Makingthings – new projects…
I’ve been meaning to post this for awhile, the folks from MakingThings have a whole bunch of new HOW TOs and project ideas for their Teleo product. What is Teleo? Teleo is a rapid-prototyping and development tool developed and marketed by MakingThings. It consists of a line of modular and networkable hardware components that can easily be connected to a computer via USB and programmed and controlled using any one of a number of programming languages. Components range from a variety of input and output modules, motor controller modules and accessories. Link. Also, check out the blocks.
When I started thinking about CNC machines, I just wanted a computer-controlled machine that would be able to automatically drill all of the holes in the printed circuit boards that I made, for my Curve Tracer kits (see the link, above). But, the “good” commercially-available machines were priced higher than the amount that I could justify spending. So, I started thinking about what it would take to build one, myself. And, I didn’t want to build one that would cost almost as much as a commercial machine: Otherwise it might have been smarter to just BUY one, to begin with! So, I decided to add “low cost” as one of the design goals. I also expected to end up with one or more additional products to sell, as a result of this project, to (help) justify the time that I spent on it. 
Here’s an overview of a clever email-to-RSS hack I was forwarded. If you subscribe to an email mailing list, you can set blogger.com posting to the email address you signed up with. So, each time you get an email, it’ll post that to a blog you have set up. Then blogger.com automatically has a feed you can subscribe to. (Make sure it’s not a private mailing list of course.)
I really like Firefox, mostly because you can make your own browser with all the GreaseMonkey stuff…and now check this- The Mozilla Foundation, developer of the Firefox Web browser, plans to announce Wednesday that it has created a for-profit subsidiary to pursue wider potential for the software. 
Home made, open source mp3 Player. The main goal of this project is to create an open design for a portable MP3 player, in both hardware and software. The secondary goal of this project is to make it as simple to construct, and as cheap, as possible. The design is based around the AVR Butterfly from Atmel.