This project, called "Reddot", reacts to human interaction in the lobby of an office building by displaying color flows in a three-dimensional plexiglass grid that tracks pedestrians as they walk by. The project uses a unique form of presence detection by projecting lasers onto people's bodies and tracking how far they are from its face, also it writes incoming SMS messages sent by visitors on its 3D display. Check out more technical details and a nice "exploded" view of the structure at the link below.

Reddot

This installation called "BB_Write" employs a Blackberry and custom hardware to create four micro environments that correspond to the keywords: liberation, innovation, interaction, communication. The project attempts to build a spatial version of the "always on" experience as the Blackberry collects email constantly and generates ambient sounds based on incoming emails from visitors to the installation and from around the world.

BB_Write

Looking for a better reason to have that high powered phone on your hip? How about saving the world, or saving yourself?

The applications are designed to change people's behavior for the better, said Sunny Consolvo, one of UbiFit's creators. In a three-month field experiment, people using UbiFit with the background display kept up their workout routines over the winter holidays, a period when people typically slack off on exercise, while people without the display let their regimen slide.

The project is funded in part though a grant from the Intel Foundation.

How could your phone do more for you? Have you tried this app, or others like it? Have you created an application that makes innovative use of the iPhone or Android's robust sensors? Join in to the conversation in the comments and add your photos and videos to the Make Flickr pool!

Thanks Amon!

We received a few HTC ExtUSB connectors from PodGizmo. The first thing we thought of, was making the T-Mobile G1 send the audio to an iPod Speaker set we have. There is a sea of iPod accessories, so naturally the dock connector has a well known pinout. Figuring out the pinout for the HTC ExtUSB connector wasn't too hard, I just split open my hands free adapter I got with my T-Mobile Dash.

The first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1, has been out for a couple of months now, and it's turned out to be a nicely hackable phone. Google has opened things up a bit more by making a read-only development branch, "cupcake", available for public perusal. If you're wondering when we'll see these enhancements on a shipping Android phone, it's gotten one step closer since the cupcake branch came out:

The changes introduced in the cupcake branch have been merged into the master branch, preserving all of the previous commits to master. The same will happen for each future drop to cupcake.

If you're not familiar with the guts of software development, what this means is that Google's Android developers took two complex pieces of software (the official, stable version of the Android operating system + the experimental version with all the new bells and whistles) and combined them, reconciling any differences and combining them into a seamless whole.

"cupcake" development branch [via phandroid]

For those of you who don't want to hack your own firmware to open it up completely, you can get an unlocked, hackable phone direct from Google.

A new MacGyver-esque cellphone hack could bring cheap, on-the-spot disease detection to even the most remote villages on the planet. Using only an LED, plastic light filter and some wires, scientists at UCLA have modded a cellphone into a portable blood tester capable of detecting HIV, malaria and other illnesses.

Blood tests today require either refrigerator-sized machines that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars or a trained technician who manually identifies and counts cells under a microscope. These systems are slow, expensive and require dedicated labs to function. And soon they could be a thing of the past.

This gel-remote control which was redesigned by Panasonic as something that is "waiting to be touched" actually seems a bit more freaky than functional. Constructed from a soft, flesh-like gel, the remote appears to be cold when turned off. When on, a soft light glows from its middle and the device begins to mimic the motions of "breath" by moving ever so slightly. Just be careful not to lose it in a sex shop, otherwise it might be mistaken for something else.

via Next Nature

This is a great development; Google is selling G1s that are not only unlocked, but that will accept unofficial builds of the Android operating system. Google's warning will be pure delight for makers and hackers: "Since the devices can be configured with system software not provided by or supported by Google or any other company, end users operate these devices at their own risk."

The Android Dev Phone 1 is a SIM-unlocked and hardware-unlocked device that is designed for advanced developers. The device ships with a system image that is fully compatible with Android 1.0, so you can rely on it when developing your applications. You can use any SIM in the device and can flash custom Android builds that will work with the unlocked bootloader. Unlike the bootloader on retail devices, the bootloader on the Android Dev Phone 1 does not enforce signed system images. The Android Dev Phone 1 should also appeal to developers who live outside of T-Mobile geographies.

