What better way to celebrate the lifting of the NDA than to hack your iPhone?

iPhone Hackers David Jurick, Adam Stolarz, and Damien Stolarz have been hard at work on the upcoming iPhone Hacks. Because it's such a moving target, we decided to do an experiment with the folks at Near-Time. The authors are developing the book in a Near-Time space, which is a lot like a Wiki. It won't be long before we turn this into a print book, but with everything changing constantly, we wanted to get the information out as soon as possible.

The first chapter is available for free viewing, and we have a subscription option in case you want to subscribe to the whole book. On top of that, there's a forum where you can post your own hacks, and you can post comments at the bottom of every hack.

Collaborate. Contribute. Develop.

Join iPhone Hacks and gain advanced access to hacks, tips, and tricks to make your iPhone experience even better. You'll learn how to do things to your iPhone that would surprise even Apple engineers! Members of this community site can make comments, participate in the forums, and help author the book by submitting their own hacks. Start your 30-day free trial now!

iPhone Hacks

Bonus: If you're shopping for Make or Hacks books, you can take advantage of our back to school special: 35% off Make & Hacks Books. (Enter in the following code at checkout "BOOK4ME" and get 35% off at checkout! Offer good for the Make books & Hacks books only, magazines & box sets excluded.)

Animated Ghost Kit
Grab this cool kit for Halloween. Sound activated, the ghost flashes his little red LED eyes, vibrates and makes scary sounds! Easy and fun to build. Hack it!

MAKE: Halloween Special Edition
DIY HALLOWEEN from the editors of MAKE and CRAFT brings you 40-plus DIY projects for the holiday that's made for makers. From the craftiest costumes to amazing animated props and the latest in computer-controlled haunted house effects.

Twitchie Robot Kit
Twitchie is an open source multi-purpose robot kit. It has the capacity to frighten and scare, but also the power to love and care! It's a regular pathos-o-matic! Grown men scream! Maternal instincts long dormant, suddenly activated! It's a robot unlike any other, and you can make one with this kit. Cover your Twitchie any way you'd like to make it truly unique.

Arduino Starter Kit
Arduino is a tool for making computers that can sense and control more of the physical world than your desktop computer. It's an open-source physical computing platform based on a simple microcontroller board, and a development environment for writing software for the board. Arduino is open source!
We've put together our own Arduino Starter Kit, tossed in our bestselling Making Things Talk book, wrapped it up in some cool packaging so you can get started quickly without having to do a lot of shopping first. Check out the "How To" for some helpful links to provide support and contact with the growing Arduino community. Happy Hacking!

Andrew Odewahn, editor of Baseball Hacks, sent in a link to this great article about how to display batting statistics in a Google Gadget:

This article demonstrates how to use several Google Code APIs using a baseball hack as an example. We will create a Google Gadget that displays Major League Baseball batting statistics. You will learn about Google Gadgets, the Google Spreadsheet API, and the Google Chart API. After reading this article, you'll have a good idea of the sorts of applications you can build using these APIs, know enough to get started writing your own applications, and know where to get more detailed information. This is the first article in the Google Code baseball hacks series.

The code is based on Hack #25 from Baseball Hacks, "Spider Baseball Sites for Data", and it's the first in a series of Google Code Baseball Hacks articles. Google Code baseball hacks: Display batting stats in a Google Gadget

Baseball Hacks - Tips & Tools for Analyzing and Winning with Statistics

This one's an oldie but goodie. If you're using Gmail, you can append "+something" to your name in your email address to better sort incoming mails. For instance, if your name is John Doe and you wanted to separate work mail from family mail, you can use "john.doe+work@gmail.com" and "john.doe+family@gmail.com"... and then create a filter in Gmail to differently label incoming mail to these two addresses. Just use the Create a Filter link in Gmail, and enter your customized email in the "To:" field.

On that note, you can also remove the dot in the name of your email -- as in "johndoe@gmail.com" -- and messages still reach you fine. (On yet another note, is there anybody out there who's actually really named John Doe? He must get an awful lot of spam.)

If you have a blog, you might want to check who talks about the things you post. There are many ways to go about this, and one involves Google Blog Search. Just type the full URL of your blog post in question -- say, http://example.com/archive/102.html -- and hit the search button (you can also use the "link:" operator preceding your URL, though Google adds that one automatically for you). To the right hand side you can now sort the results by date, and you'll see the latest other blogs linking to yours.

As another interesting way to keep updated on discussions circling around your blog, company or person, you can also use Google News Alerts (for extra usefulness, include spelling errors in alerts you set up -- like ["acme inc" OR "amce inc"]).

