Texas Instruments has issued a DMCA notice to United TI, a group of enthusiasts. They had been cracking the keys that sign the operating system binaries in an attempt to gain access and possibly expand on the features. This seems, at least a little counter productive to us. Texas Instruments doesn’t sell the operating system separately do they? These people were buying their product and expanding on it. There is no difference in their income, except possibly a gain as people flock to the one they can modify. Maybe they are charging more for an expanded feature set that is crippled in…
Hack
TI lashes out at their biggest fans
Hack
Software pulse width modulation
Pulse Width Modulation is a topic that tends to give a lot of beginners trouble. [Daqq], whose nixie plasma ball we covered a few days ago, has a simple but effective PWM project that you should take a look at. The circuit used 9 LEDs clustered together into 3 sets of RGB modules and connected them to an AVR ATtiny2313 through some current limiting resistors. Most of the time the PWM function of the AVR’s timers would be used to generate the signal but this application calls for 9 signals which is more than can be produced by this…
Business
Pakistan food stampede kills many
Reports say dozens more have been injured. The free flour was being handed out in a poor, congested neighbourhood of the city by a private group as part of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Pakistani TV showed distraught relatives arriving at a hospital where the injured had been taken. “The deaths were caused by suffocation and the stampede in one of the most congested localities of Khori Garden,” said Karachi police chief Waseem Ahmad, reports AFP news agency. President’s shock He said the man distributing the free flour had been detained because he had not given police prior notice.…
Game
Arduino + hang man = Hangmanduino
We saw this nifty little toy today and thought you guys might get a kick out of it. Its called the Hangmanduino, and as you can probably tell from the name, it plays hang man. This was an exercise in simplicity, you’ll notice there is only a single control for the entire game. We thought that the design was pretty cool, especially the single control. We weren’t surprised to see that this is actually the very same control we featured previously. You can download the code yourself from his website, if you want to make one of your own.…
Hack
Open-Frame digital clock
Here’s an interesting project from several years ago. The clock design itself isn’t too noteworthy, but the construction is definitely inspired. You’ll notice that there is no breadboard or PCB, the frame actually is the circuit. The tubes he’s using are Numitron tubes, which aren’t as high voltage as Nixies or even VFDs. This means that there is only 12V maximum going through the exposed rails. He discusses some possible future upgrades such as LED or Nixie or VFD, but since this project is a few years old, who knows if he is still working with it.
[thanks Agent420]…
Hack
Automated blinds
Inspired by the multitudes of other automated window blind projects, [John] decided to build his own simpler design. Knowing his Arduino was massive overkill (yes, we hear you all cheering) he picked up a picaxe 08m starter kit. Looking at his very simple circuit, you’ll notice there are no resistors or capacitors. He designed it to take commands from his PC via IR. The final product is fairly well hidden, and should his girlfriend ever be upgraded to wife, we assume he’ll hide it better. Good job [John]. We’re no strangers to automated blinds, we’ve seen them a few…
Cisco Systems
links for 2009-07-24
Allowing DHCP Option 82 in Cisco DHCP Relay Agents | Slaptijack
If you are using your Cisco Catalyst switches to insert DHCP Option 82 information and you are also using your Cisco routers as DHCP relay-agents (via ‘ip helper-address’), you’ll notice right away that your Option 82 enabled DHCP requests are not being forwarded by your routers.
(tags: BCMSN Cisco Networking)
Understanding DHCP Option 82 – CCIE Blog
Understanding DHCP Option 82
By Petr Lapukhov, CCIE #16379
The DHCP Information option (Option 82) is commonly used in metro or large enterprise deployments to provide additional information on “physical attachment”…
Facebook
Facebook Privacy Announcement Today (1 PM EDT)
Facebook has sent out a notice to members of the press about a webcast this afternoon (1 PM EDT) about upcoming changes to Facebook’s privacy. So what is the exact subject of call? Nothing has been said except for “upcoming privacy changes”. We’ll be covering the event live but we are expecting it to simply be more details about Facebook’s new granular publisher controls.
There has been a lot of miscommunication recently about the new features which is why Facebook is holding an event to provide more details. I’d also expect more information about Facebook’s planned roll-out of Facebook profile…
Facebook
Oh Yeah, Facebook Connect Has Been Live On Hulu For Months
Apparently Hulu launched their implementation of Facebook Connect early last month but few people actually noticed. The Connect implementation enables users to view what videos their friends are watching. One thing that doesn’t appear to be an integral part of the Connect support is the ability to publish stories about what videos you’ve watched to your feed. Hulu has been receiving a lot of traffic which will also help Facebook expand the reach of Connect.
If you didn’t notice that Hulu had implemented Connect, it’s not surprising. To sync your Facebook account with Hulu, you need to login to the…
Facebook
Facebook Platform Glitch Reports Majority Of Applications Have 0 Users
This morning while browsing through out our Facebook application statistics are, I noticed that the leaderboard had changed drastically. Many of the top applications were no longer appearing which didn’t make much sense. After browsing around I noticed that most Facebook applications were now reporting their monthly active users as 0. It’s a minor glitch but it ended up throwing off all of our statistics and developer stats are not being reported properly as well.
Most developers probably don’t notice a substantial impact since they use services like Google Analytics to track the number of visitors to their applications, not…
Internet
Finding the best domain name, host and graphics for Maximum
Using this method you will be able to find the best domain name,host and graphics to generate huge profits with your eBusinessDomain NameA domain name is the word used for the actual website address.When someone keys in the domain name they will find yourwebsite. It is important that every e-Book you write and has anew and different domain name. This makes you e-Book stay in thememory of the customer and makes it a far more professionallooking.Your domain name must describe what your e-Book is about. Forexample if your e-Book was about building garden sheds, youshould have a domain name like…
Facebook
Facebook Shuts Down SocialReach For Violating Platform Terms
Last night Facebook took aggressive action to stop the increased level of application Facebooks ads that are in violation of Facebook’s terms by shutting down SocialReach. As I’ve been covering for the past few days, the volume of spam ads on Facebook have been increasing over the past few weeks. Some developers have even been reporting substantial jumps in revenue from these ad networks which is understandable considering how aggressive the ads are. Around midnight last night the company sent out the following letter to all publishers:
Monday, June 8th, 2009
Facebook Publishers:
Due to circumstances beyond our control we…
