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LEGO - my - Crackberry writes "Matthias Wandel is an engineer at Research in Motion (RIMM), the company that makes the Blackberry. What did RIMM turn to for testing the antenna reception of one of its 900MHz devices? LEGO machines. Specifically a device made of LEGO that could rotate a Blackberry about its horizontal & vertical axis in a pre-defined pattern."

WaveDave writes "I have found some really inspiring pages out there by folks who are hacking together amazingly cool low-cost hardware/software/etc projects (reminiscent of the old homebrew computer club days). With the cost of IC's, sensors, microcontrollers, and PC's falling through the floor, we've entered a time where the barriers to entry on hacking neat projects are lower than they've ever been. There are a lot of indicators of the excitement in these projects, including the recent announcement of the upcoming Make Magazine from O'Reilly. Initially blown away by Matthias Wandel's projects, I've begun to put together a small collection of links to other creative DIY-ers out there, as well as resources for finding parts, getting stuff made (like PCB's and machined stuff). My current list is here - what are some of your favorite creatives and resources?"

Cebu writes "According to GameSpot, in a less than surprising move, Kyle Bennett of tech website HardOCP has decided to file a lawsuit against Infinium Labs, makers of the forthcoming Phantom PC-based 'console'. On February 27, a lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division under the Declaratory Judgment Act to force the issue of Infinium Labs' repeated legal threats against HardOCP for an allegedly defamatory article written last year."

SuperDuG writes "This is a true homebrew solution to saving a few bucks when it comes to cd changers. And to make it even better the whole setup is controlled by none other than linux. Seems like a nice setup to do batch burns without user interaction. Source is provided if you wanted to build your own." Not sure if this is very practical, or even if it would be cheaper than buying a changer, but it sure looks cool.

mwandel writes "It used to be that one off amateur printed circuit boards were all etched in acid. A lot of companies nowadays use a special form of milling machine to mill them out of solid copper clad circuit boards. This guy Jonathan Westhues built his own PCB milling machine out of various parts, with a laminate trimmer as the milling head. Lots of other neat hacks on his Webpage as well."

An Anonymous Coward writes: "Want a weird & wobbly digital camera, but don't want to spend over $100? Well, Matthias Wandel, whose site is due for some /. lovin', used the guts of a cheap scanner, some camera parts, and scrap wood to build a very high quality digitcal camera. Read about progress at this site. Oh, and he also builds things out of legos as well." I personally think that his Jenga Pistol and wasp-vacuum are pretty neat too.

An Anonymous Coward writes: "Want a weird & wobbly digital camera, but don't want to spend over $100? Well, Matthias Wandel, whose site is due for some /. lovin', used the guts of a cheap scanner, some camera parts, and scrap wood to build a very high quality digitcal camera. Read about progress at this site. Oh, and he also builds things out of legos as well." I personally think that his Jenga Pistol and wasp-vacuum are pretty neat too.

An Anonymous Coward writes: "Want a weird & wobbly digital camera, but don't want to spend over $100? Well, Matthias Wandel, whose site is due for some /. lovin', used the guts of a cheap scanner, some camera parts, and scrap wood to build a very high quality digitcal camera. Read about progress at this site. Oh, and he also builds things out of legos as well." I personally think that his Jenga Pistol and wasp-vacuum are pretty neat too.

An Anonymous Coward writes: "Want a weird & wobbly digital camera, but don't want to spend over $100? Well, Matthias Wandel, whose site is due for some /. lovin', used the guts of a cheap scanner, some camera parts, and scrap wood to build a very high quality digitcal camera. Read about progress at this site. Oh, and he also builds things out of legos as well." I personally think that his Jenga Pistol and wasp-vacuum are pretty neat too.

Gary William Flake has written a book entitled ``The Computational Beauty of Nature: Computer Explorations of Fractals, Chaos, Complex Systems, and Adaptation.'' The book's companion website is located at here. Art & Math can work so well together sometimes. Tom Murphy sent us a link to Chris Wenham os OS/2 E-zine's rant on Conspiracy Theories anf the FSF. Mentions Slashdot for some reason too. alank sent us an article on free software that you might enjoy. Gunfighter wrote in to say that recent User Friendly strips will be of interest to Red Hat users, Finally W. O. Frobozz sent us a link to an article about Gary Kildall of CP/M and DRI fame. Worthwhile read.

Too much good stuff sent in today. W. O. Frobozz sent us a link to User Friendly, another cool geek comic strip. Josh Baugher writes "Jenni of JenniCam fame is going to be interviewed on the 10:00 Fox5 news (out of Washington, D.C.) tonight. " And finally, Kory Lasker sent us a link to the mp3mobile which has been updated to include a bit more info for those who are as envious as me.

K. Fisher writes " Check this for some interesting developments on the freely available VNC software from Oracle/Olivetti. VNC is sort-of a free PC/Anywhere clone that works extremely well on X-Terminals and Linux. :) Well, someone has ported it to the PalmPilot! Check the URL and scroll near the bottom...the port isn't available yet, but you can watch an AVI of it in action on the CoPilot. I can't WAIT for this thing. :) (Oh yeah there's a port available for Wince devices too...big whoop.. :) "