This is more of a warning than a tip... if you're currently using Google Page Creator as a website creation tool, note that Google on their help page for this service announced they're slowly closing it down! Instead of Google Page Creator, Google say they shifted their focus on the newer Google Sites, and new sign-ups for Page Creator are not accepted anymore. Google writes, "If you are currently a Page Creator user, you can continue to use Page Creator and your pages will automatically be transitioned to Google Sites later this year. We are committed to making this transition as smooth and easy as possible, and we will post more details as we get closer to the transition time. You can also manually move your web pages from Page Creator to Google Sites or other service providers at any time."

Have you ever had a chance to see the Google Answers service while it was still active? Google shut it down for actual usage a while ago, but while it was live, it was a nice service to ask a paid question and then have a researcher get back with an answer to you (somewhat similar to Yahoo Answers, but in higher quality... if I may say so as an ex-Google Answers Researcher in 2002). However, there's a cool replacement for this service: Uclue. In fact, they have nothing but ex-Google Answers Researchers on board; I'm using that site quite a bit myself.

You might have heard of the Gmail Labs which allows you to opt-in to special, prototypical features. I just wanted to mention my favorite experimental feature of them all: a Quick Link to your unread mail. Now first of all, let me say there's several user types in Gmail (as Gmail designer Kevin Fox explained), and if you're the kind of Gmail user who archives mails as soon as they're read, you won't need the following tip. If, however, you let everything flow into your inbox but you don't like to archive read mails, creating an "Unread mail" quick link comes in handy.

To do so, just click on Settings on top and switch to the Labs tab. Check the "Enable" box next to Quick Links. Approve by hitting Save Changes at the bottom. Now search Gmail for [in:inbox is:unread] (without the square brackets) and in the Quick Links box appearing to the left side, click Add Quick Link. Enter "Unread" for the title and approve the dialog. Next time you want to see all your unread mails in one go, just click the Unread link to the left!

Are you using Google Spreadsheets as your web-based spreadsheet editor alternative to desktop programs like Excel? If you do, give the "magic" auto-completions a try. To understand what this does, enter "Superman" in the top left cell, and enter "Batman" and "Wonder Woman" in the cells below. Now select all three cells you created. Hold down the Ctrl key, and drag the bottom right corner of the selection downwards over the other cells. Notice something? Your list is now continued with entries like "spider man", "x men", "green lantern". (Admittedly, not all continuations make sense -- "star wars"? -- but where would be the fun in magic without surprises.)

What's happening here? Well, the Google Labs have a member called Google Sets. (Being from 2002, it's the oldest member still listed in the Labs, too.) This tool automatically expands a given set of items. Like "Batman" and "Superman", but also anything else that could be thought of as a group. For instance, entering "google" and "yahoo" also shows "altavista", "lycos" and "msn". Entering "tom cruise" and "nicolas cage" yields "brad pitt", "angelina jolie", "johnny depp" and others.

Do you want to get to see only the images of a particular website? You can, by using Google Image Search in combination with the "site:" operator. To see all images Google crawled on Makezine.com, for instance, you'd search Google Images for site:makezine.com. This returns around 44,800 images, though as things go, Google will restrict you to look at around the first 1000 pics. Note that you can combine this search type with other keywords, too -- like the keyword "screenshot" -- and you can also mix it with other settings from the advanced image search page... like by checking the "faces" box to show faces only (with 117 results for that one on Makezine.com).

I like my Firefox browser relatively uncluttered but there's one or two features I don't want to miss... like the Google Toolbar's "Translate Page into English" functionality. You can find it as part of the Google Toolbar for Firefox. On any page you're on, you can click the arrow icon next to the translate button, and pick Translate Page into English. The translated page will load in place of the original one after some seconds. Not only is this approach quite quick, it's also useful if you're not sure which source language the page in question is held in (like when you check discussions in other blogs by using tip #2 above).

If you often search through a set of sites to discover something, creating a Custom Search Engine can be helpful. Already in a normal Google search, you can enter something like [site:makezine.com google] to get all Make posts containing the keyword "google". But what if you want to have results on that keyword from all O'Reilly blogs?

First, let's assemble a list of some O'Reilly blogs. Open up oreilly.net/blogs/ and note down the URLs of the sites printed in the footer, like http://radar.oreilly.com, http://ignite.oreilly.com, http://craftzine.com, http://makezine.com and http://hackszine.com. Now jump to the Google Custom Search Engine service and hit the "Create..." button. Name your search engine -- like "O'Reilly Search" -- and provide something for the other fields as well. Leave the "Search engine keywords" field empty, but in the "Sites to search" field, enter the URLs you assembled above one by one. Hit the Next, and then the Finish button, and you're done. You can now visit your Google Custom Search Engine's homepage (as listed in the dashboard) and enter a keyword as usual -- you'll see the results will be restricted to those hosted at the sites you previously provided.

