Reach inside our magic laundry dryer and pull out a shirt design from the past! Not the real past, though; an idealized, imaginary past, like Spartacus: Blood and Sand without the bare breasts. These Honorable Mentions for Derby #136: the New Vintage give us the feeling that somewhere, in an alternate universe, somebody's wondering where their favorite t-shirts disappeared to...

Fly!

by capedcrusader514

Oddly, he's not interested in dope or anything fresh.

 

Holy Guacamole!

by walmazan

Might have won if it was easier to stuff inside a recipe box.

 

I got mooned!

by jewelwing

Thank you for not illustrating the pun.

 

Mista Mista

by riffmaster18

How many copyrights can we almost infringe upon?

 

Disco is Dead

by dredgedarko

Now we want a disco skull for our office.

 

Tweets are for Birds

by jasneko

Said it with 120 characters to spare.

 

Vote Abe in 1860

by profbrendan

Millinery we can believe in.

 

use it or lose it

by kamz

Is this another one of those zombie things?

 

Rap Attack Version: POP!

by Beefcoat

Yo! Tyrannosaurus raps!

 

Vinyl Is Dead

by cmdixon2

The reports of its death were premature.

 

Congrats and props to the Honorable Mentioneers; see y'all again in the next Double-Take Derby. Meanwhile, back in our own timestream, the future is unfolding in the current Derby.

Man, "In addition to your radishes, I will take this" got so much love in the forums (and in our office) we didn't think it'd go down like this. Think of the Children displaces It's a Trap! for the number one seed right out of the gate. The rest of the noobs are going to need a little more help. Could this be the sign of an extended run for our new numero uno shirt? Find out at our Reckoning page, or better yet: go ahead and influence the standings yourself by making a purchase.

And oh yeah, Nevermore is still hangin' tough.

Milk, Milk, Lemonade

‘Round the corner, love is made

Some things just go together. Like whiskey and vermouth. Or peanut butter and jelly. Or peanut butter and chocolate. Or peanut butter and banana. Boy, peanut butter gets around, doesn’t it? It wasn’t until just now that we realized what a whore peanut butter is.

It’s nice to have a natural match. But equally nice—or maybe even nicer—is to find yourself in an unexpected hook-up that nonetheless works. Here’s to odd couples! To Murtaugh and Riggs! To jalapeño and chocolate! To Rachel and Finn! To Bono and U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill!

Because what’s more delightful than an unlikely pair?

Just about nothing, that’s what.

Wear this shirt: after smelling it to make sure it hasn’t gone bad.

Don’t wear this shirt: unless it’s been properly refrigerated.

This shirt tells the world: “TEACH LACTOSE TOLERANCE”

We call this color: Royally Cute Royal Blue

Design Placement: Centered

Design Size:
3X – S: 10” x 9.63”
WXL - K4: 7.5” x 7.22”

Pantone Colors: White – 189C – 601C – 3945C – 7409C – 635C

Please check our sizing chart before you order. The Woot Tee follows a classic closer-fitting style. If you prefer a baggier look, order a larger size. If there is not a larger size, consider starting a belly-hanging-out trend.

If you are a guitar enthusiast, you may be interested in the extremely functional, uncluttered, and organized storage solution known as The Guitar Hanger:

Check out the full details:

I would only consider these if you regularly play your guitar. A case is the best storage option if you only play your guitar every once in awhile and prefer a long-term storage solution. For our household, though, these would be perfect for freeing up some floor space.

(Images from The Guitar Hanger website.)

The next task in my basement project was to clean up our tool bench. Here is a picture of its cluttered state before I got started:

It is a decent tool bench and serves our purposes. Unfortunately, the workspace had become quite the dumping ground for whatever we thought belonged in the basement but didn’t yet have a permanent storage solution. After a couple hours of attention, the clutter was removed. All that remains are the tools that we use for guitar and furniture making and basic home improvements.

In addition to the great peg board for the most-accessed tools at the back of the bench, I also put to use a set of four plastic storage bins from Ikea (which I can’t seem to locate on their website, but Container Store appears to carry similar ones):

These bins will keep errant screws, nails, and other small materials from running rampant on the workspace. A significant improvement to our tool bench.

—
Other posts in this series:

• Project Basement: Day 1
• Project Basement: Day 2
• Day 3

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By Andrew Liszewski

With a price tag of around $118,000 you probably won’t want to use the Phantom HD GOLD high-speed digital video camera for capturing your child’s first steps, but on the other hand, it could make for a baby video that your friends and family might actually want to watch. The camera has a max resolution of 2048×2048 pixels, and it can capture about 555 frames per second at that setting. And as you decrease the resolution the fps capabilities obviously increase, all the way down to a 16×8 pixel icon which can be captured at 100,000 fps.

It comes with 32GB of onboard storage, though if you’re capturing at 2K resolutions you’ll probably want to add a couple of the swappable Phantom CineMags which expand that storage by 256GB or 512GB at a time. And if you’re planning to use the camera as a more affordable alternative to film for that indie flick you’ve been planning, the Phantom HD GOLD can will give you 35mm depth of field in either 2K or HD resolutions, and comes with a PL lens mount, though other lens mount options are available.

[ Phantom HD GOLD ] VIA [ Uncrate ]

By Evan Ackerman

At the end of last month, Nokia filed a patent for a “piezoelectric kinetic energy harvester” for mobile phones. If they get it to work, it will enable mobile phones to charge themselves. Brillliant! Why didn’t I think of that?

I’ll tell you why I didn’t think of that. It’s because a “piezoelectric kinetic energy harvester” works by generating electricity from crystals which are compressed by movement. So, the catch is (of course there’s a catch), you have to be moving for the phone to charge. As in, not sedentary in front of the computer. This means that people like me will have dead cell phones 99% of the time, with the remaining 1% of uptime due to bedroom to bathroom transitions plus trips to the fridge. Maybe I’ll just strap it to my cat and bust out the laser pointer for a few hours, that should do the trick.

Cat or no cat, it’s always good to see big companies trying to innovate when it comes to green energy and infinite phone calls. Or at least, it’s good to see them take the first tentative steps in the form of a patent.

[ Nokia Patent ] VIA [ New Scientist ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Is there anything more embarrassing than accidentally placing the salad fork where the fish fork belongs at dinner? Or mixing up the bread plate and the soup plate? You might as well disappear from the social scene altogether if you make a faux pas like that.

But rest assured, if you use these place setting placemats, which provide a detailed blueprint of where everything is supposed to go, you’ll never have to deal with those disapproving stares from your guests during dinner again.

From what I can tell they’re available for about $27 each (19.95 €) which is a little steep, but I imagine you can just order one, set a place setting, and then pull the old ‘tablecloth out from under it’ trick and repeat the process.

[ Donkey Products - Place Setting Placemats ] VIA [ 7Gadgets ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Clearly designed for strictly playing homebrew SNES titles, and definitely not ROMS you’ve acquired from the internet, the new NEO SNES/SFC Myth Cart plugs into your Super Famicom or Super Nintendo console like any standard game cartridge, but does just a bit more. It connects to your PC via USB allowing you to copy ROMS directly to the cart, or copy/backup save game files to your computer, and according to the NEOTEAM it supports up to 99.5% of all Super Famicom/Super Nintendo games. At $169 it will probably only appeal to those who’ve turned their nose up at the Wii’s Virtual Console, or those who still have an SNES hooked up at home… like me.

[ NEO SNES/SFC Myth Cart ] VIA [ DCEmu Forums ]

By Chris Scott Barr

No one wants to get a trojan on their computer, for quite obvious reasons. Thus one is careful about the sites they browse, the links they click and the software they download. Generally doing these things will keep your computer free of such malicious bits of software. But have you ever considered that your hardware might be hiding something nasty?

Apparently the Energizer DUO USB Battery Charger has been carrying around a nasty little trojan that can wreak havoc on your system. CERT has issued a warning and stated the following:

An attacker is able to remotely control a system, including the ability to list directories, send and receive files, and execute programs. The backdoor operates with the privileges of the logged-on user.

That’s right, something as simple as plugging in your USB battery charger could give someone complete control over your system. I think the question on everyone’s mind was how in the world the trojan was put onto all of these in the first place. The file is tied into the installer for the charging software, which also means that downloading it from Energizer directly was no better an option. (In my best Ricky Ricardo voice) “Energizer, you’ve got some ’splainin’ to do.”

On a bright note, Mac users were not affected. The OSX version of the software was found to be clean.

[ CERT ] VIA [ CrunchGear ]

The invite for Blockparty 4 has been published on their website. Go watch it!

Day #7 is finally over and we’ve reached a productivity high with LaunchBar. Here are the 10 lucky winners of our LaunchBar giveaway! Congratulations!

Are you doing more already?

License information will be sent via email. Thank you for participating. Have you won anything yet?

MakeUseOf would like to thank Norbert and Objective Development for their generosity while participating in this giveaway. Interesting in sponsoring? We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with us via email.

em>Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!

• (2)Mac Giveaway Midnight Inbox Winners!
• (5)Mac Giveaway Intego VirusBarrier X6 Winners!
• (2)Mac Giveaway CoverSutra Winners!
• (6)Mac Giveaway CleanMyMac Winners!
• (4)Mac Giveaway AppZapper Winners!

Ever since I read the story of “The Lost City of Inca”, I’ve always wanted to visit Machu Picchu in Peru. I have put the name in the list of places that I will visit someday in the future.