Devices for Developers [via Android Guys]

Check out this silicon iPhone case for the sight-impaired, via Core77:

Portugal-based designer Bruno Fosi has developed a prototype iPhone case that would enable the sight-impaired to use the device. The silicone case has debossed, tactile logos, icons and characters, yet is still thin enough for the screen to register touches. Used in conjunction with text-to-speech features, it opens up a world of possibilities for those without sight. Not to mention the blind could eke out some extra battery life by turning down the backlight.

Silly, but nonetheless cool, steampunk telephone. The coolest thing is the punch cards you use to call a number. Okay, that's also the silliest thing about it. As Apartment Therapy says, it would give new meaning to the term "calling card." I hope one of those dials displays signal strength.

Steampunk Cell Phone Takes Tech Backwards

When I need to photograph a small object with my iPhone, the fixed focus lens makes for a pretty horrible image. Inspired by this post, I took a 50mm lens from an old SLR and started using it as an improvised macro lens by holding it in front of my iPhone.

I decided to make a mount for the whole contraption. I realized that the little plastic coffin from the iPhone packaging would work pretty well. I cut a piece of mousepad to cushion things, and mounted it all with a couple of zip-ties and a rubber band. Now, I just slip my phone into the thing and snap away! Here's the Flickr set for larger photos.

How to turn an airsoft handgun and a bluetooth headset into a fun, fully functional handset for your iPhone. Pull the trigger to receive calls and to, um, end them. Listen through the barrel, and talk into the grip. I think everyone has made the thumb and forefinger gun-to-the-head sign when someone unpleasant shows up on their caller ID. Eli and I thought it would be fun to make an actual gun handset, and it turned out to be surprisingly straightforward. No glue or powertools were required. Even though it's not very practical, there's something so satisfying about ending a call with this handset. Pow. Naturally, this handset works with any cell phone. You just feel like pulling the trigger more if you own an iPhone.

Control your VCR with a text message.

From the MAKE Flickr photo pool

Mightyohm gave a broken phone handset new life in the form of bluetooth functionality - by repurposing a discarded, semi-functional headset -

Upon receiving it, I proceeded to rip the headset apart, interested to see what was inside. I found a fairly simple PCB with a discrete bluetooth module in the center. The PCB is not labeled, but given that this is an older headset (3-4 years old) most of the connections are large enough to attack with a pencil iron and solder wires to.

This headset was begging for a project.

I got it all working. I now have an Android Activity (GarageDoorActivity) which interacts with an Android Service I wrote (InRangeService), letting me start and stop the service's wifi scanning task. The service gets the system WifiManager, holds a WifiLock to keep the radio active, and then does a Wifi scan every couple seconds, looking for my house.

When my house is in range, it does the magic HTTP request to my garage door opener's webserver (HMAC-signed timestamped URL, for non-replayability/forgeability if sniffed) and my garage door opens. Complete with a bunch of fun Toast notifications (like Growl) and Android Notifications (both persistent ongoing notifications for background scanning, and one-time notifications for things like the garage door actually opening).

So when Brad comes home, he starts the application which scans the WiFi network and then opens the garage door as soon as his home network is in range. He even describes an automated version where the phone constantly monitors the network for common scenarios. For instance, your if your phone sees your work network disappear, followed an hour later by your home network appearing, it could safely assume you have come home from work, opening the door without any interaction.

This is compelling support for a fully hackable, open source device. With normal iPhone development, you don't this level of deep access to be able to monitor WiFi connectivity or run an application as a background process.

Brad's released the source code for this one. If this app gives you any ideas, his code might be a good place to start. Just make sure to send us a link to your Android hack when you get your G1 to turn lights on and off when you walk around the house.

Android Garage Door Opener
Download the Java Source

More:

• Mac and T-Mobile G1 (Google Android) phone syncing.
• Android Proxy App - Use your Android G1 for net access.
• "Upgraded" G1 headset - use whatever earbuds you want...
• 24 hours of Android.

Each bottle contains a text message that I have avoided deleting from my selfoan. The messages are printed in braille on used 1/2-inch Ampex audio tape. The end of each message is wound and adhered to the respective leather corks.

JC sent in a link in response to 24 hours of Android. He was suggesting an adapter for the headphone, essentially usb to 1/8" stereo. The $6 purchase price indicates that there must be a simple way of doing it. While checking out some of the other accessories for HTC phones, I came upon this neat little terminal. Redfly is apparently a keyboard and screen to go with your smartphone. With no processor, memory or much else, it is likely pretty light. It looks to be about the size of the micro laptops or notebook computers running processors similar to the OLPC. It rides off the USB connection from the phone.

So what are the possibilities in these little computers and terminals when combined with the new, powerful phones on the market? Could I get my MSI Wind to be a terminal for my G1? That would have been handy last night, where I had ok coverage on the 2G network, but no wifi. Out here in the cellular fringe, 3G is not an option. The small screen and keyboard of the Wind would have been easier to use than the tiny screen and keyboard of the phone. Since both devices have USB ports, then it should be possible to program them to talk to each other.

If you have been poking around with this idea, then post up in the comments!

Now that you can run commands as root on the Google phone, you may have been thinking about what else you can do with the device. You know, besides the usual talking, texting, and surfing while driving.

The device is Linux based, sure, but the installed software is relatively spartan and there isn't too much internal space to get dangerous. Thankfully, Jay Freeman wrote a nice guide for installing a more complete Linux distribution on the device, right alongside Android.

The main thing I've so far seen on this matter have been a few attempts to get busybox on there. I, however, think we can go a lot further: following the instructions in this article will end you up with a full distribution of Debian, one of the most highly respected Linux distributions, and the ability to install almost anything you want.

To do this, we need to think through a few of the details of getting this sort of thing running on the G1. The first question: where do we put it? The device has some internal flash, but it isn't really enough: only 128MB to share with the OS and other applications.

We therefore turn our attention to the much more reasonably sized microSD card, a format which lets us get up to 16GB of space.

Debian & Android Together on G1

Horrible, gang - we need to work towards changing this... reuse and recycle locally, the video hits hard - "Where do the millions of computer monitors, cell phones and other electronic refuse our society generates end up? Scott Pelley reports." 60 minutes & more.

60 Minutes is going to take you to one of the most toxic places on Earth - a place government officials and gangsters don't want you to see. It's a town in China where you can't breathe the air or drink the water, a town where the blood of the children is laced with lead.

It's worth risking a visit because much of the poison is coming out of the homes, schools and offices of America. This is a story about recycling - about how your best intentions to be green can be channeled into an underground sewer that flows from the United States and into the wasteland.


That wasteland is piled with the burning remains of some of the most expensive, sophisticated stuff that consumers crave. And 60 Minutes and correspondent Scott Pelley discovered that the gangs who run this place wanted to keep it a secret.

What are they hiding? The answer lies in the first law of the digital age: newer is better. In with the next thing, and out with the old TV, phone or computer. All of this becomes obsolete, electronic garbage called "e-waste."

Yesterday I bought the first cellphone of my life. I had been using the junker phone that my niece lost two years ago when she was in 7th grade. It resurfaced when she finally cleaned her closet. The phone was already on the plan and they had replaced it Tmobile was going to charge to turn it off. My entry phone almost worked, and it wasn't pink. Eventually I would need to get an 'adult phone'.

So a few months ago Google started making noise about the Android. Open source, touch screen, 3G, browser, all the good stuff in modern phones. I had thought about getting an iPhone, but that was so last Spring. Verizon has a few iPhone copies, but they are basically wannabees. Why not get the real thing?

Since I live in a fringe area, they don't have Tmobile stores nearby. The noncorporate stores don't carry the phone yet. I went twice to the store on Newbury street in Boston, but their hours are not late enough for my schedule. Yesterday I finally got my G1.

My uncle asked last night if the G1 was any better than the iPhone. I told him that it probably isn't better as far as a design standpoint. Apple has been working up the various parts of that interface for years. The true value to me is that the Android and G1 are open source. By encouraging people to not only use the phone but actually improve it, the G1 has much more potential than the locked down design from Apple.

Here are a few observations about the device and what it has me thinking about:

The web browser is okay, pages load pretty slow. Having a web browser in my pocket is definitely a plus.

When you turn the phone on its side, the screen doesn't adjust. You have to open the slider to get it to switch to landscape mode. That's annoying to me, and certainly somebody will hack into the motion sensor and fix the flaw.

On the keyboard, there are not arrow keys. The keys are pretty small, but seem to work ok. After a bit of practice I have gotten the hang of a bit more. It took me a while to figure out that the rolly ball is like a track ball and allows you to move the cursor around. It is pretty sensitive.

Email: The phone is linked to my Google account. So this means that gmail, google documents, youtube and blogger all know that I am me. I think I signed in once and everything else was good to go.

Photos: One of the reasons that I got this phone was that it has a 3 megapixel camera. A couple of years ago I started carrying a Nikon S4 digicam in my pocket every day. Having a camera with me all the time changed the way I think about photography. That camera finally died in September, and I have missed the smallish size of it compared to my larger Canon S515. The exposure of the G1's camera is not that great in low light. It is not yet seamless to shoot and have it go straight to my flickr account. At this point, the best way seems to be to take the picture, then email it to the flickr address tied to my account. Pictures go up, but don't have tags, nor are they added to sets. Certainly that will be figured out. Since the phone has a micro sd card reader, I could use my other camera with an adapter and micro sd, then use the phone to upload on the fly. That will be useful. No video yet. Somebody will solve that issue, right?

Internet: for me, web access is a new thing to have in my pocket. I think I will like it.

Power: The battery took its first charge while I sat at the counter in the store and played with it. The seat was comfortable and there was much to learn about the phone, so I stayed a couple of hours. Several times it shut itself down in the store. I pointed this behavior out to the salesguy, but he did not seem inclined to replace the phone. A great feature of power is that the phone charges with a standard mini USB plug. This means that I can get a charge any time I am near a computer. It also means that I do not need to have a special phone charger. They tried to sell a car charger to the guy after me in line. I quietly told him that the phone used USB and saved him twenty bucks. You could probably use a Minty Boost to top it off if for some reason you were out of reach of the great USB.

Reception: This phone has much better reception in my fringy town in the suburbs than my middle school hand me down. Originally, I thought that I would only be able to use it as a phone around home base. Instead, I have been able to get email and web access in town, and the coverage seems better than I anticipated. Apparently the 2G coverage includes data. In the house, the phone does not seem to be able to see the wireless N router very well. Tomorrow I will see how it likes the routers at school.

Maps: Since the phone is tied to all things Google, google maps and street view are ready to roll. I looked at the street in Boston where I often park my car, but the photos must have been taken on a day when I was out of the city. When there is good coverage from lots of cell towers, the phone can pinpoint its gps location pretty well. Out in the boonies, it shows the one tower that is in range. One really nice thing about that is that the phone can show me where the cell towers are in my area. I have been wondering where the cell towers are for quite some time. It appears that the phone can show me the location of the Tmobile cell antennae through the maps data. The other day, I was actually seriously considering looking up the coverage maps in the FCC documentation. To me, the gps reception/simulation means that back country geocaching will not be successful, but innercity hunting could work fine.

Physical form: The phone is a bit clunky and big, but not as big as a blackberry. Last night some Blackberry addicts found me out at a family party and had a wonderful time showing me how good my phone was. I was worried about the hinge, but it seems sturdy, and I think HTC is the company tht makes the Sidekick. Getting the back off to change the sim card and battery was a tool-free event. Fingernails and a couple of tugs got the plastic back off.

Interface: I have found the interface both good and a bit complex. I like the touch screen response, but wish it had the magnification feature I see on the iPhone. My 10 year old daughter has enjoyed poking around in the menus, and figured out the music player aspect pretty well before I did. She seems to think that it will be easy to learn the features and add more capability to it.

What does the G1 Android have me looking to learn? It would be nice to make a headphone adapter that can make use of the regular 1/8th inch stereo plug. The board and surface mount components could be made easily in the Fab Lab. A usb keyboard would be nice to be able to plug in and use at times. Custom cut vinyl will be very possible, there is lots of real estate on the back that is just waiting for a skin. My friend Perry is anxious to learn about programming in Java so he can make his own apps for the android. Could students in programming classes learn to program for the G1?

What possibilities do you see in the G1 Android? What does it make want you to learn? What has it taught you already? How will it change the way people see phones and hardware? Can it change the way people learn?

In response to my posting of the DIY hobby o-scope item, Ken_S sent a link to his "Minimalist Oscilloscope 08M Project," which uses a PICAXE 08M chip and a Nokia cellphone screen to create a... well... minimal oscilloscope. Given that he got the phone for a buck, he was able to build the scope for $5. I like at the bottom where he brags: "Check out these impressive specifications rivaling scopes costing twice the price."

The Minimalist Oscilloscope 08M Project

More:

• DIY hobby o-scope

RjDj is a sound application for the Apple iPhone* that allows users to access "scenes" that transform sound that comes in through the microphone and allows additional tweakage via the the iPhone's accelerometer and touch screen. But did you know that RjDj's scenes are made with PD (PureData), a free, open-source multimedia programming environment that uses a visual patch cable-style interface to create interactive applications for audio and multimedia? Yup. This makes RjDj scenes incredibly hackable, and it also makes it very easy to port RjDj scenes that you've made to other platforms. Because RjDj is built with PD under the hood, it isn't difficult to modify the scenes that come bundled with RjDj, and with a little PD know-how, you can also create scenes from scratch (see my video below). Read on to see how.

What with its open source operating system and developer-friendly nature, cracking open phones running Google's Android was always going to be easier than the full-on assault that was required to hack the iPhone, but we're still impressed by the speed with which hackers have broken the T-Mobile G1. First is full access to the file system on the phone. This part is easy, but you could potentially break everything with an errant rm -r. You need to grab PTerminal, a command line tool, from the Android marketplace. From there, you navigate to your system/bin folder (where the binaries are kept) and type telnetd to launch the telnet program which lets you login to the phone remotely.

I have been thoroughly enjoying my new G1 for the last week or so with one major exception. Music! After trying out the included headset for about 3 minutes, I swore it off. They felt just like the i-pod headphones to me and I hate those. Maybe I have big ears or something, but I always feel like they are about to fall out and I get zero bass response. I generally prefer earbuds with a tight fitting rubber or foam earpieces (like the Sony EX51s and EX71s or my favorites, Etymotics!).

Sooo, not wanting to have to hassle with adapters if at all possible, I figured I could perform a little surgery on the included headset and get what I wanted.

When Peter Alan Smith pulls out his phone in a crowded Back Bay restaurant, there's no clue that his Nokia is by far the most expensive mobile phone in the entire place. He has about $2,400 in software loaded onto the $600 device.

But then it becomes apparent what's unique about Smith's phone: A flash goes off when he snaps a picture of the menu, and a few seconds later, his phone has translated the page of text into speech, and started reciting the options through his earpiece at a rapid clip.

Smith developed a degenerative eye disease when he was 18, and he is now legally blind. It has been about two decades since he could read a restaurant menu independently. He first heard about the phone on a podcast series called "Blind Cool Tech" and took out a low-interest loan to buy it.

More:

Let There Be Speech. How do you make a $200 computer for blind kids? By Fernando Botelho... MAKE 03 - page 40.

My T-Mobile G1 phone based on Google's Android platform arrived on Monday. It was a big change for me because I've been using Windows Mobile based smartphones since 2002 when I started with the very first T-Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition. Since Android phones sync directly with Google Calendar and Gmail Contacts, this also meant switching away from Microsoft Outlook on my old Windows XP PC. Given this big change, I thought it might be interesting to see if I could sync Contacts and Calendar with my Mac. One of my goals was to only use tools provided by Apple or Google. I wanted to avoid trust issues involved with using third party web services that worked as an intemediatry between the Google web services and my Mac.

Today marks the 25th anniversary of the first commercial wireless call. It happened Oct. 13, 1983, at Soldier Field, where Ameritech Mobile, now part of Verizon Wireless, made the call from a Motorola DynaTAC 8000X known as the "brick" phone. The phone cost $3,995, was 13 inches long, and weighed 1.75 pounds.

Paul Gudonis, who was vice president of marketing for Ameritech Mobile Communications and who organized the launch, said 20 customers of the new cell phone service were invited to the event.

More:

Wave Bubble - Open source Wi-Fi, cellphone, GPS and RF jammer.

Modifying a cheap portable cellphone jammer.

Phone looks like pack of cigarettes and cell phone jammer that fits inside a pack of cigarettes...