Do you want to find content on the web you can re-use on your blog, homepage, and other places? The Creative Commons license comes to the rescue. Creative Commons is an effort to bring a more relaxed copyright system to people in order to better share and re-use content (check out their homepage to see how you can license your content as Creative Commons).

To search for content using this license only, skip Google's normal search box and go right to their Advanced Search, as linked from the Google homepage. On that page, expand the part linked as "Date, usage rights ...". Select "free to use or share" or a similar license in the "Usage rights" field, and enter a keyword on top as usual. Now when you hit the Advanced Search button, you'll note how pages in the results are using the CC license; clicking on the respective license on a page will let you know what specifically you can do with this content, as there are different CC frameworks available.

From the Maker Shed:

Google Apps Hacks by Philipp Lenssen - all about Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Presentations, and more! Price: $29.99 Buy it in the Maker Shed

[This post originally appeared at Lifehacker]

Yay! Philipp Lenssen's Google Apps Hacks just got reviewed on Slashdot by JR Peck, who had some kind words for the book:

Well, this book is an excellent introduction to Google's many on-line applications. I use many already and still learned of a couple new ones when I read this book. It also does bring all that instruction into one place, and provides a very user-friendly style of instruction. There is also a very nice feature, 8 sections that take the reader "Beyond Google...". Each of these sections informs the reader about alternative software that provides similar functionality to the Google software described in the preceding chapter. This is really a great resource and an unexpected bonus for anyone who reads the book.

Slashdot | Google Apps Hacks

(In the review, JR raises a good point about the definition of a Hack. We use the definition "A non-obvious solution to an interesting problem", although JR leans toward some other definitions mentioned in the review).

From the Maker Shed:

Google Apps Hacks by Philipp Lenssen - all about Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Presentations, and more!
Price: $29.99
Buy it in the Maker Shed

When Philipp Lenssen started writing Google Apps Hacks, we made up our minds that we'd develop the book in Google Docs. A while back, Philipp wrote up Part I of the story of how we made the book. From Writing a Book in Google Docs:

Currently, my editor Brian Jepson and I are collaboratively writing the book (tentatively titled) Google Office Hacks by O'Reilly using Google Docs. I wanted to outline the process we came up with, and maybe it's helpful for you too for certain needs.

I just wrote Part II of this story, and Philipp's posted it to the Google Blogoscoped blog. From From Google Docs to InDesign:

One of the tricky parts for us was getting the chapters into InDesign, the book layout program we use for our books and magazines. I know where we were coming from - Google Docs' HTML format - and where we were going to - InDesign's tagged text format.

From the Maker Shed:

Google Apps Hacks by Philipp Lenssen - all about Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Presentations, and more!
Price: $29.99
Buy it in the Maker Shed

Here's Hack #111, Display a "Please Wait" Message, from David and Raina Hawley's Excel Hacks, 2nd Edition. Millions of users create and share Excel spreadsheets every day, but few go deeply enough to learn the techniques that will make their work much easier. Yet there are many ways to take advantage of Excel's sophisticated capabilities without spending hours on advanced study. In Excel Hacks, you'll learn how to:

• Reduce workbook and worksheet frustration--manage how users interact with worksheets, find and highlight information, and deal with debris and corruption.
• Analyze and manage data--extend and automate these features, moving beyond the limited tasks they were designed to perform.
• Hack names--learn not only how to name cells and ranges, but also how to create names that adapt to the data in your spreadsheet.
• Get the most out of PivotTables--avoid the problems that make them frustrating and learn how to extend them.
• Create customized charts--tweak and combine Excel's built-in charting capabilities.
• Hack formulas and functions--subjects range from moving formulas around to dealing with datatype issues to improving recalculation time.
• Make the most of macros--including ways to manage them and use them to extend other features.
• Use the enhanced capabilities of Microsoft Office 2007 to combine Excel with Word, Access, and Outlook.

