Year: 2008

GP3X To Be Released In October

August 28, 2008 by 9 Comments


You should be able to get your hands on your Wiz as soon as October. The Wiz, also known as the GP3X is the highly anticipated follow up to the GP2X, a handheld game system that runs linux. Sporting a 533 MHz ARM processor, 64 MB of RAM, a 2.8 inch OLED display, 5 hour battery life, and 16 GB of storage, its a heck of a deal. Where else can you get a portable with those specs, bundled with Flash player 7, DivX, Xvid, and MPEG playback for $179?

These units are supposed to be as hackable as the previous version. We’ve seen GPS and USB ports added as well as qtopia and Windows 95 run on them.

Correction: the 16GB of storage on the Engadget site is a typo. This unit comes with 1GB.

[via Engadget]

Macro Photography With An IPhone

August 28, 2008 by 4 Comments


The camera lens on the iPhone is much like any other cameraphone lens in the fact that the lens has a fixed minimum and maximum focus length. If you want to get a little closer to your subject, you just might want to give [eastrain’s] macro camera mod a try.

According to [eastrain] both first and second generation iPhone cameras have a screw type focus ring that has been glued to infinity from the factory. This was probably set so that 99% of your photos were roughly in focus.

Gaining access to the camera lens requires the disassembly of your phone and will undoubtedly void any type of warranty you may have had. Once the lens is in view you will need to break the 2 glue points that hold the lens at its current position.

Using needle nose pliers you can then rotate the lens counter clockwise to increase the zoom or clockwise to decrease it. Enabling the built in camera app allows you to see in real time your changes. When you’re satisfied, just put everything back together. Of course the next step should be an externally mounted ring to allow manual zooming on the fly.

Aurora Mixer Now Available

August 28, 2008 by 9 Comments


It’s been a long time coming but that highly sought after open source mixer, the aurora224 is now available for purchase on the company’s website. The aurora mixer is a fully programmable USB mixer complete with 24 back lit knobs, 2 faders, and a single crossfader.

While the instructions on how to assemble your own mixer from scratch have been available for sometime now, many wanted a kit complete with everything needed to avoid having to source the parts themselves.

The aurora mixer is available in 2 versions, a fully assembled turn key deck and a DIY kit that requires the use of a soldering iron and the ability to follow directions.

So, if you’ve wanted to build your own aurora mixer but never knew where to start, this may be your lucky day. Don’t wait too long as you have until September 1st to get your order in.

Wifi Robot : A Hacked WRT54GL Rover

August 28, 2008 by 16 Comments

[Jon Bennett] sent us this link to his Wifi Robot. After playing with a Linksys WRT54GL router, he was inspired to build something that would utilize this embedded Linux system. Using a thrift store R/C truck, he built a wireless robot rover. This thing can be controlled over the internet, or by laptop with a range of about 500 meters.

The router has been modified to have 2 Serial ports and a 1GB SD Card. It connects to a micro controller, which could be an Arduino or AVR Butterfly. He has supplied information for both. The truck has been mostly gutted, leaving only the chassis and electronics. He had to beef up some of the truck electronics when they fried under the load. The entire unit is powered by a pair of 7.2 Volt 3800 mAh battery packs. The most important thing on the list though, is the horn. You can honk the horn while you are driving this thing around.

The site supplies tons of information including pictures of his build, videos of it in action, speed tests, schematics, software downloads, and resource links. Great job [Jon].

Security Flaw Allows Full Access To Locked IPhones

August 28, 2008 by 2 Comments

[greenmymac] on the MacRumors forums recently exposed a security flaw that allows anyone full access to a locked iPhone running firmware version 2.0.2. The flaw works by entering the emergency call menu of a locked iPhone, and double tapping the home button. This opens the iPhone’s Favorites menu, allowing anyone in your Favorites to be called. From here, an attacker has access to your SMS messages and potentially your email or Safari browser. While we are sure that Apple has a patch for this flaw on the way in the next firmware update, there is a temporary way to secure your locked iPhone. Simply enter the Settings menu on your iPhone and enter General > Home Button and select “Home” or “iPod”. Now when you double tap your home button, it will navigate to either your home screen or the iPod screen. While this fix might be annoying for some, as of right now it seems like the only way to secure your locked iPhone.

[photo: Refracted Moments™]

[via Gizmodo]

Ubiquity, A Browser Command Line

August 27, 2008 by 19 Comments

During the last day the web has been abuzz about Mozilla Labs’ Ubiquity. It’s an addon for Firefox that can help you streamline how you get things done on the web. In the example above, they show constructing an email with a map and reviews using mostly keyboard driven input. The addon is quick to install and we think you’ll find it saving you a lot of time on tasks you’d normally hit the search box for. In the popup, you can do quick Wikipedia lookups, define words, translate, perform calculations, and many other operations. You can email a page to someone by just typing three words. The best part is: anyone can write a command that will expand Ubiquity’s function. Greasemonkey helped fix broken websites and we think Ubiquity will help make interactions between sites much easier. We can’t wait to see what clever uses people come up with.