Peter, from Rossum's Posterous, asks the musical question:

Can you make an iPhone out of an AVR? No. Can you get a surprising amout of functionality out of a humble 8-bit processor and a cheap touch LCD? Yes.

AVR homebrew device with iPhone aspirations [via Peter Horvath's Twitter feed]

If you've ever shopped at an Apple store you've probably experienced their relaxed point of sale (POS) system. You walk in, try out new gear, talk to a sales rep, swipe your card, sign a screen, blurt an email address, and you're out of there. Usually you skip the register, yet your wallet always seems lighter after each visit. It's all very smooth and thought out. But something has always bugged me about the whole process. The sales reps have always used a third-party mobile device to complete the transaction. It just didn't go well with the jeans and black turtleneck vibe.

Well, it would seem that Apple has picked up on customers pestering them about this minor user experience discrepancy and are about to remedy the situation with a new POS system based on their wildly popular iPod touch mobile entertainment device. Dubbed EasyPay, each unit will consist of a iPod touch and a special case which houses a barcode scanner, card reader, extra battery and mini-USB connector. The system runs custom POS software and uses a Pogo Sketch stylus to capture cardholder signatures.

Apple's new iPod touch-based EasyPay checkout [via AppleInsider]

Master iPhone unlocker George Hotz aka GeoHot has done it again. Apparently the current iPhone 3G/3GS baseband has been successfully cracked and new unlock code titled blacksn0w will soon become available through the blackr1n jailbreak. [via iPhoneSchool]

Android hacker Akia Harada has successfully ported the latest version of Android to the T-Mobile G1/HTC Dream. It's an early build that needs optimization, but it does boot and gives those brave enough to install it a glimpse of the new Android 2.0 operating system. [via AndroidGuys]

This has to be my favorite iPhone stand to date. Its simple one piece design is easy to fabricate and lays flat when not in use. Follow along with this Instructables as maker jonpoate steps through the process. [via lifehacker]

Adobe has released a version of their Photoshop.com Mobile app for the iPhone. It's not the full-featured professional software known for it's reality altering effects, but rather a slimmed-down version compatible with their photoshop.com service. You'll have the ability to perform basic operations on your images like crop, rotate, and flip. You'll also be able to do basic color correction and apply simple filters and effects.

After making personalized edits, users can upload photos from their iPhone to their Photoshop.com account to view and retrieve their images at a later time from any Internet-connected computer. In addition, Photoshop.com Mobile for iPhone provides the ultimate digital photo wallet, giving users access to their entire Photoshop.com library directly from their iPhone.

Motorola's new Android UI has been ported to the HTC G1. The accompanying video of the unofficial build shows off many of the user enhancements shipping with the newer Motorola Android based phones. [via Android and Me]

Got an awesome idea for a cell phone project, and wish you could get it funded? Then you might want to check out Nokia's PUSH N900 contest. They're accepting proposals until October 11th, and the contest winner will receive funding and N900 devices to build their project. From their website:

The brief is simple: tell us how you would hack and mod the N900 & Maemo to connect the N900 to something you love. An expert judging panel will be selecting winning submissions and the groups behind them will receive N900 devices, funding and support to develop their PUSH idea. And once they're complete, we'll share them with the rest of the world with a series of installations in Nokia Flagship Stores across the globe.

To help get your imagination going, check out these N900-based hacks that we covered earlier.

As part of a course at the United States Military Academy at West Point, maker Roy D. Ragsdale developed a prototype Street View-like camera using a laptop, $300 in off-the-shelf components, and open source software. A Python script captures eight 1280x1024px JPEG files that are then stitched together and uploaded to Google Earth.

Construction was straightforward. On a flat octagonal heavy-cardboard base, I glued small posts for the cameras' clips to latch onto. I aligned each unit and then placed the USB hubs and the GPS receiver in the middle. I secured the cables with Velcro and sandwiched everything with another piece of cardboard. The whole thing's the size of a small pizza box, weighing less than 1 kilogram. Excluding the notebook (a 2-gigahertz machine with 512 megabytes of RAM running Ubuntu Linux), the hardware cost about $300.

[thanks, Erico]

Zipit hacker Hunter Davis runs through installing Linux on the low-cost WiFi connected IM device in his latest tutorial. Complete with Fluxbox window manager, mouse, audio and wireless, the Zipit can be transformed into an inexpensive Linux mobile device that begs further modification.

[via hackaday]

Layar, the augmented reality app for the Android platform will be incorporating 3D capabilities into the application in November. They've released a tech preview this week for PICNIC '09 in Amsterdam. The preview, which is available from the Android Market (and only works with-in and around the PICNIC festival) is a significant improvement over flat pins on a map and hopefully encourages people to further investigate the use of augmented reality.

[via androidworld.nl]

Tokyo-based Ubiquitous Entertainment has built the iPhone ARider, a portable head-mounted navigation prototype. It attaches to a standard bike helmet and is capable of delivering visuals via a Scalar Corporation T3-A retractable HMD. With the glut of AR apps hitting the market you'll likely see a lot more HMD projects showing up in the near future. If you know of or are working on an AR physical computing project and would like to share, please leave a comment.

21th Century "Chonmage" ARider [via zikkir]

What's the first thing that comes to mind when you're handed a N900 and told to connect it to another object? That's what was asked of design studio Tinker.it in preparation of a promotional contest recently launched by Nokia. Tinker.it collaborated with London agency Hyper to devise and build four example objects "inspired by the 80's".

Built using the Arduino platform, they were extremely intriguing: a Speak and Spell which was used to text a message to a member of the audience, a Rolodex which identified a contact's details after being manually spun and automatically pulled it up on the phone, an FM radio hack which identified any '80's musician texted to the phone and then connected to Last.fm to pull up the relevant cover art as you tuned the radio to a station playing the selected artist's music, and finally a View-Master which used the phone to create custom 3D photos.

Hacking 80's Gadgets with the Nokia N900: PUSH N900 London Launch

[via psfk]

OK, stop. Before you read any further, we need to come to a legal understanding.

I, the author, and we, the MAKE blogging staff, as well as all of you, the readers, understand that this widget is only to be used in a car that is stationary, out of gear, and well clear of traffic. It is not designed, marketed, or sold for use in a moving vehicle, and indeed anyone who would do so is manifestly irresponsible and dumb as a post. Everyone with the sense to operate a car or a laptop, or, indeed, even to read this blog, understands that. THEREFORE: Commenters griping about how hyping this product is tantamount to genocide will be summarily vaporized by our orbital lasers.

And now that we've reached an understanding, I can talk about why I think this is cool.

1. It's incredibly useful, as anyone who's ever had to use a laptop in a car for more than a few seconds will recognize.
   
2. It's inexpensive and easy to manufacture, and could be easily remade in the material and style of your choice, for your own use or as an easy, thoughtful, and useful handmade gift.
   
3. It's clever! It does a lot with a little. Whoever thought up that curvy-slot-with-ears shape deserves a lollipop, at the very least.
   

I rest my case. If you're still mad, well, remember those lasers.

Got a Palm Pre and would like an on-screen keyboard, but didn't want to bend over backwards to get it installed? You're in luck. The WebOS Internals and preware.org folks have packaged everything needed to install the on-screen keyboard into a patch for their Preware app installer, making it a relatively painless process.

[via Gizmodo]

Using a couple computers, a PhidgetInterfaceKit with RelayBoard, and a bevy of client/server software, Matthias Wagler and friends from Intuity Media Lab built a Rube Goldberg XMPP messaging system to frob a light using an Andorid-powered mobile device. Check out this behind-the-scenes video detailing set-up.

[via hackaday]

Speaking of 'Making Things Talk"...

Looking for something portable and not satisfied with jailbreaking, or paying a metered fee, maker Adam Byers decided to build this interface box to record calls made on his iPhone.

[via @adambyers]

Using a custom APK file you can root your Android phone with relative ease. Once rooted, you're free to install one of the latest custom Android ROMs on the phone and enjoy new features still in development or scratch that itch the standard SDK won't facilitate.

Android Rooting in 1-click [via RyeBrye & Hackaday]

Some N97 owners find the integrated GPS doesn't perform as well as they'd like, so they've taken it upon themselves to render a proper fix. Using a copper wire attached to the existing antenna, Symbian Freak contributors Bruno and Teo have greatly improved their signal strength and can go about geocaching with fewer dropped signals.

[via Symbian Freak]

This quick and dirty improvised iPhone flash/video light from Andreas Ødegård consists of a 3V battery and a high intensity Cree emitter. Sure, it's just an LED flashlight with a doc connector mount, but then again it was built in under 10 minutes with electrical tape, spare parts, and a hot glue gun. The result seems to knock the socks off your run-of-the-mill super bright LED mini-array.

A similar hack that pulls power from the iPhone dock connector can be found in the book iPhone Hacks.

In the Maker Shed:

iPhone Hacks

It's often said that the best camera is the one on you. These readymade snap-on lenses for the iPhone are a fun addition to a spur of the moment snapshot.

[via TalkiPhone]

Owl Headphone Wrap

More:
John Park's earbud owl
3D-printed 7-piece puzzle cube

The prototype iPhone payment system Square, currently in testing at a trendy clothing store in NYC, has been generating a lot of buzz for the past couple of days. What caught my attention was its use of the mini jack as a communication port. Often overlooked as a means of transferring data, the microphone/audio port on the iPhone is accessible from the standard iPhone SDK. If you're curious about using the mini jack port, the hardware chapter of the book iPhone Hacks has a number of hacks that utilize the the mini jack for uni- and bi-directional communication.

In addition to magstripe readers, IR remotes, modems, and keyboards, the mini jack is suitable for building almost any low-speed peripheral requiring bidirectional communication using inexpensive components. Since the release of the v3.0 SDK the iPhone development community has been excited about the possibilities of the iPhone doc connector. However, using the mini jack over the doc connector not only shaves off some manufacturing costs, but by using a standardized connector the peripheral can be used by other devices like, for instance, the OLPC XO.

[via mobilewhack]

In the Maker Shed:

iPhone Hacks

Steve Roberts, the "high-tech nomad," was one of my first hardware hacking heroes. I just started following him on Twitter, and via his feed, found this other nomadness site, Technomadia. It chronicles the technomadic lives of Cherie Ve Ard & Chris Dunphy. In this post, they talk about being on "Nomadic Standard Time," and about the concept of "nomadic serendipity."

The downside to living a life without a firm itinerary is that it's awfully difficult to convey arrival times and destinations. When we don't know where we'll be even tonight, how can I tell our next rendezvous or host when to expect us? At first, this caused me a great deal of stress. Either we were rushing to meet a plan we conveyed, or we were afraid of leaving friends and family in a state of limbo.

It actually once contributed to a pretty major highway scare for us because we were pushing too hard to make an arrival date. Spinning down the interstate jack-knifed while towing a trailer was a wake-up call. Never again.

And thus now when conveying potential plans I always prefaces all dates and times being on NST - or Nomadic Standard Time.

A nomad, like a wizard, always arrives precisely when they are meant to.

Looking at their site, I had a moment of true wanderlust and thought: Hey, maybe *I* should become a technomad. It could happen. Since all my work is online, I can do it from anywhere, with the right tech.

Living on NST - Nomadic Standard Time

From AfriGadget:

Pascal Katana, a Fourth Year student at the Department of Electrical and Information Engineering at the University of Nairobi, Kenya, developed an electronic device that 'automates' fishing. The trap employs amplification of the sound made by fish while feeding. The acoustic signals are radiated and attract other fish who head toward the direction of the source thinking there is food there.

Once a good catch is detected by a net weighing mechanism, it triggers a GPRS/GSM device attached to the system and the fisherman gets a call/sms informing him that his catch is ready. Pascal is in the process of developing a by-catch control system which will ensure that his contraption doesn't cause overfishing.

Fish 'call' the Fisherman

Back in March of 2008 we mentioned a class project from a group of UC Berkeley students working to develop a microscope extension for cameraphones. Led by Daniel Fletcher, the team has since updated their prototype, which is capable of acquiring objects at 1.2 micrometers across. In it's current form the device attaches to a Nokia N73 and is capable of viewing color images of malaria parasites and individual blood cells at 3.2Mp. This low-cost solution is used for telemedicine applications in developing worlds, where access to cellphone networks are more prevalent.

Could u txt me ur blood sample? [via RegisterHardware]

@brady over at radar.oreilly.com has an excellent summary of what some folks are already doing to integrate Apple's new Find My iPhone service into their location aware applications. He speculates formalization of these techniques into a service and offers meaningful use cases, citing established applications, that would benefit from granular location data. People are building real world apps against this service and a community is forming around its use.

[via radar.oreilly.com]

Maker Sebastian Dwornik needed a way to mount a mobile device to his mountain bike to field test some software he'd written. If you've ever tried this, you know what a pain it is to try to strap something small on to your handlebars, not to mention things can get pretty banged up while you're out-and-about. His solution, though crude, turned out to be quite effective.

The secret comes in the form of a brilliant product called Model Magic. Originally designed for young children to express their creative talents through modeling with it. The material is safe, clean, cheap, and air-dries within 24 hours to a firm and rubbery substance that holds the shape it was molded in.

It makes for an excellent shock absorber as well as a perfect fit for any device you sculpt it for. You can even paint it any colour afterward, but I just left it stock white for simplicity.

Munch from Belgrade seems to have shoehorned Google's Android OS onto a dual-boot Nokia N95. The demo videos are rather grainy, but you can make out Android booting up and Google Maps running fullscreen. Munch vows to release the code for installation October 5th on his blog.

If you manage to get this running on your N95 when it's released, leave a note in the comments.

Update: turns out to be a complete fake.

[via gizmodo]