There are many situations where you might need a small amount of electricity: running gate openers, safety lights, water level indicators and other low-power devices, for example. This site shows how to make a simple Savonius wind turbine to power a gate opener. Link.
Just when you thought you had seen all the Open Source Projects you could think of, the Open Source Submersible Project comes along. The project was founded on the belief that oncerted effort, pooled resources, and freely available information would esult in a better Personal Submersible for all. www.psubs.org has lots of other info on submarines too. Thanks Hans! Link.
If you are a Linux user and want to rip your DVD movies to DivX4, DivX5 and Xvid seamlessly, this article is for you. We will use a single ripping tool (DVD::Rip) to extract DVD movies and encode them to the compression formats mentioned above. All you need is a DVD drive, a DVD movie, an Internet connection and a Linux machine [via] Link.
Great reference. Tao of Mac writes “I’ve decided to put up a short tutorial on generating KML data for Google Earth – anyone with PHP installed should be able to use these simple techniques to layer their own data atop Google Earth from nothing but a CSV file, and build up from there”. Link.
I don’t really care for CD and DVD packaging and am always on the look out for something better. Mike writes “3D Insertable is a fully patented, 100% recyclable product that replaces CD jewel cases and standard DVD cases. Use for your CD packaging, DVD packaging, photo packaging and software packaging.” Electrons are still the best container. Link.
I’m not using Audible so much any more, but I still want to get some audio books once in a while. I think I’m going to try some of the audio book rental services that send out titles Netflix style. The two I found are Simply Audio Books & JitterBug. Has anyone tried these? What did you think? $20 for all you can rent in a month.
Here’s an idea that I can’t hack this week since I’m on the road…but have at it: each person who wants to publish their location can via the status of Skype/AIM/Jabber/MSN/etc. A buddy “bot” on that system reads the info and makes a KML file (Google Earth). Then you just drag all the KML files of the people who you’re looking for in to Google Earth. See our how-to on doing this with photos. GeoBloggers does this now with photos and other items (Meetro does this too) – Link.