I’m sure that many people share the same passion for world traveling, visiting exquisite corners of the world and feasting the eyes with breathtaking views. But sightseeing is not the only form of adventure you can get from traveling. There are others who prefer exploring the darkness of caves, crawling on the harsh textures of rock faces, challenging the rush rivers, or simply enjoying a cocktail while watching the sunset on a pristine beach.

These adventures will surely enrich one’s life. But everything will taste sweeter if you could share the stories to people with similar enthusiasm. People that you will find in WAYN (I guess it stands for: “Where Are You Now?”).

Share The Action

One glance at the front page of this social network for adventure travelers, and you can already guess what WAYN is all about. A high adrenalin background image and a small blue “f” logo in the corner shows that this is definitely not a site for those who spend their leisure time with Ruby on Rails.

Now let’s dig in a little bit deeper. The registration step is a little bit different from the usual because you need to provide data of your location.

If you choose to take the Facebook route, the service will attach itself to your virtual social life. WAYN will fetch information from your Facebook account and send your WAYN content to your wall.

But of course the exchange won’t happen unless you give the permission first.

Start The Adventure

After logging in you will arrive at an “overwhelming” place. Literally. There are so many things here to explore and customize that one might not know where to start.

Let’s take it one step at a time. On the upper left there’s the main menu consisting of links to other main pages such as: Homepage, Calendar, Trips, and Activities.

But before you explore any further, the first thing you need to do is to write down the answer to “what would you love to do?”

Then complete your profile by uploading a photo. To encourage members to upload their picture, there’s an incentive of 1 point given to every member who do so. The points that you earn can be used for further enhancing your social status in WAYN. Then you can add activities that you want to do and places that you want to visit.

Enrich your adventures by adding your friends to your circle. You can do a name search filtered by countries, or you can also do an email search if you know your friend’s email address.

Another way to add friends is by interacting with people around you. In the WAYN context, this means those whose location is geographically near you.

Then you can start checking out news from other WAYN members, and try to find people with similar passions.

But maybe the most interesting thing about WAYN is the ability to plan a trip. Start by clicking the “Add” button from the “Add Locations” box. Then add other information about the trip, including the description, name of the place and the date of the trip.

The you can enrich the trip log by adding photos, videos, notes and sharing it with your friends. A general trip map (powered by Google Maps) is automatically drawn there.

So, do you love adventures? Have you traveled to the other side of the world? Do you know of other social networks for travelers like WAYN?  Please share using the comments below.

Image credit: EduardoZ

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Imagine you would not have to go to work to work. Imagine you could work from home, from a nearby cafe, from the park, or from the beach somewhere far away. In other words, imagine you were free to work from anywhere.

This scenario is becoming increasingly real. Many people work in jobs that don’t rely on their physical presence since they can complete and submit their work electronically. Thus, they are free to work wherever they want. An essential ingredient for this freedom is wireless LAN or WiFi.

Besides, having access to the internet from anywhere is nice to have, even if you don’t need it for work. This article covers free WiFi sites that allow you to find hotspot locations near you.

Wi-Fi Hotspot Directory

This directory lists over 30,000 hotspots worldwide. The most prominent locations are Europe and North America with over 10,000 hotspots each. Not all of the listed hotspots are free.

To locate free WiFi locations near you, use the search form, where you can select your country and enter your state, city, or ZIP code. You can also specify an operator and the type of place you’re looking for, i.e. park or internet cafe. To find only free wifi hotspot sites and locations, be sure to tick the respective box!

The search form also provides a link through which you can browse all cities.

LaptopFriendlyCafes

Do you crave for a cafe that serves delicious coffee, offers free WiFi, and a power plugin for your laptop? Then you need to have a look at LaptopFriendlyCafes.com. Here you will find a list of places that offer the full service.

So far, their collection contains over 300 cafes, with most being situated in the cities London, New York, and Sydney. If you know another one anywhere in the world, please go ahead and submit it.

Do you have an iPhone? Get their iPhone app to spot cafes close to where you currently are.

WaiFi

This is a very easy to use WiFi hotspot finder that integrates Google Maps to show you exactly where to find a free wireless access point. Simply enter your location and check the Google map for WaiFi flags. A click on the flag will bring up details, i.e. the category, location, and carrier.

The site is powered by users. You can add WiFi hotspots easily by clicking the button at the bottom left of the map, which will bring up a WaiFi flag. Drag the flag to the exact location and fill in the details.

FREE-hotspot

A site similar to WaiFi is FREE-hotspot.com. It’s a little more convenient to use, albeit not as stylish. It also uses Google Maps and provides lots of useful information for WiFi beginners.

One very convenient feature is an indicator of whether or not a listed hotspot is currently active (green or red flag). Additionally, the list of all currently displayed WiFi locations is displayed in a menu on the left-hand side. An interactive filter menu pulls out from the top of the map on mouse-over and can be used to find specific hotspots.

Unfortunately, FREE-hotspot.com appears to cover fewer locations than WaiFi, at least for the places in North America, Europe, and Australia I checked.

Last year, David introduced 5 Wi-Fi Hotspot Finders To Find Free Wi-Fi Spots Near You. In this article he also covered WiFi-friendly chains and airports and linked to the following sites:

• Chain restaurants with free wirless internet access
• Wi-Fi-FreeSpot Directory – locations that offer Free WiFi
• Free wifi airports

Do you own a PSP? Simon explained How To Use Your PSP WiFi Scanner To Find A Wireless Internet Hotspot.

Before you go out hunting for a free WiFi hotspot, however, make sure you’re all prepared. Karl reminds you of Things To Know When Using a WiFi Hotspot Or a Public PC and Ryan showed you 4 Free WiFi Software Downloads to Get Most of Wireless Networks. Both articles contain important security-relevant information.

Finally, if you’re wondering how wireless works in the first place, read Guy’s Technology Explained article on How Does Wireless Internet Work?.

What is your favorite location to make use of free public WiFi?

Image credits: duchessa

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

• (13)How To Use Your PSP WiFi Scanner To Find A Wireless Internet Hotspot
• (32)4 Free WiFi Software Downloads to Get Most of Wireless Networks
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• (21)How To Troubleshoot Weak Wireless Connections

Check out some of the latest MakeUseOf discoveries. All listed websites are FREE (or come with a decent free account option). No trials or buy-to-use craplets. For more cool websites and web app reviews subscribe to MakeUseOf Directory.

List Your Website Here!

Sprdword – This website indexes documentary videos that offer alternative perspectives and worldviews. You will find a collection of best controversial documentaries that you wouldn’t normally find in traditional media. Read more: Sprdword: Aggregates Best Controversial Documentaries Online.

		Fill That Form – Many web services still ask you to fill out boring forms before you can do anything else. If you are one of those people who hate filling out the same information again and again, check out FillThatForm. It is a cool app that provides you with an automated way to fill in forms online with a single click. Read more: FillThatForm: Automatically Fill In Forms Online.
		ABCya – Learning from a book is so old-fashioned. Kids today are so much into technology that it has to be the medium for their education. ABCya is one such site that allows children to learn through thousands of interactive browser based games for kids. Read more: ABCya: Thousands Of Educational & Browser Based Games For Kids.
		Meetifyr – Finding out when everybody is available for a meeting can be a real hassle, specially if the group is large. Meetifyr is a free availability calendar that helps you with this by providing a dead simple way to check everybody’s availability. Simply go to Meetifyr and launch a new calendar. Read more: Meetifyr: Dead Simple & Free Availablity Calendar.
		ColorIQ – How good your eyes are doesn’t entirely revolve around clarity: some people are better at judging colors than others. If you’d like to know how you see colors compared to others in your age the ColorIQ offers you a way to find out. Simply arrange four rows of similar colors in hue order. Read more: ColorIQ: Test How You See Colors.

List Your Website Here!

These are just half of the websites that we discovered in the last couple of days. If you want us to send you daily round-ups of all cool websites we come across, leave your email here. Or follow us via RSS feed.

em>Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!

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It seems that recently all the attention has been going to the iPhone or the Android platform. There will soon be an uproar with Windows Mobile as they will be doing away with all the old installation packages and there will be no upgrade path to Windows Mobile 7.

Well we felt that we were missing out on showing our Blackberry users a little love. So here, without further ado, is a list of 6 free Blackberry software applications to download and install that will essentially trick out your mobile phone and make it do what you want it to do.

I tried very hard not to include any of the free Blackberry software we already covered here in this post from Grant.

The first application we will cover is the free Blackberry Kindle software. The free Kindle application can be downloaded first to your computer or over the air on your Blackberry via this link. You will be able to link to your Amazon account and any eBooks you have already purchased as well as being able to buy paid and free books via Amazon as well.

This is a nifty feature to add to your Blackberry, essentially making it a eBook reader. Nice!

Next up is an application called StockView and as you can guess it displays NYSE (New York Stock Exchange) and NASDAQ quotes. There are loads of stock applications for the Blackberry but most of them are either charging $29.99 for the application or a monthly fee. This application is totally free (at least for now). The site lists it as a trial but it will work indefinitely.

Now let’s make your Blackberry into a powerful money sending/accepting machine.  Paypal has provided an application via the Blackberry Appworld Store that allows you to log into your Paypal account and view your balance, check your history and send money. This is very cool stuff! Check if that payment came in right on the spot before you continue working…

You can download it via this link.

And of course if you have full access to your PayPal account why not your eBay account as well?

Well from the eBay App for the Blackberry you can pretty much do anything you can do directly on eBay’s website without having to be in front of a computer! No more waiting around for that auction to end and you can search auctions on the go!

