Phidgets Inc. :: Unique and Easy to Use USB Interfaces

Phidgets Inc. :: Unique and Easy to Use USB Interfaces

This past week at work, I had the opportunity to work with these neat devices! They are versatile little devices which allow you to work with a TextLDC output, Analog input devices and digital input and output devices. All for very reasonable prices and what I really did like was that they have a reasonably complete software programming API which is available for most development platforms, Windows, Linux, MS VC++, Java and several other languages as well.

What I was working with was the following LCD display and a couple of other sensors


I was amazed, with only a couple of hours I had it up and working and was able to get most of the interfacing with the device done and then able to get down to actually writing the rest of the application that I needed to do.

If you are ordering from the US order from http://phidgetsusa.com/. For documentation and information or for the Forums head over to http://www.phidgets.com where the forums and documentation is slightly more up to date.

If I actually had any extra cash on me right now I'd pick up some of these for putzing around with in my spare time at home.

Computer Manages Restaurant Workers and Manna

Slashdot | Computer Manages Restaurant Workers was an interesting article and a wonderful link to a story I hadn't read before but found a very interesting and insightful story titled Manna by Marshall Brain.

I would wholely recommend taking the couple of hours and read the book Manna. Then taking a gander over at the article about Hyperactive Bob. With the best quote from the article being

Hopefully, no one will tell the makers of Hyperactive Bob about the Manna story; it has too many practical suggestions for the enslavement of humans.

That is just a great quote. When I was reading the Manna book online I was very impressed and I think it is on par with 1984 in dystopic quality.

Endgame: Singularity

Just ran across this very interesting sounding game review by PCBurn. An I was hooked. A little more digging and I found the Python Game Programming Challenge site called PyWeek. The actual game's page is found on http://www.emhsoft.net/singularity/index.html.

Nuketown - Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Geekdom

Nuketown is a pretty cool site, and Kenneth Newquist has done a pretty good job on his Nuketown podcast as well.

Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame

The Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame looks very interesting and it is now on our list of to visit eventually locations.

Why Google OS Already Exists

OSWeekly.com - Why Google OS Already Exists

What constitutes an OS?

Consider this. Google already offers e-mail, picture editing, blogging, a personal calendar and its own brand of instant messenger. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the Google OS is already alive and well. The best part is that it has gone largely unnoticed by even the most observant of us. It's called web applications and the World Wide Web.

Interesting to say the least.

Hawking Says Humans Must Go Into Space

Slashdot | Hawking Says Humans Must Go Into Space

Article

Interesting and provocative article about why the human race must go into space and expand there.