In case you’ve ever wondered, “why don’t I ever run into those Hack a Day scamps at the Panera?” It’s because SonicWALL thinks we’re a “Hacking/Proxy Avoidance Systems” and the more inexplicable “Usenet News Groups.” We’ve gotten many reports from readers over the years about getting blocked by various vendors’ proxies. Do you have any trouble viewing Hack a Day from your school/work? What “service” are they using? We use ssh’s application level dynamic port forwarding to get around most systems when we’re on the road.
Author: Eliot1332 Articles
Dash Express Now Twittering
Here’s a quick hack to satiate our appetite for location aware applications. The Dash Express is a GPS unit with cellular and WiFi radios so it can do two way communication. Out of the box it can download maps and traffic on the fly. A little while ago they opened up the API so the device could receive info from other web services and owners could give feedback, like reporting speed traps live. The handy hack embedded above publishes your location to Twitter; we would have preferred it hit an actual location service like Brightkite. This just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to possible applications. We wonder what the adoption rate of the Dash Express will be, since the iPhone also has a touchscreen, GPS, and of course a cellular connection.
We’ve got a Dash Express in the lab and it’s based on the OpenMoko design. What sort of tomfoolery would you like to see us do with it? What do you think the killer app for the Dash Express will be?
[via Gizmodo]
Eee PC 901 Teardown
The folks from bit-tech have done us a great service by tearing open the Eee PC 901. Under the keyboard is a large metal plate that acts as the processor’s heat sink. The 4GB SSD card is not soldered to the board this time around. There is some empty space labeled IDE3 and solder points that say 3GCard, which definitely deserve further investigation. The oddest thing they found was a button with no indication to its purpose. It looks like a good machine and we hope to see more Eee PC hacks in the future.
[via Engadget]
Mozilla’s First Public Release
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZTJbsUcdeU&hl=en&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999]
In honor of Firefox 3.0 download day, Waxy.org has posted the full Code Rush documentary. It spans March ’98 to April ’99, as the Mozilla team publishes the first source code and then the eventual AOL acquisition of Netscape. Embedded above is a short clip of [Jamie Zawinski] pushing the code live at 10AM on March 31, 1998. The hour documentary is well worth watching.
If you’re unsure about moving from FF2 to 3, MultiFireFox still works perfectly fine with the new release.
Boxee Social Media Center Public Alpha
Boxee is the latest piece of software to enter the home theater PC space. It’s recently become available as a public alpha. The first build is only for OSX 10.5, but Ubuntu is coming. Built on the XBMC code base-they even hosted the XBMC developer con last weekend-it has the same goal of letting you navigate and watch/listen to all of your media from your using just a remote. There’s more than just that though.
Get Firefox 3 Early
It’s five hours till the official release of Firefox 3. We know your hands are sweating in anticipation, waiting to click that download link and contribute to the greatest World Record known to man… What? You don’t want your browser to have all the notoriety afforded to fat twins? Well then, let’s just go grab the file now since they’re already on the mirrors.
First, pick out a mirror from the official list. Navigate to the the directory of the Firefox 3.0 release: /pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/3.0/ You’ll be greeted by a message that says, “We’re not quite ready yet!” and that “Downloading them directly can harm our ability to distribute Firefox efficiently.” Also, you won’t be in the world record count. Think about that, jerk. All releases are named using a consistent pattern. Looking at an earlier release you can determine that the Mac version of 3.0 will be named: Firefox 3.0.dmg Add on the OS and language directories and it will look like this: /pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/3.0/mac/en-US/Firefox%203.0.dmg
You can find out more about the new release by reading Dria’s Field Guide to Firefox 3.
LA SIGGRAPH Maker Night
We coaxed our friends at Mahalo Daily into coming along with us to LA SIGGRAPH’s Maker Night. There were a handful of interesting projects there. [Univac] was showing a circuit bent Teletubby and his CellularRecombomat. [Brett Doar] brought his Bronco Table. Tired of engineers building items that made life easier, he decided to make something that made life more difficult. The table uses a piezo to detect the sound of something being set on top. It then starts twitching and bucking to shake the item free. The motors look like they’re salvaged window motors. Finally, we talked to [Mark Frauenfelder] from BoingBoing/Make about how he got into the DIY culture.
