cool-tech

So a week or so ago I discovered lala. It may just be the simplest and best dotcom idea I’ve seen in a long time.

I have CDs. You have CDs. In all honesty, I’m sick of most of my CDs. And you probably are too. I might not have listened to my Nirvana “In Utero” CD in 8 years, but maybe you’ve recently suffered a bit of nostalgia and you want to listen to them again. So why don’t we trade?

Within a half hour or so of me having my beta account I loaded a bunch of the CD’s that I knew I had into my “I Have” section and I’d added a bunch of CD’s I wanted to my “I Want” section. About an hour or two later I discovered that I’d had my first match and that somebody wanted my copy of The Clash’s “London Calling” (an excellent CD by the way). And simultaneously somebody was shipping me Jurassic 5’s “Quality Control”. And I was only out $1.

Too cool.

Update: If anybody wants lala invites, add a comment below and leave the email address you want it sent to. I have a bunch.

I thought I’d take a minute to plug my friend’s new startup, a project that I think has a lot of potential and that could be very cool if it takes off.

Fundable.org. Its a very neat idea. Say, for instance, that you’ve got a project you’d like to undertake which requires buy-in from a large number of individuals. Something like having a web designer create a good looking webpage for an open-source project or bringing a decent band to a musical vacuum like Pittsburgh.

Fundable allows you to create a “group action” that people can contribute money towards. Say it’ll take $1000 to get The Long Winters to make a stop in Pittsburgh during their next tour:

1. Create a group action with a goal of getting them to play here in Pittsburgh.
2. Allow the advance purchase of 100 tickets to the show for $10 apiece.
3. If the group action gets 100 people to contribute, the $1000 is “turned on” and the group leader can then withdraw the money and set up the show.
4. If the action doesn’t get enough contributors, everybody’s money gets refunded.

Its a neat concept and I think it could be great for setting up “bounties” for open-source projects or for starting advertising campaigns for non-profit groups.

So go check them out and let me know what you think.

I was doing some googling looking for a Gmail applet for Gnome, and found the project page of the (probably dead) application “Gmail” (short for “Gnome Mail”):

Gmail is an experiment in a sql vfolder based email system. It implements sql vfolders, incoming POP3, outgoing SMTP and more.

Hmm… SQL based VFolders. Sounds a lot like “labels” in Google’s Gmail to me…

Interesting.

Today I finally got around to work on something that I’ve wanted to get done for a long time…

Pretty cool, eh? I finally stripped down an old Thinkpad i1400 that had been waiting to become a digital picture frame. Right now it’s without an actual frame, so I’ve got the components zip-tied to a wire panel from one of those dorm-style bookshelf kits. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve dumped all my notes from Defcon 12 into my online wiki:

• How Do We Get The World To Use Message Security
• Real World Privacy
• Introduction To Hardware Hacking
• Blue Snarfing
• Wireless Weaponry
• RFIDSmart Labels
• Identification Evasion
• What Do You Mean Privacy?
• Cracking Net 2 Phone
• IPV6 Primer
• Ask EFF
• Black Ops Of TCPIP
• Phone Phreaking
• Network Attack Visualization