Hack #111: Display a "Please Wait" Message - Link

Related:

• Excel Hacks, 2nd Edition @ the Maker Store - Buy now
• Excel Hacks, Second Edition--New from O'Reilly: Hook Up with Excel Expert Hackers - Press Release

Here's Hack #87, Display Negative Time Values, from David and Raina Hawley's Excel Hacks, 2nd Edition. Millions of users create and share Excel spreadsheets every day, but few go deeply enough to learn the techniques that will make their work much easier. Yet there are many ways to take advantage of Excel's sophisticated capabilities without spending hours on advanced study. In Excel Hacks, you'll learn how to:

• Reduce workbook and worksheet frustration--manage how users interact with worksheets, find and highlight information, and deal with debris and corruption.
• Analyze and manage data--extend and automate these features, moving beyond the limited tasks they were designed to perform.
• Hack names--learn not only how to name cells and ranges, but also how to create names that adapt to the data in your spreadsheet.
• Get the most out of PivotTables--avoid the problems that make them frustrating and learn how to extend them.
• Create customized charts--tweak and combine Excel's built-in charting capabilities.
• Hack formulas and functions--subjects range from moving formulas around to dealing with datatype issues to improving recalculation time.
• Make the most of macros--including ways to manage them and use them to extend other features.
• Use the enhanced capabilities of Microsoft Office 2007 to combine Excel with Word, Access, and Outlook.

Hack #87: Display Negative Time Values - Link

Related:

• Excel Hacks, 2nd Edition @ the Maker Store - Buy now
• Excel Hacks, Second Edition--New from O'Reilly: Hook Up with Excel Expert Hackers - Press Release

Here's Hack #21, Highlight Every Other Row or Column, from David and Raina Hawley's Excel Hacks, 2nd Edition. Millions of users create and share Excel spreadsheets every day, but few go deeply enough to learn the techniques that will make their work much easier. Yet there are many ways to take advantage of Excel's sophisticated capabilities without spending hours on advanced study. In Excel Hacks, you'll learn how to:

• Reduce workbook and worksheet frustration--manage how users interact with worksheets, find and highlight information, and deal with debris and corruption.
• Analyze and manage data--extend and automate these features, moving beyond the limited tasks they were designed to perform.
• Hack names--learn not only how to name cells and ranges, but also how to create names that adapt to the data in your spreadsheet.
• Get the most out of PivotTables--avoid the problems that make them frustrating and learn how to extend them.
• Create customized charts--tweak and combine Excel's built-in charting capabilities.
• Hack formulas and functions--subjects range from moving formulas around to dealing with datatype issues to improving recalculation time.
• Make the most of macros--including ways to manage them and use them to extend other features.
• Use the enhanced capabilities of Microsoft Office 2007 to combine Excel with Word, Access, and Outlook.

Hack #21: Highlight Every Other Row or Column - Link

Related:

• Excel Hacks, 2nd Edition @ the Maker Store - Buy now
• Excel Hacks, Second Edition--New from O'Reilly: Hook Up with Excel Expert Hackers - Press Release

Windows Home Server may seem like an unusual piece of software, but it's worth playing around with if you are considering a home server for your Windows systems. You can get a 120-day evaluation version from Microsoft, and OEM versions are available from retailers like Newegg.com. Here's a Windows Home Server hack from Preston Gralla's Big Book of Windows Hacks. This one shows you how to connect remotely to your home server so you can keep an eye on things back at home. Hack #129 - Link

Related:

• Big Book of Windows Hacks @ the Maker Store - Link
  
• Big Book of Windows Hacks--New from Make: Tips & Tricks for Unlocking the Power of Your Windows PC - Link
  
• Hack #156 from Big Book of Windows Hacks: strip down your Windows installation - Link
  
• Big Book of Windows Hacks #16: a grab bag of Vista interface hacks - Link
  

Here's Hack #15, Reduce Workbook Bloat, from David and Raina Hawley's Excel Hacks, 2nd Edition. Millions of users create and share Excel spreadsheets every day, but few go deeply enough to learn the techniques that will make their work much easier. Yet there are many ways to take advantage of Excel's sophisticated capabilities without spending hours on advanced study. In Excel Hacks, you'll learn how to:

• Reduce workbook and worksheet frustration--manage how users interact with worksheets, find and highlight information, and deal with debris and corruption.
• Analyze and manage data--extend and automate these features, moving beyond the limited tasks they were designed to perform.
• Hack names--learn not only how to name cells and ranges, but also how to create names that adapt to the data in your spreadsheet.
• Get the most out of PivotTables--avoid the problems that make them frustrating and learn how to extend them.
• Create customized charts--tweak and combine Excel's built-in charting capabilities.
• Hack formulas and functions--subjects range from moving formulas around to dealing with datatype issues to improving recalculation time.
• Make the most of macros--including ways to manage them and use them to extend other features.
• Use the enhanced capabilities of Microsoft Office 2007 to combine Excel with Word, Access, and Outlook.

