October 2008
2008-10-31 17:23:14
Tiny baby Digit curled up with me last night (not being a jerk at all!) as I almost-finished the book sweater. I'm always so pleased when a neckline works out (god bless EZ). Now all I have to do is...
2008-10-31 08:09:33
Good lord! A wonderful person just donated the money that will let Bethany and I both go to the Night of Writing Dangerously! WOOOOOOOOT! This is how I felt when I found out: Really. I did that. Then I realized...
2008-10-31 05:48:58
The Donor's Choose Blogger's Challenge ends today. The AVC community is in first place in the tech category with about $16,000 donated, ahead of TechCrunch by about $3300 as of 7am eastern. So we are rounding the last turn with...
2008-10-31 04:27:15
Well it looks like we got a win yesterday when the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that software and business method patents must meet a two pronged test that should serve to render many of these patents...
2008-10-31 00:03:50
Most web copy is still being written by people who aren't writers and don't have time. The good news? Anyone who touches copy can make a difference by insisting that every chunk of text on the site do something concrete.
2008-10-30 15:58:03
WRITERS WHO KNIT:This is cool. I'll be part of a reading at Knit-One-One on November 15th, with Jesse Loesberg and Peggy Vincent. I'll be reading from my recently completed book. Please come? I haven't given a reading in years, not...
2008-10-30 07:47:22
As I read through all of these third quarter letters from various fund and asset managers I am getting, I keep reading the same things. It's time to cut exposures, leave equities for now, expect 2009 earnings estimates to get...
2008-10-30 04:42:49
Last night I asked this community to join me in funding a $1,289 LCD for a needy classroom in Los Angeles. This morning I wake up and find the whole thing is funded. Wow. Thanks to everyone who contributed. If...
2008-10-29 20:42:42
No, really. I'm going. First week of December. Delta is having a sale - $161 ROUND TRIP from SFO, non-stop flight. I had been planning on going away that weekend, probably driving to Tahoe, but good god, New York will...
2008-10-29 17:06:04
We use the LCD projector in our conference room every day. I don't honestly know how we'd function without it. A young friend of mine who graduated from college last year told me that he uses an LCD connected to...
2008-10-29 09:41:05
How do hardware geeks carve pumpkins? With giant home made CNC mills, that’s how. Using the open source CNC kit from Lumenlab.com, they converted a photograph into g-code, then fed it to the machine. After about 20 minutes of pumpkin drilling, they had this beautiful jack-o’-lantern. We are definitely jealous. Keep up the good work [...]
2008-10-29 09:12:00
2008-10-29 08:47:31
[foo] sent in this amazingly well done mod to add an SNES controller to a PSP. He was contact with a request to mod a PSP for someone who had limited use of one hand. The PSP controls were too difficult for her, but miraculously, she could play an SNES controller well. The quality of [...]
2008-10-29 08:34:14
This morning on the eliptical trainer at the gym I pulled out a third quarter report for a hedge fund of funds and read it. It had some numbers in it that weren't particularly good, but were way better than...
2008-10-29 01:31:46
[tnkgrl] is back with part three of her Acer Aspire One hacking. This time she’s adding in 3G. You may look at the picture the above and think, “Cake. She just plugged the card in”. No, the Acer doesn’t ship with the mini-PCIe slot or the SIM card holder. First you have to solder a [...]
2008-10-28 19:19:36
2008-10-28 17:20:38
2008-10-28 17:16:31
For roughly $250, you too can have this sweet bit of gadgetry based off of the Arduino platform. It is open source, and has some pretty impressive specs. Sporting a rumble pack, lithium ion battery, OLED display, and space for expanson. You can buy the pieces pre assembled, or as a kit. If you get [...]
2008-10-28 15:55:27
[djsures] went crazy on his Interactive Wall-E toy. Wall-E just didn’t have enough bounce in his step, so [djsures] decided to give him an overhaul. He went through the entire robot and replaced most of the joints with servos, giving much more control and adding head tilt. All of this was wired to a microcontroller [...]
