open source

Google is reported to have spent millions of dollars on its Street View project. Roy Ragsdale, a student at West Point, has done a pretty nice job of putting together a portable panorama camera setup that includes GPS and Google Earth file output for under $300, using exclusively open source tools.

Photography has made countless technological leaps since George Eastman drew up the patent for his innovative roll film technology, and even since the first digital cameras hit the market. But in large part, photogs have been tethered to the innovations and technologies made and doled out by a handful of companies. But Stanford computer science professor Marc Levoy and graduate student Andrew Adams are looking to change that by creating an open-source digital camera, dubbed "Frankencamera."

Think of the Acceleglove as a socially-acceptable Power Glove for adults. Laced with acclerometers on each finger, the glove comes with an open source SDK that allows for it to control virtually anything--provided you can write the code for it.

Diehard Arduino users know that Processing is the framework that is used for building a sketch into an ATmega168 AVR project. Well, step aside, Arduino, because there’s a new maker on the block: Nervous System.

Adobe has announced that it will be lifting licensing fees for Flash to developers working on mobile applications as part of its new Open Screen Project. The goal is to bring more rich content to phones across a standardized platform. Flash is already ubiquitous in Web browsers, so the available content on the net is mature and widespread. Currently, phones use a disparate variety of software to power video and games; rarely has the feedback been overwhelmingly positive about a mobile experience with either kind of media.

The ambitious One Laptop per Child program continues to flounder. OLPC's cornerstone XO laptop, which was widely lauded when it was functionally revealed in 2006, has still failed to reach its original price point of $100. Currently selling for $188 and achieving a narrower distribution than initially intended, the machine has yet again run into problems. Last week, Walter Bender, long the second in command on the project, left the group apparently out of disagreement over a significant internal shift in goals and direction.

AOL last week finally opened its hugely popular AIM chat network to multi-client third-party access. The SDK had been partially open to developers, but with restrictions against using it with multi-network IM clients. In the past, developers behind popular chat applications like Trillian and Adium have had to reverse engineer or otherwise hack their way around using the AIM network.