Are you dreaming of becoming an indie software developer for the next wave of Android phones or building an Android-capable device and don’t have Big Phone testing resources? How about developing apps to load on a jail-broken Android Palm Pre? All of these desires may soon be slaked by the Zoom OMAP34x-II Mobile Development Platform […]
Continue ReadingWe have a mission, GeekDad readers! Like we often are called upon to do in our daily lives, we are being asked to suggest a tech solution for someone. But in this case, the request is a little more challenging. I was very honored the other day to receive the following email from a reader: […]
Continue ReadingSeeking to fill a perceived need for an adult hackerspace in the Twin Cities area, a guy named Paul Sobczak has created Twin Cities Maker, a forum to discuss founding such a space. Twin Cities Maker was created to spark the discussion about creating a maker shop in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area in Minnesota A […]
Continue ReadingImage via Wikipedia This is a guest post by GeekWife/Mom and Teacher, Travlyn Russell. In the midst of a the largest budget crisis in California since the 1970′s, when most teachers are facing cuts in supplies and materials, I teach in a classroom with millions of resources at my command. Yep! I teach in a computer lab. Specifically, […]
Continue ReadingWe bought our wonderful Sony 50" rear-projection television about four years ago, and have watched the heck out of it, between regular TV, the Blu-ray player we’ve had for a year now, the Wii, and the AppleTV. And this last weekend, we hit the milestone folks with this kind of set dread: The bulb died. […]
Continue ReadingHere I thought it was impressive that I won a regional science fair at the age of 12. But now comes the story of M.Lavinashree, a girl from the Tamil Nadu state in India, who has passed the Microsoft Certified Professional exam at the age of 9. I first read about this on Engadget last […]
Continue ReadingDisclaimer: my wife, who is a high school teacher, came up with the idea for this article. As a fairly geeky person herself, my wife is often saddled with technology projects. Currently she is the Lead Teacher for the Information Technology Academy at her school. Her academy teaches students in Adobe Certification, Cisco Certification, Web […]
Continue ReadingLast November and December, the One Laptop Per Child project had a program called "Give One Get One," whereby you would pay for two laptops, get one yourself and send one to a child in the developing world. This holiday season, they’re doing it again, only this time in conjunction with Amazon.com. They haven’t announced […]
Continue ReadingYou may have noticed that Best Buy and its in-house technology troubleshooters, Geek Squad, don’t have the best reputations on the web. While they’ve surely earned a certain amount of scorn thrown their way, they also do something that should earn them a measure of praise: They run an inexpensive-to-free summer camp to get kids […]
Continue ReadingIf you’re a geek, you probably get a little jittery when you’re away from the web for more than a couple of hours. If you have an iPhone, you’ve proven my point. If you don’t have an iPhone, then you want one, so again my point is proven. If you don’t even want an iPhone, […]
Continue ReadingI had a great time at iPhoneDevCamp 2 in San Francisco last weekend. I’ve posted some general notes from the camp over at Webmonkey, but here are some thoughts I had with my GeekDad hat* on: Lots of geekdads and their kids were in attendance. Joe Michels got an iPhone so he could show off […]
Continue ReadingI saw two GeekDad-friendly items in the IDEA award announcements I hadn’t seen before and would love to test drive.