2008-10-28 15:07:15
The AM300 developer’s kit, shown in this video, has some pretty cool new features. It has the ability to show much faster animations than before, as well as having 16 bit gray scale image rendering and pen input. The animations look pretty quick, they mention this being useful for diagrams and advertisements. We just can’t [...]
2008-10-28 14:47:00
2008-10-28 10:10:12
Full disclosure - this post is a about a new service from our portfolio company Adaptive Blue. I have a vested interest in the success of Adaptive Blue and the new Glue service. What if you could join a social...
2008-10-28 09:46:30
Blinkomat, an LED matrix, turned out quite well. 240 LEDs controlled by an Atmega 16 is what we call a decent bookshelf decoration. The dimensions of 12×20 were chosen due to the fact that the microcontroller has 32 I/O lines. The LEDs are switched on and off using multiplexing. The brightness, controlled by pulse width [...]
2008-10-27 18:36:59
I really may be the very last person to see it, but I finished watching the movie Once last night. It was incredible. I don't know when I last saw a movie that made me feel like I was eating...
2008-10-27 18:20:22
Here’s a fun little suprise that showed up in a recent Flaming Lips interview. Frontman Wayne Coyne built this custom guitar rig out of a double-necked Epiphone. It has a neck from a Guitar Hero controller, which triggers a built in KORG Kaossilator touchpad synthesizer. Checkout the video interview at around 1:55 for a demo. [...]
2008-10-27 17:48:21
Equality for everyone. I want to keep this marriage license, and it's just TOO close to call right now. I just signed up to wave a sign around with a bunch of other like-minded people. Wanna join the Statewide Visibility...
2008-10-27 13:23:35
Hello, kids. It's a day off! A day with no plans in it. I've already done enough work today so that I can legitimately call it quits. At eight in the morning. I love it. (I got up early, couldn't...
2008-10-27 13:18:07
13 year old [Googfan] built this slick mini TV/Oscilloscope. The viewfinder in an old camcorder is pretty much just a small CRT TV. [Googfan] found the inputs, added some controls for v-sync and h-sync and mounted it in an enclosure. He takes the same project, and builds a projection accessory as well. The only improvement [...]
2008-10-27 11:50:50
As Brad Stone and Claire Cain Miller talked about in the New York Times piece about startups slimming down to survive, we are seeing many companies looking at their cash balances and burn rates and deciding to cut burn to...
2008-10-27 10:48:11
[alien x] has posted this peculiar hack for a PSP. He has gutted and splayed the PSP spreading its insides neatly and mounting them on a plexiglass back. Everything is easily accessible and ready to tinker with. It may not fit in your pocket, but adding mods and experimenting with ideas should be much easier [...]
2008-10-26 13:46:22
T-Mobile’s G1 was released last week and there has been at least one Android vulnerability announced already. The New York Times reported on research done by [Charlie Miller], who also helped find one of the first iPhone bugs, so we think the report is fairly credible. Last year, we saw him deliver a seminar on [...]
2008-10-26 12:49:10
With the release of the Arduino Duemilanove, Adafruit is trying to shift out some old stock Arduino Diecimila by offering 10% off. [amk] noted that the new Duemilanove is not so much an upgrade as an Arduino with a new hat. The only changes were autoselecting power and a cutable reset line. The best part [...]
2008-10-26 09:47:51
A while ago, I bought the urls fredwilson.fm and fredwilson.tv and have been sitting on them. A few weeks ago, someone called the banners that run at the bottom of this blog and my tumblog "fredwilson.fm". It made me think...
2008-10-25 16:58:12
Thoughts on European Start Ups View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: startups vc) Thanks to Andy at Betaworks for showcasing it on their blog.
2008-10-25 15:55:11
Matrixsynth pointed out a couple incredibly small optical theremins that look like they’d make for a great afternoon project. [AlexArt] first built the simple circuit on a piece of protoboard (Google translated). Knowing he could go smaller, he then built it freeform with a buzzer instead of a full size speaker. The design is based [...]
