Fabricatorz Naked Laoban Soundsystem 2.0 in Guangzhou

Updated June 12, 2009 @ 1:43 am

Fabricatorz is getting a lot more love than REJON.org right now. Check out the naked Laoban Soundsystem 2.0 without the grills. Just a little more sponsorship will land this in Beijing. Read more…

Laoban half-stack in the factory

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Libre Graphics Meeting 2009 from Nathan Willis Press + Open Font Library

Updated June 3, 2009 @ 2:43 am

LGM Panoramic Shot

The most complete article I’ve seen recounting LGM2009 comes from Nathan Willis’ great reporting.

Here is the motherload of reviews and notes about LGM2009 from the LGM website:

One of the gems Nathan Willis also covered in a separate article, “Open Fonts at Libre Graphics Meeting 2009,” is the LGM2009 discussion around the Open Font Library, the larger Open Font movement, and what is surely to be quite important, web font linking. The basics are that up until this point, fonts on the Internet have been limited to literally 4-6 generic fonts. With the upcoming release of Firefox 3.5, this will change as fonts can be linked like many resources, downloaded and rendered.

Nathan’s article I’m not doing justice right now, so please go read up on his report about the importance of Open Fonts, and the upcoming relaunch of the Open Font Library in sync with the release of Firefox 3.5.

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Blackcloud Sensor Installation at Kudelabs in Guangzhou

Updated June 3, 2009 @ 2:23 am

Guangzhou Kudelabs Office

Kudelabs Office in Guangzhou

Recently I worked with my friend, artist and UC Berkeley Professor, Greg Niemeyer to install one of his Blackcloud sensors at Kudelabs in Guangzhou, China, a great software company cranking out web applications you will be hearing more about in the near future.

Blackcloud is a quite interesting project to create highly sensitive pollution sensors to be distributed around the world with the data collecting at blackcloud.org to make observations and games around the concept of pollution. Each Blackcloud sensor tracks:

… CO2, your VOC’s, your city light, your endless noise, your rising heat, your damp confines in places all around the world. I visualze the Indoor Air in beautiful graphs so you can see when and where you pollute. Maybe I can predict your pollution cycles, too.

From Drop Box

Blackcloud Sensor at Kudelabs office in Guangzhou

The sensors are quite interesting little boxes I thought I might have had a hard time transporting into China. They have little LEDs on the outside which show the previously discussed measurements. The whole box uses power-over-ethernet and of course a net connection to send and receive pollution data.

Here is more info for the tech nerds, Greg wrote:

I built two sensors so far. Both have a two-PCB board design, a ATMega 168 processor, a DCS CO2 sensor, and an array of other parts. The blue version sends data to my server via SMS text messaging, and the red version sends data via TCP/IP. I built the sensors using Eagle PCB design software, and a local PCB manufacturing plant.

I took a bunch of pictures of the installation and Kudelabs at Flickr, which I’m having a terrible time accessing today in the Great Firewalled China.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jonphillips/tags/kudelabs

To me its quite curious to collect pollution data in China. It is often rumored that even during the Olympics, pollution measurements in Beijing were done far outside of the city away from the major sources of pollutants. With the lowering prices of sensors and affordable access to the Internet, it is possible for many to do their own fact finding. Now, if only the Chinese Internet could be made more reliable…

NOTE: Kudelabs is a gracious sponsor of the Laoban Soundsystem 2.0 being manufactured in Guangzhou, China, right now! Check out the latest in-progress pictures.

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