I am testing out a GHL-100XX 160mW+ green laser from LaserGlow.com. Laser power is measured in milliwatts, your standard red laser pointer is usually less than 5mW. This one is not only 30 times more powerful, our eyes are more sensitive to green light, so it appears even brighter. I really like using lasers for star pointing- Mark was telling me was helping his daughter with an astronomy project and needed to point out which stars in the sky were actually planets- this is where these lasers literally shine. Other uses- alignment (in day light) and doing really cool time lapse photos. With a laser like this one there are also some fun experiments- here’s a photo of the laser “burning” a hole through a red plastic cup. I’ll have some other photos soon, along with some projects. It goes without saying but I feel compelled to post this, never point a laser at people, cars, planes, robots, etc…

We’re getting very close to rolling out our first Make:Audio series- this week while visiting the Make Magazine compound I interview Kyle Rankin and Derrick Story. Kyle is the author of Knoppix Hacks. We talked about what it is, where to get it, how to run, some hacks and some cool things folks are doing with it. Later- all about digital photography. Derrick has authored numerous books on digital photography- we chatted about tips to take better pictures, iPhoto 5, favorite digital cameras and what’s ahead for digital photography in 2005. Stay tuned!

Dan, our Associate Publisher here at Make Magazine says “I’m about to tackle my wife’s vinyl LP collection. I just purchased a PowerWave from Griffin. Now I’m looking at software. I’m sort of leaning toward Peak LE 4.1 and SoundSoap from bias. Thought I’d check in with you. Know anything good/bad or otherwise of these products?”.

In the past I’ve only needed to record a couple things, so I used an Archos under the watchful eye(s) of a couple robots. Anyone have suggestions for Dan? Post them up in the comments!

On my flight today, I was chatting with a fellow who worked on CO2 lasers– since I happen to have my USB Radiation detector I figured this would be a good opportunity to detect the http://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtorrone/5317200/in/pool-make/”>(photo here). The detector picked up 80, 120 and 240 Muon Count Rate (cpm). I haven’t dumped all the data and looked it up yet- seems harmless of course, but it was really neat to detect stuff while high above the clouds at 20,000 feet. When I get time, I’ll map the data with GPS, Sat photos and altitude- kinda like war driving for radiation.

Last week I posted some photos on the iPod Shuffle waterproof case that I had pre-ordered. I’m working on a few DIY iPod cases and accessories, so it’s usually good to check out what the pros are doing. Today, my iPod Shuffle armband showed up (photos here). It’s pretty good, but I think it’s a little bulky for how small the Shuffle is. Expect a homemade version of this soon. Lastly, check out out these silicone Shuffle cases on iPodLounge, pretty spiffy.

I’ve been watching the Lexmark vs Static Control Components (SCC) pretty closely and it looks like Lexmark won’t be using the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) to keep us from getting less expensive printer cartridges anytime soon. A little background- Lexmark tried using the DMCA to keep a company from making cartridges that would work with Lexmark printers. They did this by stating there were copyrights on the programs used on the printer and toner cartridge and if you made your own, you’re violating an anti-circumvention law. The reason this alarmed me is I think we’re going to see lots of manufacturers do this with cell phone and laptop batteries in addition to any “replaceable” accessory like power cords. The markup on these items are so high, some companies would love to only have us use their own “protected” versions. I tend to make my own chargers for any device I can, not being able to, or not being able to buy a less expensive alternative would be a drag. So- although this seems to be over, keep an eye out. Speaking of…next week I should have an “interesting” charger posted up, just waiting on the last part to ship.

If you haven’t already, be sure to book your travel and register for O’Reilly’s Emerging Technology Conference March 14-17, 2005 in San Diego, CA.

Citizen engineers are throwing their warranties to the wind, hacking their TiVos, Xboxes, and home networks. Wily geeks are jacking Jetsons-like technology into their cars for music, movies, geolocation, and internet connectivity on the road. E-commerce and network service giants like Amazon, eBay, PayPal, and Google are decoupling, opening, and syndicating their services, then realizing and sharing the network effects. Professional musicians and weekend DJs are serving up custom mixes on the dance floor. Operating system and software application makers are tearing down the arbitrary walls they’ve built, turning the monolithic PC into a box of loosely coupled component parts and services.

The Make Magazine crew will be there, details to follow on that. See you there!

Over the weekend the Discovery Channel had some footage from last year’s SKATEBOT competition. The University of Calgary’s SKATEBOT event pits autonomous LEGO robots against each other in the ice rink. Contestants all have the same LEGO parts in addition to 2 razor blades, the real ingenuity is how the students choose to move the bots around. Some chop their way, others push, one called the dragonfly mimicked the motions of their human skater counterparts. I couldn’t find an updated page for this year’s event, but if the 2004 page is correct- the next one should be in March of 2005.

Each week there seems to be more and more great applications using the Flickr API. I’ve used a lot of photo sharing sites in the past, but Flickr is where it’s at– being able to tinker, mashup what and how photos are viewed is as important as the photos themselves. The latest cool app spotted via Waxy.org is the Flickr / TiVo HME experiment. With this, you can view pictures by tags, groups, sets, users and photos recently posted. If any of you out there use this, point it at our group pool! Make:TV!

The Einstein@Home project is now open for general participation! Much like the SETI@Home and folding@Home efforts- this project uses the idle time of your computer to work on a distributed computing project. Einstein@Home searches data from the LIGO and GEO gravitational wave detectors to detect waves that ripple the fabric of time and space which may confirm predictions by the General theory of Relativity. You can read more about the project, gravity waves and other distributed computing projects here. If you’d like to join the Make Magazine team, visit our team page. Here’s a screenshot of the screensaver from the Einstein@Home application as well the BOINC projects on (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing).