August 31, 2010

Open Hardware and The Creative Economy

59 minutes

Another episode in the bag! We admittedly didn’t talk about straight electronics as we have in the past but we covered recent happenings in both the open source and (micro) and commercial (macro) electronics industries. Check out some of the links discussed in todays show below!

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Shoutouts and Upcoming Events:

See a nerd with a tripod at the Electronex Electronics show coming soon to Sydney, Australia? It's Dave! Snap a picture of him and send it to us and we'll be sure to give you a shoutout on the air!

Another Dave sighting! The most recent edition of the Element-14 Journal features Dave's DMM "test and toss" acrobatics on a waterfall. Just watch out for the screwy formatting!

Dave highlights the Mitch Altman and LadyAda talks about open source hardware and starting a company. Check them out at The Next Hope.org among their many videos.

Chris finally found out that MAKE magazine has a video podcast. How'd I miss that one? Check out tips and tricks, as well as fun project ideas. Just don't say their video podcast is better than Dave's ....

We have a new logo! Link to us from your page and we'll love you! (Be sure to let us know about it as well!)

Another great podcast will return soon! Solder Smoke, a podcast concentrating on HAM radio, has been on a break as Bill Meara is moving back from Rome. But he shall rule the airwaves again soon. We look forward to bouncing ideas around with him!

Matt Mets has a funny new poster combining resistors and a double rainbow, as seen on the viral YouTube video. Purchase the poster direct from him and hang it up in your lab!

Yet another podcast of sorts was found with Jeri Ellsworth. This feed is mostly her chatting with people via uStream while she's working in her lab. Join in on the conversation and even use a Dave Jones bot as your voice!

There's an open hardware summit coming up in NYC, right before the next Maker Faire. They will be discussing the Open Source Hardware V 0.3 definition. Dave doesn't like that the new definition does not allow the use of the Non-Commercial Creative Commons license option. How can the individual release and sell their open hardware product/kit and not fear being undercut by a bigger player? Isn't that why the Creative Commons contains such a license option?

Jobs Moving To Asia? Duh.

Chris is pondering learning mandarin as a job skill. Is there any possible downside to this?

Samsung forecasted to pull ahead of Intel in terms of chip sales. Not too surprising given that Samsung accounts for 1/3 of S. Korea's GDP.

A blog from EDN discusses how US policy is allowing jobs to easily jump overseas by not investing in companies and education. Chris says it's ten years too late to try and act, Dave says 20.

Apparently it's a 70:1 applicants to job ratio in the UK. We don't quite believe it, at least not legitimate applicants. Nor is it that bad in the US or AUS.

A Quick Talk About The Kindle

Dave is smitten with the 3rd version of the Kindle.

Apparently the company is doing well, Lab126 out of Cupertino, CA has over 50 job openings on their page! Need a job? Give 'em a shout!

The e-ink technology has come a long way!

The Creative Economy

Is the future economy based only on creativity? Chris mentions a talk he heard recently by Phil McKinney about the Creative Economy and how knowledge is now a commodity.

Dave thinks that applicable skills are just as important as the creative aspect and that not a lot of students coming out of Universities have those skills these days.

(Not mentioned in episode) Talks recently at NI week in Austin seem to reinforce this idea, that individuals and their contributions will drive future economic development.

Dumb Ideas

Pulling energy from the clouds?! Yeah right!

Reminds Chris of when EEstor was trying to pull the wool over people's eyes with their bogus claims about the EESU technology. (It was actually 1.5 years ago, not 2.5 as Chris thought out loud).

These horrible ideas are nearly as bad as giving guidance on financials and then making or missing them in the chip industry. Not worth it, execs! Give it a break!

Just for fun -- Dave's Pillow Fort Studio Setup!

That’s all for this week. One last reminder to please link to us using our new logo and associated code on your facebook pages or website. Please leave any feedback or questions about this episode in the comments below and any suggestions for future episodes at our suggestions page. Thanks for listening!

PS. One or two people might have caught our post before it went live again (we see 3 downloads before publishing the second time). I totally forgot to cut out our sound check and a couple of flubs. Hold on to that recording, it’ll be worth a fortune some day ;-)

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By The Amp Hour (Chris Gammell and David L Jones)

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