Now how about having the power of Directory Assistance without having to make a phone call? The application is called Beyond411 and can be downloaded from here.

I first saw this on the iPhone and it looked great. Beyond411 is  a service for information that goes one step beyond basic 411 information. It allows you to drill down and find what you are looking for.  You set your location so it returns local stuff and it goes on to provide, in addition to the directory searching on Yellow Pages, support for maps, driving directions and white pages.

The last application, and certainly not least worthy, is a program called WorldMate Live. WorldMate Live has a free and a paid version. The free version allows you to view and modify your travel itinerary, see world clocks, weather forecasts and there is even a currency converter in there.

Consider this a traveler’s best friend or assistant. It will hold your information down so you don’t lose or misplace it. You can go Gold (paid) to have flight alerts and status automatically updated on the go. All in all, after using this application, I don’t know how to travel without it.

Did I leave out your favorite free Blackberry application? Well than hit us up in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Tweetie is unarguably one of the most robust iPhone Twitter clients, so you wouldn’t expect anything less of the desktop version.

Tweetie’s straightforward and minimalist appearance makes it a breeze to use. Yet, it’s a looker and quite capable.

It’s no wonder we’re giving away 10 copies of Tweetie worth $200 as one of the must-have commercial Mac apps!

Think you’re lucky enough to grab one?

After entering your Twitter credentials, you are taken to a window with your Timeline.

Navigating through your replies, messages and searches is made simple with the small vertical menu on the left hand side of the app.

When scrolling through your, or other users’ timelines, replies directed to you are highlighted in blue.

The icon in the menu bar turns blue when there are new tweets in your timeline, otherwise it remains grey.

From the menu bar, you can quickly access your or other user’s profiles, and switch between your profiles if you have multiple Twitter accounts. From any given profile, you can access a user’s timeline, favourites, replies directed at them, and their profile info.

Tweetie has incorporated five URL shortening services: bit.ly, TinyURL, is.gd, tr.im and DiggBar, as well as six services for sharing your images: yFrog, TwitPic, Twitgoo, Posterous, Imag.ly and Pix.im. And it doesn’t end there. With Tweetie, you can record video directly from your Mac, using a webcam, and share it with your Twitter followers through yFrog. Images uploaded to these services, as well as profile pictures, will open in a slick HUD window.

One of the ways in which Tweetie truly excels is the way it handles conversations. Opening a reply, Tweetie will list all the tweets in that conversation, with the most recent at the top of the list.

For those of you who are fans of keyboard shortcuts, Tweetie has a shortcut for just about everything, from creating a new tweet, to quickly switching between your timeline, replies and direct messages.

If you already use the iPhone app, or if you’ve been looking for a simple but powerful Twitter client to use when you’re at your Mac – Tweetie is perfect for you. Download the free, ad-supported version and take it for a spin.

Ready to jump into Twitterverse just for this app?

How do I win a copy?

It’s simple. Just follow the steps.

STEP 3
	Post a link to your Facebook profile and/or Twitter username in the comments section below Make sure to enter your real email address so that we can contact you if you win!

This giveaway ends tomorrow, just before the next one starts. You may participate in as many giveaways as you want, even if you’ve previously won!

Let the giveaway begin! Have fun! Want to know what else we’re giving away? Check out this post 15 Must-Have Free Apps For Your Mac & Giveaway.

MakeUseOf would like to thank Loren from atebits for her generosity while participating in this giveaway. Interesting in sponsoring? We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with us via email.

em>Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!

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Looks like we will be making 20 music lovers very, very happy.

We even had to extend the giveaway since CoverSutra is such a great app, everyone should have a chance to grab a free copy.

Here are the lucky winners of our CoverSutra giveaway! Congratulations!

Get that groove on!

License information will be sent via email. Thank you for participating. Have you won anything yet?

MakeUseOf would like to thank Sophia from Sophiestication Software for her generosity while participating in this giveaway. Interesting in sponsoring? We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with us via email.

em>Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!

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When accessing a certain site, blog, or social network, it’s become customary to expect a mobile application from the site. Now, having tried the official Android Facebook application, I must admit to being rather disappointed. It’s even less intuitive than the current design, and that’s saying something.

Yahoo! Meme has a similar story on display. Or hasn’t, rather. There is no official mobile app available yet.

In these cases, we would turn to third-party (preferably) freeware. And we would be positively stunned. Reader, meet Pixelpipe.

Pixelpipe :: 100+ Sites Supported

Pixelpipe is an application for your Android, iPhone, or Palm Pre that allows you to post to social network sites and blogs. So what? Pixelpipe currently supports far over 100 different ‘pipes’, including Wordpress, Blogger, Drupal, Facebook, Twitter, Meme, Flickr, and pretty much anything else that comes to mind. Here’s a list dating back five months, and it’ll still blow your mind. So that.

You can Twitter, blog, share family snapshots, and even upload to a batch of ‘pipes’ by using one predefined @tag. Amazingly, Pixelpipe manages to retain an overview of the horde. Prepare for dumping your old mobile applications.

What work needs to be done for the switch, you ask? Just follow the steps below.

Step 1 – Create a Pixelpipe Account

Quite obviously, you’re going to need a Pixelpipe account. Otherwise signing in would be one hell of a job. The basic sign up progress is hardly even a bother. Just enter your name, email address and password.

If you’ve already got an account on Twitter or Ovi Share, you can even skip the signup progress, and link those accounts together by simply logging in. However, do note that in the future you will always need to sign in with that Twitter or Ovi Share account you used, so there’s an unnecessary online dependence.

Step 2 – Add Your Pipes

Once signed in, you’ll need to start adding ‘pipes’. These are simply blog or social network accounts that you can later use to throw some interesting content online. Apart from Facebook, Meme and Twitter, not all these accounts are so obvious. It takes some time, but I’d advise you to scan through the entire list.

Know that you can also perform this step on your mobile phone. But repeatedly entering usernames and passwords goes a lot easier on your computer.

Perhaps you’re already sure what you want to use Pixelpipe for. In that case, you might only want to add a very specific branch of online accounts, and leave the rest for your desktop internet use. Luckily you can also filter the available ‘pipe’ accounts by their capabilities.

After authorizing Pixelpipe with the selected account, you’ll be asked to enter a few additional details as well. Noteworthy is the Routing tag. By embedding this tag in title or body, you can override the default pipes and have a message sent only to that service. Routing tags are also used when you post by email and MMS.

Step 3 – Profit! (Mobile)

And that’s pretty much all you need to do before you’re able to start using Pixelpipe for you mobile phone. If you log in with your Pixelpipe account now, you’re all set to go. Post text, pictures, and video to all of you’re favorite sites.

As you can see in the screenshot above, you can still select non-default pipes every time you post. Where supported, you can even include your Geo (graphical location).

Know any mobile applications that top this? Be sure to let us know what mobile services you use, and why!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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The Digital Media Copyright Act, otherwise known as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act or simply the DMCA, is a Federal copyright law that was meant to curb Internet piracy of digital media. The bill passed in the U.S. Senate by unanimous decision on October 12, 1998 and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton seventeen days later.

Since that time, the DMCA has been implemented in many notable court cases and heavily criticized by society. It is essentially the law that made it illegal to download copyrighted digital media such as music, movies, and software, and is what the RIAA and MPAA have used to combat piracy in the courts.

So exactly what is the Digital Media Copyright Act and what’s all the commotion about? Well, the DMCA is still a heated topic today because of its use in the fight against online piracy and its effects on Internet users. This article serves to educate those on what is in the DMCA and how it affects the everyday Internet user.

So What Is the Digital Media Copyright Act?

The DMCA is comprised of five titles and implements two treaties signed at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Geneva conference in 1996. The five titles are as follows:

• Title I: WIPO Copyright and Performances and Phonograms Treaties Implementation Act
• Title II: Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act
• Title III: Computer Maintenance Competition Assurance Act
• Title IV: Miscellaneous Provisions
• Title V: Vessel Hull Design Protection Act

Now that’s a lot of legal wordiness and doesn’t really explain the key points of this document. Allow me to translate this for you. I will list the important points made in this law doctrine and cite examples of how they have influenced activity on the Web.

Circumvention

The DMCA restricts the ability to make, sell, or distribute devices which circumvent (or get around) copyright protection. This means you are not allowed to make or use programs that allow users to get by any technical measures that control access to a copyrighted work.

“It is illegal to manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in a device or service which is primarily intended to circumvent copyright protection.”

Under this Act, it is illegal for you to ‘crack’ commercial software, sell or distribute any software used for cracking commercial software, or make unauthorized copies of copyrighted DVDs and CDs.

File Sharing

The illegal file-sharing of copyrighted materials is probably the most widely known and openly discussed effect of the Digital Media Copyright Act. It is illegal to host, share, or download copyrighted works, including music, movies, books, software, etc.

We have seen a lot of programs/websites over the years fall in the courts under violation of the DMCA (or its backings), most notably Napster, Kazaa, and Limewire.

There is still an ongoing debate over whether or not ‘linking’ to—that is, not hosting yourself—infringing content is illegal. This is primarily the case with torrent websites.

We have seen websites like The Pirate Bay, ISOHunt, and Mininova lose in court because they provide links to infringing material and make file-sharing very easy for peer-to-peer (P2P) users. Although none of the copyright infringing material is physically on their websites, it’s pretty much an aiding and abetting mentality.

Safe Harbor

Title II of the DMCA creates a safe harbor for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) against copyright liability if they meet the guidelines and block access to—or remove—allegedly infringing material after receiving notification from the copyright holder.

A safe harbor is a legal term that means as long as the ISPs comply with the copyright holder’s request (and take down the material) then they will not be held legally accountable for the infringing material.

We’ve seen this on YouTube. Have you ever come across a video that has been “removed at the request of the copyright holder”? Most recently, we’ve had to witness the death (and rebirth!) of the ‘Rick Roll’ on YouTube.

This provision of the DMCA has been openly criticized for making it too easy for copyright owners to take down infringing content and links, alleging that often times the material that is removed might not actually be infringing in the first place.

Conclusion

In summary, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act lays the groundwork for all Internet-related copyright law and is the basis that a lot of court cases and online activities are carried out on.

The document does have other miscellaneous provisions and sections attached to it, like the modified section in Title III, which states that those repairing computers are allowed to make certain, temporary copies of materials while working, but the three things covered in this article (circumvention, file-sharing, and safe harbor) are the primary effects of this Act and constitute the majority of actions and criticisms that this law has undertaken.

What do you think of the DMCA? How has it affected your actions online? Do you pay for digital music and movies or download them for free? Are you a pirate?

Leave your comments below!

Image Credit: Horia Varlan, everyskyline, mkwilbur

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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In this article, I’m going to outline some of the top resources that I use to find guitar chords for songs that I want to learn how to play. Recently, I decided that I needed a way to relax and get rid of stress – something that is somehow unconnected with the computer.

I remembered playing around with my mother’s old guitar when I was a kid, and realized that I’ve always wanted to learn how to play guitar. My daughter was already taking piano lessons from a local older couple who give lessons, so I decided to take guitar lessons while waiting for my daughter to finish her piano lessons.

Within three lessons, I found myself playing a John Denver song using just three chords. Of course, I was immediately hooked. Practicing every night, I’ve mastered the song in about a month. However, once I was able to play the one song, I wondered how many others I could learn that use just those three or four chords.

So, a hobby that I took on in order to get off of the computer and take a break from the Internet, ended up bringing me back to the Internet in search of guitar chords for songs that I really want to learn how to play. I’ve found a few excellent websites that do a tremendous job in cataloging the correct chords for the most popular traditional and contemporary songs. Today, I’d like to share those discoveries with other guitar players out there.

Chordie – A Massive Library Of Accurate & Inaccurate Chords

I think Chordie has to be one of the largest collections of guitar chords and tabs that I’ve ever found. I’ve yet to think of a song that doesn’t have a corresponding Chordie listing. At Chordie, you can search for either song or artist listings that are organized in a long alphabetical collection. This way, if you don’t know the title of a song, you can search for the guitar chords by the artist name instead.

Chordie is actually a huge community of guitar players who love music so much that they spend time trying to figure out the chords to music, and then list their findings on Chordie. Most of the time, you’ll discover that the chords listed here are actually pretty accurate – and you’ll be playing the coolest songs in no time.

If you can’t find guitar chords for songs that you’re looking for anywhere else, then I’d suggest going to Chordie as your last resort. Why as a last resort? Because at least half the time, you’ll also discover that members posted chords or lyrics that are just totally wrong.

For example, one of the first songs I tried to learn on my own was Losing My Religion, by R.E.M. I found that the chords seem correct, but the lyrics are completely messed up. Some sentences are completely wrong, and others are just plain silly. This is only representative of about a third of Chordie chord listings from members – most of them are pretty accurate. The best part of Chordie listings is that the chord is displayed at the upper right hand corner, so you don’t have to go flipping through your guitar book to remind yourself how to play an “F”.

Ultimate Guitar – The Ultimate Resource

Although I started out using Chordie, I got frustrated looking for accurate contemporary songs, so I was very pleased to stumble across Ultimate Guitar. The first thing you’ll notice when you arrive is that the layout is very clean and very cool. There’s music news, reviews, articles and interviews. You’ll find a forum and a full community of guitar playing music lovers just like you.

This is seriously a huge community where you can not only discover the guitar chords for songs, but you can absolutely immerse yourself into the world of music as you’re learning to play new songs.

My favorite section of the site is the Top 100, where you’ll discover some of the greatest songs that you hear on the radio and wish that you could learn how to play.

I was very happy to discover the song Hey There Delilah, by the Plain White T’s – it’s a song I really want to learn how to play.  Unfortunately, this page brought the discovery that it requires both F minor and B minor – two chords I’ve yet to master yet. Maybe some day soon…

Another thing I like about this site is that in most cases you’ll find both the chords and the tabs. Many self-taught guitar players like tabs because it shows which string and which fret to play for each strum. However, taking lessons I’ve learned the chords, so really prefer just the lyrics with the chord changes listed above. Luckily, at Ultimate Guitar you’ll find both.

E-Chords – An Online Application For Learning Guitar Chords

While my favorite online sport for popular guitar chords is Ultimate Guitar, E-Chords is a very close second. I love how functional the site is. From the main page, you’ll discover that you can search for songs by artists, albums, composers, song titles and even using just part of the lyrics, which is very useful when you just can’t remember the title of a song.

This site isn’t so much as community as it is an awesome online application that helps you learn how to play any song using whatever format you’re most comfortable with. The coolest part of e-chords is how you can customize the display of the song and the associated chords with a click of the mouse.

The guitar chords for songs that you’ll find here are displayed exactly how I like them – the lyrics with the required chord listed above them. The menu bar on the left offers all kinds of cool features, including auto-scroll (really nice when you’re trying to play and need to scroll down for the lyrics!), increase or decrease the font size, hide chords, play simpler chords (if available) and even switch the chord display from the letter to the chord drawings (awesome for beginners).

Overall, I’d have to say that guitar chords for songs that I want are at e-chords, then this is where I prefer playing them because it’s so convenient and easy to use.

Heartwood Guitar Instruction – Chords For Learning Guitar

While Heartwood Guitar isn’t a giant library of thousands of guitar chords for songs, it is a place that you’ll want to go for some amazing free resources to learn how to play the guitar – with a hundred or so great classic songs, including the chords you’ll need to know to play them. Major kudos to Rob Hampton of Seattle for creating this impressive and useful online resource. To find the chords, from his main site just click on Chord Charts. You’ll find hundreds of great songs listed alphabetically.

These chord listings are nicely laid out with strum and rhythm information noted throughout in some spots. Now, while the chord listings are really fun to go through and play, I have to say that my favorite part of this website are the guitar lessons that Rob has written up and that he offers for absolutely free on his blog.

On his blog, he’ll show you tips and techniques on how to strum, tuning your guitar, fingerpicking and much more – often including images and always including detailed and clear instruction. It’s obvious that this is one instructor who is an excellent teacher, and that he really loves the art of guitar playing.

Are you learning to play guitar, or are you an old pro on the strings? Do you have your own personal favorite online resources for finding accurate guitar chords for your favorite songs? Share your own resources in the comments section below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Last month we took a look at the Nuance PDF Reader, a desktop app which can convert your PDF document into its Word, Excel or Rich Text equivalent. A few readers liked the conversion bit among its features. A few of them also put in a good word for another free PDF reader. No, it’s not Adobe Reader or Foxit, but a relatively played down one called PDF-XChange Viewer.

On second thoughts, the last sentence would be misplaced. Taking CNET’s download figures for document management software, I see that it’s behind Foxit and Adobe Reader. But the download numbers are really noteworthy.

So why do a review of the PDF-XChange Viewer so late in the day? In response, I say…why not? The fact that a number of our readers have put in their nod for this free PDF reader is reason enough to take a second, more prying look.

We have featured it before, albeit briefly, in a post on 4 Really Light Alternatives to Adobe Reader and in 6 Ways To Convert A PDF To A JPG Image. But it’s time to give PDF-XChange Viewer some limelight of all its own.

The free version of PDF-XChange Viewer, which we are interested in, is a slim 18MB download. That makes it heavier than Foxit but lighter than Adobe Reader. You can get it in various installation packages including a portable version.

The first thing you will notice with the first run is that the free PDF reader loads very fast. So let me load one of our own MakeUseOf eBooks and play around with the features that are there.

The first pleasing thing is it has a slick tabbed interface, letting me view more than one PDF file within one instance of the program. While choosing the components during the installation process, you will notice that PDF-XChange Viewer’s Help file has a requirement of nearly 6MB. This translates into a comprehensive and detailed Help file for the guy who likes to know his software in and out.

The toolbar seems to be a bit cluttered. But that’s because, by default, the software loads all the toolbars. You can set it up to your liking with a right click on the toolbar area and choosing Customize. A glance at the toolbar buttons gives you an idea of the features to expect. Features that are part of the paid Pro version are marked as such.

The Key Features That Make Up PDF-XChange Viewer

PDF-XChange Viewer makes navigation smooth with its Pan and Loupe tools located in the Zoom Toolbar. Zooming in and out with the slider is one way. Both the Loupe tool and the Pan and Zoom tool open up navigation windows and help to focus on specific areas of a PDF document.

PDF-XChange Viewer not only has a document search box but also a web search toolbar that’s set first on Ask.com (more engines can be added from Preferences). Click the dropdown to choose from the other search providers. For searching within the document, you can also comb through added comments and bookmarks.

PDF-XChange Viewer can be used as a ‘limited’ document converter. PDF pages can be exported to a variety of image formats. The Export to Image dialog box is also rich in features as in the screenshot.

You can easily email a PDF document from within the reader itself. The title of the document is entered in the Subject line of the email.