2008-10-25 14:35:23
My friend and former entrepreneur Tom Evslin's been on a tear on his blog lately. Today, he wrote a great post asking everyone to do what they can to lobby the FCC to open up the "white spaces", the frequencies...
2008-10-24 23:48:15
Wow, how quickly the wearable electronics world has slid into the gutter. They’re now resigned to watching our nations finest natural resource, the butt crack. This project by [semiotech] uses a LilyPad Arduino to monitor the exposure of the wearer’s coin slot. It detects the presence of light with a photoresistor and alerts the user [...]
2008-10-24 18:04:30
Yesterday, we featured [Andrew]’s orientation aware camera. We want to highlight another one of his projects: LED Life. It’s a 6×5 LED matrix playing Conway’s Game of Life. He used the low power MSP430 like our e-paper clock. The best part of the writeup is his explanation of how Charlieplexing works. Microcontroller GPIO pins generally [...]
2008-10-24 07:48:10
I Got My Android G1 Originally uploaded by fredwilson. I spent the day yesterday at the New Business For News Summit and played a bit with the G1 I got the day before. For those who want to know, it...
2008-10-23 05:45:30
I don't love conferences but I do love getting together with other people and talking about and working on issues. That's what we do with our firm's sessions events and that's what I am going to spend today doing The...
2008-10-22 10:03:17
Now. Now I have time to sit down and tell you about the half-marathon. Also, in this post, we will draw the winner of the socks! I have internet at home again! Hooray! I haven't even drawn the name yet....
2008-10-22 04:16:55
I saw one of the investors in our funds on the plane back from SF last week. He reminded me that "cash is king" and certainly it is. We've done an analysis of our entire portfolio, the cash balances of...
2008-10-22 03:41:33
It's the 22nd of October and you are all probably tired of me talking about Donor's Choose Bloggers Challenge all month long. You've all been very generous once again and we've raised $12,631 from 50 different donors so far this...
2008-10-21 09:42:23
Its been a while since I've done one of these posts. A lot's been going on and I find myself on the trainer thinking outloud. 1) The credit markets are thawing (see the ted spread chart on fredwilson.vc for a...
2008-10-20 04:43:42
GaryVee, a tortured Jets fan just like me, said yesterday that Britney should be sending and receiving her own tweets if she's going to be on twitter. My favorite quote from Gary's video is "when it's your team [posting], it's...
2008-10-19 15:17:18
I did it! Originally uploaded by Yarnagogo RachaelIt was soooo awesome and no blisters! But internet has been down at our house for two days so I don't know my time (around 3:30) and I haven't been able to draw...
2008-10-19 12:17:05
Say what you will about Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama, I was inspired by it. In particular, I was inspired by his talk about the need for more tolerance of different religions. This part just made me jump for...
2008-10-18 15:53:59
We asked. Our gentle readers answered. In A List Apart No. 263 we inquired how you walk the blurry line when you work from home. Here are your secrets?how to balance work and family, maintain energy and focus, get things done, and above all, how to remember the love.
2008-10-18 09:40:17
One of our favorite working positions Angie asks after looking at the last post: "Are you using a second keyboard? Do you type in your lap or just don't like the notebook's keyboard?" You can see in the above picture...
2008-10-18 09:27:31
There's a great article in the NY Times Magazine section today about Obama's quest to win the white male vote which was written by Matt Bai. In it Obama addresses the "bitter quote": ?That was my biggest boneheaded move,? Obama...
2008-10-18 06:43:32
Organize multiple style sheets to simplify the creation of environmentally appropriate visual experiences. Support older browsers while keeping your CSS hack-free. Use generated content to provide visual enhancements, and seize the power of advanced selectors to create wondrous (or amusing) effects. Part two of a series.
2008-10-17 17:20:23
Motivation to write Originally uploaded by Yarnagogo RachaelIt's five o'clock somewhere. Oh, here! It's got to be 75 degrees out here and gorgeous. I have music, writing, windchimes, wine, and Clara is chasing cheeky squirrels. All is good. My all-day...
