I have to give Kyle Rankin all the credit for my Raspberry Pi collection. I never really felt geeky enough to do anything with an Arduino, and for some reason I mentally lumped the RPi into the same world. Boy was I short-sighted! Thankfully Kyle showed me the light, and I managed to snag some of the new 512MB model B units.

I've been interested in 3-D printers ever since I saw one at a Maker Faire a few years ago, but it was only a year ago when I started seriously thinking about having one of my own. At that point, I started to realize just how many different options existed and ultimately started researching the RepRap family of 3-D printers (more on the different printer families below).

The PirateBox is a device designed to facilitate sharing.

I was recently contacted by Earl Malmrose of ZaReason, who wanted to know if I'd like to review ZaReason's new Linux-based desktop computer, built around the new Intel 6-Core processor and quad channel memory.

For the past several years, I've used a custom-built file server at my house. I've upgraded it many times, but it began life, as near as I can recall, in April 2000. When I say "upgraded", I mean the internals have been swapped completely on at least two occasions among other things.

After waiting like Job for the pre-installed Linux machines we deserved, we've arrived at a literal Garden of Eden full of worthy choices. A compelling new offering is the Zorin PC, a new mini-laptop that runs its own Linux distro, Zorin OS.

Recycling is something we all deal with, or at least should deal with, when it comes to technology.

Often you may not necessarily know what kind of hardware you have—you may have a no-name box from a smaller company or a used machine. This month, I present the tools you can use to find out what you have installed.

At a recent local LUG I regularly attend, Braddock Gaskill gave a wonderful presentation on an open source 8-bit computer he had created. This was his first public debut of the device and every person in attendance was enthralled.

The phone business is changing at a rate so fast, and on such a curved path, that Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle comes to mind. Where it is and where it's going may be conjugate variables, but trying to reconcile the two is kind of futile.

The robustness and versatility of the Android open source operating system combined with extremely energy efficient E Ink could prove to be a marriage made in heaven, as this demonstration from labs.moto.com would suggest.

The iPhone is certainly known for its elegance and beauty, but around these parts it's also known for being closed and proprietary. The Open Source community does a little cheer when we hear about jailbreaking the iPhone -- but soon we'll have even more to party about.

This video is from nuvalo who writes: "This is the latest kernel from Wii-Linux, which supports USB, Bluetooth, etc. This video shows how it boots T2 SDE for PowerPC, with its X server and the login. The colors are messed up as the X server writes its colors in RGB format, and the Wii frame buffer only supports yuv2. Anyway, it is possible to run an X server without too much effort."

Purple Labs, a company based in France with a multinational management team, is pushing Linux mobile phones outward in capabilities and downward in price.