Ismenio writes "Does anyone have any ideas for a do-it-yourself Google Street View like project on the cheap? I am planning to visit a few places outside the US important to me and would like to be able to set up a site for friends and family to visit and would like to give them the Street View-like experience so that they could navigate, pan and zoom in the areas I have. Though being able to use GPS coordinates would be great, that's certainly something I can do without. I know I can take pictures and stitch them together to create panoramic views but I would like to be able to also navigate though some streets. Would it make sense to record it with an HD camera, the batch export frames as pictures? Is there any software in the open source community that I can use?" Ismenio includes links to some related pages: Popular Mechanics' look at the camera tech used for Street View, and a company that claims better panoramic image technology than Google's.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sleepy Dog Millionare writes "Brian Palmer, writing for Slate, asks 'Can you die from lack of sleep?' and shockingly, the answer may very well be Yes, you can. Palmer points to 'ground breaking experiments' in the area of sleep research. It turns out that sleep deprivation can actually be deadly in rats. The obvious conclusion is that it is probably deadly in all mammals. So the next time you think you need to pull multiple all-night hack-a-thons, ask yourself if it's worth risking your life for."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Barence writes "IT analyst firm Gartner has told businesses to skip Vista and prepare to roll out Windows 7. Companies have traditionally been advised to wait until the first Service Pack of an operating system arrives before considering migration. However, Gartner is urging organisations that aren't already midway through Vista deployments to give the much-maligned operating system a miss. 'Preparing for Vista will require the same amount of effort as preparing for Windows 7, so at this point, targeting Windows 7 would add less than six months to the schedule and would result in a plan that is more politically palatable, better for users, and results in greater longevity.' Even businesses that are midway through planning a Vista migration are urged to consider scrapping the deployment. 'Consider switching to Windows 7 if it would delay deployment by six months or less.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Video, via Laughing Squid Links, of Eric Scott, a Go Fast Jet Pack pilot, setting a speed record at the Knockhill Raceway in Scotland.

Go Fast Jet Pack world record
Jet Pack International

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theodp writes "Last week, the USPTO granted IBM a patent for its System and method for comprehensive automatic color customization in an email message based on cultural perspective. So what exactly did the four Big Blue inventors come up with? IBM explains: 'For example, an email created in the U.S. in red font to indicate urgency or emphasis might be mapped to a more appropriate color (e.g., blue or black) for sending to Korea.' IBM took advantage of the USPTO's Accelerated Examination Program to fast-track the patent's approval. BTW, if you missed the 2006 press release, IBM boasted it was 'holding itself to a higher standard than any law requires because it's urgent that patent quality is improved.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

rossturk writes "Michael Lynton, CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment, said,'I'm a guy who doesn't see anything good having come from the Internet, period.' Why? Because people 'feel entitled' to have what they want when they want it, and if they can't get it for free, 'they'll steal it.' It's become customary to expect a somewhat limited perspective on things from old-world entertainment companies, but his inability to acknowledge that the Internet has changed everything makes me think he's a very confused man. Is this when we all give up hope that companies like Sony Pictures can adapt? Will we look back on this as one of the defining moments when the industrialized entertainment industry lost touch for good?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

RJ sez, "Storks will choose the position for their nest for a variety of reasons and if that happens to be atop a man-made object, then so be it. Some are welcomed and encouraged, others not so. Yet their ability to build huge nests in precarious positions never fails to surprise. Here are some examples that may just take your breath away."

Although many Europeans encourage storks to nest on the roof of their home - it is supposed to increase the fecundity of the householders - many would gasp at the inherent danger that lies in building one's home on top of a deadly current of electricity. In Denmark, however, the stork is not a welcome guest and so this would be considered appropriate alternative housing. The Danish believe that if a stork builds a nest on top of your house then someone who lives there will die before the year ends. These parent storks, however, will not be on the nest for great periods of time. This stork in Hungary is flying back to the nest to feed its offspring. The visit will need to be fairly quick though - stork chicks can eat anything up to sixty percent of their body weight each day. That is quite a few fish and frogs.

Avian Architecture: The Precarious Nests of the Stork (Thanks, RJ!)

(Image: Stork's nest II, a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike image from Tillwe's Flickr stream)

iso writes "USB graphics should be coming to Linux soon: DisplayLink has released an LGPL library that talks to one of its graphics chips over a USB connection. DisplayLink aren't one of the big guys in graphics, but it's always nice to see a hardware manufacturer go the open source route. Now, when can I get one of these touchscreen MIMOs on my Linux HTPC?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

[Photo from M. Barcley on Flickr]

Smart Challenge, a gathering of student transportation projects is having their culminating event of the year this weekend.

High school students are provided with a yearlong educational program involving the entire school and community. Beginning in the fall of the school year, students begin learning about advanced transportation concepts as part of their curriculum. Throughout the year, they complete numerous projects, including the conversion of a gasoline vehicle to electric power. In the SMARTT Challenge's Final Event, they compete against other high schools to see who can go the farthest and fastest. They are also tested on their knowledge of the vehicle.

