Please Gadget Freak! Don’t make me open source everything.

Gadget Freak is a Design News program that features DIY projects by inventors and hackers from across the net.  Sometimes the projects are very polished, sometimes they look pretty cobbled together.  That’s the beauty of it.

My only complaint is submissions have to be full disclosure.  The following is an email I sent Design News to open their open source policy up a bit.

To the Gadget Freak Editor,

I love your Gadget Freak column.  It seems like a pretty unique thing on the net, which is saying a lot these days.

I like Gadget Freak because I can see what other DIYers are building.  It inspires me to do better, and gets me excited about the efforts we experimenters are doing collectively.  You can see some of my projects at techbloginator.wordpress.com.

I’d like to recommend you create another category of Gadget Freak submission that doesn’t require complete disclosure.  I’d love to read about Gadgets even without being able to recreate them.  I value and participate in the Open Source movement, but it doesn’t apply to everything.  I’m sure people would still submit projects without the $500 reward if they could have it appear on your site for all to adore.

Rover 2 SpyTank Teardown

Brookstone Rover 2.0 SpyTank Teardown

Brookstone SpyTank

The Brookstone SpyTank is a track-driven spy cam with night vision that you can remote control using a tablet computer.  It includes auditory listening and loudspeaker functionality in its arsenal of intelligence gathering weaponry.  Drive it around to surveil targets, gather intelligence, and master your environment.  Your home may never be the same.

Project Ophelia – Mobile Computing as a Component

Dell seems to be working on a new type of “cloud” device.  Project Ophelia is described in the provided link.  Basically, it’s a small thin-client type of computer that’s the size of a large thumb-drive.

It will be interesting to see if the market will accept Ophelia.  Maybe there’s a window for her now?  Anyone remember Black Dog?  Let’s hope Dell pushes this project long enough for it to get some traction.  I, for one, would like to see what can be done with something like this.