2008-10-17 10:44:04
Thanks to all of your suggestions, I've added the Google translate widget to this blog. The widget is on the right sidebar underneath the Donors Choose badge. There's a weird conflict between google translate and google maps which generates an...
2008-10-17 03:59:47
I was reading MG Siegler's post on Twittter's organizational changes this morning and came across this comment: Yeah, it'll be interesting to see what people talk about when the elections are over. Women's fashion? Originally posted as a comment by...
2008-10-16 19:37:58
Oh, this makes my heart soar. California Teachers' Union Donates $1 million dollars to fight Prop 8. The California Teachers Assn. donated $1 million this week to defeat a ballot initiative seeking to ban same-sex marriage in California, joining the...
2008-10-16 18:03:51
I just got back online after a long day and saw that this community gave over $4000 today to Donors Choose. I was part of that, but a small part. I completed a project with a donation of about $150....
2008-10-16 06:43:01
Last year this community won the Donors Choose Bloggers Challenge with almost 100 donors in this community who collectively gave almost $20,000. Right now, thirty-three of us have given about $7400, which at current course and speed will mean we'll...
2008-10-16 05:52:16
Most of the APIs we think about are data driven. Developers can use the Facebook API to build apps that run in Facebook. Developers can use the Twitter API to build applications that leverage the twitter user base and content....
2008-10-15 13:02:34
Whatcha doing? Huh? Huh? Whatcha doing? I might have had some coffee. Maybe a bit too much, I don't know. I only know a few things this morning, and they belong in bullet form. Yep. I'm still feeling good. The...
2008-10-15 07:50:06
Our portfolio company TargetSpot, which is the leader in streaming audio monetization, has acquired Ronning Lipset Radio, the largest internet radio ad sales organization. This is a great marriage, technology plus sales, and makes TargetSpot the largest online radio ad...
2008-10-13 20:16:00
2008-10-13 19:16:25
Maker Faire Austin is happening this weekend, October 18 & 19, 2008 at the Travis County Expo Center in Austin, TX. Maker Faire is a showcase of all things DIY. You’ll see robots, sculptures, live performances, and other wonders including many of the projects we cover here every day. We enjoyed our time in San [...]
2008-10-13 18:48:34
2008-10-13 17:47:33
Wow, Caribbean Conquest Day is such a dull holiday. If it’s a holiday at all: we’re at work today and you probably are too. We decided to post what we’re working on in hopes of breaking out of our holiday slump. Pictured above are two IR illuminator boards we assembled this weekend. We bought the [...]
2008-10-13 16:57:40
Midnight Research Labs has just published a new tool. Depant will scan your network and check to see if services are using default passwords. It starts by performing an Nmap scan to discover available services on the network. It organizes these services by speed of response. Using Hydra it does brute force password checking of [...]
2008-10-13 16:16:24
http://medicalromance.blogspot.com/2008/10/ode-to-joss-by-lucy-clark-fanatic.html
Lucy Clark, a Harlequin Medical Romance author, gushes about how Joss influences her writing on this blog post.
2008-10-13 15:26:50
The Wiimote has turned out to be very versatile indeed. This video shows someone using it to control his modular synth. There is not a lot of artistic jamming going on, but explains in fair detail how to set it up. If you want to see Isadore getting down, check this out.
[thanks Louis]
[...]
2008-10-13 14:23:53
http://www.isfreepop.com/noticias/buffy/buffy-agora-na-redetv-
Brazilian Tv Channel, Rede Tv returns Buffy On Sunday 19 at 5:00 p.m.
Ok, the majority of whedonesquers wont give a damn to this news and I hate this Channel (they take off Star Trek: Enterprise in the middle of a season!) but, like nobody posted it...
2008-10-13 13:03:40
http://www.ew.com/ew/gallery/0,,20152680_24,00.html
Also see Summer Glau at no. 12 and 25 on this EW.com list!