If your school is participating, make sure you upload your photos to the MAKE Flickr pool. We would love to hear about your projects!

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Here's the Kingston Trio performing "Zombie Jamboree," a favorite song around our place. I'm partial to Harry Belafonte's version, not to mention Noel Anthony's wicked calypso version.

File under "Music to play Left 4 Dead to."

The Kingston Trio: Zombie Jamboree (Thanks, Rebecca!)

A reader writes, "Patrick Costello - you have posted about his work as an open source banjo teacher several times - is having surgery this Thursday at Johns Hopkins to install a BAHA implant so he can continue teaching."

Patrick is the king of open-source banjo teaching, a public-spirited saint who teaches and produces teaching materials on a free/open basis. The BAHA is an implanted hearing aid that will be fitted as part of a surgery to relieve an excruciating bone infection.

Good luck, Patrick!

BAHA Implant Surgery On 5/21/09

reporter writes "According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, scientists have discovered the common ancestor of monkeys, apes, and Slashdotters. The 47 million year old fossils were discovered in Germany. The ancestor physically resembles today's lemur. Quoting: 'The skeleton will be unveiled at New York City's American Museum of Natural History next Tuesday by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and an international team involved in the discovery. According to Prof. Gingerich, the fossilized remains are of a young female adapid. The skeleton was unearthed by collectors about two years ago and has been kept tightly under wraps since then, in an unusual feat of scientific secrecy. Prof. Gingerich said he had twice examined the adapid skeleton, which was "a complete, spectacular fossil." The completeness of the preserved skeleton is crucial, because most previously found fossils of ancient primates were small finds, such as teeth and jawbones.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I read a really interesting article the other day about the 47 people at Twitter, Inc and thought it would make an interesting aggregate. So I used the same code I had to follow the top-100 most followed people and did one for the 47 people of Twitter. Since it starts on a weekend, most people are doing home and family things, or not tweeting at all. It'll be interesting to see how it picks up on Monday.

The New York Times seems to operate at all hours. We aggregate the tweets of the people of the Times -- what they're talking about; as opposed to the stories they've written.

Both of the new feeds are interesting, as is the original:

1. http://nyt.100twt.com/

2. http://twitter.100twt.com/

3. http://100twt.com/

I'm open to doing others if people have ideas.

Video Link (dialogue in Spanish). Jean Ramses Anleu Fernández, the soft-spoken Guatemalan I.T. worker arrested for having "tweeted" a critical opinion about the assasination/bank corruption scandal that has shaken Guatemala this week, is released from jail.

In the video above, his pals -- including a few who've checked in here on Boing Boing -- set up a laptop in the jail holding area right after he's "checked out of his hotel suite," as @jeanfer puts it, and he makes his first "freed" post to Twitter.

Note that he is twittering while still handcuffed.

He is now sentenced to house arrest.

@jeanfer's employer put up a loan for the $6500 fine ordered by a Guatemalan judge. Supporters are collecting PayPal donations to repay it. (via Oscar Mota)

Meanwhile, massive protests are planned this weekend in response to the assassination of attorney Rodrigo Rosenberg, who blamed Guatemalan president Álvaro Colom for his own anticipated murder in a posthumously released YouTube video.

In interviews today, Colom blamed powerful enemies for the scandal about claims he ordered Rosenberg's murder, as his administration cracks down on military abuses and drug gangs.

And meanwhile, we presume that José Encarnación Leiva Marroquín, the street vendor arrested for selling bootlegged DVDs of the Rosenberg YouTube video, is still in prison -- with no internet-connected pals to help rally for his release.

Update: Word on Twitter is that the video vendor has since been released, and charges dropped by the judge (via surizar).

A quick recap of updates this morning on the political crisis in Guatemala follows. Previous posts linked at the bottom.

* Yesterday, Guatemalan I.T. worker and Twitter user Jean Anleu (shown above / photo: Surizar) was raided by police, arrested, charged with inciting "financial panic," fined US $6500 (more than the average Guatemalan makes in a year), and sentenced to detention to be followed by house arrest. Supporters created a blog with information about his case, and are continuing what some describe as a "Twitterevolution" in Guatemala, using the hashtag #escandalogt and raising money by PayPal for his release. Anleu's case is the first of its kind in Central American history.

* One of Jean Anleu's Twitter (and real-life) geek friends, "Manolo," says,

Fundraising from abroad to secure his release is being received in my personal PayPal account (manolo@manoloweb.net) For people in Guatemala we have an accout of a Jean's relative G&T Bank, account # 39-4478-4 (Jhenny Gonzalez). We are going out to the courthouse in Guatemala City right now, since the family got a loan from Jean's employers for the rest of the required amount, so, we are planning to release him within hours. I'll keep Boing Boing updated on this. More here.

UPDATE, May 15, 12pm PT: Manolo emails us:

The good news is that @jeanfer is about to be free. He and his family now have to pay back the money, but he'll be released in a few hours. He was able to post a tweet from my PC before leaving for the detention center, where he has to do some paperwork and wait till tonight to be released.

Below, @jeanfer's "freedom tweet," sent about an hour ago from @manolo's computer.

