Sastira writes "Jordan Bunnell has successfully modded his Macbook Air to use an internal EVDO Broadband card. In order to make everything fit, he had to sacrifice the WiFi and bluetooth cards, but considering the portable nature of the laptop, it is a small price to pay for being truly wireless." (You'll need to scroll down past the sketchy-looking top section of that page.) Sastira also links to this InsanelyMac forum thread on the mod.

TechRadar writes "A hacker has turned his OQO ultraportable into the world's smallest Mac running Leopard. 'I will warn you this project is not for the plug and play crowd but definitely do-able,' the hacker, 'TRF' says. Interesting, given the OQO was designed by ex-Apple employees." It might run Mac OS X, but one thing this OQO is not is a Mac.

timholman writes "After a series of burglaries and auto break-ins in my neighborhood, I'm thinking about adding some video security cameras to my home. To me, the object isn't just deterrence — if someone tries to break into my house or my car (parked on the street in front of my house), I'd like to provide a high-quality image of the perpetrator to the police. Inexpensive video surveillance systems, with their atrocious image quality, are nearly useless. The problem is being able to get good image quality at an affordable price. After some research, I've decided that using network cameras to FTP images to a central server over a HomePlug network is the best solution. However, good megapixel network cameras (e.g. Stardot or Axis cameras) can easily cost more than $1,000 each. Has any of you dealt with a similar situation? Is there any way to get reasonable quality (preferably open source) daytime and nighttime video surveillance equipment for home use without paying an arm and a leg? Is it better to go with a couple of expensive cameras, or a multitude of inexpensive cameras? Is paying two to three thousand dollars simply unavoidable if I want to monitor my front and back yards?"

rafaelmizrahi writes "WiiMan the Super Hero is a full action figure costume of a super hero that functions as a Nintendo WiiMote remote. Having trouble playing Wii? WiiMan to the rescue. This GarageGeeks project combines Gaming, Technology and Useless Activity to the extreme. Rafael Mizrahi, an artificial vision and experience explorer at Feng-GUI and a GarageGeeks member along with Yael Hertzog built this custom costume that acts as a fully functional Nintendo WiiMote remote with buttons, bluetooth, accelerometers, and an IR cam. BTW, last year, they built another hero, The Guitar Hero Noid, a robot built with Tal Chalozin that plays the PlayStation game Guitar Hero." (You might have better luck reaching the GarageGeeks site's Google cache.)

jeronimo989 writes "A customer of mine has a small shop and asked me to look for an electronic cash register. One of the requirements is to retrieve the sales data from the cash register in some accessible format so he can import it in the software of his choice (which happens to be OpenOffice), either by downloading the data on a Flash card, connecting a laptop via USB, or even via a direct modem connection. As far as the cash register itself is concerned, he doesn't need anything too fancy; any 'entry level' machine for small businesses is probably OK (as long as it keeps an electronic journal, of course). Which options do we have? Are there cash register manufacturers out there that allow accessing the sales data directly in an open format? Does anyone here have experience with setting up a link between a cash register and PC, preferably using free/open source solutions?"

bigwophh writes "Liquid cooling a PC has traditionally been considered an extreme solution, pursued by enthusiasts trying to squeeze every last bit of performance from their systems. In recent years, however, liquid cooling has moved toward the mainstream, as evidenced by the number of manufacturers producing entry-level, all-in-one kits. These kits are usually easy to install and operate, but at the expense of performance. Asetek's aptly named LCLC (Low Cost Liquid Cooling) may resemble other liquid cooling setups, but it offers a number of features that set it apart. For one, the LCLC is a totally sealed system that comes pre-assembled. Secondly, plastic tubing and a non-toxic, non-flammable liquid are used to overcome evaporation issues, eliminating the need to refill the system. And to further simplify the LCLC, its pump and water block are integrated into a single unit. Considering its relative simplicity, silence, and low cost, the Asetek LCLC performs quite well, besting traditional air coolers by a large margin in some tests."

A number of readers let us know about the Chaos Computer Club's latest caper: they published the fingerprint of German Secretary of the Interior Wolfgang Schäuble (link is to a Google translation of the German original). The club has been active in opposition to Germany's increasing push to use biometrics in, for example, e-passports. Someone friendly to the club's aims captured Schäuble's fingerprint from a glass he drank from at a panel discussion. The club published 4,000 copies of their magazine Die Datenschleuder including a plastic foil reproducing the minister's fingerprint — ready to glue to someone else's finger to provide a false biometric reading. The CCC has a page on their site detailing how to make such a fake fingerprint. The article says a ministry spokesman alluded to possible legal action against the club.

Pickens writes "They called it leviathan, behemoth, Big Bertha. At 12 feet wide, rising 7 feet above the cement floor and weighing an estimated 65 tons, the Columbia cyclotron, the particle accelerator built in the late 1930s by Columbia physicist John Dunning, played a crucial role in the dawn of the nuclear era. Dunning's experiments verified fission, established many of its properties, and, most significantly, demonstrated that the rare isotope Uranium 235, and not the more common U-238, was the more fissionable form of the element. 'In a week or two, they will dismantle it, and they will sell it for scrap,' says George Hamawy, Columbia University's director of radiation safety. 'This is the last chance to see it,' Hamawy added as students held a wake and contractors arrived to remove the cyclotron. 'We're going to make two-thousand-pound sections,' said one contractor before taking the cyclotron's measurements. 'We'll start slicing on Monday.'"

