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Flattr me this!

Flattr

Flattr is a way to reward people for the things they do online. You can check out this intro to learn more, but basically, with some money in your Flattr account, you can monetarily give thanks. It’s pretty much the old “tip jar” idea that bloggers had about 10 years ago, but the time is probably right for Flattr to be a big player in this market.

Big you say? Well, they just decided to open the floodgates, so you no longer have to give money to get money. They are doing this (I assume) to get Flattr buttons on everything, because now anyone can start asking to be Flattr’d or, paid, as it were.

For instance, on this very blog, where I’ve been providing you posts since 1997 (and other content even longer than that) there’s a Flattr button you can click, and it’ll let you Flattr RasterWeb!. (Note that I added a donate page a while back, which has seen very little action.) I’m still not sold on putting Flattr buttons on every blog post, and am just doing the entire blog right now.

So besides this blog, you can Flattr the things I do at Thingiverse. Expect many other sites to follow. Discussion and help forums seem like a no-brainer, and any site where you might want to “like” what someone does, or thank them in some way, may fit.

Will anyone get rich from Flattr? Well, right now it looks more like a “thank you economy” type of thing. I mean, no one every got rich from a “tip jar” right? But you get that “good feeling inside” as well as a small amount of cash, which should (for many people) be an incentive to keep on keeping on.

Did I mention you can Flattr RasterWeb!?

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Arduino Education

Arduino EDU

As you probably know, I’m a big fan of the Arduino microcontroller… Why? Well, for one thing, it’s fun. I’ve always enjoyed tinkering and building things, and when I was in school I did take electronics classes, and liked them. I’ve also been programming “things” forever, and while programming can be mundane, it can also be fun.

So fun is great, but where does the learning come in? Well, the Arduino can (and should) have a place in education. In fact, the Arduino started in the education world, so to me, it makes sense to see it there.

Steve Dickie is a teacher who is incorporating the Arduino into his teachings, and you can check out some of his work at Pre-Engineering: Electronics with Micro-controllers and the Arduino Education Blog.

Besides being fun, I think the Arduino is a good choice because it’s open source hardware, supported by open source software, and it’s got a supportive community and ecosystem. I think open source should play a role in our schools for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the cost associated with many proprietary systems. I’ve seen schools implement solutions that are too costly, or over-engineered, or that get abandoned, or whatever… Open source could be a solution to some of these issues.

Steve’s also got an "Open Source Microcontroller in Education" Kickstarter project going to take his project to a higher level. The project may or may not get funded, and Steve may or may not complete the project, but either way, I’m glad to see someone promoting (and using) open source in schools.

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TenFourFox – PowerPC 4 Ever!

TenFourFox

I know all the hep cats out there have the latest Intel MacBooks to write their Ruby code on, but you would do well to remember that there are still a lot of useful PowerPC-based PowerMacs out there, being used daily for general purpose computing. These machines were the powerhouses of yesteryear at many a creative agency, and a lot of them have big drives, plenty of RAM, and are still running. They get passed down to folks who aren’t running any heavy apps like Photoshop, InDesign, or Final Cut Pro.

And dammit, I want those people to be able to browse the web in a reasonably modern fashion.

TenFourFox may be the best option now that Firefox 4 is out and has abandoned the PowerPC architecture.

TenFourFox - PowerPC 4 Ever!

Here’s some words worth reading:

If there’s one thing we’ve learned from our years of using Macs, it’s that they outlast anything else out there. Why shouldn’t an iBook be able to look at embarrassing pictures on Facebook, or Twitter about our lunch break? These are our computers, dang it. We paid good money for them. They still work. There’s no technical reason they can’t do everything that a MacBook can. So if you want something done, you do it yourself, and we did. The result is TenFourFox.

You’ve still got do deal with things like older versions of Flash (yuck) and QuickTime. I mean, everyone is abandoning PowerPC-based Macs, and it’s only a matter of time, but TenFourFox buys you some time, just like WaMCom bought us some time back in the old days… I’ve always thankful for the people behind these projects. They take on work that the so-called “official” software developers won’t, or can’t. I know there’s only so many hours in the day, and developer time has to be focused, but still… it’s always a shame to see working technology abandoned.

Anyway, TenFourFox is now on two machines, and I’ll put it on more if I need to, and let you know how it goes…

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Your iPhone is tracking you!

Oh yeah, time to freak out, because your iPhone is tracking you! Well, it’s tracking itself, or cell towers, or wifi access points, or… something of interest, but sadly, it’s not doing a great job at it.

For some people, this is “Big Brother” type of scare… and for others (fans of geo-tracking) it’s not quite good enough.

I grabbed iPhone Tracker, and dug through some of my files, and took a look at the SQLite database, and was fascinated by the data (I tend to get fascinated by data) but I didn’t feel like alerting the media about it…

Will Clarke has a nice blog post about this as well. It’s worth a read.

Here’s some data that was marked 2010-12-29. I’m not sure what that date refers to, but this seems to show my trip taken on 2011-01-01. I find it interesting to see this data. Back in mid-2010 I wrote some code to make an archive of my Foursquare data, with the thought I would map it all out at some point. Sadly, I’ve collected a lot of data, but haven’t done anything useful with it yet. Maybe it would make more sense for me to just get my geo-data directly from my iPhone. I mean, I don’t even have to check in and it knows (roughly) where I’ve been!

This seems to do a poor job of showing where I was. I mean, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t in all of these location. Maybe it was just my phone connecting to towers in all of these locations…

A nice table view of some of the geo-data the iPhone records. Now to figure out how to use it for something good. Or bad. Or somewhere in-between.

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Diavolino

Diavolino

Remember when I wrote about Cheap Arduinos? Well, if you do, maybe you remember the Diavolino.

The Diavolino is a damn cheap Arduino clone, coming in at about $13. (I say “about” because if you want some headers, or a battery pack, or a chip socket, it’ll run you another few bucks… but still, you can get away with just $13 for the base kit.)

Even though I said there was an “extremely detailed assembly guide” there were a few places where I got slightly confused, mainly just in the “power options” section. (I wasn’t even drinking when I put this kit together, unlike the last kit I built.) Since I got the Diavolino with the 3 x AA battery holder for $1, it was simple to just go with that option. Obviously you’ll need a FTDI USB-TTL cable to connect it to your computer to program it. Again, leaving out the on-board USB makes this kit nice and cheap. (I did get a socket for the chip, as I don’t like to solder chips directly into place.) My only real complaint is that, even though the board looks cool in red and black, it can be a little hard to read the type on the board to locate the correct pins. Then again, I tend to prototype in dimly lit rooms.

I got this kit put together in about 40 minutes. (In fact, I even made a time lapse video showing the assembly.) This seems like a pretty simple kit for a beginner. In fact, I could see the Diavolino being used as a kit put together in a class for people wanting to learn soldering and basic Arduino programming. (As long as you can send them home without an FTDI cable.)

The Diavolino appears to have been designed knowing that in being low cost, a few sacrifices had to be made, and I’m OK with that. If you know how you want to use it, it shouldn’t be an issue at all. (This one is destined for a robot.)