventual seller online usually wasn't a party to those agreements and isn't bound by them -- and (reasonably) the courts recognize that you shouldn't be barred from reselling a product you legally purchased (that whole first sale thing).

However, there are some exceptions, and Eric Goldman points us to the latest one. A reseller of radar detectors has effectively been barred from selling a certain brand on eBay, claiming that it was trademark infringement. But what about those first sale rights? Well, apparently this case gets around them by claiming that the product being resold by this company Midwest Inventory Distribution is a different product, because it doesn't come with the same warranty (Midwest offers its own warranty and the original company, Beltronics, refuses to honor warranties on these resold radar detectors). The court also seemed to have problems with the fact that Midwest didn't properly "disclose" this information, even though every auction stated clearly that Midwest offered its own warranty and Beltronics wouldn't provide any warranty coverage.

As Goldman notes, this seems based on some questionable theories, and conceivably could allow companies to skirt around first sale rules, by claiming that anyone reselling their products online are engaging in trademark infringement, because the "warranties" on the products are different -- even if the products themselves are really identical. As Goldman rights:

The net result then is that eBay buyers willing to pay a discount for an identical radar detector but with only Midwest's warranty instead of Beltronics' won't get that choice. Instead, they get the pleasure of buying at the minimum resale price set by Beltronics.

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I've you've never read The Perry Bible Fellowship webcomic, now's the time to start. Dark Horse recently published a giant omnibus of material from Nicholas Gurewitch's PBF, The Perry Bible Fellowship Almanack, and it's a concentrated dose of the kind of dark, twisted humor that makes you bark with laughter and look away at the same time.

Gurewitch's comedy is solidly in the "unexpected turn of events" school, the surprise in the final panel that contains as much surrealism, malignancy and social commentary as it does humor. This is complemented by Gurewitch's visual style, which veers from the simplistic and cartoonish to incredibly detailed line art that's like something out of Tony Millionaire.

Last year, Gurewitch had a huge success with the first collection of his strip, The Perry Bible Fellowship: The Trial of Colonel Sweeto and Other Stories, which pre-sold three print runs before its ship date (!), so it's no surprise that Dark Horse would reprise the collection this year.

Be warned, though: the Almanack duplicates all the material in the Colonel Sweeto collection, though it's twice as long, including many strips that were omitted from Sweeto, including a number that were too racy, gross, unfunny or weird for the newspaper syndicate, as well as sketches and interviews.

Here's what I'd do if I already owned Colonel Sweeto: I'd get this one anyway and give the Sweeto to someone who needed a good mind-blowing. Both books are very handsomely made (Dark Horse does a quality product) and both are the kind of funny that's worth having around.

The Perry Bible Fellowship Almanack</a

The Make Controller 2.0 & Interface Board kit from the Maker Shed is a great way to get up and running with this micro-controller. Adding sensors and motors has never been easier.

The Make Controller is built around the AT91SAM7X256, and adds the essential components (like the crystal, voltage regulator, filter capacitors, etc.) required to run it, while bringing almost all the processor's signal lines out to standard 0.1" spaced sockets. The software environment remains constant no matter what you plug the Make Controller into - the firmware libraries are organized and documented, making it clear which are compatible with the Controller and Application boards.

The Interface Board makes it easy to connect and communicate with your favorite devices with up to 35 general input/outputs, 2 serial ports, TWI, CAN, SPI along with Ethernet and USB. All pins are 0.1" spaced for easy insertion into your prototyping breadboard.

More about the Make Controller 2.0 & Interface Board kit

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angry tapir writes "Chris Jager from GoodGearGuide argues that the rise of casual gaming means near-certain death for hardcore gaming. The sales of casual 'party-friendly' games are massively outstripping the sales of classic hardcore games, and the makers of other consoles are taking note of Nintendo's success in attracting non-traditional gamers to the Wii and DS. There is evidence that Sony and Microsoft are both trying to tap into the casual market, and it's only a matter of time before hardcore gaming goes the way of the Nintendo PowerGlove." Of course, the trend toward casual doesn't just involve Nintendo — World of Warcraft's success (and the huge effect it's had on the MMO genre) is often credited to its focus on casual gamers. While it's not unreasonable for game studios to want all players to see all of the game's content, perhaps there's a better way of catering to the more hardcore players than tacking on difficulty modes and "do it the hard way" achievements.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Via Romenesko comes the news that the Chicago Tribune's own "recession reporter" wasn't just laid off in the latest round, but was then stopped from posting a story about the experience. Well, he actually published it and it was quickly taken down by Trib editors. Of course, because of the takedown, the text of his blog post is now getting a lot more attention. Reading it over, it's difficult to see what the Trib was concerned about. It seems like the type of writing they would want in their publication -- humanizing the situation, while still being respectful of what's happening.

