Optimus mini-three keyboard

/ Media Technology

optimus-mini-3-kbd.jpg

I’m not sure yet what I’d do with it, but the Optimus mini-three keyboard looks very fun: it’s an auxiliary keyboard with three keys, each with its own little OLED screen displaying the current function (potentially animated). The most compelling examples are where not only is the button’s function displayed but also what effect it’ll have in the current context, like what image, song, or PowerPoint slide is coming up next when browsing through media.

USB 1.0, currently Windows only for the configuration software but others are coming. Pre-orderable for $100 until April 2nd, shipped to arrive on May 15th. This is coming out of the Art. Lebedev Studio in Russia — looks like they’ve also got a complete keyboard coming soon too.

(Thanks to Nerfduck for this link too!)

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On the Internet, no one knows you’re a pigeon…

/ Media Technology

PigeonBlog

Via Reuters: UC Irvine professor Beatriz da Costa will be releasing 20 pigeons into the San Jose skies during this year’s International Symmposium on Electronic Art. Each pigeon will be equipped with a camera, GPS, air-polution monitor and cellphone, and images and location-based polution data will be automatically posted to a PigeonBlog. (No word on whether PigeonBlog will comply with RFC 1149.)

Thanks to Nerfduck for the link!

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iPods for the Senate

/ Intellectual Property

The “balanced intellectual-property policy” advocacy group IPac has a new campaign to educate senators about media in the Internet Age by sending them iPods:

Last week, the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation held a hearing on the “Broadcast Flag” and “Audio Flag,” a set of proposals by the MPAA and RIAA that would stifle innovation by giving content holders a virtual veto over new technologies and existing user rights.

But Senator Stevens, the 82-year old committee chairman from Alaska, surprised the audience by announcing that his daughter had bought him an iPod, and suddenly Stevens had a much greater understanding of the many ways innovative technology can create choice for consumers. Content industry representatives at the hearing found themselves answering much tougher questions than they typically receive.

I’d thought this same thing when I first read about Senator Stevens, but figured it’d be illegal for Senators to accept the iPods as gifts. IPac’s FAQ says they’re donating these to the Senator’s campaign offices (for use in campaign-related activities) and so they get around the rules — whether the Senators will accept them given the current scrutiny over lobbying scandals is another question.

(Thanks to Amy for the link!)

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Congressional staffers try to whitewash Wikipedia

/ Media Technology

The Wikipedia community is trying to respond to whitewashing of politically-sensitive articles that appear to be coming from congressional staffers themselves (with the staff of Marty Meehan (D, MA) being one of the biggest culprits).

I’m always amazed that Wikipedia works as well as it does — hopefully the bad press Meehan and other congress-critters get over this flap will outweigh any good press specific staffers may have hoped to achieve.

Detailed coverage at Lowell Sun, C|net and Slashdot.

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PDFs that fink

/ Security

Here’s a tricky little privacy hole: Adobe PDF Reader 6.0 and later will automatically (and silently) execute Javascript that’s been embedded in a PDF file, and LWN reports that a company called Remote Approach uses this “feature” to tag a PDF so it’ll phone home to their servers whenever it’s opened. Their customers can then go to a special webpage to track when the PDF was opened and at what IP address.

I’m sure you can think of your own scenarios where this would be a Bad Thing™, but the case that brought it to my attention was from a supposedly-anonymous reviewer of an academic paper who discovered Remote’s website in his firewall logs.

The simple moral of the story is that content formats should not be able to run arbitrary code, but the more general point is one of setting limits and expectations. End-users need to be able to limit what’s run on their own computers, and when the actual limits are broader than what a naive user might expect (such as when their supposedly-static PDF document can actually access the network) it’s extra important for the system to alert the user what’s happening and get permission first.

To their credit, Adobe seems to have heeded the moral: the current version of Acrobat Reader (at least on the Mac) gives a pop-up warning saying the PDF is trying to access a remote URL, and allows you to save your security settings on a site-by-site basis. I don’t know when they added this alert or whether it was in response to problems like those I mentioned, but regardless it’s nice to see the feature.

(Thanks to Dirk for the link.)

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Exploding drawer trap

/ Hacks

I just posted another DIY-trap page, this one an exploding-cap trap for a drawer. This is what I’d call a third-level trap: it takes a bit of dexterity and knowledge to disarm, but anyone with a little experience shouldn’t have any trouble getting past it. I never sent this one off to Jay; it just sits on my shelf to surprise visitors who haven’t learned to be careful when opening boxes around my place.

You can browse through previous traps at my Traps Gallery (I’ve only posted a couple so far, but more will be coming).

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Google Talk joins the federation

/ Media Technology

I’m a bit late on this, but I’m psyched to see that last week Google flipped the switch to allow all their Google Talk instant messenger accounts to talk to any other Jabber client out there. I’ve not verified it yet, but I think that included people with .Mac accounts using iChat, and BigBlueBall has a nice tutorial on how to use the federation to hook up your GTalk account directly to AIM, Yahoo!, MSN and ICQ using Jabber transport services.

This is the final step I’ve been waiting for before ditching my AIM account and going entirely to Jabber!

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A gargoyle on the roof…

/ Culture

…sounds crazy, no?

Gargoyle on the roof

File this one under “Only in San Francisco.” One of the attractions at a friend’s birthday party this past weekend was watching them have their chimney swept by a gargoyle.

In hindsight, I guess being a chimney-sweeping grotesque architectural decoration is an odd odd job to have, but somehow Shadow (a costuming major from USCS who always swept out his Dad’s chimney every year) made it seem like a perfectly normal thing to do. Heck, maybe it is…

[more pictures]

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Multishot pellet-gun trap

/ Hacks

For over fifteen years my friend Jay and I have exchange trapped presents at Christmas. When I say trapped I mean it in the classic Circle of Death game style — if you open the present carelessly a buzzer will sound or explosive cap will trigger.

I usually focus on making it difficult to find and disarm a simple explosive-cap trap, but this year I wanted to change things up a bit and focus on the effect itself. In particular, I wanted to make a box trap that would shoot darts out in all directions, machine-gun style. It had to be completely mechanical (what can I say, I like the style better), and had to be stable enough to ship through the mail without going off or getting jammed. After many attempts I landed on this rather elegant sprung-hammer design (click for video and construction notes).

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