New book shows how to build working Apple I replica: "Syngress Publishing today announced the release of 'Apple I Replica Creation: Back to the Garage' (US$39.95) by Tom Owad and featuring a foreword by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak..."

(Via MacMinute.)

If you're over, say, 30, you'll enjoy this. I'd almost forgotten about the TRS-80 Model 100 - one of several items on this list that I've owned at one time or another.

Top 100 Gadgets of All Time [MobilePCMag]

(Via Gizmodo.)

Well, this information didn't take too long to become available:

Mac Mini Disassembly and Modification

Doesn't look too hard to, say, upgrade the RAM. It's unfortunate that the hard drive is a 2.5" unit, but I suppose there wasn't any way around it.

Do you pine for the days of 3/4" thick Byte Magazines with real code samples? Do you still have your soldering iron (but can't find very much to solder with it)?

If you do, you'll probably be interested in Make Magazine, which purports to be:

"The first magazine devoted to digital projects, hardware hacks, and D.I.Y. inspiration."

Well, the first this century, anyways. Regardless, this is something that we've been sorely lacking for a long time. I'm ordering my subscription and digging out my soldering gear. And maybe my IC extractor too.

I got a kick out of this project to create a RAID array out of a set of iPod Shuffles. This is one of those things that, of course, should work, but it's always kind of fun to see it actually done.

I had a chance to play with an iPod Shuffle for an extended period of time recently, after a colleague purchased one. I'm always amazed at Apple's attention to detail (and so was my colleague, who isn't an Apple person). The sound is outstanding as well.

It'll be interesting to keep an eye on the iDash Project over the next while. It seems that the Mac Minis resemblence in size to a car stereo has inspired some folks to try and use it as such...from the site:

"The purpose of iDash is to open the doors on CarMac projects. Allowing the end user to tie every aspect of the CarMac (music, video, pictures, gps, and even xm radio!) together for a clean, smooth look and feel on the in car system's lcd screen - all through OSX!"

And this all makes me ask: what ever happened to Microsoft's Auto PC?

I've had an iSight for quite a while now, but never put it to much use simply because I didn't have any other Mac users to "chat" with. Yes, it will work with Yahoo Messenger, but it just wasn't worth using it for the slideshow-webcam-postage stamp video. So it's sat around gathering dust for, oh, about 6 months now.

I had a chance to use iChat with a colleague recently though, and frankly I'm shocked at how well it works. My wife and I always get a kick out of television shows that depict people doing video conferencing on their PCs with smooth full motion video and sound. Well, this one actually works. It is smooth (even with full-screen video) and the audio is clear.

Another "I can't believe it works" item, also involving the iSight...

Delicious Library is a media cataloging application for the Mac. Since the early days of TRS-80s, this kind of app has proliferated. I've always thought they would be useful, but in practice they never were. Lets face it, how many people are willing to sit down for hours on end typing in book titles, authors, etc, etc. I'm certainly not.

Delicious Library, however, makes use of an iSight to scan the barcodes of books, movies, games and CDs, looks them up on Amazon.com and makes an entry in the database. Here's a screenshot of a scan (click the image for a larger picture):

There's lots you can do with this application after you get your library scanned in, like email links to friends, sync the library to an iPod and "check out" items to people you're lending them to (in order to, well, remember who you lent them to), but the real killer is the easy scanning.

Highly recommended if you have an iSight. And if you have other Mac users to chat with, the iSight itself is highly recommended.