I guess most of the people reading this will have seen some of the multi-touch demos by Jeff Han, Apple and Tactiva. I wanted to play around with some ideas that required a multi-touch pad, but there aren’t any devices available (Tactiva aren’t shipping…)

Long story short, I made a simple one from a plastic bag, some dye and a camera

Link: Medallia Blog: dyeSight $2 Multi-Touch Pad Archives

Endlich zur anarchistischen Sau auch mal wieder ne richtig krasse Message rauslassen.

Link:

Ronald McHummer

From the eBay page:

Hi there, my name is Ron Steen. I am selling 2% of my future earnings for a chance to go to college. I am offering up 2% of every dollar I make for the rest of my working life for a starting bid of $100,000. I am starting Cal State University of Fullerton on August 21st, 2006 and I want to pay for college and its expenses by myself. In exchange for money to go to college I will send you 2% of whatever my income is annually in the form of a check once a year. This also means if I win the lottery you will get 2%, any income is your income (but I don‘t play the lottery so don‘t count on that one) The papers will be drawn up by my lawyer and you are more than welcome to look them over.

Link: eBay: 2 % of Ron Steen’s Future Earnings For College Money

I found this via reddit, then looked for blog quotes via technorati — not many people writing about this yet, let’s see how it develops.

Link: technorati search for the eBay article URL

Update: LazyMotivation.com publishes an insightful analysis of the auction, including a judgement of the value of this investment, and a list of false claims made by the auctioneer which makes this sound rather fishy. And: eBay took the auction down.

Link: LazyMotivation.com: Ron Steen lied about his SAT scores!

Dig this: Isobella Jade is 5′2″ [158cm] struggling model who recently wrote a memoir about her life experiences — entirely on the computers at a Manhattan Apple store. Apparently Jade has been homeless, so she doesn’t have a place to own or store a computer.

The amazing part of the story, though, is neither the fact that the model is so tiny, or that she is homeless, or that she has been writing her memoirs in an Apple store, or that she used to be an amateur nude model while in college — but how she manages to use these weird facts as marketing tools. The result may not be that someone will publish her memoirs, but I’m sure it’s now easier for her to get into parties and get other free stuff. Nice one.

Link: collision detection, FishbowlNY, FishbowlNY Interview

Apparently my recent remarks regarding homebrew mobile phone communities were right on the money:

I’m announcing the formation of the “Silicon Valley Homebrew Mobile Phone Club.” Our purpose is to provide support and guidance for individuals building their own “convergence devices.” We’re going to have monthly meetings where we discuss designs and applications with the idea that two heads is frequently better than one. Don’t toil in solitude, trying to get your latest wireless hardware hack to work.

Links: Announcement, The Open Phone Proposal
Preliminary site: telefono.revejo.org

And Stacking Fault points to a number of people already active in the field in the insightful overview Build your own mobile phone.

Making things is part of being human. Whether you make bikes, kites, food, clothing, protocols for biology research, or hack consumer electronics, a good way to show “How-To” is critical. Instructables is a simple and fast way to share projects with a mixture of images, text, ingredient lists, CAD files, and more. Show your colleagues how to operate a machine, show your friends how to build a kayak, show the world how to make cool stuff. Instructables leads the way in Open Source development for “Stuff”.

Link: Instructables: step-by-step collaboration