37689001
submission
toygeek writes:
How much robot can you get for a hundred bucks? Not much: $100 is about a quarter of a Roomba. A quarter of a cheap Roomba. Or, you can spend it on an open source education robot from Switzerland that will help your kids to learn how to do things besides not vacuuming the floor.
36924445
submission
toygeek writes:
Babies, as you may have noticed if you own one, like to get into all sorts of mischief, and studies show that exploring and interacting with the world is important for cognitive development. Babies who can't move around as well may not develop at the same rate as babies who can, which is why researchers from Ithaca College in New York are working on a way to fuse babies with robots to give mobility to all babies, even those with conditions that may delay independent mobility, like Down syndrome, spina bifida, or cerebral palsy.
36804079
submission
toygeek writes:
Before Curiosity, before Opportunity, before Spirit, and before Sojourner, the very first robot to land on Mars was this little guy, way back in December of 1971. Called PrOP-M, the rover was part of the Soviet Union's Mars-3 mission, which had the potential to deploy the first ever mobile scientific instruments onto the Martian surface. Article also contains Russian video on early rovers.
35830999
submission
toygeek writes:
In an effort to give various robots more control during free-fall and navigation of severe obstacles, researchers have studied how agama lizards use their tails to retain or correct orientation during leaps and jumps. They've applied the research to both hexapod and wheeled robots, and the results are both astounding, and outstanding!
29323553
submission
toygeek writes:
I've been using Google Docs, Picasa, Gmail, Blogspot, and probably a couple of other Google services that I'm forgetting, for some years now. I also use Facebook. With privacy and ownership of my own data being a rising concern for me, I'd like to in-source all of my online data. I have a CentOS VPS already, and a domain, and am well versed in running servers etc, having extensive experience in the web hosting business in years past. I'd like to host my own online documents, pictures, blog, etc. I don't know what is available for software anymore as I've been out of the loop for some time. If there is one unified way to do that, I'd love it. I don't mind running separate applications for each service such as Wordpress, Coppermine Photo Gallery, but I don't know which is best anymore. Of course, I'd like to stick to FOSS software that can run on a typical LAMP stack. As for email, I'm stuck with Gmail for the foreseeable future, so I'll address that another time.
20803282
submission
toygeek writes:
Before I got completely engulfed in being a Linux sysadmin, I did basic old school web design. A few graphics, a few tables, and some HTML/PHP to round it out. Things have changed since 2003 and with the economy being in the dumps I'm picking up web developement again. What technologies are relevant today? I'm starting with CSS and learning GIMP.