* Guatemalan photojournalist James Rodriguez has published a photo-essay documenting protests in Guatemala calling for president Álvaro Colom to resign in the wake of accusations he ordered the assastination of Rodrigo Rosenberg.

Those accusations came in the form of a posthumoustly-released YouTube video recorded by the whistleblower attorney before his murder on Mother's Day. Protests continue today in Guatemala City over Rosenberg's murder, and the fact that, as one Guatemalan Twitter user wrote, "Some guy on Twitter is in jail for one 96-character tweet, while assassins roam free." A large protest is planned for Sunday in the capital, with some participants planning to wear white, tape their mouths shut, and carry placards reading "I DON'T TALK, I TWITTER / WE ARE ALL @JEANFER."

* Street vendors are selling bootleg DVDs of Rosenberg's "death message" video (screengrab at left) which has spread virally on YouTube. One of these street vendors, José Encarnación Leiva Marroquín, was arrested by the Guatemalan police. For the act of distributing bootlegged YouTube videos, this man, who also works as a "chicken bus" driver's assistant, has been charged with "inciting sedition, revolution, or overthrow of the state.." Here's a PDF link. Update: Word on Twitter is that he has since been released, and charges dropped by the judge.

CWmike writes "Sci-Fi writers call it Utopia, the glorious City of the Future. But short of downtown atriums being guarded by invisible walls and flying cars, City 2.0 is not as far off as you may think, writes John Brandon. Ubiquitous wireless networks are already available in Baltimore and Minneapolis, Thomson Reuters has sustainable data centers that sell power back to the local utility, the smart energy grid is well on its way, and city-provided social networks are common. While the concept of City 2.0 is monumental, these key technology advancements are already helping pave the road to the next-generation city. The next steps toward the city of tomorrow are all about integrating these services cohesively, making them widely available across the entire metropolis and managing the services more efficiently. 'The reality is that the city of the future will likely have many aspects of a contained and managed ecosystem,' says analyst Rob Enderle."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

eldavojohn writes "With the Pirate Bay trial, it's been easy to overlook similar struggles in other nations. A Dutch Usenet community named FTD is going on the offensive and suing BREIN (Bescherming Rechten Entertainment Industrie Nederland). You may remember BREIN (along with the IFPI & BPI) as the people who raided and cut out the heart of eDonkey. This is turning into a pretty familiar scenario; the FTD group makes software that allows its 450k members to easily find copyrighted content for free on Usenet. The shocking part is that FTD isn't waiting for BREIN to sue them. FTD is refusing to take down their file location reports, and is actually suing BREIN. Why the preemptive attack? FTD wants the courts to show that the act of downloading is not illegal in the Netherlands. (Both articles have the five points in English that FTD wants the courts to settle.) OSNews has a few more details on the story."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jim D sez, "Last week I worked on rebinding a 1518 printing of Ovid's "Metamorphoses". Since the client wanted to have it done in a limp vellum binding -- which I don't get to do that often -- and the book itself is significant, I thought I would take some photos of the process and write the whole thing up, and that this might be of interest to BB readers."

Rebinding a 1518 copy of Ovid. (Thanks, Jim!)

allenw writes "In a recent blog post, Yahoo's grid computing team announced that Apache Hadoop was used to break the current world sorting records in the annual GraySort contest. It topped the 'Gray' and 'Minute' sorts in the general purpose (Daytona) category. They sorted 1TB in 62 seconds, and 1PB in 16.25 hours. Apache Hadoop is the only open source software to ever win the competition. It also won the Terasort competition last year."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

EMI has told Danger Mouse that his latest CD won't see the light of day due to "legal issues," so he's responding by releasing the disc as a blank CD-R in a jewel case with art and liner notes. Fans can just download the music off a P2P site and burn it to the CD-R.

Dark Night Of The Soul, a collaboration with rock group Sparklehorse, also features Iggy Pop and The Flaming Lips, along with artwork by David Lynch.

It has already been streamed online, but Billboard magazine said a "legal dispute" with EMI derailed the project...

"Danger Mouse remains hugely proud of Dark Night of the Soul and hopes that people lucky enough to hear the music, by whatever means, are as excited by it as he is."

He added that the album, which comes with a limited edition, "100+ page book" of David Lynch photographs inspired by the music "will now come with a blank, recordable CD-R".

"All copies will be clearly labelled: 'For Legal Reasons, enclosed CD-R contains no music. Use it as you will.'"

Danger Mouse to release blank CD

Hear The Entire Album: 'Dark Night Of The Soul'

(Image: Danger Mouse 2 - Gnarls Barkley, a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike image from Staxnet's photostream)

[Photo from Connors934 on Flickr]

The other night I noticed Jimmie's camera amidst the rubble of a circuit bending melee. It stood out for how intentionally ugly it was. He said that it was done in preparation for a trip overseas, where he wanted to make sure he kept his camera. After taping it up and otherwise camouflaging it, he developed a shooting technique where he folded our the screen, set the shots up, then held it up to his eye while shooting to make it look like a film camera. Film cameras, he figured would be of little or no interest to those with sticky fingers.