Chroniton writes with news of a Silicon Valley company, Luxim, that has developed a tiny, full-spectrum light bulb, based on a plasma of argon gas, that gives off as much light as a streetlight while using less power. The Tic Tac-sized bulb operates at temperatures up to 6000K and produces 140 lumens/watt, almost ten times as efficient as standard incandescent lamps, and twice the efficiency of high-end LEDs. The new bulbs also have a lifetime of 20,000 hours. There's no mention of mercury or other heavy metals, which pose a problem for compact fluorescents.

mr sanjeev notes that Computerworld is running a story about Cyber Storm II, set to run from March 11th until the 14th. The exercise will test the security of the US, Australia, the UK, New Zealand, and Canada. The organizers' goals are to test preparedness and responsiveness in relation to real-time threats. The previous Cyber Storm test identified "eight specific areas in need of improvement." We recently discussed the details of the tests themselves. From Computerworld: "Security experts said the first Cyber Storm event last year improved participants' understanding of who to call in the event of an attack, but did not identify specific vulnerabilities in the nation's computer systems. 'What they're trying to do is highlight the inefficiencies in the process,' according to Marcus Sachs, deputy director with research group SRI International's Computer Science Laboratory. 'They're not really looking for technical solutions.'"

An anonymous reader writes "Why have a key to open your front door when you can have an RFID tag implanted in your arm that will do the trick? Computerworld has a story up about the outgoing Linux Australia group president's hacked home, in which just about anything from watering the lawn, to opening his blinds, or checking the mail can be controlled through a software environment. Jonathan Oxer is an electronics and coding whiz who apparently has an RIFD tag implanted in his arm that opens his front door, and his front gate is hooked up with gigabit Ethernet — able to tell him when someone enters the property or send him a virtual email or sms to say he has real mail. Apparently the iPod Touch has just inspired him to begin linking all his little hardware hacks together into the one single, software controlled handheld touch device. I wonder if Steve Jobs ever thought the Touch would end up being used this way?"

An anonymous reader writes "MIT recently open-sourced some really cool hardware designs, including an H.264 video decoder and an OFDM transceiver, under MIT's open source license (a.k.a. the X11 license). Now, the OpenCores FAQ recommends that people use either the GPL, LGPL, or modified BSD license; they do not mention the MIT license at all. And, according to the Free Software Foundation the GPL license can be used for hardware, but they do not list the LPGL, modified BSD, or MIT licenses as suitable for non-software. Would you or your company use hardware source-released under the MIT license? What's the best license to use for releasing hardware?"

Maximum Prophet writes "An optics professor and a postgrad have developed a way to use ultra-short pulses of laser light to etch nano features into the surface of metals so that they can absorb or reflect specific wavelengths of light. This is very similar to the way that butterflies get the color in their wings."

nerdyH writes "Google's Android stack for Linux phones has been successfully hacked onto several actual hardware devices, including Linux-based Sharp Zaurus PDAs and a high-end development board. Google's preview release of Android last fall included a software emulator based on Qemu, but you can't beat real target hardware when writing applications for devices, because emulators may not accurately reflect real-world performance. Plus, it appears that Android's modern UI could really breathe some new life into lots of Linux-friendly hardware with ARMv5TE or better cores."

djmoore writes "Over at Make Magazine, watch this video of a French amateur radio operator making and testing his own vacuum tubes. It looks like he built much of his own equipment as well. The Make poster notes: 'I love the ease with which he performs these rather high-end skills (like glass forming), the gestural flourishes (like it's hand magic), and the Zelig-esque soundtrack.'"

Nathan Ramella writes "The ARCwelder project has released a technique dubbed 'Go Fighting Tabby!' which exploits an unquoted system() call through the Archos UI, providing the ability to execute arbitrary code with root access on the Archos 605 WiFi. In doing so, opening the platform up for further hacking. The Archos 605 WiFi runs embedded Linux on an ARM processor, but employs a variety of anti-hack techniques to keep users from modifying its firmware and operating system. Included is a cross-compiled sshd with configuration files to allow for passwordless ssh access to the Archos when it is connected to a WiFi connection. Bricks ahoy!"

Tmack writes "While hard-hacks with the Wiimote are somewhat old news, this particular implementation is quite interesting. Using the infrared camera on the Wiimote, pens with LEDs instead of ink, and an LCD projector, Johnny Chung Lee of Carnegie Mellon University has created software to use them as a (relatively) cheap multi-touch display. Any surface onto which you can project becomes an interactive multi-touch display, as demonstrated in the video at the link. He has the software available for download, along with some other neat projects. Lee has also documented another impressive Wiimote hack.

The Solitaire brings us a link to Datamancer, where Richard R. Nagy shows off his Steampunk Laptop. The attention to detail and the creative style, which includes a copper-plated keyboard and speakers shaped like violin f-holes, make this an impressive case mod. From Datamancer: "This may look like a Victorian music box, but inside this intricately hand-crafted wooden case lives a Hewlett-Packard ZT1000 laptop that runs both Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux. It features an elaborate display of clockworks under glass, engraved brass accents, claw feet, an antiqued copper keyboard and mouse, leather wrist pads, and customized wireless network card. The machine turns on with an antique clock-winding key by way of a custom-built ratcheting switch made from old clock parts."

Wired is running a profile of the Time Nuts, a small group of people who buy surplus precision time equipment — cesium clocks for example — on eBay and keep really accurate time, because they can. The article quotes Tom Van Baak, who has outfitted a time lab superior to those of many small countries: "If you have one clock... you are peaceful and have no worries. If you have two clocks... you start asking, 'What time is it, really?'"

ludwigvan968 writes "The ACTLab at the University of Texas at Austin is making waves with its Weird Science class. The link is to the TA's blog with documentation of some of the projects: a laser harp, a 3D environment constructed with fog and an LCD projector, and a 'water bridge' using a 50,000-volt transformer. Next semester, they're introducing a new class called 'Disruptive Technologies.'"