techyum ::

Almost a year ago, Qik made me one of their sponsored livestream videobloggers, but between the phone and working out the bugs, it made live videoblogging from the phone spotty. Now, Qik has tightened up their (free) service and it’s seriously versatile and easy to use — and I got my hands on a brand new Nokia N95-4. It’s a hell of a gadget, and now that it’s out of the box I can’t stop playing with it and it’s never, ever far from reach. And I know I’m not even maximizing it.
I’ll get this out of the way: I have a phone from Helio (an Ocean) and that’s my trusty phone, with a qwerty keyboard and extremely reliable everything; I’ve had 3G for years, my friends. So the N95-4 isn’t quite going to replace my Ocean — but if the Nokia had a qwerty keyboard, it would in about .00006 seconds. On the Nokia I will read your email and enjoy the experience very much. But on the Ocean I’ll respond. Yes, there are other Nokia phones with keyboards: but you say, the E71. Yes, it’s lovely, but it only shoots 15fps video, and that just won’t do.
After charging the N95, the first thing I did was turn off all sounds and get to work. In just a few minutes, I went to “Web”, and downloaded and installed Gmail, Google Maps, and my Qik. I found it unfortunate that the phone’s default search is Yahoo, but without qwerty I won’t *exactly* be blogging from the phone, so I don’t really care. Then I went into the menu>tools>settings>general>personalization>standby mode and changed the “shortcuts” and “active standby apps.” In here, I changed the phone’s desktop icons to Gmail, Google Maps, and other things I’ll want with one click, and I changed the right and left softkey buttons to be Qik and “camera”.
Next, I went into gallery>open online service and it already had Flickr installed; I just entered in my information and activated it. Now when I take a photo (it’s got a 5mp camera, Carl Zeiss lens, with 8G storage and 5M photos size), I click once and it uploads the big, sharp photo to my photo stream — quickly, with the 3G.
So I can press one button from the interface and open the Qik livestreaming app — that’s neat. I’m ready to shoot live video in a few seconds. Qik has integrated with a lot of other online services; when you get a Qik account, you can do what I did and link it to my Twitter, YouTube and 12seconds account (there’s more, but that’s what I’m using right now). So far everything works except the 12seconds integration; when I livestream to Qik, an automatic message (that I customized in my Qik account) is sent to my Twitter stream, and the video is simultaneously uploaded to my seldom used YouTube channel. Here’s a Qik video with the Nokia:

A couple people have raved about the high quality of my phone-to-Qik videos (and they look great; in video ‘settings’ make it high quality and put steady shot ‘on’). But I know that the phone is capable of better video than the 320×240 Qik default, and I really love 12seconds — and the integration not working really isn’t my problem. And I’m impatient.
So I set up the phone’s mailbox, which with Gmail was actually an unbelievably complicated pain in the ass. Fortunately, this is not a road less traveled. Once that was set up, I noticed that when I took a photo or shot a video (not in Qik, just with the phone), when I hit “send” I now had an email option — but no contacts. To keep it simple, I put in two contacts: my Flickr email posting address (find it in your Flickr account), and my 12seconds email posting address (it’s in your 12seconds account). Now when I shoot a high quality video with the Nokia’s nice camera, I can hit “send”, pick Flickr or 12seconds, and it’ll upload my video to either service. Three or four clicks. Here’s a too-dark, dorky test video I shot and sent to Flickr:

So now if someone confiscates my phone for shooting video of say, a BART police shooting, the video will be in so many places already it won’t matter. But mostly, I’m now frighteningly agile with live media and feel like having fun. I also made some physical modifications to the phone:

Instead of a kewt fob, I sacrificed my girly style for a practical camera strap.

