Tinker it now!

It’s official “opensource hardware” is now the new black. some proofs:

++ Check out a nice article on Core77: Hacking the Physical world: What we taught software designers and what they’re trying to teach us, a long but worthwhile read.

++ An intriguing find via our friends at Roomware: Buglabs is launching “BUG, an open, modular, consumer electronics web services + hardware platform”
UPDATE: They’re also hiring!.

++And over in California, the lovely guys at ThingM are starting a new education centre around hardware hacking:
“Tod is working to create a collaborative physical computing laboratory, education and project space for the Los Angeles area with Machine Project (http://www.machineproject.com/) and Prof. Julian Bleeker’s Near Future Laboratory (http://research.techkwondo.com/) at USC. The goal is to create an environment with equipment and space to create technology art and
design and teach people about it. Several spaces like this exist in the Bay Area [...] and we’d like to bring that kind of collaboration to Los Angeles.

++ Jonathan Oxer’s great talk at Google called Hardware/Software Hacking: Joining the Real and the Virtual where he presents the Arduino board as a great tool for novice hackers.

++ Ambient Devices now offer access to their datacasting chipset: “Use Ambient’s technology to embed realtime, web-customizable
weather forecasts and self-setting local time in your product line.” They even offer documentation and developer workshops.