It reminded me of Rick Polito's article in MAKE, Volume 11 U-G-L-Y Your Bike. Mostly, I just try to keep my camera low key and dislike carrying a dedicated camera bag, what do you do?

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Here's another chance to see Make: television - Episode 10

Visit SparkLab founder and designer Syuzi Pakhchyan, a maker who explores the new frontier of high tech and fashion with her space age handiwork. In the Workshop, John Park shows us how to build a guitar out of a piece of wood, some string, nails and a cigar box. Then he "makes it rock" by wiring it to a buck-fifty cassette-player amp. In a Hidden Treasures segment, Mister Jalopy opens up his Chevy Camaro's cassette player to show us the beauty and value of clear schematics for makers like him. The Maker Channel features a sunlight-triggered poem, a pedal-powered blender, a time lapse photography rig, and a handmade theremin.

Get the m4v, subscribe in iTunes, or watch in HD on Blip.

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Wikileaks has published a talking points memo from the Canadian Conservative Party, intended to form the standard stump speech/letter-to-the-editor/op-ed for the week:

Canadian Conservative Party May Constituency Week Caucus Pack, May 2009 (via Michael Geist)

The LSAC is a nonprofit corporation that oversees the LSAT, the test you need to take to get into law school. They charge $194 for every copy of the exam that's distributed, including the ones that are distributed as PDFs and printed by prep companies. As Lessig sez, "It would seem a nonprofit would be keen to find a better way to make access easier. As Schwartz suggests, the exams should be free, or at least, following iTunes, $.99."

Suggestions for LSAC on Restructuring LSAT PrepTest Sales (via Lessig)

Asaf sez, "After hanging on to my VHS tapes collection for about 15 years -schlepping them to every apartment I moved - I realized those movies are NEVER going to see the light of day or a screen, for that matter. So I decided to be kind AND rewind!"

Toploader VHS Table (Thanks, Asaf!)

Hugh Pickens writes "Google encourages advertisers to purchase other companies' trademarks as targeted search terms, and they're expanding the practice into 190 countries. When Audrey Spangenberg typed the name of her small software company into Google and saw the ads of competitors that had paid Google to display their marketing messages whenever someone searched for FirePond, a registered trademark, she was furious. This week, her company filed a class-action suit against Google in federal court, saying that Google had infringed on her company's trademark, and challenged Google's policies on behalf of all trademark owners in the state. Legal experts said it was the first class-action suit against Google over the issue. Google's acceptance of such competitive uses of trademarks has irked many other companies, including the likes of American Airlines and Geico, who have filed suits against Google and settled them. Many brand owners say the practice abuses their brands, confuses customers and increases their cost of doing business. 'I know of several companies spending millions of dollars a year in payments to Google to make sure that their company is the very first sponsored link' on searches for their own names, said Terrence Ross, a partner at Gibson Dunn, who represented American Airlines in its suit against Google. 'It certainly smacks of a protection racket,'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The ladies of the Afternoon Club in Mersham, England, knitted this complete replica of their village over the course of 23 years. It's to be sold in pieces to benefit the local hall.

In pictures: Knitted village (Thanks, Marilyn!)

Jim from Rock Paper Shotgun sez, "We recently posted up this piece by upcoming games critic Lewis Denby. It's about Dear Esther a bizarre Half-Life 2 modification set on an abandoned island. The mod itself is fascinating because of the slow, poetic style and superb narration - the designer Dan Pinchbeck describes it as a "interactive ghost story" - and it's more like a piece of fiction read with a mouse and keyboard than any trad horror-game. But what's interesting to me is the way it provoked Denby to examine the response of gamers to the mod, and how it changed his personal comprehension of what games could or should be doing."

If you're looking for fun, I've no idea why you're playing Dear Esther in the first place. This is fearless, classical tragedy. It ends with the sound of a heart monitor flatlining, for goodness' sake. Lead designer Dan Pinchbeck describes it as "an interactive ghost story," but the inevitable connotations of that are misleading. This isn't about bumps in the night or any other hackneyed horror archetypes. It's deep, heart-tugging, emotional trauma. Dear Esther is indeed ghostly and ethereal, but it's all thematic notation. Really, the only horror is in realising how truly heartbreaking this tale is.

Some people will tell you it's not a game. Depending on your definitions, maybe it isn't. You play as... well, that's never revealed, and since it's all in uninterrupted first-person, you've no way of finding out. During your time on what initially appears to be a remote Hebridean island, a disembodied voice will read fragments of a series of letters, written to a woman named Esther who we're never introduced to. And you'll explore, climbing higher and higher up the mountain in the centre, piecing together the proverbial puzzle and trying to establish, often in vain, just what this place is.

Touched By The Hand Of Mod: Dear Esther (Thanks, Jim!)

A Chicago Alderman decided he didn't like a public mural depicting Chicago PD CCTV cameras, so he had it painted over.

When Humberto Angeles woke up on Thursday morning, he heard a truck outside his Bridgeport apartment. He looked out the window and saw the city's graffiti blasters painting a brick wall across the street. They covered over a mural that Angeles says he rather liked.