PDF-XChange Viewer shows the capability to handle interactive forms (AcroForms). The Form Data menu choice allows you to enter and retrieve data from Adobe Acrobat Forms. PDF-XChange Viewer has a few View options, for instance, View – Other Panes – Fields opens up a side pane with all the form fields. Along with form field highlighting, it makes the fields more obvious.

Commenting & Markup Tools

Every PDF reader has its uniqueness. With PDF-XChange Viewer it could be its rich subset of commenting and markup tools. Here’s a snapshot of the sub-menu accessed from Tools – Comment and Markup.

PDF-XChange Viewer gives you all the aids for elaborate markups with a variety of shape and line tools. And if you want to bump up the detail, there’s the free form Pencil tool for some freehand rough sketches.

You can add comments and annotations to any PDF file. The Sticky Note tool adds a Sticky Note wherever you need one for commenting. Others can also add replies below the main text by clicking on Add Reply. The appearance of the text and the container box can be changed anytime.

The Callout Tool allows you to add a text box with an arrow pointing to a selected location on the page.

For some straight-cut text annotations, you can use the Typewriter or the Textbox Tool.

The Stamps sub-menu is for marking documents with your choice of stamps. You can add your own stamps, for instance, your scanned signature via the Stamps Palette.

For more of navigation between internal and external locations, the Link Tools are just two steps down. You can link to any internal point in the PDF document or to an external website.

More Below The Surface

The above lines highlight the more conspicuous features of PDF-XChange Viewer. Scratch the surface and there’s more. Check out the Preferences and for customization options. For the paranoid, there’s 40/128 bit RC4 and 128/256 bit AES Encryption and Password security support.

Go into the Preferences and you can set a few memory usage and performance tuning options.

Along with the extremely detailed Help file, you get an informative product page on their website with screenshots and how-to videos to guide you through the product.

Downsides? Not many. Perhaps, the ability to add your own bookmarks in the free version would have helped. Hey, you can’t win every round with a product that’s absolutely free. PDF-XChange Viewer does win most of them.

Take it around for a few rounds and compare it with your experience in either Foxit or the Adobe Reader.

PDF-XChange Viewer (ver.2.0) is supported on Windows 2000 and all later versions.

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Facebook is fun and helpful.  I love keeping up with people I know from far away and those that are still close.  One of the great features is the ability to share photos with each other.  Photos are a great tool to see what people are up to.  They’re also good for seeing newer family members (marriages and births) and other fun stuff.

The thing about photos is that the caption at the bottom is very helpful in seeing what the uploader was thinking when they uploaded the photo.  The problem is that people don’t always take the time to add Facebook photo captions, especially if they’re uploading multiple photos at a time.  If I wanted to upload several photos from the same event (or are somehow otherwise related), I would love to have the ability to automatically add the same caption to all of them at the time of the upload.

I have found three methods to automatically load Facebook photo captions when you upload pictures.

Facebook’s Upload via Email feature

If you upload photos via email, the subject line automatically becomes the caption.  If you are emailing more than one photo, the subject line becomes the caption of all of the photos attached to that email.  Very cool.

Head to Facebook Mobile to find out the email address you should send updates and photos to.  Don’t share this address with anyone because anyone who knows it can then post stuff to your profile and nobody wants that!

Compose an email message attaching the photos and adding a subject line.

Check out your Facebook photo section to see the results.

The screenshot only shows one photo but they both ended up with the same caption.  So using the email feature is one shortcut making adding Facebook photo captions automatic and easy.

Desktop Application

Another way to easily add captions to multiple photos when uploading them to Facebook is to use a desktop application.  I found one called Bloom.  Bloom makes uploading multiple photos to Facebook easy.  Just highlight the photos in their folder and drag and drop them into the Bloom application.  It’s really that easy.

Then you just add the album and photo information in fields in the right sidebar.  You can either add separate photo captions by selecting them individually or you can Shift-click or Ctrl-click to highlight multiple photos and add the same caption to all selected photos.

Bloom also has many other features but for the sake of this article I’ll only cover the bulk uploader.

Picasa Uploader

There is also a Picasa plugin called Picasa Uploader that allows you to upload photos directly from your Picasa program to Facebook, captions and all.  It’s as easy as installing Picasa (if you haven’t already), installing the plugin, allow access to your Facebook account, and upload.  It even gives you the option to create a new album for each group of pictures you upload in bulk.

Facebook has its own upload function and it is quite easy to add captions after uploading, but these are a few ways to have the captions done in bulk and before the upload. As far as Picasa goes, you are saving yourself from doing the captions twice if you’ve already inserted them in Picasa.

What are some of your tips to make adding captions to Facebook photos easier?  Please share them with us in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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We have blogged about American assemblage artist Ron Pippin's work before, with a focus on his wunderkammer pieces. But he's been busy since then. Fair warning: Much of Pippin's work uses real animal parts, and although I personally find it very beautiful, some viewers may be disturbed and/or offended. [via The Automata / Automaton Blog]

Tim Heath and Ryan Hickman's Truckbot could be built for under $20 (excluding mobile). That's pretty impressive for such an open and accessible robotics prototyping environment. Using a laser-cut cardboard chassis, $3 micro servos, and a bare bones Arduino, the duo have assembled one of the cheapest platforms to come along in a while. [via GadgetLab]

One of the main reasons for using cell phones as part of robots is to drive down costs. Today's phones come with wi-fi, cellular connections, Bluetooth, GPS, touch sensing, accelerometers, magnetometers, displays, microphones, speakers, and cameras. They are now being powered by 1Ghz processors and come with ample amounts of storage. Everything you need in a robot except for mobility is already in your pocket. We just needed to add some inexpensive mobility to it.

Dan Morrill decided to take the Garduino system that he built a step further, and created a remote control that runs on an Android phone and talks to the Arduino over Bluetooth:

In practice, it takes your "Serial.print" output from an Arduino program and makes it available over Bluetooth to a PC..... or a phone. Android, meanwhile, added an API for Bluetooth RFCOMM in version 2.0. My wife got me a BlueSMiRF for my birthday, and it was off to the races.

I rewrote the Arduino code into a simple finite state machine, and added the ability to accept commands over serial. It's a very simple project, so there are only 2 commands: reset, and set current time. I encountered some interesting open-source related issues in doing this, but that's another post.

I then wrote a spiffy little Android app that pairs up to the BlueSMiRF, reads the state dumped from the Arduino every 3 seconds, and then makes a pretty little Android UI. It shows me a Sun, Moon, or Clock depending on which state the Arduino is in (daytime, nighttime, or waiting for clock data), and reports the other status fields like light intensity and status.

Garduino Redux

Source code for Arduinos and Android devices

Remember L.A. Lights? Looks like they're all grown up, as Rodarte uses LED shoes in their Fall 2010 collection. [via Fashioning Technology]

Although this is still a work in progress, I think it's great! All you need is an Arudino, a few buttons, and an 8x8 LED matrix to make you own simplified version of this arcade classic. What's next Halo? Let's hope so! More information, including the Arduino code, can be found in the Vimeo description.

This is a game project for S10-05833 - Gadgets, Sensors, and Activity Recognition in HCI taught by Scott Hudson at Carnegie Mellon University. I created a simple version of Super Mario Bros using an 8x8 LED matrix (one color), an Arduino Nano, two buttons for the input (forward and jump), and a piezo sensor hooked to a separate Arduino for the theme song.

In the Maker Shed:


The Maker Shed has everything you need to get started with Arduino

Tokyo/Glow is an absolutely gorgeous short film, written and directed by Jonathan Bensimon, about the little glowing guy from a cross-walk sign who jumps down from the sign, at night, and wanders around Tokyo gawking at all the lights. I don't think there are any CG effects. The film's amazing look was achieved by combining a real actor in a custom glow-suit with a bunch of photographic hi-jinks: stop-motion, time-lapse, long exposure...did I miss anything?

The Association of Professional Model Makers (APMM) 2010 conference, "Revolutions in Model Making - Creating the Future Faster," will be held on March 26-29, 2010 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, Cambridge, MA.

The conference's keynote speaker is Neil Gershenfeld, Director of MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and author of FAB: The Coming Revolution on Your Desktop -- From Personal Computers to Personal Fabrication. Saturday and Sunday will feature workshops on the latest model-making materials, techniques, tools, and resources, as well as career advice. Friday and Monday include tours of Boston-area model facilities at DEKA, Continuum, BOSE, Rhode Island School of Design, Hasbro, Harvard Graduate School of Design, Boston City Model, and MIT.

The student model-making competition has a $500 first prize and the winner's school will receive a RepRap machine that will be built at the conference. Entry categories are: architectural, entertainment, exhibit, product design...working prototypes & engineering models, transportation, virtual/non-traditional, and open category (doesn't fit the other categories). No cost to enter, but you must be a student member of the APMM (either on your own or through your School APMM membership) or become a student member for $25.00/year.

Revolutions in Model Making - Creating the Future Faster
March 26-29, 2010
The Association of Professional Model Makers
Hyatt Regency Hotel, Cambridge, MA

Spotted in the MAKE Flickr pool:

Flickr user zeni666 made this neat visualizer using an Arduino, oscilloscope, and homemade resistor ladder. Here's what the setup looks like:

Rachel @ CRAFT points us to this drawer set with graduated boxes for proper and easy hardware storage, what a neat idea!

Spring is in the air! The snow is melting, the birds are chirping, and we're looking to do some cleaning in our warehouse. What does that mean for you? Well, for starters, we have a bunch of products on sale in the Maker Shed. We'll even throw in free shipping on orders over $125! Just use the code "CLEARME" at checkout.