I placed a thin strip over both the red ‘record’ light and the flash. There is unfortunately no way to set the phone’s camera default to “flash off” and I do not shoot with a flash. Plus, the red light is something people find intimidating; if I simply tell people they’re about to be on video, and then say okay, they’re a lot more relaxed than the visible cringe I see when the red light goes on and everyone poses and doesn’t know what to say anymore. Well, anyway, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. So there.
I love it. I won’t leave the house without it. And like I said, if it had qwerty, I’d use it as a phone. And probably also as a portable computer: add Google Docs and my blog via the web browser, and I’d be invincible.
For those of you with unboxing fetishes, the unboxing photos are after the jump. Here are a couple of photos from the Nokia:

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Maker Channel 102 on MAKE: television from make magazine on Vimeo.
Above favorite: crazy veggie flute guy, *adorable* crabby robots, stunning latte image printer, and featured (local, San Francisco) Trouble Maker Todd Lappin showing us how to cheat at parking.
I’ve been watching a lot of Make:TV lately and perusing their upcoming schedule, and it’s got to be one of my favorite shows on the web right now. Make got the formula just right: a great host that doesn’t distract from the content but he *is* entertaining in a “Dr. Horrible’s Sing A Long Blog” kind of way, and they really focus on col and fun stuff. Real people making really fun things. I also love that — and I’m watching — they’re featuring as many, if not more female makers than male. YAY!
Also, I’d like to point out that they hit all points of win with distribution; you can get this show *anywhere* for free, and has made history by being the first TV show to launch its distribution via Bittorrent, while simultaneously launching on iTunes, YouTube and all the other usual suspects. That’s right: they debuted online, on public TV and Bittorrent. Hollywood’s old models of ownership just got a little more dirt on the coffin, all around. Which means yay for us. Free, user-individuated experience of the content, and original content with value. WIN.
I love this short segment of the VCR powered cat feeder (with test kitteh), PDF instructions available, watch:

Maker Workshop – VCR Cat Feeder from make magazine on Vimeo.
And my other fave is the maaajor bike geekery profile on art group Cyclecide, which you may have already seen:

Maker Profile – Cyclecide from make magazine on Vimeo.
The totally amazing segment on kinetic artist (I’ll profile his work in depth on art machines as well), Reuben Margolin:

Kinetic Wave Sculptures on MAKE: television from make magazine on Vimeo.
Do check out their upcoming episode guide; it’s exciting. Robo stool! More Trouble Makers! I’m hooked.

Image via the must-ogle Culture Jamming Gift Guide and Flickr user smashtheqube.
I may be rilly biased because pt and I are extremely close friends, but one look at The Culture Jamming Gift Guide at MAKE blog – hack, stick, throw, jam and inspire! and the deal is sealed. You need no more than this and the amazing dorktastic Ars Guide to geek out forever in your mad scientist fortress of doom. Plus, tips on building that death ray while cat camming the nooks and crannies of your underground secret laboratory via that fluffy white cat, you know, the one you have to pet menacingly when the annoying pseudo-hero tries to put you on their overhyped vlogshow yet again. Cue the LED-throwie lined alligator pit.

* I am extremely proud to brag that I have this (from the MAKE Jamming Guide) in my purse at all times.

Real elf ears = real elf fears. This Instructable has lots of unusual body modification advice, and shows step-by-step how Kimmie had her ears cut, stitched and healed to have real-life elf ears. Le whoa. (thanks, Eve!) Link to her LiveJournal. She did it with the help of Body Modification Artist, Russ Foxx. Here’s the slideshow gallery embed:

Image of the circuit diagram for the Gerassic Organ.
Peter Blasser of Ciat-Lombarde is offering printable templates of circuits from his homemade musical instrument oddities. Sniff around the rest of the Ciat-Lombarde site for an array of odd and wonderful instruments and sound samples. I am saving up my pennies, though Peter does take “food, sound objects or interesting plant specimens.” Though some of us are ashamed to admit we haven’t soldered anything since grade school (guilty), this allows everyone to get back into the game.
A further confession: Actually, I only used the soldering iron to melt my toys.