ANGELES: What I got from it, it was just a mural for peace. That's what I got out of it. Peace.

The mural was a painting of three Chicago Police Department blue light camera's that you see on light posts in high crime areas. The Chicago Police logo is on the cameras but then the artist also painted Jesus on one post, a deer head on another, and a skull on the third camera. What the mural is supposed to mean is anyone's guess. Angeles agrees that it's a rather inscrutable work of art but he liked it and he says he feels bad for the artist...

Alderman Jim Balcer confirmed that he ordered the mural removed, saying some of his residents viewed the work as graffiti.

Alderman Destroys Public Art

Alderman says he had this mural destroyed

Here's a lovely, nearly-entirely-edible Dalek wedding cake -- we had a Portal cake at our wedding, but this is a close second:

The "tiers" (the base and the middle) are foam board wrapped in fondant, and were planned to be that way from the get-go to support the weight of the cake. The cake itself contains 5 chopsticks: two to support the second tier (holding the upper body) and one each for the core of the three arms. The lower half of the body is white cake frosted with vanilla buttercream and wrapped in coffee fondant. The copper balls are all fondant, and the piping is just royal icing. The upper half of the body is sculpted from Rice Krispie Treat that was then covered with fondtant and piped with details. The little armor plates and the accessories on the arms are made of sugar candy (gumpaste). The whole thing weighed about 10 pounds. Dassit.

Cakey bits (Thanks, Jeff!)

Worried about the free/open database MySQL now that Oracle owns Sun (who bought out MySQL)? So are a lot of open database hackers, who've formed the Open Database Alliance to create a community-run foundation to oversee free MySQL development and releases:

The intent of the Open Database Alliance is to unify all MySQL-related development and services, providing a solution to the fragmentation and uncertainty facing the communities, businesses and technical experts involved with MySQL. Still under development, the Open Database Alliance is open to all businesses, organizations and individuals interested in helping create a new, centralized resource for MySQL and to ensure that it remains a top quality, high performance open source database.

Monty Program Ab, founded by Monty Widenius, the "father" of the MySQL database, and Percona, established by MySQL expert Peter Zaitsev, are the founding members of the Open Database Alliance. Monty Program is currently the primary developer of MariaDB, a branch of the MySQL database that includes all major open source storage engines, including the Maria transactional storage engine.

Welcome to the Open Database Alliance.

Open Database Alliance hedges against Oracle plans for MySQL

An anonymous reader writes "DJ Danger Mouse famously fought with EMI over his Beatles/Jay-Z mashup, 'The Grey Album,' and now seems to be battling with the label again. Rather than release his latest album and face legal issues with EMI, Techdirt is reporting that Danger Mouse will be selling a blank CD-R along with lots of artwork, and buyers will be responsible for finding the music themselves (yes, it's findable on the internet) and burning the CD."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Beijing retiree Lin Shuseng wanted to help his wife find relief from joint pain - so he built her this amazing massage chair completely from found scrap. The project apparently took about eight years to complete, but judging from the look on his face it seems it was worth it. (that is an expression of relief/comfort … right?) [via Ananova]

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NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "With her trial coming up on June 15th, Jammie Thomas has received a motion by her lawyer to withdraw from the highly publicized case, Capitol Records v. Thomas. Ms. Thomas said in a written declaration (PDF) obtained from her by her lawyer that she was not opposed to the lawyer's withdrawal, and waived any hearing on the matter. The court papers submitted by the lawyer (PDF) also indicated that the RIAA was not opposed to the withdrawal — i.e. it graciously consented to Ms. Thomas having no legal representation — but was opposed to any continuance (i.e. the RIAA wants to make sure that Ms. Thomas does not have sufficient time to find other legal representation, or to prepare to handle the trial herself, or to enable new counsel to prepare to handle the trial). Nice of them."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Extreme videos

The bike rack is a nice touch.

My buddies modified Suzuki Hyabusa dirt drag bike with twin rear wheels and mud tires.

Anybody got the backstory on this one?

[Thanks Sandy!]

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Announcing our new bundles available exclusively in the Maker Shed. This time we packaged 4 of our favorite electronics kits, along with a Maker's Notebook, to make one fantastic bundle. This would be a great selection of kits for your next MAKEcation!

The Editor's Choice electronics bundle includes:

• (1) MintyBoost $19.99 value
  
• (1) MiniPOV kit $17.99 value
  
• (1) Drawdio kit $19.50 value
  
• (1) Super TV-B-Gone Kit $21.99 value
  
• (1) Maker's Notebook $19.99 value
  

All for the discounted price of $69. That's an amazing 30% off the price if you purchased these items individually. Take advantage of this amazing deal before it's too late.