2008-10-13 12:56:37
http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2008/10/13/terminator-tv-star-summer-glau-looks-forward-to-dancing-for-joss-whedon-in-the-serving-girl/
Find out if it will ever come to fruition.
2008-10-13 12:42:03
[Terry Porter] added an external antenna to his EeePC 900. Initially, he mounted it on the side of the unit, but found that the location caused it to no longer fit in its carrying case, and made plugging in USB or Ethernet cables very difficult. His resolution was to move the mount to the rear [...]
2008-10-13 12:21:22
Several weeks ago I sat down with Nathan Lipson, a journalist from Israel, and talked to him about the market meltdown, venture capital, and what is going on in the US economy. I blogged about it the next day and...
Chris Bowers exposes the Washington Post's "objectively wrong and quantifiably unfair" electoral map
2008-10-13 12:16:06
2008-10-13 10:45:53
3.5mm stereo connectors for headphones and microphones are almost mandatory for audio projects. X1 (left) is a simple plug with connections for the audio channels (pin 2,3), and ground (pin 1). X2 (right) has pass-through contacts (pin 2,3) that divert audio to an internal speaker when headphones aren’t connected.
Here?s a breakdown of the audio connectors [...]
2008-10-13 10:27:43
2008-10-13 10:22:00
2008-10-13 00:25:53
http://www.tvweek.com/news/2008/10/20th_team_celebrates_cable_win.php
"There's no one we have more faith in than Joss Whedon".
Episode three sounds like a killer.
2008-10-12 20:09:20
http://blogs.abc.com/healingwithlove
Dr. Sydney Heron, played by Kali, is the credited author of "Grey's Anatomy: Healing With Love".
2008-10-12 19:50:52
[stuart] wanted a more intuitive way to control his rover platform than the software solution he had been using. He settled on using a Playstation controller with an AVR to operate the rover wirelessly. He found a couple references for talking to the controller using SPI on a PIC and adapted that for his ATMega88. [...]
2008-10-12 19:08:37
While waiting for his clothes to dry, our reader [xaio] decided to poke around and see how his building’s coin laundry system worked. It turned out to be ridiculously simple. All he needed to do was jumper the cable coming from each machine and they’d run without issue. We wonder why the relay box is [...]
2008-10-12 15:33:47
http://bloglynch.blogspot.com/2008/10/finished-angelafter-fall-15.html
Brian drops some hints at what's coming in that issue.
So I would say major spoilery hints based on his comments etc.
2008-10-12 12:12:45
http://dollhousewiki.fox.com/page/Episode+1.5+Man+on+the+Street
Apparently the writer is Maurissa Tancharoen and the director is David Solomon.
2008-10-12 06:38:30
Alley Insider has posted a memo that John Borthwick, co-founder of NYC-based investor/incubator Betaworks sent to his portfolio companies. There are many gems in it so I suggest you all click on that link and read it. But here are...
2008-10-12 06:04:00
American Express is giving away $1.5mm to the winning project and $500k to the project that comes in second. This contest ends in less than 2 days. The number of projects still in the race is now five and Donors...
2008-10-12 01:51:19
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/10/12/1012philanthropy.html
An article in the Austin American-Statesman mentions some Browncoats doing some good.
2008-10-11 12:59:52
[garygadget15] in the UK has an interesting youtube page showing an electric bicycle. On his page titled, saving money the “green way” he has replaced his commuter car with one of these electric bikes. He then videos the commute with both to compare the results. The DIY electric bicycle kit he uses is made by [...]
2008-10-11 09:39:37
I've detected a bit of irritation, and even cynicism about the motives of Sequoia, Benchmark, Ron Conway, and others (including me perhaps) in the venture capital business who have been publicly and privately advising their portfolio companies and entrepreneurs everywhere...
2008-10-11 09:00:10
This came in on the tipline: [Ville 'Willek' Kyrö] wanted to build a fully passively cooled computer. That means no fans at all. He started with scrap aluminum heatsinks, ripped apart a cpu heatsink to get the copper heat pipes, and began surrounding the boards with heatsinks to form a case. Cooling down the powersupply [...]
