I was invited to be a speaker at O’Reilly Where 2.0 Conference. It’s a conference mostly about mapping technologies, location-based services, and interesting new location-aware mobile apps.

I spoke about RFID and NFC, in the context of the release of the new NFC-capable Android phone, the Google Nexus S. Having an RFID reader in a phone could cause a big change in how we interact with the world around us. I talked about what RFID and NFC technologies are, how they work, some examples of them in the world and on Android, and how to add [...]

I love Arduino but its lack of wireless bugs me. And it sucks that WiFi Shields for the Arduino cost as much a cell phone. I want something cheap. Turns out, small, cheap WiFi routers like the Asus WL-520gu can run the DD-WRT Linux firmware and act as serial-to-network gateway for Arduinos (or most any other USB device). Here’s how to do it.

(Hey, is this a Wifi-controlled BlinkM? I think it is.)

A quick video showing a router acting as a serial-to-network gateway:

This is not that new of a concept, hacking Linux onto a router for some [...]

At this years Sketching in Hardware conference, I gave a talk on the general approach I used to create LinkM, ThingM’s USB-to-I2C adapter for programming and controlling BlinkMs. I called it “Hacking USB HID for Easy Tethered Ubicomp” (4.8MB PDF) to give it a form that fit within some of the larger issues I’ve been dealing with in creating easily usable ubiquitous computing devices.

USB has many different (and confusing) aspects to it. I’ve long advocated the creation of a set of libraries and patterns to make “driverless” USB a reality. A sort of training wheels for USB. [...]