More about the Editor's Choice electronics bundle in the Maker Shed

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The cancellation of Six Days in Fallujah seems to have stirred up almost as much debate as its original announcement. Given the popularity of World War II games, it seems clear that the main concern about a game focusing on modern war events relates to how recently they happened. Kotaku takes a look at some of the obstacles such a game would need to overcome to achieve broad acceptance. "When approaching a game that realistically depicts a modern combat situation, one criticism that often arises is the subject of fun. Can a realistic military shooter be fun? According to Ian Bogost, that's the wrong question to ask. 'We use the word fun as a placeholder, when we don't even really know what we mean when we look for some sort of enjoyment in a serious experience,' he said. Fun and entertainment aren't mutually exclusive, especially when it comes to entertainment based on real-world military conflicts. As Bogost explains, fun isn't the key word in this situation. 'It may not be possible to make a realistic war game that is fun — war is not fun — but it is possible to create an experience that is informative, appealing, and startling in a positive way.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Okay, I need to get a life.

In the meantime here are some searches I did with Alpha.

1. The obvious vanity search.

2. A common expletive phrase.

3. Ooops it doesn't know what RSS is.

4. Madison, Wisconsin.

5. A favorite movie.

6. A recent movie.

7. Its inventor.

8. A relative. A contemporary. A great old movie.

9. A word I looked up on Google yesterday. (Very good!)

10. The cosine of 1204. (Something it does very well that I never need.)

11. A breed of dog. (It thinks it's a chemical.)

This is a well executed project and fun, poignant art piece: the Sigh Collector by Michael Kontopoulos. He writes:

These are instructions for building a home monitoring system that measures and 'collects' sighs. The result is a physical visualization of the amount of sighing, for personal use in a domestic environment.

The project is in two parts. The first part is a stationary unit, which inflates a large red air bladder upon receiving the appropriate signal. The second part is a mobile unit, worn by the user, which monitors breathing (via a chest strap) and communicates a signal to the stationary unit wirelessly when a sigh is detected.

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macson_g writes "Students from Wroclaw University of Technology (Poland) once again turned one of their dormitories into huge display. The project is called P.I.W.O. (B.E.E.R.). This time they converted a 10-story building into 4-color, 12x10 display. The business was used to display animations, and to play interactive games as well. On the project page (in polish, Google translation here) you can watch an almost hour-long video, featuring music videos, a Tetris session, a dancing Michael Jackson, Duke Nukem and Mario."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Vanity Fair has a gallery of Ed Sorel's illustrations of Dick Cheney and his unsavory ilk.

No one is safe under the brush of Vanity Fair contributing artist Edward Sorel, whose watercolors expose the pathology of power and the fatuousness of fame. VF.com presents a gallery of Sorel’s rogues.

Illustration above from “Inside Bush’s Bunker,” by Todd S. Purdum (October 2007).

I recognize that it's becoming fashionable among many to bash Twitter, but for those who have learned how to use Twitter well (as opposed to many who use it poorly), the value of it is quite impressive. I now spend a lot more time using Twitter to find news than I do my feed reader -- and that's amazing to me. However, I think Mark Cuban actually has made the strongest point, noting that in many ways, Twitter is becoming more useful than Google. This isn't to say that Twitter is "killing" Google (x killing y stories are lame), but that many people are finding information via Twitter now, where they used to find it via Google.

Cuban gives an example of trying to buy a car, where there may be a lot of value in being able to message a guru on the type of car he wants to buy via Twitter (or, better yet, finding a few of them). I know I've found Twitter to be useful in this manner. A few months ago, I was looking for a new backpack for my computer -- and I had very specific requirements (such as the ability to carry both a laptop and a netbook at times comfortably). It was quite difficult to come up with a Google query that made sense for such a thing, but I could ask it easily in 140 characters and plenty of people could easily understand it, and then provide thoughts and recommendations. It comes back to two points:

• Having real humans respond to a query works well for more specific queries that simply aren't well automated.
• Perhaps much more importantly, real people can better offer recommendations or explanations than an automated query on Google, which simply seeks to find data or answers.

Basically, what Twitter is enabling is an entirely different form of information gathering online: via conversation, rather than via data dump. Each has it's place, but the reason many of us find Twitter so compelling is that it's opening up tremendous new possibilities to enable useful information flow that simply wasn't possible before.

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We were just talking about how Sony CEO Howard Stringer was lamenting the fact that Sony didn't embrace openness and new technologies like the internet earlier. Perhaps part of the problem is the execs who work under him. Mathew Ingram points out that at a recent panel discussion the CEO of Sony Pictures, Michael Lynton, said: "I'm a guy who doesn't see anything good having come from the internet. Period."

Perhaps that explains why you're failing to figure out how to embrace it?

I recently wrote up something for Open Forum talking about how every threat is really an opportunity. A threat just means that someone else may have figured out how to serve your customers/community better. That should be seen as an opportunity for you to serve your community/customers better. An exec today who views those opportunities as threats, as apparently Michael Lynton does, shouldn't still have a job. It's bad for business. It's bad for shareholders. And it's bad for customers. Saying that there's nothing good that has come from the internet suggests someone so lacking in vision that it's scary he still has a job running a major motion picture studio.