2008-10-11 04:28:44
http://www.tvguide.com/Roush/Ask-Matt-Analyzing-20161.aspx
Buffy and Angel are mentioned in a question to Matt Roush, which argues that showrunners/ creators generally know best on the creative directions their shows should take. The question is just over half-way down the page. Possible spoilers for non-Whedon shows.
2008-10-11 02:02:14
http://www.sequentialtart.com/article.php?id=1125
Comic book writer and artist Ted Naifeh answers that all important Buffy question.
2008-10-11 01:48:52
http://www.startribune.com/entertainment/tv/30714844.html?page=2&c=y
Jason Smilovic, creator of the upcoming NBC drama 'My Own Worst Enemy', comments on the supposedly similar premises between his show and Dollhouse. Christian Slater also talks about the similarities in this interview with the futon critic.
2008-10-10 13:58:18
[mdavis19] found himself in the middle of nowhere, with no electricity, needing a strong vacuum. That happens to us all right? His solution was to hack together a gas powered monster vacuum. He found a shop vac at a yard sale and promptly discarded the motor and filter. Some minor modifications to a leaf blower [...]
2008-10-10 13:23:23
I ran from Southshore in Alameda around Bayfarm Island and the model airplane field and back. This is the view, and trust me, in person, it's stunning. T-minus nine days till the half-marathon. And I am SO stoked. I ran...
2008-10-10 10:00:15
Our friend [Jeffrey Sharkey] hacked the iTunes remote control protocol and produced his own version for Android, one of the smartphone OSes we just covered. He pored over dumped packets for a few days and wrote a client which is of course GPL’d. Besides that, he’s been busy winning the Android Developer Challenge. His app, [...]
2008-10-10 09:51:31
Absolutely fascinating. The University of Washington is developing a vocally controled mouse interface. We’ve seen vocal control of the computer before, but it is usally responding to specific commands and words to carry out tasks such as opening files. This system uses different vowels and sounds to create cursor motion. You can see the same [...]
2008-10-10 05:15:45
? My recommendation to all of you entrepreneurs out there is to get off the negative sentiment treadmill, step up, and lead. The people working for your company are likely confused, concerned, and overwhelmed with all the noise in the...
2008-10-10 04:07:27
I've always felt that Sequoia was the best venture capital firm in the business and this slide show shows exactly why that is. It's chock full of data and charts and advice. Kudos to the team at Sequoia who put...
2008-10-09 23:00:38
Drawdio, designed by [Jay Silver], is a fun, simple toy that uses the conductive nature of pencil graphite to generate different sounds. When you use the Drawdio pencil to draw or write, you also simultaneously create music. The entire kit is available for sale at Adafruit Industries, or for the more adventurous, separate components and [...]
2008-10-09 21:46:42
Gizmodo’s in-depth look at smartphone OSes provides you with the pros and cons of each, allowing you to make an educated decision, if you’re in the market for a phone that also has email, a web browser, a calendar, and a decent contacts manager. If you’re attracted to the open source Linux-based Android by Google, [...]
2008-10-09 15:21:49
My partner Albert calculated early last year that it takes about 1/10th the hardware, software, bandwidth, storage, and other expenses to build a web service compared to what it took in the 99/2000 time period. That was just as services...
2008-10-09 08:36:55
Over the past week (eight plus days actually), I've been promoting this Donors Choose Giving Page on this blog and twitter. During that period, 26 people have given a total of $6055. We are basically on a path to raise...
2008-10-08 09:54:17
I never, ever thought I'd say this, but I think I might like the editing process even more than the first-draft writing process. I love the pell-mell pace of writing fast, but this tidying up suits me. (I plan on...
2008-10-08 03:57:04
My friend Tom Watson has written a book on "peer to peer philanthropy" called CauseWired. It's not yet out but you can pre-order it at that link. Tom gave me a preview of it and I am going to blog...
