Computers & Mobile
The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for digital gadgetry, open code, smart hacks, and more. Processing power to the people!
Here’s one of many resources for finding DOS games. If you have an old PC laying around, or looking to do something with one, these old games could make a great little gamer machine and will bring back a lot of memories.[
HOW TO – The Magic Phone, Part 2
Here’s part 2 of Fabienne Serriere’s great rotary phone to cell phone project “This week we bring you Part 2 of The Magic Phone How-To: The Circuit. The Magic Phone is a project where both a DECT compatible wireless home phone and a GSM cellphone are placed inside an old rotary phone. In Part 1 of the How-To, we showed you how to reverse engineer the matrix on a phone circuit.” Link.
HOW TO – Put your Mac to sleep by sending a text message
Here’s a pretty simply how to on using a text message (SMS) from your phone to put your Mac to sleep at home. While that in itself isn’t that useful, you could easily make your own scripts and email rules to do other things like send back ring tones, trigger a robot, turn on a web camera…[via] Link.
Case Mod a Dell monitor?
Peter writes “I bought a Dell monitor since they are so cheap, but personally find it ugly sitting next to my (Apple) G5. Is there any way you could find a hack or other DIY “brushed metal” case replacement for a Dell monitor? I would so love to see this and learn from it.” Any ideas for him? I think a lot of clear acrylic might be a way to go, but then again – I like the look of exposed electronics…
HOW TO – Make a Custom ROM for the Treo 650
TreoCentral member Tem has a great step by step on making your own custom ROM for your Treo, this adds more memory and puts your own apps in ROM “I am a complete unskilled newbie but after days of reading information I was able to make a perfect ROM for my Sprint Treo 650. I gained 4 megs of RAM since I placed in ROM 4 megs of my 3rd party programs that would usually be in RAM. More importantly I got rid of the junk applications that wasted space and occasionally caused me problems, like versamail.” Link.
Laptop to Homemade Digital Picture Frame Resources
If you’re thinking of building a LCD picture frame from an old computer, here’s a great resource to get started “This site was inspired by a MacWorld article on turning an old mac laptop into a digital picture frame. I decided to try my hand at creating my own digital frame. While looking around for information to help me with my project, I soon realized that there are quite a number of people who have been building digital picture frames. This page is a resource for anyone who would like to create their own digital picture frames.” Link.
HOW TO – Screencasting
“A screencast is a digital movie in which the setting is partly or wholly a computer screen, and in which audio narration describes the on-screen action. It’s not a new idea. The screencaster’s tools–for video capture, editing, and production of compressed files–have long been used to market software products, and to train people in the use of those products. What’s new is the emergence of a genre of documentary filmmaking that tells stories about software-based cultures like Wikipedia, del.icio.us, and content remixing. These uses of the medium, along with a new breed of lightweight software demonstrations, inspired the collaborative coining of a new term, screencast.” Link.