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Rational Egoist writes "Scientists working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have come up with a novel, easy way to detect life on other planets. Rather than try to measure the composition of atmospheres, they want to look at the chirality of light coming from the planet. From the article: '"If the [planet's] surface had just a collection of random chiral molecules, half would go left, half right," Germer says. "But life's self-assembly means they all would go one way. It's hard to imagine a planet's surface exhibiting handedness without the presence of self assembly, which is an essential component of life."' And they have already built a working model: 'Because chiral molecules reflect light in a way that indicates their handedness, the research team built a device to shine light on plant leaves and bacteria, and then detect the polarized reflections from the organisms' chlorophyll from a short distance away. The device detected chirality from both sources.' The article abstract is available online."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Matt asks:

I'm interested in making a silicone mold, and I'm wondering what sorts of things the silicone will stick to and what sorts of precautions to take to prevent it from sticking? I'm making a mold of a plastic figurine.

Well, you have to assume it will stick to anything. If you're using Polytek PlatSil or TinSil, you'll want to use a non-silicone based mold release (like PolEase 2500), and spray shellac will work in a pinch. SIlicone sticks to itself, too, so be sure to coat the different pieces of your mold in the release agent before pouring multiple parts. When in doubt, give the folks at Polytek a call; they're really helpful on the phone and will work with your specific project to make sure you're using the right materials and processes.

If you're unfamiliar with moldmaking in general, check out our primer in MAKE, Vol. 08 by Mythbuster Adam Savage. You can preview the article in the Digital Edition.

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Check out this amazingly cool laser-cut, Arduino-controlled walker, inspired by artist Theo Jansen's walking creature called the strandbeest. The patterns for the walking mechanism are available on Thingaverse, and you can get an Arduino to control it, right next door in the Maker Shed! You'll need two micro-servos, too.

Jansen Walker [via adafruit industries]

digg_url = 'http://digg.com/hardware/Theo_Jansen_inspired_Arduino_walker';

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I wonder what the "your business card is crap" guy would have to say about these, because his fancy card has just been pwned by these awesome meat cards.

We start with 100% beef jerky, and SEAR your contact information into it with a 150 WATT CO2 LASER.

Screw die-cutting. Forget about foil, popups, or UV spot lamination. THESE business cards have two ingredients:

MEAT AND LASERS.

Unlike other business cards, MEAT CARDS will retain value after the econopocalypse. Hoard and barter your calorie-rich, life-sustaining cards.

Meat cards

For about five years, there's been an effort to whip up hype around the supposed threat of mobile viruses and malware. Pretty much all of that hype's come from anti-virus vendors, so it's been pretty suspect, particularly as this threat they've been hyping for so long has failed to materialize. It's true that there have been quite a few pieces of mobile malware, but they've failed to spread for a number of reasons. The biggest factor is fragmentation: different vendors use different operating systems on their phones, rendering all sorts of software, including malware, incompatible from one handset to the next. Mobile operators also play a part, since it's relatively easy for them to filter out malware traveling across their networks via SMS. In short, the mobile environment is vastly different from the PC world when it comes to security, so it's unreasonable to think that malware will operate in the same way in both.

Some academic researchers are now saying that the only thing holding back a tidal wave of mobile malware is that no single operating system has sufficient market share, but once one hits 10 percent, phones running it are dead meat. But that argument doesn't wash, nor do the researchers' claims that an MMS-based virus could infect an entire population of devices in a matter of hours. First, the market share figure doesn't make a lot of sense, given that platforms like Nokia's Series 40 already feature in hundreds of millions of devices, creating a large target population. Second, MMS messages still have to travel through operators' servers, so they're much easier to scan for malware than PC-based communications. As long as operators' malware filters are working as they should, it won't be too difficult to stop the spread of an MMS virus. But perhaps the biggest factor holding back mobile malware is that there really isn't any money in it for virus authors. Botnets of mobile phones aren't much use for sending out spam, and generally, the money trail created by any sort of premium-message scam can be relatively easily tracked. The closed nature of mobile networks and mobile devices makes them much less susceptible to malware than internet-connected PCs, and no amount of hype will change that.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Stephen Worth says:

When people of the past envisioned what the inhabitants of other planets might be like, they conceived of gods and spirits who lived lives like those of the heroes and villains found in fables and ancient myths. Around the turn of the 20th century, mankind's conception of the world underwent a huge shift. Advances in technology were occurring at an unprecedented rate. These changes affected the way people lived their lives and the way they thought about their place in the universe. People began to think there might be no limit to the number of amazing changes technology was going to bring to them in the next hundred years.