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coondoggie writes "Robocalls are a scourge, and the Federal Trade Commission today took action against one outfit by asking a federal court to shut down companies that have been bombarding consumers with hundreds of millions of allegedly deceptive robocalls in an effort to sell vehicle service contracts. According to the FTC, the robocalls have prompted tens of thousands of complaints from consumers who are either on the Do Not Call Registry or asked not to be called. Five telephone numbers associated with the defendants have generated a total of 30,000 Do Not Call complaints. Consumers received the robocalls at home, work, and on their cell phones, sometimes several times in one day. Businesses, government offices and even 911 dispatchers also have been subjected to the calls, the FTC said." Reader powerlord points out that another such company, not named in the FTC filing, raised the ire of thousands of internet-goers, who struck back by rickrolling the company's voice mail and digging up personal information on the company's president.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

coondoggie writes "Robocalls are a scourge, and the Federal Trade Commission today took action against one outfit by asking a federal court to shut down companies that have been bombarding consumers with hundreds of millions of allegedly deceptive robocalls in an effort to sell vehicle service contracts. According to the FTC, the robocalls have prompted tens of thousands of complaints from consumers who are either on the Do Not Call Registry or asked not to be called. Five telephone numbers associated with the defendants have generated a total of 30,000 Do Not Call complaints. Consumers received the robocalls at home, work, and on their cell phones, sometimes several times in one day. Businesses, government offices and even 911 dispatchers also have been subjected to the calls, the FTC said." Reader powerlord points out that another such company, not named in the FTC filing, raised the ire of thousands of internet-goers, who struck back by rickrolling the company's voice mail and digging up personal information on the company's president.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Michael Geist points us to Ivor Tossell's final web column for the Toronto Globe & Mail, which is all about how fans kept the Star Trek universe alive, creating incredibly detailed fan versions of the shows, despite all of the offical shows having ended. In many ways, it's similar to the recent story we had about a fanmade Lord of the Rings movie. But the best point is made at the end (the emphasis is mine):

There's a lot of things you can do with the Internet. You can sit around all day, strip-mining the Net for free movies. You can disappear into virtual worlds. You can log onto your favourite website and leave a comment that will cause readers to wonder whether the planet wouldn't have been better off left to the dolphins.

You can buy a webcam and do something profoundly embarrassing that will render you unemployable for years. You can spend your days filling up Facebook with a hollow performance of yourself. You can create a Web service that seems destined to change everything, only to discover - several billion dollars later - that it really changed nothing, because people are people, and the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Or you can make something. On the sunniest days, I look at the Web and I see a world of people making things. Maybe they're cat videos; maybe they're full-blown recreations of science-fiction series from the late sixties. Either way, the creative process never happens in a vacuum. It's an endless back and forth of ideas and materials, and some of them will always cross the lines of ownership and copyright.

It's unusual to tell a story of an online project that takes a corporate work, uses its intellectual property to make something new, and gets rewarded instead of sued. But then, Star Trek has always envisioned an inexplicably cheery future in which creativity trumps commerce. It's science fiction, all right, but let's run with that.

Indeed. This is an important point. The web really is an incredible tool for creativity and making stuff. It's really too bad that copyright often gets in the way of that.

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Greg Gillis (aka Girl Talk) recently participated in a live chat as part of a Download Decade series run by the Globe and Mail. Gillis makes music entirely from samples, combining existing songs in creative ways to make something new. His last album, which was offered as a pay-what-you-want download, used over 300 samples. Even though he's been held up in Congress as an example of why traditional copyright laws might no longer make sense, it seems like a lawsuit is inevitable because Gillis doesn't license any of the samples he uses. Yet, there has been no legal action to date (knock on wood!). Gillis argues that his sampling is fair use because it's transformative, but that hasn't been tested in court.

In the chat, he responded to a question I raised about why he uses a noncommercial license for his music (as he makes commercial use of others' works), arguing that transformative fair use would still allow commercial use of his music and noting that his label suggested the noncommercial license as a "safe move." Gillis was also asked whether he's surprised that he still hasn't faced a lawsuit, even though his profile has been much higher in the past few years.

Kind of. I believe in what I'm doing. I do not think it should be illegal. But at the same time, if you look at the history of sample-based music, it is somewhat surprising. Biz Markie, 2 Live Crew, Danger Mouse, Negativland, etc. Those are the people who laid the groundwork. They all had issues.

He notes that he was under the radar with his first couple albums, but since 2006, it's been hard for him to ignore publications like the Rolling Stone and the New York Times talking about how he's going to get sued. Yet, no lawsuits. He says times are changing.

The way the general public views intellectual property in 2009 is much different than in 1999. Look around the internet. So much content comes from pre-existing media. We're used to it now. Christian Bale goes crazy on the set of T4. That turns into a techno song, which then turns into a cartoon on YouTube, which will then turn into a T-shirt. Everyone is constantly exchanging ideas and building upon previously existing material. So the idea of a remix being a real artform is being validated in our culture every day.

Certainly, artists like Girl Talk, as well as others ranging from DJ Kutiman to the creator of the "rap chop" video, have been debunking the myths about "original" content, showing people that remixing can be creative and original and that it contributes to culture. Still, there are plenty of people who believe otherwise. Hopefully, Gillis continues to avoid legal troubles, though I don't think things have changed so much that this isn't still a huge risk. But, insofar as the remix is increasingly validated as an art form, perhaps a lawsuit would end up highlighting the limits that copyright law places on artistic expression nowadays.