Image via.
Engadget has a long, fabulous post about popping Medeco locks with a simple screwdriver; these locks have been long held as one of the best, most advanced and secure deadbolt locks in the world — they have an estimated 70% share of the market, and supply the White House. As per a demonstration by the (admittedly kickass) 12-year-old Jennalynn at Defcon, the locks can be defeated in under one minute with a screwdriver. Supposedly video of *that* technique is being kept under wraps — but here’s a great video of Jennalynn doing a hammer demo. Snip:

This method of attack can be carried out with extremely simple and inexpensive tools and requires very little skill, just like bumping. In certain instances this method of bypass can even be simpler than a bumping attack on a conventional cylinder.
This video shows the result of bypass of internal components with a simple screwdriver. (The demonstration has been edited so as not to disclose the precise techniques that are employed to allow the deadbolt mechanism to be bypassed. Shown is a standard six-inch screwdriver that is inserted into the keyway of a Medeco m3 high security cylinder, which can be used to easily retract the deadbolt.)
This is not the only security vulnerability that we have documented in Medeco high security locks. At Defcon, Jenna Lynn, now twelve years old, was able to bump open the Medeco Biaxial three different times. You will recall that this young lady bumped the Kwikset and other locks last year at Defcon 14. She told me that she wanted to “maintain her reputation.” She certainly has! An upcoming series of articles will continue our analysis of security issues regarding bumping, picking, and other forms of compromise for Medeco cylinders.
Notes: A detailed analysis is available together with a video demonstration that clearly shows the method of bypass, but this publication has been restricted to locksmiths and the professional security community because of the simplicity of the technique and the potential security ramifications that could result from a public disclosure of the exact method. If you have security responsibility you may contact the author for access to the restricted document.

Link.

If you’re as big a geek as I am, you’ve often wondered how people found anything or got anywhere before Google Maps. I mean, how did Horatio Hornblower figure out if he was just entering the Bay of Biscay, rounding the Irish Sea or crawling straight up Napoleon’s froggy wazoo?
He, and everybody else navigating the seas way back when, used a marine sextant, which gives rise to Thursday’s picture of the day on Wikipedia. The animated GIF shows you how to use the marine sextant to determine your lattitude by sighting the sun at noon, the angle of which will vary with latitude. Couple that with a nice Rolex for fixing longitude — which can be measured based on the difference between the celestial time wherever you are and absolute time usually measured to Greenwich Mean — and you can leave your GPS at home… as long as it never gets cloudy.
Learning (in theory, at least) to use a sextant reminds me of the time my grandfather, who’d been an analyst in Reagan’s California gubernatorial cabinet, tried to show a six-year-old yours truly how to use a slide rule. Dude, my brain is still hurting from that one.
Link and image via Wikipedia.

I’ve been bugging/begging sweet Phillip to let me edit a MAKE:Dirty since 2005, but since it’s a family magazine, he usually just buys me another beer and listens to me prattle on about DIY naughtiness. But dig the h4wt image for their head-mounted water cannon article! Yum — and nice vintage BMW with sidecar. Also, think of all the fun you could have with that bad-ass marshmallow blaster he just posted. Oh, Make…
Aaaand, those incredibly cute girls are the irresistibly adorable Pontani Sisters.

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Google Blogscoped is such a guilty pleasure for me, like eating an extra lot of a hippie version of a corporate snack food. But thanks to GB, I just found out that Google has released a cut-and-paste Google Map embed option for blog posts and web pages, much like embedding a YouTube video. Oh, right. Anyway, this kicks ass, has full functionality, and works in several countries! Here’s a snip and link to the official announcement:

Starting today, Google Maps users can add a map to their website or blog just by copying & pasting a snippet of HTML. This new functionality enables Google Maps users to share and disseminate geographic information in the same way that YouTube users share videos. Bloggers and webmasters no longer need an API key or knowledge of Java Script to put a Google Map on their website or blog.
To embed a Google Map, users simply pull up the map they want to embed – it can be a location, a business, driving directions, or a My Map they have created – and then click “Link to this page” and copy & paste the HTML into their website or blog. The embedded map is fully interactive, like the Google Maps API, but creating one does not require any programming skills. Users can drag and click or zoom in on a location, and view it in map, satellite, and hybrid modes.

Link.

It’s from 1999 (five hundred internet years ago), but it’s still pretty kewt — and I know will only be hilarious for a handful or readers, but I did enjoy seeing this technical paper written all in haiku about a program to make all your error messages haikus. Snip:

Error messages
strewn across my terminal.
A vein starts to throb.
Their reproof adds the
injury of insult to
the shame of failure.
When a program dies
what you need is a moment
of serenity.

Link.