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Magazine Makes Gadget-Making Fun
source: Wired

On the internet, there's no shortage of techies offering tips on how to build a personal video recorder or turn an iPod into a universal remote. Now a new magazine, Make, aims to put such ideas in print form, featuring a plethora of do-it-yourself tips for modifying and manipulating gadgets.

To be launched early next year, Make is the first magazine developed by O'Reilly Media, best known as a publisher of programming books. Dale Dougherty, vice president of online publishing for O'Reilly and developer of its Hacks series, conceived the plan for the magazine as a "Martha Stewart for geeks."

"There're a lot of magazines about technology, about products, about platforms like Mac or Windows. They are about the devices themselves," Dougherty said. "Instead of products, we wanted to cover projects -- things that you can do."

The magazine is designed to appeal to techie and non-technical crowds alike. Every issue will have a primer on a basic topic, like soldering and de-soldering. Projects will be divided into small endeavors like how to use AirPort Express or how to build your own mesh network in your house, and major projects like building your own steadycam. Profiles of people or groups who make interesting projects will also be a regular feature.

The launch of Make follows the "do it yourself" trend seen on the pages of magazines like Martha Stewart Living, ReadyMade and even Cook's Illustrated.
"In many ways, Martha Stewart recovered arts and crafts for our time," Dougherty said. "She brought back things our mothers and grandmothers did, (like) cooking, making a centerpiece, baking a pie and sharing it with other people."

Technology projects also bring together people who share similar passions, he said. Setting up a wireless network among neighbors or wiring the house for music with the kids draws people together. The first issue of Make also features kite aerial photography, a pastime that has attracted enthusiasts from around the world.
The open-source movement and cheaper hardware parts are also fueling interest in home hacking.

"These are things you do on your own time, not things you have to do at work," Dougherty said.

Make will be published quarterly and will take the format of a "mook," a magazine and book hybrid popular in Japan. It will be thicker than a magazine, with fewer ads and a higher price tag: $15 an issue. Readers can find Make at newsstands and in bookstores or subscribe. Subscription prices have not been set yet.
The publication also hopes to build an active community of web users who can offer tips for modifying current projects and connect with each other. Software necessary for some tasks will be available for download at the site, along with links to useful tools for purchase.

The can-do attitude of old hobbyist magazines like Popular Science and Popular Mechanics inspired the spirit of the new magazine, Dougherty said.

"That was kind of lost in the '70s and '80s when people started becoming more consumers," said Mark Frauenfelder, editor in chief of Make. "People didn't need to make things anymore. It was cheaper to buy them."

While that still may be true today, "there is a satisfaction in making something rather than buying it," he said.

One only needs to look at the net to see how people tinker and tweak machines to their liking.

"Every day I see half a dozen really great things that (people) have done with technology," Frauenfelder said. "People are showing off all the stuff they make on the internet. It's unbelievable how much of this stuff is out there."

Frauenfelder said that Make staffers will be mindful of copyright laws -- which prevent the circumvention of digital locks on copyright material, for instance -- when putting together the content of the magazine, even if they'd prefer to ignore them.

"O'Reilly and I, personally, have always been in favor of open, accessible technology, and I think laws that discourage reverse engineering, or prevent people from customizing their own technology, are ridiculous," Frauenfelder said. "We are going to make sure that what we do does not violate any laws even if we don't agree with those laws."

It would be irresponsible to run an article that details how to rip a DVD and send it to millions of people, he said. But it might be interesting to document how to rip a DVD to watch it on your Palm Pilot.

One of the first contributors to the magazine, Cris Benton, is an expert in kite aerial photography.

"If Make appeals to people who go out and devise things, there are all sorts of avenues where you could take this project," said Benton, an architecture professor at the University of California at Berkeley and an artist in residence at San Francisco's Exploratorium museum.

Once people understand the basic design required for taking photographs, Benton said, they can adapt the rig to different kinds of cameras depending on the sorts of images they want to capture.

Benton said that since he started taking photographs from kites, one world he's discovered is the backs of waves as they break. He shoots the pictures "as if I'm a seagull, out over the waves looking down."

American Passports to Get Chipped
source: Wired

New U.S. passports will soon be read remotely at borders around the world, thanks to embedded chips that will broadcast on command an individual's name, address and digital photo to a computerized reader.
The State Department hopes the addition of the chips, which employ radio frequency identification, or RFID, technology, will make passports more secure and harder to forge, according to spokeswoman Kelly Shannon.

"The reason we are doing this is that it simply makes passports more secure," Shannon said. "It's yet another layer beyond the security features we currently use to ensure the bearer is the person who was issued the passport originally."

But civil libertarians and some technologists say the chips are actually a boon to identity thieves, stalkers and commercial data collectors, since anyone with the proper reader can download a person's biographical information and photo from several feet away.

"Even if they wanted to store this info in a chip, why have a chip that can be read remotely?" asked Barry Steinhardt, who directs the American Civil Liberty Union's Technology and Liberty program. "Why not require the passport be brought in contact with a reader so that the passport holder would know it had been captured? Americans in the know will be wrapping their passports in aluminum foil."

Last week, four companies received contracts from the government to deliver prototype chips and readers immediately for evaluation.
Diplomats and State Department employees will be issued the new passports as early as January, while other citizens applying for new passports will get the new version starting in the spring. Countries around the world are also in the process of including the tags in their passports, in part due to U.S. government requirements that some nations must add biometric identification in order for their citizens to visit without a visa.

Current passports (which are already readable by machines that decipher text on the photo page) will remain valid until they expire, according to a State Department spokeswoman.

The RFID passport works like a high-tech version of the children's game "Marco Polo." A reader speaks out the equivalent of "Marco" on a designated frequency. The chip then channels that radio energy and echoes back with an answer.

But instead of simply saying "Polo," the 64 Kb chip will say the passport holder's name, address, date and place of birth, and send along a digital photograph.

While none of the information on the chip is encrypted, the chip does also broadcast a digital signature that verifies the chip itself was created by the government. Security experts said the U.S. government decided not to encrypt the data because of the risks involved in sharing the method of decryption with other countries.

RFID technology has been around for more than 60 years, but has only recently become cheap enough to be adopted widely. E-Z Pass prepay toll systems across the country run on RFIDs, pets and livestock around the world have RFID implants, and businesses such as Wal-Mart plan to use the tags to track their inventory.

But Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney Lee Tien argues that RFID chips in passports are a "privacy horror" and would be even if the data was encrypted.

"If 180 countries have access to the technology for reading this thing, whether or not it is encrypted, from a security standpoint, that is a very leaky system," Tien said. "Strictly from a technology standpoint, any reader system, even with security, that was so widely deployed and accessible to so many people worldwide will be subject to some very interesting compromises."

Travel privacy expert Edward Hasbrouck argues that identity thieves are not the only ones with an interest in recording the data remotely. Commercial travel companies, including hotels, will capture the data to create commercial dossiers when people check into hotels or exchange currency in order to up-sell their customers, he argues.
While there are no laws in the United States prohibiting anyone from snooping on someone's passport data, Roy Want, an RFID expert who works as a principal engineer for Intel Research, thinks that the possibility of identity theft is overblown.

"It is actually quite hard to read RFID at a distance," said Want.

A person's keys, bag and body interfere with the radio waves, and the type of RFID chip being used requires readers equipped with very large -- and obvious -- coils to capture the data, according to Want.

Still, he concedes that a determined snooper could create a snooping system.
"In principle someone could rig up a reader, perhaps in a doorway you are forcing people to go through. You could read some of these tags some of the time," Want said.

But Want thinks that overall the chips will help cut down on passport fraud.

"The problem with security is there is always a possibility of attack," Want said. "RFIDs are not going to solve the problem of passport forgery, but people who know about printing are not going to learn about RFIDs."

CES confirms Bill Gates keynote; Xbox 2 announcement expected
With tommEE pickles birthdaycon, why would you think about missing it?

Bill Gates is expected to announce the Xbox 2 on January 5th during his keynote at CES:

Gates will speak on Wednesday, January 5th at 6.30pm PST, the night before the opening of the CES event - which is the largest trade show of any description in North America, and is expected to attract 130,000 professionals from 110 countries over its three-day span.

Sometimes, I really want to buy an iBook
CUPERTINO, California - October 19, 2004 - Apple® today unveiled the fastest, most affordable iBook® G4 ever for consumers and education customers, featuring built-in AirPort® Extreme 54 Mbps 802.11g wireless networking across the line and prices starting at just $999. The iBook line includes PowerPC G4 processors running up to 1.33 GHz and an available slot-load SuperDriveTM for burning DVDs, as well as Apple's breakthrough iLife® '04 suite for managing digital music and photos, making movies and music and creating professional-quality DVDs.

"Designed for the digital life on the go, the iBook G4 has been incredibly popular with consumers and students," said David Moody, Apple's vice president of Worldwide Mac Product Marketing. "With prices starting at just $999, including AirPort Extreme wireless networking built-in and faster PowerPC G4 processors, the new iBooks are a great deal for every student, home user and small business owner."

Encased in a sleek, durable polycarbonate plastic enclosure, the new 12- and 14-inch iBooks offer improved performance with either a 1.2 GHz or 1.33 GHz PowerPC G4 processor. Providing up to six hours of battery life for all-day use on the road or in the classroom,* the iBook lineup offers AirPort Extreme 54 Mbps 802.11g wireless networking in every model and an optional internal Bluetooth module for wirelessly connecting peripherals such as the Apple Wireless Keyboard and Apple Wireless Mouse.** All iBook G4 models also offer a full complement of I/O ports including FireWire® 400, USB 2.0, a built-in 56K v.92 modem and Ethernet (10/100BASE-T) for connectivity to a wide range of peripherals such as speakers, MIDI keyboards and iPod®.

Providing world class graphics capabilities, each iBook G4 offers ATI Mobility Radeon 9200 graphics with 32MB of dedicated DDR memory and AGP 4X support for gaming and watching DVDs, as well as VGA video out for easy mirroring to projection systems and external displays. The new iBook G4 also includes either a slot-load SuperDrive, for burning both DVDs and CDs, or a slot-load combo drive capable of burning and playing CDs and watching DVDs.

From the tommEE pickles annoyance idea bag

Keychain clicker kills TVs

Discreet device turns off televisions, creating a little peace and quiet. Until the yelling starts.

A keychain gadget allows people to turn off most televisions, whose flashing images and background drone inventor Mitch Altman compares to second-hand smoke.

Baseball fans during a pennant chase might disagree, but the TV-B-Gone universal remote control may be fun for its kitschy and, most importantly, discreet appeal. While not the first device of its kind, the $14.99 gadget is inexpensive and can turn off every model of U.S., Asian and European television, according to the company, San Francisco-based Cornfield Electronics. The product is available through the company Web site and select retail locations.
The keychain remote control does not damage televisions--it only turns them on and off.

TV-B-Gone and other devices like it may not be popular among consumer electronics and PC makers, many of whom are centering or emphasizing the television as a vital device in the digital home.

Sales of high-definition televisions, as well as of digital audio players and other high-tech gadgets, are expected to drive solid growth in the consumer electronics category this holiday season, according to the Consumer Electronics Association.

The diminutive remote control is the first product from the company. "I consider TV-B-Gone a personal safety device," Altman said in a statement. Probably not in the middle of a sports bar in October, though.