Build your dream, then make it move! Lego Mindstorms NXT 2.0 is the latest version of the robotic building set that launched First Lego League and inspired thousands of kids. People have used Mindstorms to make everything from robotic animals to Rubik's cube solvers.

Today, in association with The Lego Group, we're giving away a NXT set! All you have to do is leave a comment on our Facebook fan page. Simply find the post on Facebook corresponding to this one, and leave a comment describing a real or theoretical project you'd like to make with the set. We'll choose a random commenter to get the prize. The contest ends noon PST tomorrow. Good luck, and our thanks to Lego for their generosity!

WHAT? Un-freaking-believable! Energizer battery charger contains backdoor

The United States Computer Emergency Response Team (US-CERT) has warned that the software included in the Energizer DUO USB battery charger contains a backdoor that allows unauthorized remote system access. In an advisory, the US-CERT warned that he installer for the Energizer DUO software places the file UsbCharger.dll in the application’s directory and Arucer.dll in the Windows system32 directory. An attacker is able to remotely control a system, including the ability to list directories, send and receive files, and execute programs. The backdoor operates with the privileges of the logged-on user.

When considering a battery charger, if there's an open source one, choose it - and avoid the one that comes with software for no good reason, otherwise this could happen... MAKE stocks the MintyBoost, and while that charges devices (not batteries) - it's open source, does not require software, will not trojan your computer.

Beeple posted this video analyzing/documenting/presenting a beyond-awesome computer-generated rhythm machine I so deeply wish was real. Note to self - must figure how to construct laser capable of creating laser sound … anyone? [via CDM]

From the pages of MAKE: Drumbot Activate! MAKE: 15: Music, Page 60. Subscribers--read this article now in your digital edition!

The upcoming mission of the space shuttle will focus heavily on robotics and NASA is using that opportunity to bring additional educational outreach to teachers and students. In an education briefing today, NASA detailed some of the resources and events related to STS-131. The robotics section of the NASA web site includes lesson plans, multimedia, information about robotics competitions, and career profiles of ways students can use math, science and engineering in various robotics jobs. STS-131 Mission Specialist, Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger, is a teacher-turned-astronaut and will be recording an educational video about the space shuttle and space station robotics operations while on-orbit and crew members will participate in two live educational downlinked events during the mission. You can follow the STS-131 mission on the NASA web site and check the NASA TV schedule for all televised mission events.

Spotted in the MAKE Forums:

Liam built this impressive robot, then used it to demonstrate the difference between proportional and PID control. The robot is designed to stay a certain distance from an object, and uses two Sharp IR distance sensors to track it's position. The system looks like it is working great, however he is noticing some variability in the output of the distance sensors he is using- anyone have any ideas?

This is the GBOT with a PID controller using the ZX-40A microcontroller from http://www.zbasic.net. ZX-40A is based on the ATMEGA644 AVR chip. Inputs include 2 IR range sensors (GP2D12). Outputs include 2 PWM signals to the Pololu motor driver (VNH2SP30).

The GBOT maintains a setpoint distance of 10-inches from a target and maintains that distance, no matter what. The control system was originally coded with P-control only and resulted in excessive overshoot and oscillations. So then I added PID control. See video to observe P-control vs. PID control.

Had trouble with IR sensor noise. Issue mitigated with hardware and software. Hardware... added low ESR 1,000uF capacitors on VIN and VOUT of the LM2940T voltage regulator. Software includes an 8th order butterworth filter to clean IR sensor position and velocity. I did have issues with a fire, probably caused by a short or the motor driver. Not sure yet. Since isolating the regulator with the filters and after adding a large heatsink to the voltage regulator, no more fires. See picture below of "incident".

Anyone have experience or information on GP2D12 IR sensor distance variability? I have the noise reduced to 0.025" amplitude. Can this be reduced further? Thanks.

Dale Dougherty and Sherry Huss would like to invite you all to a Maker Faire Detroit - Community Planning Meeting, Wednesday, March 10, 2010, 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM. The meeting will be held at the Main Branch Detroit Public Library, 5201 Woodward Ave., Detroit, MI.

In addition to providing updates on the event, the goal of the meeting is to continue to generate ideas, form working groups, and continue to connect with people and organizations that would be interested in bringing Maker Faire to Detroit.

If there are others that you know would like to get involved, please feel free to invite them. This event is open to the public and we'd love to connect with people, groups, and organizations that should be involved with Maker Faire.

If you've attended a Maker Faire Community Meeting in the past, and want to talk about specifics of your curated area, we'll have our Maker Faire team onsite to work with you. Otherwise, we look forward to receiving your submission to the Maker Faire Detroit "Call for Makers" which will go live on March 15th, 2010 at www.makerfaire.com

For more info, see the event page on Socializr.

Stewart McCullough sent us this stop-motion music video he did for some friends, The Bran Flakes. He used (and recommends) Dragon Stop Motion software. He says it's "very well done... stable, with a good user interface, and lots of good features specifically for doing any kind of stop-motion animation." It costs $275.

The Bran Flakes
Dragon Stop Motion

In response to our DIY Movie Making theme, Derek "Deek" Diedricksen sent us this first episode of Tiny Yellow Houses, a series he's doing on backyard shackitecture, this one featuring his "Hickshaw," a movable small structure designed to be used as a backyard hang-out space/tiny office or festival sleeping space.

Derek also has a self-published, hand-drawn book of his wacky, whimsical backyard structures, called Humble Homes... You can order it on his blog, Relax Shacks.

More pics from the book after the jump.

I've had this long-standing concept for a theme restaurant where everything--tables, chairs, utensils, food, condiment dispensers--is like 30% bigger than normal. The idea is to make you feel like a kid again. We'd call it "Tiny's." (And yes, we're still seeking investors. Also waitstaff suffering from gigantism.) Look for one soon in a strip-mall near you. Believe me, you won't be able to miss it.

In the meantime, if you just can't wait for the experience, you could always start filling up your house with great big versions of the stuff you already have. Instructables has just posted a cool round-up of tutorials on how to do just that. Shown uppermost is user Tetranitrate's giant match. And yes, as the middle photo shows, it does (or did) actually work. At bottom, last but in no sense least, there's user indymogul's giant sandwich, which I think was part of a Halloween costume or something. But who cares? Giant sandwich!

Related:

• Claes Oldenburg is a famous Swedish sculptor, associated with the Pop Art movement, who made great big versions of stuff as sculpture.
• GreatBigStuff.com is an online store that only sells...well, you can guess, can't you?

Hackyhack is a fun project by Dustin Jessen and Chanika Remest that packs an Arduino mini, an LED, a speaker and a piezo knock sensor into a hacky-sack ball. The LED flashes and the speaker emits a sound with every kick, and thirty successful kicks causes a song to be played.

More:

• HOW TO - Make your own hacky sack / footbag

Guilherme Martins wanted a simple Arduino-compatible board that he could use as a robotics platform, so he designed one. Called the Motoruino, he took a standard Arduino board and added an H-Bridge chip so that it can control two motors directly. Of course, you could certainly get the same functionality using an add-on board such as the MotorShield (or even by making your own on a breadboard). If you know you are going to be making a robot, though, I can certainly see that having everything together on a single piece would help make your project smaller and more reliable.

He is working on some final tweaks, and plans to release the project under the Creative Commons license. Cool stuff! [via Lets Make Robots]

In the Maker Shed:

MotorShield for Arduino Kit

Free wall chart! Designing with Amplifiers Quick Reference Wall Chart @ Analog Devices... get the poster / wall chart here! (or PDF). Mine arrived today!

Julia Tsao's Curious Displays thesis project proposes swarms of half-inch pixelbots, which could form into a TV or perform other robotic tasks.

Each block operates independently as a self-contained unit, and has full mobility, allowing movement across any physical surface. The blocks operate independently of one another, but are aware of the position and role relative to the rest of the system. With this awareness, the blocks are able to coordinate with the other blocks to reconfigure their positioning to form larger display surfaces and forms depending on purpose and function. In this way, the blocks become a physical embodiment of digital media, and act as a vehicle for the physical manifestation of what typically exists only in the virtual space of the screen.

Julia even provides a prototype remote control, made improbably gigantic by such buttons as NEEDY, MELANCHOLY and ZEN which would activate pre-pogrammed pixelbot behaviors. Part of the project even includes simulated instructions for dealing with rogue pixels that are hiding under the couch! [via Fast Company]

Have you ever wondered what exactly is involved in building a working, radio-controlled R2-D2 robot replica? This vid documents the two-year process of Victor Franco, of Southern California, and his friends building an R2, mainly from scratch-built parts of varying materials, including wood, styrene, resin, and aluminum. He also used some parts provided by members of the R2 Builders Club. Nice work! [Thanks to Chris James and Michelle Iva Cook Hlubinka!]

Victor Franco's Blog

More:

• Building clubs for your favorite movie and TV robots
• R2-D2 builders at WonderCon
• MAKE Audio: DIY R2-D2!

Mirko Faienza documented a tiny, amazing world in his father’s front garden.

via Neatorama

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The official trailer for Tron: Legacy, scheduled for release in December 2010.

Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund), the tech-savvy 27-year-old son of Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), looks into his fathers disappearance and finds himself pulled into the digital world of Tron where his father has been living for 25 years. Along with Kevins loyal confidant Qora (Olivia Wilde), father and son embark on a life-and-death journey of escape across a visually-stunning cyber universe that has become far more advanced and exceedingly dangerous.

