Fun Theory grant is 25k for a fun project

First the bad news, it’s too late for you to apply for this grant. The good news is that you can vote for the projects you think deserve money to do some good.

The Fun Theory is the group that produced the musical subway stairs and the bottle bank arcade. Now they’ve put out the call to arms on the Internet for submissions that make life more fun and our communities better places. All of the submissions for the fun-theory-award are in and available for your perusal. Some of the most popular submissions include a vending machine that uses recycled cans to play a slot-machine game, a hand sanitizer that makes funny sounds when used, and putting a giant crossword puzzle at bus stops to encourage ridership and make waiting more fun.

[Thanks Matthew][see Matthew's entry in the contest]

[cash photo credit]

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Fanboys want to take AT&T down

A post about Operation Chokehold popped up on (fake) Steve Jobs’ blog this morning. It seems some folks are just plain tired of AT&T giving excuses about their network. The straw that broke the camel’s back came when AT&T floated the idea of instituting bandwidth limitations for data accounts. Now, someone hatched the idea of organizing enough users to bring the whole network down by maxing their bandwidth at the same time.

We’re not quite sure what to think about this. Our friend Google told us that there’s plenty of press already out there regarding Operation Chokehold so it’s not beyond comprehension that this could have an effect on the network. On the other hand, AT&T already knows about it and we’d wager they’re working on a plan to mitigate any outages that might occur.

As for the effectiveness of the message? We’d have more sympathy for AT&T if they didn’t have exclusivity contracts for their smart phones (most notably the iPhone). And if you’re selling an “Unlimited Plan” it should be just that. What do you think?

[Thanks Bobbers]

[Headlock photo]

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Banned Xbox 360’s – boon or bust?

We’re sure you’ve heard about Xbox 360s facing an other round of bans from Xbox Live last week. It seems that living in a hole, or even in Grenora, North Dakota couldn’t help you escape hearing this from every news source possible. Apparently, this has caused a slew of banned consoles to go up for sale in a buyer-beware quagmire. This is a joke in several ways; didn’t the hardware problems of the machine already make the used market risky enough? Now consumers will be even more wary, losing game sales because less people are buying used consoles.

If you have just the right kernel, and a copy of your CPU key, and a second unbanned Xbox 360, you may be able to reactivate your machine. But how many people have those things available to them? Undoubtedly an Xbox 360’s desirability is greatly diminished if Xbox Live is removed from the equation. This is something Nintendo could learn from when it comes to the Wii (no online multiplayer with New Super Mario Bros Wii?… Really?). So whether you are the one who was banned, or you decided/were tricked in to purchasing a banned console, what are you going to do with it now that online play is out of the picture?

We’ve seen the console emulating SNES games and even XBMC run with the help of Ubuntu. Leave us a comment and tell us if you are planning to just go without Xbox Live, use the machine as a desktop running Ubuntu, or spearhead the effort to repurpose this powerful (and flawed) hardware platform. Will you go out and capitalize on cheaper hardware, or have you been burnt by the grim reality of a crippled rig?

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Read about trash-hackers… for free

[Cory Doctorow] has published a novel about the near future and a couple of hackers who can make anything from the stuff lying around. We like a good sci-fi novel, and have no shortage of recommendations (go read Snow Crash) for those who need them. We’re adding ‘Makers’ to our must read list.

Not only is this book about you, but its release most likely agrees with your life philosophy. You can download this book, right now, for free, legally. This is because it has been release under the creative commons license. Best of all, if you like the book and want to make a donation, you are directed to purchase a book on behalf of a school or other program that has requested a copy but doesn’t have the funds to acquire it themselves.

So, buy the book if you want a physical copy, download it if you prefer that method, but either way we think this is better than stealing the printed word.

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Google Wave breaks the email mold

By now you’ve probably heard something about Google Wave which saw a private preview release last week. The video above is an eight minute overview of the core functionality that the Wave offers. Wave development was based on the premise that email, invented 40 years ago, has not kept pace with our working needs as a technological society. Wave looks to improve on the email model by combining real time chat features, in line conversations, and web tools like document sharing and real-time translation.

The team here at Hack a Day uses a collaborative effort to bring you the best hacks we can find. To do so, we use a combination of email, instant messaging, document sharing, IRC, and old-fashioned conference calling. We’re waiting patiently for our invitation and although we’ve been skeptical of some past Google offerings, we hope the advertised features of Google Wave will allow us to improve our team coverage for the benefit of our readers.

Are you already using Google Wave? Please share your experiences with us in the comments.

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Google to Trolls: please flame EVERY web site

Google has unveiled their latest web app. It’s called Google Sidewiki and makes it easy to “Contribute helpful information to any webpage”. We’re not quite so sure. If you have the Google Toolbar installed on your browser, Sidewiki allows you to open a side-panel, add your comments about the page, and read the comments of others.

In a Utopian Internet (Utopernet?) the world’s most predominant experts on all subjects would be browsing websites dropping off clairvoyant nuggets of wisdom like Greek oracles. In reality, letting anyone add to any web page does not equate to instant insight. We’re all familiar with long comment threads and forum posts that contain very low percentages of useful information.

Google considered this “white noise” as a possible problem and implemented a ranking system for which comments are displayed first. This raises another flag, will this become a type of advertising? At some point in the future will comments linking to other pages be ranked based not only on popularity, but on a kickback to the Big G in return for increased exposure?

There is also the consideration that web pages might not like what comments are being left in Sidewiki. We’ve noticed that emails referencing the Labor Movement often have link advertisements in Gmail about how to prevent Unionization. What would the Sidewiki for pages covering controversial topics such as religion, sexual persuasion, and abortion look like?

We will admit this is a well intentioned idea with a lot of potential. But everything depends on how well it is executed.

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Show us your most useless machine

We were fortunate enough to StumbleUpon the most useless machine ever. Delightful! Eclipsed perhaps by the world’s most useless machine copy. We say that because the doll arm looks more realistic which creeps us out in a very entertaining way. So these machines aren’t useless, they provide entertainment.

We, on the other hand, have had some projects that really fell on their faces. With that in mind, show use your most useless machine. Please leave a comment after the beep.

(beep)

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How to make your project an Internet sensation

We’d like to spend some time talking about documenting your project and sharing it with the world. For many, the goal is to become an Internet sensation, hopefully for the right reasons. Taking a bit more time to make certain you do a great job of sharing your information will pay off. Here at hackaday.comwe focus on technological wonders but these guidelines should work well at improving the desirability of anything you might want to share on the interweb. Read the rest of this entry »

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Hackit: Xbox 360 hardware failures on the rise?

Joystiq has been tracking the new starlet of Xbox 360 failures: the E74 error. It appears as the lower right light on the console turning red and an on-screen message telling the user to contact support with the error E74. The number of reported E74 errors seems to have risen since August 2008 and people are wondering if the more recent increase in errors are related to the release of the New Xbox Experience (NXE) Dashboard update. Did Microsoft reclass Red Ring of Death (RROD) failures as E74 to avoid warranty replacements? Read the rest of this entry »

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