Web Sites for items discussed at the October 2006 ABACUS Meeting

This month's episode: Warren started the meeting by challenging the other members to build a simple electric motor out of a flashlight battery, a piece of wire, a sheetmetal screw and a couple of magnets. He then demonstrated how it was done and went to the Web site where he found out how to do it, Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories. He then showed how he found the site through a reference on the Hack A Day Web pages. Both Hack A Day and Evil Mad Scientist Labs have many fun and amusing do-it-yourself projects, often involving computers and electronics. Warren noted that the magnet Evil Mad Scientist Labs used was taken from a 'throwie'. This lead to a him to play a few videos of throwies from Grafitti Research Labs. Next he showed a commentary on the Instructables Web site by Evil Mad Scientist Labs blogger Windell Oskay on How To Eat Fewer Insects!

Finally, Warren took us to a Sony Web site that where we could view a commercial for Sony's new Bravia line of flat-panel TVs. This was significant only because it involved the steep hills of San Francisco and 250,000 brilliantly-colored Superballs. Unfortunately, the experience was marred by slow-loading video.

Roger then took over the computer and showed us a number of different Web sites that can help organize and direct our Web browsing. All of them involve the sharing of information about what's new and hot (or just weird and humorous) on the Web among participants of these sites. The most important of these was the del.icio.us social bookmarking service. This site allows you to collect your Web page bookmarks or favorites and share them with others. It also allows you to, for example, sort through everybody else's bookmarks for those related to, say, Atari. Roger also showed us Reddit, a site that lists new and popular pages on the Web. It will also keep track of what pages you go to from Reddit and start recommending pages that are similar to what you read in the past.

Other sites Roger showed us were Digg, a website where viewers recommend Web content to other viewers (Web pages that are most popular go to the top of the list) and the meta-site Popurls which shows the top-ranked content on Digg, del.icio.us, Reddit, photo-sharing site Flickr, video-sharing site YouTube, Google and Yahoo News, Slashdot, Fark; the list goes on and on.

Next we visited the above-mentioned Fark.com, where readers post links to weird and humorous news stories and others comment on them. Fark is also infamous for 'Photoshopping' contests where readers mess with digital photos in weird and humorous ways. Did I mention that Fark.com is weird and humorous?

Finally, Roger took us over to look at the ABCink Web site. This was in response to Warren complaining about problems with his printer while printing the ABACUS newsletter.

Do-It-Yourself Projects:

• Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories main page - Quirky science and technology plus arts and crafts weblog.
• EMSL post on the simplest electric motor.
• Hack A Day - Web site with numerous hardware hacking projects.
• Grafitti Research Labs - Information on LED 'throwies' and other high-tech vandalism.
• How To Eat Fewer Insects - Instructables article by EMSL blogger Windell Oskay.
• Instructables main page.

SONY Bravia™ TV Commercial:

• 250,000 Superballs (and a frog) bouncing down Filbert and Leavenworth.

Social Web Browsing Services:

• del.icio.us - Web site for saving and sharing your bookmarks of Web pages.
• Reddit - Site which finds new and popular stuff on the Web. Supposedly learns your preferences.
• Digg - Site of links to Web articles recommended by others. Most popular articles move up in the list.
• Popurls - Site of links to entries on del.icio.us, Reddit, Digg, Fark and others. Where to go if you're too lazy to monitor the other sites.
• Fark.Com - Weird and humorous Web site featuring links to oddball news items and Photoshopping contests.

Cheap ink and toner for computer printers:

• ABCink

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© 2006 ABACUS

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