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poster by Jeff Kleinsmith

The 8th annual Emerald City ComiCon (ECCC), the largest comic book and pop culture convention in the Pacific Northwest, takes place March 13th & 14th at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle.

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San Francisco’s The Morning Benders newest album, “The Big Echo”, is out now. The band is streaming The Big Echo in it’s entirety today only (3/9/10).

Check out this beautiful video of a live “Wall of Sound” style recording of “Excuses”. You can read more about the video, along with an open letter to Phil Spector, on Yours Truly.

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photos by Eric Harvey Brown

Eric Harvey Brown shot some wonderful photos of Sunday’s Phagwah 2010 parade in Richmond Hill, Queens, celebrating the Hindu festival of Holi.

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Academy Award Winning Movie Trailer by BriTANicK

via Ze Frank

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Mauricio Balvanera put together a really great video from last weekend’s Urban Iditarod 2010 in San Francisco. He shot it at 60fps on a Canon 7D.

The music in the video is “Pursuit Of Happiness” by Kid Cudi.

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photos by Scott Beale

The Street Sweets and Rickshaw Dumpling trucks spotted last week in the Upper West Side doing their thing in front of the Fairway Market.

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- Hi-Fructose & Gallery 1988 Present: Bitters and Sweets

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- Bush Street Renamed Obama Street in San Francisco

Cyriak creates some of the most bizarre animation out there, for example his latest video “Cycles”.

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- Meow Mix Cat Music Video by Cyriak

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- Tron Light Cycles Scene Recreated Using Cardboard

At the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art yesterday, I came across a series of clever artist-themed desserts offered at the SFMOMA’s Rooftop Coffee Bar. There were many on offer, but these three were my favorites: Mondrian Cake, Richard Serra Cookies, and Jeff Koons White Hot Chocolate. Delicious and brilliant!

photos by Telstar Logistics

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katamaran78 created “Galactica: Sabotage”, a remake the music video for “Sabotage” by Beastie Boys using footage from Battlestar Galactica.

Here’s a side-by-side comparison of the edit.

via Matthew Williams

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photo by Scott Meinzer

Scott Meinzer shot a beautiful HDR photo of a rainbow over San Francisco after yesterday’s rain and hail.

via Ryan King

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Cafe Grumpy photo by Scott Beale

Over the years I’ve noticed how the coffee situation in New York City has been steadily improving. Not long ago it was all Starbucks and Duncan Donuts, but that’s no longer the case. Oliver Strand of The New York Times takes a look at the best places to find good coffee in NYC, including a super handy interactive map.

photo by Scott Beale

The article mentions how San Francisco’s Four Barrel Coffee will be roasting in NYC soon. In the last year Oakland’s Blue Bottle opened a cafe in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and Portland’s Stumptown Coffee opened a cafe at the Ace Hotel in Manhattan, along with a roastery in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

via Buzz Andersen

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Interstellar travel is impossible - very interesting!

Captain Kirk might want to avoid taking the starship Enterprise to warp speed, unless he's ready to shrug off interstellar hydrogen atoms that would deliver a lethal radiation blast to both ship and crew.

There are just two hydrogen atoms per cubic centimeter on average in space, which poses no threat to spaceships traveling at low speeds. But those same lone atoms would transform into deadly galactic space mines for a spaceship that runs into them at near-light speed, according to calculations based on Einstein's special theory of relativity.

The original crew of "Star Trek" featured as unfortunate examples at a presentation by William Edelstein, a physicist at Johns Hopkins University, at the American Physical Society conference in Washington, D.C. on Feb. 13. The physicist showed a video clip of Kirk telling engineer Scotty to go to warp speed.

"Well, they're all dead," Edelstein recalled saying. His words caused a stir among the audience.

Edelstein's personal interest in this thought experiment began 20 years ago, when his son Arthur asked him if there was friction in space. The father responded that yes, there would be hydrogen bumping off a spaceship. But he soon realized that the stray atoms of hydrogen gas would actually go right through the ship traveling close to light speed, and irradiate both crew and electronics in the process.

South Korean researchers Tuesday launched an environmentally friendly public transport system using a "recharging road" -- with a vehicle sucking power magnetically from buried electric strips. The Online Electric Vehicle , towing three buses, went into service at an amusement park in southern Seoul. If the prototype proves successful, there are plans to try it out on a bus route in the capital.

In short, accountability turned into a nightmare for American schools, producing graduates who were drilled regularly on the basic skills but were often ignorant about almost everything else. Colleges continued to complain about the poor preparation of entering students, who not only had meager knowledge of the world but still required remediation in basic skills. This was not my vision of good education.

On our present course, we are...

A new iPhone app makes productivity fun and fun productive.

An open letter to the next generation of designers, part 1.

Reserachers at the Carnegie Institution used trade data from 2004 to create a model of the global flow of products in 113 countries and regions. They then associated those products with carbon emissions to determine which countries are net "importers" of emissions and which are net "exporters." "Just like the electricity that you use in your home probably causes CO2 emissions at a coal-burning power plant somewhere else, we found that the products imported by the developed countries of western Europe, Japan, and the United States cause substantial emissions in other countries, especially China," said the study's lead author Steven Davis of Carnegie, in a statement.

These double-sided clips from Calumet are perfect for controlling light within small-scale or tabletop photography setups. The sprung clips rotate on the steel U that connects them, so they’re easily manipulated to stand on their own, with one clip acting as a foot while the other clasps the reflector. They're sized to hold small homemade reflectors (Mylar glued to cardboard is one of my favorites, see below) in order to bounce light precisely where you need it on your miniature set. They can be used with something like a small piece of black foamcore to block light (flag), as well.

These little clips are among my most valuable tools for food photography; my ideal setup is a single large light source (often a window) and a bunch of 3"x3" reflectors on these clips to redirect the light within the scene (see below).

They’re superb for shooting jewelry, Lego constructions, anything small, putting highlights exactly where you want them or just bouncing bits of light to illuminate your subject.

Calumet Multiclip
$10
$9 (3 or more)

Available from Calumet Photo

Photo © Kadir van Lohuizen / NOOR: Nelvis Clerge sits on the rubble that was his family's home in Port-au-Prince. Nelvis, a 55-year old construction worker, built the house with his own hands 25 years ago. The Clerge family is one of many struggling to survive in post-emergency Haiti with little assistance.

This image is part of a larger slideshow on survivors of the Haiti quake, and the work of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières in Haiti. MSF: Facebook, Twitter-USA, Twitter-UK. (thanks, Julie Whitaker)

Different from medical-grade silicone, the substance used in the botched procedures was believed to be a diluted version of nonmedical-grade silicone.

"The same stuff you use to put caulk around the bathtub," said Steven M. Marcus, executive and medical director of the New Jersey Poison Information and Education System, who learned about the bizarre procedures through a committee he sits on that monitors outbreaks in the metropolitan area.

"What a tragedy," said Gregory Borah, chief of plastic surgery at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick. Using over-the-counter silicone can cause abscesses that he said resemble "a big zit"...

A plastic surgeon doing buttocks augmentation would make an incision to develop a pocket underneath the muscle and shape the buttocks with inert medical-grade silicone, Borah said. He noted it is a relatively uncommon procedure in most practices and that he has done only two in his 24-year career. By the time he tells patients of the potential risks — from anesthesia, scarring and silicone shifting when patients sit down — they often change their minds.

Susannah Breslin writes, "Apparently, there's an entire phenomenon of young women videotaping themselves talking to the internet as they show off the latest cache of goods they scored at the mall. Do not underestimate the haul vloggers. They are fascinating." More on this by Susannah at True/Slant, and one such specimen is above. What-so-ever.

Karen O'Leary creates hand-cut city maps from paper. She just finished Paris, and it is shown above. More here, and her Flickr stream is here.

Warning: This may shock you if you love dogs and cats. In this video report, CNN's Emily Chang goes to a dog and cat meat market in Guanghzhou, China. There, dogs and cats are kept in cages and sold to restaurants and street vendors that specialize in things like cat stew and frozen dog leg. The Chinese government has taken the first steps in banning the consumption of dog and cat meat, but this report says it may take a decade for actual changes to be implemented.

The idea that coercive interrogation works rests on an untested and largely unsupported framework, says Shane O'Mara, director of the Institute of Neuroscience at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. On the face of it, the coercive model for interrogation seems like common sense: there is information that the interrogator wants to know and the subject holds but doesn't want to give up. The interrogator applies some pressure to break down the defences put up by the subject, who then spills the desired information. "You see this model repeatedly in movies and TV series such as 24," says O'Mara.

Whether it really works like that is questionable, however. "Everything we know shows that the ability to accurately retrieve information is severely impaired under conditions of extreme stress," O'Mara says. Studies on soldiers, for instance, have shown that manipulating sleep, food and temperature produces severe effects on memory, even when people are willing to give up information.

In a recent paper, O'Mara outlined the problem (Trends in Cognitive Sciences, vol 13, p 497). Both torture and CIDT flood the brain with stress hormones such as cortisol and the catecholamines, with potentially profound effects. Three regions are especially affected: the hippocampus, which is important in retrieving long-term memories; the amygdala, which forms part of the fear network; and the frontal lobes. Disturbances of these regions are likely to kick in during coercive interrogation, particularly if such questioning continues for weeks or months.