2008-10-08 03:55:58
The teacher is asking for a set of classic novels, including "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain, one of my favorites. I can easily recall the thrill of reading Huck Finn for the first time. The cost is...
2008-10-07 04:40:35
Image by Getty Images via Daylife The Treasury, the Fed, and Warren Buffet have been the only buyers in this meltdown and have been largely focused on financial companies. Meanwhile the rest of the market has gone down 30% year...
2008-10-06 20:24:08
We've been training Clara to "WAIT" before eating from her food dish which we place on her pillow in the living room. She's really, really good at it, and we've been experimenting with doing different things as she's waiting --...
2008-10-06 04:54:49
My friend Howard was visiting me a few weeks ago and he said to me "free is over, I am only investing in services that customers pay for". He said "freemium is dead". I reminded him that freemium is a...
2008-10-05 07:35:27
I spent 15 years in the States and left in 2006, precisely because I saw the horrifying decline of this great nation. Don't you think, though, that before a turnaround plan you need to do a SWOT analysis? Here's a...
2008-10-05 06:17:25
I visited the New York Times today and saw this at the top of the front page: For those of you with good eyes, that's my avatar on the upper left and that top banner is something that is called...
2008-10-04 13:03:44
I just spent a lovely half-hour watching YouTube videos of the Kingston Trio. There were a lot of albums that my sisters and I listened to over and over and OVER again growing up (Tom Paxton, Hoyt Axton, Pete Seeger)...
2008-10-04 04:25:35
Here's the status of the Donors Choose blogger's challenge: We've donated almost $3,000 in the first three days of the month. If we keep giving at this rate, we'll beat the $20k we donated last year. But unlike last year,...
2008-10-03 22:45:23
When Google was little more than a napkin sketch and the first dot-com boom was not even a blip, we started a magazine for people who make websites. Celebrate A List Apart's first decade. Join Zeldman for a look back at the way we were?and why we were that way. Find out what we've done and who did it with us, peek into our process, and get a clue about what's next.
2008-10-03 20:55:37
Steven Champeon turned web development upside down, and created an instant best practice of standards-based design, when he introduced the notion of designing for content and experience instead of browsers. In part one of a series, ALA?s Gustafson refreshes us on the principles of progressive enhancement. Upcoming installments will translate the philosophy into sophisticated, future-focused design and code.
2008-10-03 18:30:54
[Erik Knutzen] and [Kelly Coyne], authors of The Urban Homestead, are really into all things green and sustainable. In their blog, Homegrown Evolution, they discuss building their own solar dehydrator using plans from the February/March 1997 issue of Home Power Magazine. The dehydrator is designed by Appalachian State University’s Appropriate Technology Program. If interested, you [...]
2008-10-03 17:20:00
2008-10-03 17:18:49
We’re always looking for people to contribute posts daily and help expand the site. We’ve added a handful of contributors in the last couple months, which you can see in our new How-tos.
This is a paid, freelancing position that requires professionalism, consistency, and reliability. We want to hear from people that are passionate about software/hardware [...]
2008-10-03 16:06:50
2008-10-03 12:50:46
[Matt Daughtrey] sent us this sweet little project he’s doing for Halloween. He’s building some animated LED eyes. He says that the whole thing is 3 individual LMDriver platforms, another project he’s working on. There isn’t any info available about that, but he does expand a little. He states that each display module uses an [...]
2008-10-03 11:35:49
It took me a while to wake up this morning. Late night, don'tchaknow. I needed more coffee than Clara was going to be able to make me, so I went to the cafe. Still here, and I actually did work,...
2008-10-03 08:50:50
2008-10-03 07:13:37
Obama?s mantra of change, since adopted also by McCain, is not enough for me. We need more than change. We need a full-blown turnaround plan and a leader capable of executing it. I?ve moved beyond the splurge because like it...
2008-10-02 18:05:29
Wondering what we did with our web server on a business card project from last week? It’s powering a giant LED graffiti wall. Animations can be user-submitted using the online designer. You can watch a live feed of user animations as well. The online interface runs on the Google App Engine for maximum scalability and [...]