Hack #15: Reduce Workbook Bloat - Link

Related:

• Excel Hacks, 2nd Edition @ the Maker Store - Buy now
• Excel Hacks, Second Edition--New from O'Reilly: Hook Up with Excel Expert Hackers - Press Release

Here's Hack #94, Download Windows Patches Securely, from Kyle Rankin's Knoppix Hacks, 2nd Edition. Knoppix Hacks offers a collection of tips and techniques for using the enormous amount of software Knoppix offers--not just to work and play, but also to troubleshoot, repair, upgrade, and disinfect your system without having to install a thing. The book includes scores of hacks covering both the standard Knoppix live CD and the feature-rich DVD "Maxi" distribution (included with this book). In this book, you'll learn how to:

• Investigate features of the KDE desktop and its Internet applications
• Save settings and data between reboots with persistent storage
• Use Knoppix as a system administration multitool to replace failed servers and more
• Use the CD/DVD as a rescue disc to repair filesystems or a system that won't boot
• Rescue Windows systems with Knoppix to back up files and settings, hack the registry, and more
• Explore other live CDs based on Knoppix
• Use Knoppix to automatically detect and configure hardware
• Remaster Knoppix to include favorite software and custom branding

Hack #94: Download Windows Patches Securely - Link

Related:

• Knoppix Hacks, 2nd Edition @ the Maker Store - Buy now
• Knoppix Hacks, Second Edition--New from O'Reilly Media: Using the Linux Live CD to Hack, Repair, and Enjoy Your PC - Press Release

Here's Hack #59, Wipe a Hard Drive, from Kyle Rankin's Knoppix Hacks, 2nd Edition. Knoppix Hacks offers a collection of tips and techniques for using the enormous amount of software Knoppix offers--not just to work and play, but also to troubleshoot, repair, upgrade, and disinfect your system without having to install a thing. The book includes scores of hacks covering both the standard Knoppix live CD and the feature-rich DVD "Maxi" distribution (included with this book). In this book, you'll learn how to:

• Investigate features of the KDE desktop and its Internet applications
• Save settings and data between reboots with persistent storage
• Use Knoppix as a system administration multitool to replace failed servers and more
• Use the CD/DVD as a rescue disc to repair filesystems or a system that won't boot
• Rescue Windows systems with Knoppix to back up files and settings, hack the registry, and more
• Explore other live CDs based on Knoppix
• Use Knoppix to automatically detect and configure hardware
• Remaster Knoppix to include favorite software and custom branding

Hack #59: Wipe a Hard Drive - Link

Related:

• Knoppix Hacks, 2nd Edition @ the Maker Store - Buy now
• Knoppix Hacks, Second Edition--New from O'Reilly Media: Using the Linux Live CD to Hack, Repair, and Enjoy Your PC - Press Release

Here's Hack #39, Install Multimedia Codecs, from Kyle Rankin's Knoppix Hacks, 2nd Edition. Knoppix Hacks offers a collection of tips and techniques for using the enormous amount of software Knoppix offers--not just to work and play, but also to troubleshoot, repair, upgrade, and disinfect your system without having to install a thing. The book includes scores of hacks covering both the standard Knoppix live CD and the feature-rich DVD "Maxi" distribution (included with this book). In this book, you'll learn how to:

• Investigate features of the KDE desktop and its Internet applications
• Save settings and data between reboots with persistent storage
• Use Knoppix as a system administration multitool to replace failed servers and more
• Use the CD/DVD as a rescue disc to repair filesystems or a system that won't boot
• Rescue Windows systems with Knoppix to back up files and settings, hack the registry, and more
• Explore other live CDs based on Knoppix
• Use Knoppix to automatically detect and configure hardware
• Remaster Knoppix to include favorite software and custom branding

Hack #39: Install Multimedia Codecs - Link

Related:

• Knoppix Hacks, 2nd Edition @ the Maker Store - Buy now
• Knoppix Hacks, Second Edition--New from O'Reilly Media: Using the Linux Live CD to Hack, Repair, and Enjoy Your PC - Press Release

Here's Hack #18, Rock Out with Knoppix Multimedia, from Kyle Rankin's Knoppix Hacks, 2nd Edition. Knoppix Hacks offers a collection of tips and techniques for using the enormous amount of software Knoppix offers--not just to work and play, but also to troubleshoot, repair, upgrade, and disinfect your system without having to install a thing. The book includes scores of hacks covering both the standard Knoppix live CD and the feature-rich DVD "Maxi" distribution (included with this book). In this book, you'll learn how to:

• Investigate features of the KDE desktop and its Internet applications
• Save settings and data between reboots with persistent storage
• Use Knoppix as a system administration multitool to replace failed servers and more
• Use the CD/DVD as a rescue disc to repair filesystems or a system that won't boot
• Rescue Windows systems with Knoppix to back up files and settings, hack the registry, and more
• Explore other live CDs based on Knoppix
• Use Knoppix to automatically detect and configure hardware
• Remaster Knoppix to include favorite software and custom branding

Hack #18: Rock Out with Knoppix Multimedia - Link

Related:

• Knoppix Hacks, 2nd Edition @ the Maker Store - Buy now
• Knoppix Hacks, Second Edition--New from O'Reilly Media: Using the Linux Live CD to Hack, Repair, and Enjoy Your PC - Press Release

Like most of us, you've probably got some last-minute shopping to take care of. Or maybe there's a special someone in your life who keeps asking you for gift ideas and you need to start dropping hints to avoid another button down and a neck tie. Whatever the reason, here's a quick and dirty hacker gift guide with a variety of gift ideas that should put a smile on someone's face.

