By Lisa Anne Auerback

Nicely written diatribe attacks the "consumerist" issues in the DIY economy. It ignores the fact that DIY is primarily a source of entertainment, but it's interesting nonetheless.

Quoted: Photography courtesy of Chemical Heritage Foundation (top left, bottom right); by Dustin Fenstermacher (top right, bottom left). Why old chemistry sets were better — and how to make your own today by Keith Hammond. It's true: chemistry sets today...

Yeah! A programmable guitar pedal, complete with DSP development software from Freescale!

Yet another free ODT-compatible tool suite, this one from IBM's Lotus operation. Includes Microsoft import/export filters.

NEW YORK, September 18, 2007 - IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced IBM Lotus Symphony, a suite of free software tools for creating and sharing documents, spreadsheets and presentations.

Beginning today at www.ibm.com/software/lotus/symphony, business, academic, governmental and consumer users alike can download this enterprise-grade office software, which is the same tool inside some of IBM's most popular collaboration products, such as the recently released Lotus Notes 8.

A list & short description of various programs available for file format conversion.

Tutorial on using the free math solver

One of our service providers, CrystalTech, just implemented greylisting to reduce spam. WOW does it ever work. Our spam has been dramatically reduced. Highly effective. Very few false-positives.
Backscattering effects are minimal for real mail (only bounces once per graylist entry). Yes, it increases network traffic proportional to the increase in spam, but only until spam comes under control. As it is now, with spam doubling each year, and now including images? It moots all traffic-based arguments against this technique IMO.

Wonderful use of public resources. Got a library card? Borrow tools!

Mighty fine online gizmo from a favorite vendor.