In addition, prolonged stress could also lead to the creation of false memories based on information and supposed facts presented by the interrogator. This phenomenon, known as confabulation in psychiatric jargon, is also found in people with frontal lobe disorders. "These people are not consciously making stuff up or trying to lie," says O'Mara. "But they have difficulty discriminating between genuine memories and those that don't bear any relationship to events they have experienced. Though the occurrence of confabulation in torture victims is more speculative, it's a marked possibility."

Although, it is unknown what the protrusion is on Mrs Zhang's head, it resembles a cutaneous horn.

This is a funnel-shaped growth and although most are only a few millimetres in length, some can extend a number of inches from the skin.

Cutaneous horns are made up of compacted keratin, which is the same protein we have in our hair and nails, and forms horns, wool and feathers in animals.

They usually develop in fair-skinned elderly adults who have a history of significant sun exposure but it is extremely unusual to see it form protrusions of this size.

The growths are most common in elderly people, aged between 60 and the mid-70s. They can sometimes be cancerous but more than half of cases are benign.

PPC Cement Laptop Bag - OPC (via Wired)

Lawrence Downes of The New York Times says: "I was just in Haiti reporting on things there and found amazing makers: boys who make kites. Even in refugee camps, where there’s only tiniest scraps of stuff: plastic, sticks, thread."

The kites are beautiful: some have layers of black and clear plastic forming diamonds and stars. Some have decorative edges, the plastic razor-sliced into piñata fringe. But they work, catching the breeze and jack-rabbiting into the smoky air. Small kites are notoriously hard to fly, but these are perfectly engineered. A boy I met in a camp down the block from the ruins of the Catholic cathedral in Port-au-Prince pointed to the sky. Blinking into the sun, I took forever to find his kite: a darting black dot far above the shattered steeples.

Santa Monica sushi restaurant The Hump is reported to have been caught selling illegal whale meat to its customers. Who went after them with hidden cameras? The guys behind the dolphin slaughter documentary The Cove.

Image above: Ric O'Barry, right after The Cove won an oscar, during the Academy Awards. BB pal Ehrich Blackhound emailed in the image and says, "I love it when winners hijack the broadcast, and for a txting campaign!"

His speech, after the jump.

Ric O'Barry:

Winning the Oscar is an amazing honor, and it does have a real impact in Japan. But so few people have seen this film, and let's be honest, with the exception of the biggest stars, most people don't listen to the speeches. I wanted people watching to know that they can take action to help end this terrible slaughter. People who text in will immediately get our petition to the Japanese Ambassador to the US, Japan's Prime Minister, President Obama, and Vice President Biden. They can sign right there from their phone. We'll also send them videos they can share and updates on the campaign.

(via LA Eater via T.Bias)

Image (large size): One of many vintage ads from old issues of Wired Magazine at wiredreread.com, a site created by Theis Søndergaard. This one for an AT&T "strap-on telephone" appeared in 1995. Be sure to use your fancy new 28.8 modem when you call up that website on the internet.

The Survival Seed Bank is advertising on Glenn Beck's television show. They offer "survival seeds" for growing your own "crisis garden" amid "emerging totalitarianism."

As Media Matters points out, the brand identity meshes well with the host's apocalyptic visions of the future. "More valuable than silver or gold in a real meltdown," the website reads.

They may quote WorldNetDaily as a news source, fine, but I really like the sound of the heirloom varieties they offer: Jacob's Cattle Bean, Yellow Dent Corn, and non-hybrid varieties of tomato and leafy greens. I'd eat that!

"You'll have confidence knowing that you and your family will be able to eat if the Insiders trigger some huge meltdown," reads the promotional copy. Perhaps (and who are these "Insiders?"), but I'm not convinced $149 is such a great deal for a couple dozen packets of seeds and a little plant food, even if it's enough for "a full acre Crisis Garden." But hey, when the jackbooted Obama-thugs destroy all the grocery stores with their black helicopters, it does look like we may be going extreme vegan locavore for a while.

Make sure to listen to the audio testimonials from happy customers. (via Baratunde)

(Years later the internet would teach me that the six dollar plastic gun I bought on Canal street in NYC and cannibalized for the grip was created by Edison Giacattoli, a legendary toy gun designer)

I made a crazy accurate scratch-built when I was 30, from resin and bondo. I had great picture reference but shitty size reference, it was 20% too small. Fuck!

I even had it chrome plated at one point and I weathered it:

In 2006, the screen-used original surfaced after 25 some-odd years and sold at auction last year for $256,000.00. Supposedly to Paul Allen [That myth has been busted -- Mark]:

This is the final iteration:

It's 95% finished. My hand-built baby. About 30-40 hours of labor spread out over (at least) 6 years. An original Steyr-Mannlicher .222 target rifle receiver and magazine and a Charter Arms Bulldog .44, both demilled and gunsmithed by me (working with hardened steel -- FUN!) with custom machined aluminum and steel parts (barrel, grip, butt) and made as close as possible, in every respect, to the original. Painstaking.

That is all I have to say on the subject (probably not). I can't even describe how good it feels to hold it in my hand.

[Click thumbnails below for enlargements]

A delightful invention from Morten Skogly:

"How about bathroom scale that takes a picture of you, from the worst and least flattering angle, and uploads it straight to the web through Twitter and twitpic? Yes, I know, it's a horrible idea! Which means it simply HAS to be made. So I did, or at least a working prototype!"

Wednesday March 10 is Tibetan Independence Day—and this year will also mark His Holiness the Dalai Lama's 75th birthday. In honor of both, Shepard Fairey collaborated with photographer Don Farber on this limited-edition, signed and numbered 18"x14" print, which goes on sale at this link Wednesday, March 10, at noon Eastern/9am Pacific. Net proceeds divided between Tibet House and LA Friends of Tibet. (thanks, Christal / Tibet Connection Radio)

If you're an epochal historical figure you are in some sense going to be all things to all people, and it stands to reason that some of those people will be painters, and of those, some quotient will be bad painters. Which is what makes badpaintingsofbarackobama.com not just a hoot but culturally inevitable. It's ultra-minimalist, as online galleries go -- just a bad painting of Obama per page, with a neat little drop shadow added to give the images an extra shot of hilarious self-importance. Some of them actually aren't bad (at least not to my untrained eye -- I don't know a lot about bad painting, but I know it when I see it); some are either goofy (like this one of Obama looking like Mr. Roarke from "Fantasy Island") or disturbing (like this one of Obama looking like The Rock). Some of them are actually sort of moving. Taken individually they're easy to dismiss. But click through the site for a while and something unexpected happens: Your image of Obama begins to lift and separate from the mire and chatter of the 24-hour news cycle, and you begin to see him again as (perhaps) you once did -- the repository of a whole lot of different, and different-looking, hopes.

And yes, this entire thing was predicted by David Byrne in 1988 in the song "(Nothing But) Flowers" on the final Talking Heads album Naked.

Operating on a scale never before attempted in this country, the city would demolish houses in some of the most desolate sections of Detroit and move residents into stronger neighborhoods. Roughly a quarter of the 139-square-mile city could go from urban to semi-rural.

Near downtown, fruit trees and vegetable farms would replace neighborhoods that are an eerie landscape of empty buildings and vacant lots. Suburban commuters heading into the city center might pass through what looks like the countryside to get there. Surviving neighborhoods in the birthplace of the auto industry would become pockets in expanses of green.

Detroit looks at downsizing to save city (Thanks, Rigel!)

(Image: Garden grows, a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike image from Payton Chung's photostream)

Many images here, all from his 2010 collection and released today. The iconic fashion designer's work incorporated fantasy and futurist themes familiar to Boing Boing readers. He died earlier this year.

I like that they've color-coded for "low-stress," "benefit to society" and "satisfaction." However, on these three counts, I'm unsurprised to see that "science fiction writer" didn't make the cut. When I was 17, the school guidance counsellor got in some software that would help you figure out what career to set your sights on. I completed its questionnaire and hit return, and an instant later was advised to become a "geriatric nutritionist" (that is, someone who prepares meals in an old folks' home). Even today, I sometimes feel like I missed my calling. ("Science fiction writer" wasn't on that list either).

Best Jobs in America (Thanks, Paul!)

Raj Panikkar sez, "We're screening a film called 'At Home By Myself... With You' (directed by Kris Booth, starring Kristin Booth - no relation) at The Royal in Toronto this week. The unique thing about the film is how we raised the financing to shoot. Quite literally, we campaigned for people to contribute their loose pocket change. The strategy took off, partly through an active Facebook and Twitter presence and also frequent video blogs detailing the contributions. By the time we shot the film, we had raised $42,000 (admittedly, one person's pocket change is occasionally another's small fortune - but it did really begin with 15 cents, 43 cents, a dollar 12, etc.) One might be led to assume that with a limited budget, there'd be a matching limitation on production quality. But the film looks gorgeous (Telefilm Canada came on board at the very end to help fund a pro finish), and reviews and comments have been great. We were reviewed by all the major papers in Toronto: The Sun, NOW, The Star, The Post, etc. The film plays at The Royal for the rest of the week, and then gets its TV debut right away on TMN and Movie Central, plus a DVD release on April 6th."

Pocket Change Film (Thanks, Raj!)

(Disclosure: Raj's mother, Bev, taught me to read)

(via JWZ)

I moved to San Francisco in 1999, and remember the feverish absurdity of it all -- and how hard it was not to feel like all these people must know something if they were pouring all this money and energy into all the odd and improbable ideas (a recurring theme I remember was people explaining how they were going to build shopping malls for the web, which, I guess, is basically what Amazon's Z-shops are).

10 Years After: A Look Back at the Dotcom Boom and Bust