Make sure to add your own favorites to the list in the comments area and pass it along. I'm focusing primarily on smaller items that are available in local stores, but feel free to toss in whatever you think is important and shouldn't be missed.

Reading Material:

• Make: The Best Of - a killer collection of the best 75 projects from our favorite magazine.
• The Dangerous Book For Boys - this is a great book for sharing with your kids. Chock-full of essential information like how to tie knots, play poker, use a compass, build a tree house, and relate to girls.
• Knoppix Hacks, 2nd Edition - the swiss army knife for your computer.
• Illustrated Guide To Astronomical Wonders - ideal for anyone who's interested in knowing their way around the universe.
• Also check out other books from the O'Reilly Hacks Series - Link

Gadgets:

• Asus Eee PC - this ultra-tiny Linux laptop is just starting to appear in stores - Hacks
• Linksys WRT54GL Router - the L in the GL stands for Linux. It's a $60 router that can be customized to do more than it's thousand dollar big-brothers - Hacks
• Western Digital MyBook World Edition External Hard Drive - any extra storage is really nice to have, but this network-available drive contains mirrored RAID storage and a mini Linux computer that can run a web and database server - Hacks
• iPhone or iPod Touch - did I really put that here? - Hacks
• Broadband Mobile Card from Verizon or Sprint - they are getting super
  popular, and heck, they are cheaper than an iPhone.
• Nokia N95-3 - the winner of our most hackable mobile phone survey - Hacks

Toys:

• Air Hogs Havoc Heli Laser Battle - remember the Picco-Zs and their clones from last year? Here's two of them in a single package, enhanced with a trigger that let's you zap your friend's heli down.
• E-Sky Lama V4 Helicopter- Yeah, I'm crazy for helicopters right now. The counter-rotating models like this one are about $100, ready (and easy) to fly, and very hackable.
• WowWee RoboSapien V2 - fun for the kids. More fun with a soldering iron - Hacks

Gear:

• 2GB or larger micro SD card, plus various SD and USB adapters - perfect for scooting files around, the size of a finger nail, and you can put a full Linux distro, anti virus software, or a Puppy Linux virtual machine on it - Hacks
• Mini Multimeter - always handy.
• Bike Multitool - a good one will pack allen and hex wrenches, screw drivers, and a knife into a pretty small package. Perfect for voiding warrantees in a pinch. Oh, and there's a chain tool, too - Link, Link
• Soldering Tools - whether it's a new Weller or just a pair of helping hands, it'll be welcome in any stocking - Link, Link

What have we missed here? Add your wishes to the comments. Then find a completely non-tacky way to get this list into the hands of someone who wants you to be a happy hacker.

We've set up a booth for Hacks authors to answer your questions about hacking your stuff. Stop by the booth and learn from (show us your hacks, too, please!) the authors of Retro Gaming, Wireless, Google Maps, Mapping, Network Security, Car PC, Digital Video, Knoppix, and Ubuntu Hacks. The Hackszine bloggers will be there as well. Hacks booth schedule - Link

Last month, I issued a Call for Hacks for our new Windows Hacks book in the works, but don't you Mac users and hackers think we're leaving you out. We're working on a Big Book of Apple Hacks too, and author Chris Seibold could use your help.

Notice I said "Apple Hacks," not "Mac OS X Hacks." Bigger in size, broader in scope, and even more useful than traditional Hacks books (such as the original Mac OS X Hacks, the third book we published in the series, just over four years ago), we're looking to give Mac power users everything they need to get the most out of their operating system, its related applications, and the hardware it runs on or connects to. This means that everything Apple-related is fair game, from applications (such as Mail, Safari, iCal, Front Row, or the iLife suite) to hardware (such as Apple TV, Mac mini, iPod, the MacBooks, or Intel desktops). And yes, of course, you should expect to see a good deal of Leopard hacks, as well as some stuff for Tiger users who aren't ready to upgrade.

So, click the Suggest a Hack link in the sidebar, or drop Chris a line to send us your best tips and tricks. If your hack is accepted, you'll get geek-cred bragging rights by becoming part of the O'Reilly Hacks community of contributors.

