04.13.14

Sharing Works: Latest News Stories About Crowd-sourcing, Sharing, Transparency

Posted in News Roundup at 3:35 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Voting/Government

• California Experiments with Open-Source Voting

  After spending tens of millions of dollars in recent years on ineffective voting systems, California election officials are planning to experiment with an “open source” system that may prove to be the cure-all for secure, accessible balloting – or just another expensive failure.

• Transparent civic improvement with crowdfunding platform Neighbor.ly

ARM

• ARM Endorses Open-Source Sensor Platform

  Sensor algorithm software company Sensor Platforms Inc. (SPI) is getting into the open-source movement by transforming its internal sensor platform into an open-source platform for sensor hubs. SPI’s Open Sensor Platform (OSP) is aimed at simplifying sensor hubs and data collection, and ARM is on board with the plan.

• Sensor Platforms and ARM Introduce Open Source Software to Enable Sensor Hub Implementations

Printers

• Do 3D-Printed Guns Warrant a Limit on Open-Source Design?

  Guns don’t kill people, people kill people is what guns advocates say. But the guns, well, the guns do play an essential role in killing people. How much blame to place on objects of design is at the heart of MoMA’s Design and Violence ongoing online exhibition and was the subject of the series’ first debate.

• Open source embroidery creates a niche stitch with the EmbroiderModder

  For those not in this niche of hobbies, embroidering your favorite image on something isn’t as simple as grabbing a crappy jpeg off the website and telling the machine “go.” You need an embroidery file, and making that file is called “digitizing.” It’s best to start with vector art, and then you need to understand things like stitch types and when the thread should be trimmed. It takes some effort to learn (like any skill), but to get better at it means sitting in front of that computer with the dongles in it. And with my travel schedule, let’s just say that doesn’t happen very often. I’m excited that now I can have the design software on my Linux laptop and work on digitizing anything anytime I want, whether I’m in an airport or a hotel or a beanbag in my house.

• Mamba3D Open Source 3D Printer Announced (video)

  A new type of open source 3D printer called the Mamba3D has been unveiled this week and its creators MyMatics are shortly set to launch a new Kickstarter crowd funding campaign to help construct the first Mamba3D 3D printers.

• Mamba3D May Just Raise The Bar For Open Source 3D Printers

• Going to the extreme to make 3D printers open source

Beehives

• Open Source, Printable Hives Let Citizens Help Save The Bee Population [Video]

• Open Source Beehives

• Wire up hives to keep bees happy and healthy

  With the help of Open Source Beehives, a do-it-yourself apiary kit, you can build a hive that encourages healthy bees. The hive comes with a sensor system that collects data so that you can keep an eye on the bees in real time.

• Save Your Bees With an Open Source Beehive (w/ Video)

NASA

• NASA goes open source

  NASA says it will publicly releases code for many of the systems the space organization has used through the years making your DIY satellite now closer than ever.

• Wanna Build a Rocket? NASA’s About to Give Away a Mountain of Its Code

  By that time, the code was little more than a novelty. But in recent years, the space agency has built all sorts of other software that is still on the cutting edge. And as it turns out, like the Apollo 11 code, much of this NASA software is available for public use, meaning anyone can download it and run it and adapt it for free. You can even use it in commercial products.

• NASA releases code, National Robotics Week, and more

Robotics

• Glaucus, an open-source soft robot sea-slug, sort of

  “The Glaucus, named after the Blue Sea Slug (Glaucus Atlanticus), is an open source soft robotic quadruped from Super-Releaser { http://superreleaser.com }. It is a proof of concept for a method developed at Super-Releaser that can reproduce nearly any geometry modeled on the computer as a seamless silicone skin. The company hopes to apply these same techniques to practical problems in medicine and engineering as the technology develops.

• Open-Source Robotic Arm Comes to Life

  There isn’t an engineer out there who hasn’t, at one point, wanted a robotic arm. Unfortunately, they’re quite costly. Dan Royer from Marginally Clever, however, has released an open-source 3DOF robotic arm that is sure to get many excited.

Drug Discovery

• India’s Open Source Drug Discovery Program Faces Lack Of Funding

• India’s Open Source Experiment Short on Funds, Talent

• The Collateral Benefits of India’s Open Source Drug Discovery Programme

  India’s Open Source Drug Discovery programme is struggling for lack of expertise and a research ecosystem. However, the programme’s real contribution may be the creation of just such an ecosystem

Starck/Furniture

• Philippe Starck’s Open Source Furniture Lets You Try Your Hand At Design

• Philippe Starck’s Open Source Furniture Lets You Try Your Hand at Design

• open source furniture by philippe starck for TOG

  …downloaded as data to be 3D printed at home.

Misc.

• If you dig maps, history, and open-source tinkering, the New York Public Library just made your week

• MEG The Open Source Indoor Smart Greenhouse (video)

  If you don’t have a garden or a balcony but fancy growing your own herbs and vegetables you might be interested in a new smart indoor greenhouse called MEG, which has been launched over on the Kickstarter crowd funding website.

• Understanding The Facets of “OPEN”

• The business of guiding other businesses to open source

• The open source culture of freedom and responsibility at Netflix

• Organizations with innovative IT departments value collaboration

  In the open source community, we know the value of collaboration. It’s at the core of everything we do. Some of us are lucky to work for organizations that understand and embrace the power of collaboration. Yet, the silo mentality runs rampant in many organizations where collaboration and internal crowdsourcing is not valued. (Opensource.com readers who are pursuing open source projects on the side, but spend their days working at companies with silos are likely very familiar with this).

• Crowdsource vs Open Source

  This is especially relevant to software. When we forget to provide software freedom, a collaborative project becomes just another crowdsourced project. This isn’t just a matter of philosophy — it affects the degree and quality of collaboration too. A crowdfunded project will have to be created and maintained solely by the recipient of the funds, even if they claim to be creating an “open community”. Open source is unlocked by the equality of all participants in a given community. When that equality is constrained, the network effect that delivers the benefits the initiator is seeking will be inhibited.

• Valcucine’s open-source project to inspire sustainable kitchen designs

• Small group of makers transforms a big idea into a community of users

  Though they’re on a trajectory without a clear future, their vision is crystal. To share what they’ve created with the world and allow the natural course of innovation and invention to change lives—without the obstacles of patents and the barriers of cost.

• pedalSHIELD designed using the open source tool KiCad

  There are a good number of nice programmable DIY guitar pedals out there. So, the pedalSHIELD is nothing new, except for the fact that I think we’ve strived harder than the rest to keep the project open, simple, supported, and affordable. The idea was to design a platform for Arduino users to learn about digital signal processing, effects, and synthesizers—also to experiment without a deep knowledge in electronics or programming.

• Open Source Racer Heading for 24 Hours LeMans

• Skirmos Takes Laser Tag To The Next Level By Going Open Source

  Skirmos Takes Laser Tag To The Next Level By Going Open SourceLaser tag is something that we might have played before in the past. The premise of laser tag is simple: aim for the enemy, pull the trigger, score some points. However a Kickstarter project b y the name of Skirmos is hoping to take a relatively simple game like laser tag to the next level by making it an open source project.

Permalink  Send this to a friend