Saturday, March 26, 2005

Open Source Hardware

Neuros Audio is a geekware (mp3 players, mpeg recorders) company which opens up specs of all of its products.

How on Earth isn't this more common? The same guys that hack open source are prone to hacking hardware. From that fact to finding that opening up specs may provide you with a market advantage is a very straight very short line.

Naturally, if you're Sony or Apple, opening up specs to the DSC-T33 or the iPod will just mean endless copies of those will now popup from China. On the other hand, if you're starting off a basement with half a dozen friends, OSS and OSHardware will mean a much better engineered product and a legion of supporters.
Posted by K at 13:04:44 | Permanent Link | Comments (1) |

Saturday, May 01, 2004

Gentoo Linux on the IBM Thinkpad R40

Yes, yes. I got myself a new toy ... er ... a new Laptop. It's an IBM Thinkpad R40. I'm pleasantly surprised that most of the hardware runs perfectly on Linux, something unimaginable just a couple years ago. Anyway, getting all of it to work with the geek-oriented Gentoo distro is a saga worth of reference. If you have a Thinkpad, it's probably interesting to review my steps.
Posted by K at 00:41:52 | Permanent Link | Comments (12) |

Tuesday, April 06, 2004

The iPod is (almost) Penguin-friendly

penquinWithIPod
Now that it is hackable, I might just have to get me one of these. Linux on the iPod seems have reached the stage where it practically replicates the functions of the original firmware:
Posted by K at 14:05:41 | Permanent Link | Comments (2) |

Thursday, March 18, 2004

Dating Services, Social Networks and Bluetooth

Really, this is just a cross of the trend that Manuel spotted on social networking services turning into dating services, with the social effect André already noted about bluetooth-enabled phones in bars:

in New Scientist via Eurekalert
YOU might pass the love of your life in the street and never know. But what if your cellphones had exchanged photographs and a few crucial details that suggested you were a match as soon as you were within a few metres of each other?
Posted by K at 12:56:35 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |