Peek-A-Booty source is available. The Peek-A-Booty team have posted the source for their great censorship-busting app. The idea is that public-spirited censorware-busters run a screen-saver that makes their computers available to act as a proxy for anyone who wants it, primarily those who live behind repressive national firewalls (cough China cough). The proxies discover each other and those who are looking for them using a Gnutella-like protocol, and when you want a page that is censored by your firewall, you ask one of your anonymous benefactors to pass it to you.

More than a censorship-circumventer, Peek-A-Booty has the potential to act as a distributed, self-evolving route-generator. If Alice has a route to CNN and Bob has no route to CNN, but Bob has a route to Alice, Bob can access CNN via Alice. When giant interchanges like MAE West go down, apps like Peek-A-Booty will take up the slack.

In other words: The Internet interprets damage as censorship and routes around it. Link Discuss (via Aaron Swartz: The Weblog) [Boing Boing Blog]

Brilliant solution to both routing and censorship issues. This could also be used to find faster ways of getting around the web, minimizing the number of hops that you need to to take to get to a high bandwidth site.

10:56:20 PM    

SJ Merc: "Sales of the Segway, priced at $8,500 each for now, have been anemic." [Scripting News]

The price-point on this has to drop for mass market adoption, down to the $2k range at least. Even for the SUV version with the beefier tires, battery, and power, it should not be more than $4k, or else they are going to price themselves out of the market.

I am looking forward to the stirling powered version of this, and I wonder if it will be able to go even faster.

What I find interesting in this article is that one of the investors only has a fiduciary interest in the balancing technology that has been developed, not in any other part of Kamen's businesses. I would live to see this tech deployed in cars, as it would serve to massively increase skidpad ratings, as well as smoothing out bumpy and or uneven roads. I know that similar tech has been around for years now, pioneered by Citroen, I think, and deployed in the Catera from Cadillac, but to see it in other vehicles would be very cool.

11:38:34 AM    

Wireless on the cheap DLink wireless hubs shippi .... Wireless on the cheap
DLink wireless hubs shipping for $60 at TigerDirect. This wireless gear is really almost free at this point. Link Discuss (via Dealmac)
posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:13 permanent link to this entry [Meerkat: An Open Wire Service]

What I find interesting is that the cost of the actual PC cards is comparable to the base stations in some cases, and also that TigerDirect has a package that includes two US robotics cards, once set up as a PCI access point, for not much more than a base unit. Since the PCI cards are used to hold with wireless PC cards, you could effectively get a set of four PC cards for the price of two if you were buying them separately. Plus you would have two antennas that I imagine you could use to boost your range on your laptop.

11:30:32 AM    

MacOS PVR a-comin'. ElGato software will launch its MacOS personal video recorder (like a software TiVo) at MacWorld New York this weekend. Link Discuss [Boing Boing Blog]

I imagine that they will have to add some kind of coax-in for the signal, likely a USB based converter. What's cool is if you then go and spend another grand or so on FInal Cut Pro, you can burn full length DVDs of the programs that you have recorded.

If they want to be super slick, they'll have the signal converter able to handle HDTV, so you can then start burning the wide-screen versions of your shows. Somehow I don't think that is going to happen though.

If you have the scratch, after you record the show, throw it on one of the new servers, and be able to stream it (hmm, how to stream it...) anywhere in the house. Your own TV station showing the shows and movies you want, when you want them (I know, I'm a broken record.)

11:10:06 AM    

Angrywhitegirl: Jughandle.Learn it. Know it. Live it. (exit 16) [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog]

I might add a few items:

1. Real Jersey drivers have the parkway toll in their hand as they roll up to the booth, and they don't stop to wait for the "Toll Paid" signal.
2. Passing on the right is not just a last ditch manuver, it's an essential skill.
3. Long on ramps are meant for building up speed as you approach the highway, do NOT ease up to the end to see if it's clear and then stop.
4. If there is insufficient "on ramp" on which to get up to speed, use the shoulder.
5. Stimulus --> response: Hear a horn --> flip the bird (I have seen/been flipped off by blue haired old ladies, and only in NJ)
6. After 11 PM, the Parkway unofficial speed limit is "As fast as you can."
7. Any time of day, Rt 21 has the same speed limit.

9:47:02 AM    

A Gadget King Lives by His Own Devices. Scott A. Jones has always liked the idea of being wired; his English Tudor-style home, outside Indianapolis, is dedicated to that idea. By John Leland. [New York Times: Technology]

Contrast this with my last post: This gentleman has a house that he is using as a testbed for a lot of the tech that I have gone on about. Touchscreen controls for the home systems, fingerprint biometrics for the doors. He's willing to live with the bugs in the system:

Locks with fingerprint sensors didn't recognize his children because their hands were dirty. "I've been locked out of the bedroom for a day," he said. "I've had no idea how to turn off lights in a room. Fireplaces won't go off. Gates open and close with a mind of their own. My maid had a horrible time getting into my bedroom."

In fact, he's got a CIO for his home to keep everything running smoothly. He also runs a set of companies that develops and markets the tech that he's living with. While the products are cool, they also come with a steep price, the 200 disc DVD manager is $7,500. I think I can live with getting up and walking across the room for that price.

Regardless, it is cool to see someone who is willing to make things better by really living with the tech as an effort to get it to improve.

1:12:11 AM