Continue ReadingTime was, Apple products had zero credibility with serious geeks — they were perceived as being purely artists’ tools. And when Photoshop and other professional design programs migrated to Windows, not even that. The brand seemed so doomed that computer executive Michael Dell famously told a Gartner Symposium that he thought the company should be […]
Continue ReadingIs your portable computer not quite portable enough? Well, the Connect-A-Desk Laptop Holder means that you will never need a desk (or for that matter your lap) ever again. Who needs to sit when you can strap your work station right to your neck. Includes the laptop harness & desk, everything you need to use […]
Continue ReadingAnyone with even a passing interest in the history of hacking needs to check out this book. 2600 magazine got its start in 1984 and it has covered every peak and valley of of the hacking scene — momentous events like Operation Sundevil and the bust of Kevin Mitnick, as well as glacial changes like […]
Continue ReadingThe GeekMom has been a fan since the original Virtual Villagers. As soon as Virtual Villagers 2 was available she downloaded it. This past week she found Virtual Villagers III and it’s become a bit of an obsession in the family. Virtual Villagers 3: The Secret City is the (obviously) third installment in the series. […]
Continue ReadingWhen I first learned to make fonts, I settled on a modular system of vector shapes in Illustrator. Need a curve? Create a curve and save it, because chances are that curve will be needed again. Need a bowl or stem? Do the same thing. Professional font creators pooh poohed this system, although a lot […]
Continue ReadingThere are World of Warcraft geeks, Mac geeks, and craft geeks, but what happens when you whip all three into a savory potage? A custom, laser etched MacBook Pro. It’s proud owner says: This is actually my MacBookPro. It took about 20 minutes to perform the laser engraving on the machine. However we did quite […]
Continue ReadingTron gained sci-fi cult status in the early 1980′s as a ground-breaking visual effects movie centered on the story of a video game programmer getting transported into a virtual world run by MCP, the Master-Control Program. Rumors are flying nearly twenty years later that Tron 2 may be in the works. Several weeks ago the […]
Continue ReadingTech-savvy teens and tweens are often looked upon with a measurable amount of contempt, so much so that the image of the bored, listless, and ultimately despondent young person maliciously hacking for the simple thrill of it has become a modern archetype. Yet, as The Who once remarked, the kids are alright. Jon Penn, a […]
Continue ReadingA year ago, you were reading this on GeekDad: Apache for Kids (by Andrew Anker) You may know Apache as the most popular web server, powering many of the internet’s biggest sites. It’s the A in LAMP, the gold standard in flexible open source architecture making web 2.0 scale cheaply. It’s also a great way […]
Continue ReadingIn the continuing saga of the GeekMom and I introducing a new generation to the TV series we watched as kids, they have now been exposed to Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. It’s James Bond meets Star Trek in the opening titles with obligatory song. Only you won’t recognize the singer (or song), and […]
Continue ReadingI’m not sure whether to be disgusted at capitalism, or over-extend my credit card to buy a complete set. Star Wars-themed USB drives, pre-loaded with SW content. Star Wars mimobot Series Designer USB Flash Drives! Two of your favorite galaxies have collided to create a collection of Star Wars mimobot crossover characters. Each are available […]
Continue ReadingMy daughter, Natasha, came home from school last week and she was extremely excited about something her class had done. We’re talking wound up. Once we calmed her down enough to figure out what she was talking about we discovered that her teacher had videotaped her Grade 2 class as each of the students presented […]
Continue ReadingThis is how it always begins in the movies. Some well-meaning scientist-geeks create an artificial intelligence, and set it loose to see how it learns and behaves. Next thing we know, he’s taken over the nuke launchers and threatens humanity unless someone brings him an ice cream cone. In this case, the AI was built […]
Continue ReadingIt’s hard to get excited about case mods any more. I mean, at first it was cool enough to just cut a Plexiglas window into the side of your case and throw a few oddly-colored lights inside. I figured things ahd pretty much reached apogee with the Doom case mod a couple of years ago. […]
Continue ReadingWe recently gave the Pup a computer of her very own. We had previously given her a hand-me-down, which subsequently died, but this was special. A geek-friend of mine recently built some PCs as part of a project at work (Core Duo, 4 gigs of RAM, 250 gigs of storage, not bad for a freebie). […]
Continue ReadingImmersive 3D at home just got a lot simpler and cheaper. CMU researcher Johnny Lee has hacked the Wiimote to perform head tracking. Translation: Amazing three-dimensionality with regular old displays, potentially available on a Wii or other system near you. Outside of the gaming space, there are some intriguing interface possbilities, too. Imagine combining Lee’s […]
Continue ReadingIt’s rare to read a book on computer programming, written by the guys who actually created the language. Processing: A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists (The MIT Press) is one. But hold on, what is Processing? Put simply, a programming language for people who want to create images, animation and interactivity without having […]
Continue ReadingSomething neat to point your computers (or the Apple TV I’m getting for Christmas) to: The Computer History Museum has started its own YouTube channel, with a slew of lectures and demonstrations from the museum itself. So, if you can’t actually go to Mountain View to see it, maybe this is the next best thing!From […]
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