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

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Irwin Chusid wrote to let me know that he has teamed up with Barbara Economon and Drew Friedman to begin offering Drew's art in the form of high quality prints. Drew is one of our favorite artists so this is great news!

Look at this gorgeous rendition of Tiny Tim, the late ukulele player and respectable historian of early 20th century music.

Launched in June 2009 by Irwin Chusid and Barbara Economon in collaboration with the artist, DrewFriedman.net is the exclusive source of fine art prints featuring the works of the iconic illustrator. All prints are personally approved and hand-signed by the artist.

Prints are offered as limited editions in archival-quality formats at affordable prices. All prints are priced in the $150-$200 range upon first release. However, as editions sell down, prices for remaining prints will increase.

Drew Friedman fine art prints

Need a new pair of shoes? looks like you could make 'em for the cost of a roll or two of duct tape.

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These commemorative Obama Shoes can be yours for just $39.99. They're "easily an $80 value," according to the TV commercial. (Thanks, Tara McGinley!)

I know that many folks think that "tech policy" is boring -- but, for those who care about the tech industry and innovation in general, it remains an important issue. During The Free Summit earlier this week we tried to inject some tech policy issues. This was a key reason for having the event in the first place. Both the Free Summit and the Tech Policy Summit were organized and run by the folks from SageScape, who are quite concerned that the tech world doesn't care enough about what's happening in the political realm and how it might impact them. While someone brought up the question, during The Free Summit, of why we should care about the entertainment industry influencing copyright laws, since they were dinosaurs in the process of dying off anyway, we pointed out that the amount of damage they could do while dying was impressive, and shouldn't be underestimated.

The overall Tech Policy Summit was quite interesting (and I've done some separate posts on some of the specific speakers), but the two key discussions that I think crystallized the debate were the discussions with Obama advisor Blair Levin and Consumer Electronics Association boss Gary Shapiro. Levin laid out a very compelling case that now that we have someone who "gets technology" in the White House, a lot of good things can be done. He was quite anxious to get nominated FCC boss Julius Genachowski approved and visibly angry and frustrated that Senate games have delayed his confirmation. Indeed, after years and years of watching technologically illiterate policy makers mucking things up left and right, the idea of having tech savvy folks in the administration is incredibly appealing. While I don't always agree with Levin, his comments did lessen some of my concerns about what's going on with tech policy in the administration.

But then... thankfully... Gary Shapiro got on stage and challenged many of Levin's points, highlighting how dangerous it is to think that the government can be an enlightened player in determining how innovation should work:

"It's not the job of government to say, "You win. You lose. You win.' That's the job of venture capitalists. The government's just going to mess it up."

While I'd argue that it's the job of the folks in the market, rather than venture capitalists, I think his point is sound. We should be worried about such massive government intervention -- even if it's coming from people who do seem to understand technology issues. Unfortunately, it had been so frustrating dealing with clueless tech policy makers for so long, the idea of more clueful tech policy makers seemed so appealing that you start to forget there's a third option: government getting out of the way.

And, realistically speaking, this should be a big concern. Even if Obama's appointments really are brilliant about technology, and put in place wonderful plans... what if the next President isn't quite so technologically clueful? Giving the federal government too much say in shaping the tech market landscape is dangerous long-term. It's why we should certainly be careful and watch what the government is doing, even if you believe the participants really are smart and knowledgeable about these subjects.

Along these lines, I should point out how strong an advocate Shapiro has been (for a long time) of consumer-first policies. Some will point out that these interests align well with the consumer electronics firms he represents, but if you just speak to the guy for a little while, you realize how strongly he believes in consumer rights because it's right, not just because it helps the companies he works with. And, unlike some of the other big names at the event, Shapiro was very involved in the entire event -- getting up to ask plenty of questions and challenge lots of speakers who said questionable things (he gets extra points for zinging David Carson, from the Copyright Office by asking him: "Do you represent the interests of copyright holders, or the public, because everything you say appears to be from the interests of the copyright holders only?"). Lots of us know about consumer advocacy organizations like the EFF and Public Knowledge, who fight for consumer rights on many of these issues, but Shapiro and the CEA deserve an awful lot of credit as well.

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Reid Gershbein says:

Thanks to you posting about my Tilt-Shift Flip video and the amazing response it got.

I was inspired to continue the path and did an entire feature film (Here. My Explosion...) using that technique and released it today online under a Creative Commons license.

Here. My Explosion...

Moleitau took this photo of a "Get Excited and Make Things" shirt at Howies, Carnaby St. London.

This looks like a huge robot army of fun!

Four wheel drive robot with dual h-bridges controlling four motors for differential steering. ATmega168 microcontroller running at 16mhz. Arduino shield compatible headers to allow for stackable shields and protoboards. Zigbee socket for wireless bootloading or USB for wired programming. Quadrature encoders on each side for dead reckoning.

Rampage Robotics!
There is much promise in a project like this. It should be loads of fun to see what the next step holds for us. Projects always look better when they're in the MAKE Flickr pool!

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