Related:

• Call for Hacks: Windows Tips for Everyone

Bre @ Makezine writes:

Some people are obsessed with twitter these days. We're not endorsing it, but if you're a twitterer and you want to stay up to date with the makezine blog, the craftzine blog, and the hackszine blog, then you can follow them on twitter and get updates about posts while mobile or on im. Whenever a new post goes up, it'll get twittered with the title of the article and the url of the post.

Unless you have unlimited text messages, you'll want to set it up with im or the internet. Twitter can generate a lot of text messages if you set up that option in the settings.

Big thanks to Kosso, rss wizard, who helped put this together.

Makezine on Twitter - Link
Craftzine on Twitter - Link
Hackszine on Twitter - Link

Preston Gralla's latest article for PC World provides Windows tips and tricks for everyone, not just the early adopters of Vista:

Whether you've jumped to Vista or are sticking with XP, our tips will make your computing faster and safer--and even a little more stylish.

Preston is the author Windows XP Hacks, across two editions, and is now hacking away at his next Windows Hacks book, which promises to be bigger, broader, and better, covering not only XP and Vista, but pretty much anything you can think of using within, or attaching to, those operating systems.

He can't complete such an immense task on his own, so he needs your help. If you have a great hack (or multiple hacks) you'd like to contribute to the book, let him know. Anything Windows related is game, including any Microsoft software or hardware, so click the Suggest a Hack link in the sidebar or drop him a line directly at preston [at] gralla [dot] com. If your hack is accepted, you'll get geek-cred bragging rights by becoming part of the O'Reilly Hacks community of contributors.

Preston's Windows Tips @ PC World:

• Windows Tips for Everyone
• Tweak Security Settings in XP and Vista
• Make the Move to Vista
• Change Vista's Defaults

Ed note: In this guest post, veteran Hacks series author Paul Bausch takes on a challenge that's been on my todo list for a while, providing a solution that should be of immediate interest to all readers of this site and just might serve as a seed for future hacking around here.

I have a shelf full of O'Reilly Hacks books across a wide range of subjects. I contributed a couple in the Web Applications category, but I also have Hacks books about digital photography, hardware, scripting languages, gaming, and operating systems. The series has introduced me to a number of authors who are doing unusual things with technology in their particular area of expertise. I thought it would be interesting to follow each of these authors outside of the Hacks series by subscribing to their blogs, collectively. I figured it would be a good way to keep up with areas of technology that I'm not necessarily tuned into. I have a collection of blogs that I read to keep up with what's happening in Web Applications, but I don't have a sense of what's going on with gaming, for example.

So I went on a mission to gather the Hacks authors' blogs using the tools I know best: Web Applications. I started with an Amazon power query for books by O'Reilly with "Hacks" in the title via the Amazon API, and ended up with a list of 80 authors' full names. I plugged each name into Google by hand, adding the word "blog" (or if that didn't turn anything up, "hacks"). Then I visited the blog to make sure it was the Hacks author I was looking for, clicked the orange feed button in the Firefox address field to get the feed URL, and copied the URL to a text file. I ended up with a list of 40 feeds. (A 50% blogging rate among an arbitrary group isn't too shabby.)

I plugged the feeds into Google Reader, and renamed each feed the author's full name. Here's what the final list looks like (click for larger view):

Here's the list of feeds as OPML if you'd like to try it: Hacks Authors.

I've only been tuning into this list for a few days, but I'm already getting to know these authors in a new way. And I was right—I am finding out about developments in tech areas I don't normally tune into. I especially found Brian K. Jones's recent post about Fighting Specialization appropriate, something I wouldn't have seen otherwise.

Related:

• Google Hacks, 3E
• Amazon Hacks

Longtime readers of books in our Hacks series will have no doubt already noticed that the launch of Hackzine.com includes a redesign of our series logo:

I love the new look and its family resemblance to Make's typography, but before we'd made this connection official, I'd already had fun mashing up these two great brands into my own fantasy book, using the following ready-to-hand materials:

• Printer's dummy book block (1): from a friend in Manufacturing
  
• Cover flats for Hacks books (2): from a friend in Design
  
• Make: stickers (2): from a friend in Sales/Marketing

Though most readers get what we're up to, we've also seen a vocal minority who seem to think (or hope) we're offering something we're not, so I'd like to take a moment to reiterate the purpose of this site, with a finer point on what you can expect to see us post and what sort of requests you should assume we'll ignore without comment.

The professed goal of the Hacks series in general, and now of Hackszine in particular, has always been to reclaim the term "hacking" for the good guys--innovators who explore and experiment, unearth shortcuts, create useful tools, and come up with fun things to try on their own. As mentioned in my welcome post, "to hack something is to make it work the way it should -- for you."