They were right.

Today at the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive, I posted an article on how visionary animators like Ward Kimball and Walt Disney were responsible for putting a man on the moon. Yes, we have Walt to thank for our space program! The post contains a complete illustrated article by the father of modern space art, Chesley Bonestell, and clips from Disney's landmark TV program, "Mars and Beyond." Enjoy!

ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive: Our Dreams of the Future

We pointed out last week that it was no surprise that the new InDenver Times operation, that sprang forth from reporters from the defunct Rocky Mountain News, was unable to meet its target of 50,000 subscribers before launching. However, it turns out that they only got around 3,000 subscribers, or around 6% of their goal. Not surprisingly, the folks who originally wanted to finance the operation have now backed out, over disagreements over how many people to employ. As some are noting, the reporters seem to think that you can just recreate a fully staffed newsroom from scratch, rather than building it up organically like a startup. Sure, there's obviously a feeling of bringing along a team from the old Rocky, but the idea is to get it right where that paper failed as a business -- and you don't do that by setting up the same bad cost structure (or... by trying to charge for subscriptions online).

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krou writes "The Guardian is reporting that NASA is quietly revising its internal estimates of a 2018 launch for its Ares V rocket. Although publicly the date given for the launch was 2020, the internal launch date was set for 2018. The shift in dates seems to be linked to 'growing budget woes,' and 'engineers say that means the public 2020 date to send humans back to the moon is in deepening trouble.' NASA administrator Mike Griffin blamed the White House, and the previous Bush administration, saying funding for Ares V and other projects fell from $4bn through 2015 to just $500m. 'This was to be allocated to early work on the Ares V heavy-lifter, and the Altair lunar lander. With only a half-billion dollars now available, this work cannot be done.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Yesterday I ran into this web extra from back in 2007 when we were working on MAKE Volume 09, and it brought back some fond memories. We were deep in production, and one of our major slotted projects was the "Antigravity Lifter." The dilemma was whether to publish this cool but really high-voltage and potentially really dangerous project. Enter the MAKE Advisory Board. Our editor-in-chief Mark Frauenfelder sent a message out to the members of the board, and a lively discussion ensued. We shared the whole thing online.

To give you a little background on lifters, here's the description that was going to run with the article:

"Lifters (aka ionocraft) are a simple assembly of wire and foil that acts as an asymmetrical capacitor. The thin wire runs parallel to and above a length of aluminum foil, with the two attached and held apart by a lightweight nonconductor such as balsa wood.

When you apply a voltage across the lifter, negative to the wire emitter and positive to foil ground, static charge builds up on both sides. At high voltages, electrons from the wire leak into and ionize the surrounding air molecules — mostly the oxygen, since nitrogen requires more energy to ionize. These negatively charged molecules are pulled downwards into the foil, which has a positive static charge. In this way, the lifter constantly pulls air downward, producing an "ion wind" which results in upward thrust. (Many enthusiasts believe that additional forces also contribute to the lifter effect.) Typical home-built lifters will fly at around 20kV at 0.4 milliamps.

At such high voltages, surplus electrons from the wire can also jump the gap down to the foil directly. This shortcut reduces both the amount of charge that can ionize the air and the force with which the ions are drawn downward. When this happens, energy goes into producing a spark rather than producing lift, so in order to fly, the lifter must be "tuned" to eliminate arcing.

Like air purifiers and electrical storms, lifters generate ozone, nitrous oxide, and other gases which may enhance the invigorating feeling of experimentation.

Many strange and poorly understood phenomena are manifested by high voltages, and some investigators believe that this area has never received the research attention it deserves. Common wisdom attributes this bias to Thomas Edison, who used his considerable influence to steer scientific inquiry and respect away from the high-voltage ideas of his rival Nikola Tesla."