2008-10-02 16:29:57
[Jacques] sent us this little project he has been working on. It is an amazingly cheap USB 2 chanel scope. The total cost of the project was around 5 Euros. It is based off of an Atmel Tiny45, has 2 analog inputs, and can supply 5 Volts to a breadboard. He has listed the bill [...]
2008-10-02 13:20:13
Helix 2.0 has been released. Helix is a collection of various tools for electronic forensics. Just like on TV, you can use this to find all kinds of information on a computer. Some of the useful tools added were Winlockpwn a tool for breaking windows security, Volitility which processes data out of the raw memory, [...]
2008-10-02 10:02:35
I've been playing at writing all morning. Can't seem to put two words together that sound like English, let alone good writing. I have a dentist appointment in an hour, so I'll make my escape soon. I hate the dentist,...
2008-10-02 08:51:31
Over the course of 10 years, [Victor Papagno] stole 19,709 pieces of equipment from the Naval Research Laboratory. He began taking stuff home in 1997 and had so much that he had to store some in a neighbors house. The report says that no secret technological information was taken. Some items listed were CDs, hard [...]
2008-10-02 07:32:52
I just hate the word "killer" in a headline. It means the author is sensationalizing the potential outcome of a new product launch. Friend Feed was going to kill Twitter, Facebook was going to kill MySpace, Google Base was going...
2008-10-01 18:30:14
We welcome the swarm of autonomous hovering robot overlords being made by students at Humboldt University. The goal of this project is to build an autonomous hovering platform that is controlled via adapted insect behavior. Navigation comes from monitoring real time inputs, such as air pressure and optical sensors, not by predefined paths and GPS [...]
2008-10-01 14:30:38
Escape From Berkeley (By Any Non-Petroleum Means Necessary) is an alternative-fueled road rally that starts October 10th and ends October 13th. The rally begins in Berkeley, California, and finishes in Las Vegas, Nevada at the Sahara. Contestants are required to use any fuel other than petroleum, and using only those fuels scavenged “for free” along [...]
2008-10-01 13:23:16
Back in August, we posted a fantastic reverse engineering game called Ruckingenur II created by [Zach Barth]. Apparently he got an overwhelmingly positive responce as well as many requests for a level editor. [Zach] decided to open this up as a contest, giving wonderful prizes and fame to the winner. Go read the rules and [...]
2008-10-01 13:08:30
Don’t be [Gabriel Meija], the criminal pictured above. He stole [Jose Caceres]‘ laptop, but didn’t realize that [Caceres] had installed a remote access program to track the activity on the laptop. Although the first few days were frustrating, as [Meija] didn’t seem to be using the laptop for anything but porn, [Caceres]‘ luck turned when [...]
2008-10-01 09:21:41
I woke this morning at3:57am, three minutes before my alarm. I woke up because of a smell. A slight smell of skunk was coming in through the window and blowing on me. Now, it wasn't a strong odor, just a...
2008-10-01 08:12:59
In a recent study, researchers were able to garnish all kinds of sensitive data from second hand mobile devices. Of the units tested, 44% contained information such as salary details, bank account information, business plans, personal medical details, personal insults, and address book data. Next time you get a used device, take a good look [...]
2008-10-01 07:30:45
[Joe L] sent in the Arduway on the tipline. It is a robot made of Arduino and Lego NXT components based on the Segway. A software library to control LEGO NXT motors and a few sensors he used is available on SourceForge. This robot does a good job of balancing itself while moving forwards and [...]
2008-10-01 07:09:04
Dave McClure runs a very cool conference called Startonomics. It's unlike anything else I've ever seen done in the conference business. Startonomics is all about instrumenting your startup business and using measurable metrics to determine how you are doing. It's...
2008-10-01 04:52:17
Last October this community here at AVC raised almost $20,000 for classroom projects in needy schools around the country. We fully funded 43 separate projects and partially funded another 7. Almost 100 different readers participated. We won the technology category...
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