Starfish PBX Goes Public

August 31, 2009 by Mike Szczys 23 Comments

starfish_pbx_public

Starfish PBX takes the very popular Asterisk telephony platform and adds an open source, fully functional web management interface. Asterisk allows you to be your own private branch exchange; think of it as your own telephone company. You can setup extensions in your home or office, configure an intercom system, implement a hold system with music, manage voice mail, and integrate Voice over Internet Protocol. Starfish PBX, available in alpha release today, aims to make Asterisk available to a wider user base by simplifying the interface used to setup and maintain the system.

[via Digg]

Lego IPod Hacking Robot

August 30, 2009 by Zach Banks 14 Comments

800px-Nanotron-3000-farthen-1

The Linux4nano project has been working to port the Linux kernel onto the iPod Nano along with other iPods in general. Although the iPodLinux project has had luck with some older iPods, newer models protect firmware updates with encryption. One of the ways they plan on running code on the device is through a vulnerability in the notes program; it causes the processor to jump to a specific instruction and execute arbitrary code. To take advantage of this, they first need to figure out where their injected code ends up in the memory. Currently, they are testing every memory location by painstakingly loading in a bogus note and recording its effect. Each note takes about a minute to test and they have tens of thousands of addresses to check over several devices.

Continue reading “Lego IPod Hacking Robot” →

Ubuntu Developer Week

August 29, 2009 by Mike Szczys 3 Comments

ubuntu_dev_week4

Next week, August 31 through September 4, is Ubuntu Developer Week. If you’ve always wanted to help out with an open source project but didn’t know how to get into it, this is your chance. The week consists of 25 one-hour sessions held interactively through IRC and led by some of the best of the Ubuntu development team. Participate in as many or as few sessions as you want. Check out the Ubuntu Developer Week page or their fancy brochure (PDF) for more information.

Want to see what it’s all about before committing to a live session? You can view the IRC logs from the January sessions. In addition to ‘Getting Started’, you may find the ‘Packaging 101’ and ‘Launchpad Bug Tracking’ session notes interesting.

Ubuntu Repository Crash-course

August 27, 2009 by Mike Szczys 13 Comments

[blip.tv ?posts_id=2542951&dest=-1]

[Alan] has just posted an Ubuntu screencast that will take you through a crash course in the Ubuntu repositories. If you are new to Ubuntu this will give you a much better grasp on how software repositories are handled.

The different types of updates are discussed: Security updates fix bugs that cause a system vulnerability. Updates (generic) are for bug fixes that aren’t a security threat. Proposed updates are for testing before an update hits the ‘updates’ section. Finally, backports are updates from a newer version that have been ‘backported‘ so systems running older versions of Ubuntu can have the benefit of newer features and fixed bugs.

He also provides some tips on selecting package sources (main, universe, restricted, and multiverse), and choosing the fastest mirror to reduce download times. This screencast is just part one and we hope to see 3rd party repositories, personal package archives, and repository caching covered in future installments.

Fedora Rawhide Nightly Builds

August 27, 2009 by Mike Szczys 12 Comments

fedora_rawhide

The devs over at the Fedora Project are hard at work on the development version: Rawhide. They’ve just setup automated nightly builds of the liveCD which can easily be downloaded and tested on a CD, DVD, USB drive, virtual machine, or separate partition.

Rawhide will be released as Fedora 12 upon completion. With this version you have a choice of Gnome 2.28 or KDE 4.3 for your desktop. There is also improved power management, expanded support for mobile broadband, easy bug reporting, and many more new or improved features. So roll up your sleeves, download last night’s build, and help test some open source software.

[via Download Squad]

Embedded Linux Billy Bass

February 13, 2005 by Jason Striegel 4 Comments

linux billy bass
if you haven’t seen this project before, it’s well worth a look. the author shows us how to control billy from a pc104 embedded pc running linux. included is an introduction into using open source tools for creating audio transcriptions, which can then be used to make billy lip-sync to custom audio clips.

the software controls the bass via the pc’s parallel port. if you are interested in doing something like this, you might also want to check out the article we recently posted on controlling an r/c car from your parallel port.

toy hacks and controlling devices from your pc are really great topics. i’d love to see more hacks like this. make sure to send in your tips!

Continue reading “Embedded Linux Billy Bass” →

High Altitude Linux Weather Balloon

February 9, 2005 by Jason Striegel 15 Comments

weather balloon

“i found it in my cow pasture, buried in the snow. i was riding my 4 wheeler.” that’s what the postcard said when it returned to me after i sent it up with a helium balloon a couple weeks ago. it traveled roughly 100 miles.

but i digress.

james meehan’s story began quite similarly, but he decided to take his balloon fascination to a much more fascinating and hackerly level. follow the link to read about how he designed and constructed his linux powered weather balloon, complete with gps, packet radio uplink, and video camera. he says it’s the coolest thing he’s ever done. i can’t really vouch for what else he’s done, but this project is pretty darn cool.

when you’ve finished marvelling at this hack, make sure to also check out the home brew, high altitude glider we wrote about a while back. i love this high altitude mischief. if you know of similar projects, send ’em in!

Continue reading “High Altitude Linux Weather Balloon” →