And here's the first part of the dilemma discussion:

DANGER: HIGH VOLTAGE! Do not attempt this project without expert assistance unless you are an adult experienced in working with extremely high voltage power sources. This project is intended only for very experienced adults. Severe injury, death, or property damage may result from failure to use adequate safety gear and precautions.

What's more important: empowering readers to take control of technology, or protecting them from the risks? A spirited discussion between MAKE's editors and technical advisory board ultimately led us to cancel publication of the high-voltage "Lifter" project in Volume 09.

The piece was written by John MacNeill, a well-known illustrator whose work appears frequently in publications such as Popular Science. MacNeill is also a "lifter" hobbyist who has made several of the mysterious levitating devices, and the how-to project he submitted was excellent. We were very excited to run it. However, MAKE's technical advisory board, consisting of engineers, how-to book authors, and researchers, deemed the project to be unsafe, due to the project's high voltage conducted across exposed wires in a flying object. Would strong warnings suffice, or did we need a full primer on high voltage? We also worried about recommending reuse of a TV tube (CRT) as a power supply, due to the dangers of capacitance discharge, and the unknown voltage and current. But even with a store-bought DC power supply, could the current of 0.4 milliamps be deadly? (Probably not.) Would the current-limiting knob protect makers? (Probably so.) Was the project too tempting for inexperienced teens? Isn't it MAKE's mission to empower people to handle technology? And, having established an email thread of world-class makers questioning safety, what about legal liability?

The article that almost was...

We made a tough call. Tell us what you think at in the talkbacks below.

Mark Frauenfelder, editor-in-chief: Dear MAKE technical advisory board members: Attached is the layout for one of the projects in MAKE Volume 09 -- a high-voltage "lifter." The instructions call for a high-voltage DC power supply, but offer the alternative of using an old (pre-Energy Star) CRT monitor to supply the power:

Using an Old CRT as a Power Supply

Here's how to adapt an old (pre-Energy Star) CRT monitor into a high-voltage power supply that's adequate for a small lifter. Unplug the monitor and let it sit for at least an hour to allow residual charge to dissipate. Open up the monitor, and locate the large wire that leads to a rubber cup at the back of the tube. This wire supplies the tube's electron gun. Lift up the cup and find a metal contact for the wire.

Run one insulated wire to the electron gun contact and another insulated wire to the metal spring framework that holds the CRT. These will feed the lifter's emitter and the ground, respectively. Position the 2 wires as far apart as possible, close up the case, and you're ready to go.

I'm a little concerned about these instructions because I've heard CRTs can hold powerful charges almost indefinitely. I guess you could drain the charge by shorting the leads with a screwdriver, but that makes a scary spark and noise.

What I'd like to know is (a) whether my concern is valid, (b) if it is, is there a safe way to dissipate the charge? and (c) is there anything else important that's left out from this? Thanks for your help!

Now read what members of the MAKE Advisory Board advised, and let us know what you think.

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There's a popular saying among copyright maximalists, that if copyright must be "for limited times," it should be "forever minus a day." And, in fact, part of the problem with the so-called "education" campaign that copyright supporters have been pushing over the past decade or so is that they never bother to spend much time on consumer rights, fair use or the importance of the public domain. So, it should come as little surprise that the default thinking among many is that copyright does, in fact, last forever. Witness this story that plenty of folks have been sending in, about the United Nations new World Digital Library that has posted ancient texts from around the world. Just one problem... the site is claiming that the texts may be covered by copyright, even though many of the texts are older than 8,000 years. Obviously, the copyright claim is wrong, but it seems to be the default position taken by lawyers these days, and many people who have falsely been told that "sharing" equals "theft" will believe that copyright lasts forever. For anyone who actually recognizes the importance and value of the public domain, and how it's helped expand our creative culture over the years, this should be quite depressing.

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A naked man at the Coachella festival didn't want to put on his clothes, so the police wrestled him to the ground and tasered him multiple times. The crowd, who didn't seem to mind the naked wizard, booed the police, and called them names. Thanks to Tracy Anderson for videotaping the event. (Video shows nudity.)

As a huge fan of TokyoFlash, I love weird and wonderful ways of telling time. Time is stranger than we like to acknowledge, why not monkey with it more, taunt it? This objet d'heure moves around to mark the hours. A continuous line of verse skirts the edge and the clock moves to rest on the word of the hour (literally). Of course, with just hours marked, you have to forgo that whole hours and minutes nonsense.

Clock n' roll

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