Do you long for the days of your Sidekick, arguably one of the best-worst-greatest phones to ever hit the market? NODE shows you how to build a mobile Raspberry Pi machine that should help with that longing as long as you don’t care about the actual phone part.
Turning a Raspberry Pi into a retro game station is easily one of the most popular Raspberry Pi projects around. If you want to make that project portable, you'll need a screen but the most common one, the Adafruit PiTFT, requires a little effort to get it working for more advanced games.
Windows only: FastStone MaxView is a portable image viewer. We've covered other efficient and lightweight FastStone applications before, such as FastStone Capture and PhotoResizer, and MaxView doesn't disappoint. Weighing in at 1.8 MB, MaxView is an excellent flash drive addition for quick viewing of common image formats (JPEG,.GIF, BMP, TIFF,.PNG, etc.) as well as less common formats like camera RAW files (CRW, NEF, DNG, etc.) Beyond simple file viewing, MaxView has lossless JPEG rotation and cropping, and internal editor for adding text, arrows, and highlights to an image, and dozens of hotkeys for those of you who prefer to use your mouse as little as possible. FastOne MaxView is free for personal use, Windows only.
One day after Firefox 3 RC 2 hit the streets, PortableApps.com has already released Firefox 3 RC 2 Portable Edition. If you're keeping up with the Firefox 3 hype but still aren't ready to ditch your solid Firefox 2 install, portable Firefox is the perfect way to test its improved performance and snazzy interface.
You don't have to lease server space or keep your home computer always on to access a personal web server—you can run a web, FTP, and database server straight from a USB drive. A slim web server package called XAMPP fits on a USB stick and can run database-driven webapps like the software that powers Wikipedia, MediaWiki. Almost two years ago you learned how to set up your "personal Wikipedia" on your home web server to capture ideas and track document revisions in a central knowledge repository. Today we'll set up MediaWiki on your flash drive for access on any Windows PC on the go.
Lifehacker alumnist Rick Broida has blogged about how to use a cheapy HDD enclose to turn your old laptop hard drive into a portable USB drive: "For 11 bucks you can get yourself a terrific little portable hard drive
for transferring files, on-the-fly backups, and so on. Sweet."
Windows only: Eager to check out all the new hotness in the Firefox 3 beta but don't want to scuff up your perfect Firefox 2 setup? Web log Digital Inspiration points to an elegant solution:1. Download the Firefox 3 Portable edition.
2. Extract this Firefox 3 installer to some new folder like C:\Firefox3
3. Close your Firefox 2 browser and run the FirefoxPortable.exe file available in the above folder. That's it.This worked perfectly for me, but it's probably a good idea to back up your Firefox 2 user profile, in case you accidentally open them both or something goes awry. For tips on doing that and more, check out
Windows only: It's no secret we're a fan of the free, open source, cross-platform audio editor Audacity for most editing needs, but anyone looking for a lighter-weight, portable editor might do well by free application Wavosaur application. Running from one file that's less than 1MB, Wavosaur can perform most basic cuts, effects, and encoding tasks, as well as handle MP3s without requiring a plugin. If you can't fit Audacity and the rest of the Portable Apps Suite onto your thumb drive, Wavosaur could make for a worthwhile tool. Wavosaur is a free download, works on Windows systems only.
Wavosaur
Our pals at Gizmodo pointed us to a kit you can buy which turns the plastic case that new iPod Nano's come in into a nice looking speaker kit. Kudos to Bird Electron, the Japanese website selling the kit (sorry, I don't know if they ship overseas, I can't read Japanese) for this hack. Way to reduce landfill and come up with a cool gadget. :)It could be a lack of caffeine making me woozy, but I reckon if you check out the photo on the website selling these babies, the speaker looks a little like a white ORLY owl with big manga eyes. If you're the kind of person who anthropomorphises speakers that is. Not that I'd ever do that. Bird Electron
Windows only: USB thumb drives, memory cards and MP3 players are easy to take with you—and easy to misplace. Portable application iHound aims to make it easy to locate your items and report their theft if they've fallen into the wrong hands. The program places a small "MyPasswords" file that looks like a text document in a device's root folder, and if that file is opened, the iHound website can report the approximate location, IP address, computer name, and more and print a formatted police report. iHound is a free download and free to use after sign-up, although its maker says he may begin charging $1/month for each device starting in February.
Booting Linux from an external drive with the applications and settings of your choice has never been easier after this week's release of Puppy Linux 3.0. Like Damn Small Linux, Puppy is small enough to fit on a USB thumb drive, and like Knoppix , you can boot it from CD. Puppy can also add your favourite open source applications to the desktop and save multiple user profiles back to your writable CD or thumb drive, too. Let's take a look at how you can take your operating system, apps, data and user settings to go with Puppy Linux.