In that spirit, this reader request is the sort of thing we love to receive and are happy to respond to. By contrast, this one is not:

I just need to Hack a single Yahoo ID's password. Either by providing a link (url) to the victim or by any means. I don't have physical contact with the victim's computer. But I am able to provide any kind of webpage url to the victim.

So, before you click that Request a Hack link in the sidebar, ask yourself if what you're about to request is the sort of thing you'd like someone doing to you. If the answer is "no," don't bother going any further. But if you're looking for ways to get the most out of your own things, life, or world, we're here to help.

In life hacking news, I just learned that Merlin Mann (life hacking pioneer and one-person productivity guru behind 43 Folders) is now an adviser for Values of n (founded by former Hacks series editor Rael Dornfest), the company behind the impressive new Stikkit productivity app. I'm looking forward to seeing some great results from this collaboration between two of my favorite life hackers. If you haven't tried out Stikkit yet, do so now. It's a great life hack in itself, which is just getting better and better as it develops, but will also likely be the source of great productivity hacks in the future (note: some power users are already hacking it).

As a bit of an aside, there's a hack to be found in the links from the Values of n announcement too, a hack in which I have some personal involvement in the telling. Though Merlin was kind enough to leave my name out of his 43 Folders podcast on "the perfect apostrophe," I am, in fact, the "very nice man whose life [he] temporarily ruined." While he overstates the damage done by just a tad, his depiction of me as "a character out a 30s screwball comedy" is uncanny:

powered by ODEO

The link to Merlin's hilarious podcast isn't simply gratuitous or intended to feed my own vanity. If you listen carefully, you'll find a valuable life hack in there, a perhaps more nuanced and intereresting way to "not sweat the small stuff" or, more accurately, to recognize the right stuff to sweat and just get it done. Beyond my obvious involvement as a character in his story, it resonated with me on a number of other levels as well, which I explained in a bit more detail a while back on my personal blog (note: this link, unlike the previous links, is indeed intentionally gratuitous).

We've developed this site to promote the philosophy of Hacks as a way to gain control of the devices and systems in our lives. To hack something is to make it work the way it should -- for you. This site will bring you the best hacks we uncover in the wilds of the Internet, while at the same time delivering fresh, original content developed by our pool of Hacks authors and contributors.

As you'll likely notice in the site's design, the Hacks series is now published by the same team responsible for Make magazine, headed by Dale Dougherty, the publisher of Make and the original creator of our Hacks series. In many ways, we see Hacks as the technological or mental counterpart to the physical DIY space addressed by Make, and our vision is to grow the Hackszine site and its community in the way we have successfully connected "makers" with Makezine and Make magazine.

Let us know what you think. We'd love to hear from you. Have a hack? Use the "Submit a Hack" link in the sidebar. We're also interested in hearing about the kind of hacks that'd work for you. If you have a specific itch that needs scratching, just click "Request a Hack" and tell us about it.

As lead editor for O’Reilly’s Hacks series, I field proposals for Hacks books on a daily basis. I also usually have several books in various stages of acquisition, writing, or production, all of which of course have authors and (this being Hacks) numerous contributors. Beyond the questions about which topical areas we’re looking to publish on, the questions that come up most often are usually variations on the theme of what makes a hack and how one should be written.

I’ve long wanted to write something for current and prospective authors, contributors, and other O’Reilly editors (to share with their authors) that explains exactly what we mean by “a nonobvious solution to an interesting problem.” But, of course, I haven’t had the time to do so, so I often go through various rounds of trying to explain something that, when it comes right down to it, you really need to just grok. Unfortunately, after a few attempts to put a fine point on the term hack (as used by O’Reilly), I often end up resorting to a description that’s not much better than Justice Stewart’s infamous definition of obscenity: namely, “I know it when I see it.”

Today, I was discussing a new project with Paul Bausch, who has established himself as a model author for the series (including Amazon Hacks, the forthcoming Yahoo! Hacks, an as-yet-unannounced third Hacks title, Flickr Hacks, and Google Hacks, Third Edition), and I learned that he’d quietly drafted his own take on this theme. Paul’s an author who groks the Hacks format with little need for supervision or guidance, so I was particularly interested in his perspective. He didn’t disappoint, so I asked him to share his sage advice with the world. Thankfully, he agreed.]]> [<a href="http://www.hackszine.com/blog/archive/2006/10/how_to_write_a_hack_for_oreill.html?CMP=OTC-7G2N43923558" />Read More</a>] [<a href="http://www.hackszine.com/blog/archive/2006/10/how_to_write_a_hack_for_oreill.html?CMP=OTC-7G2N43923558#comments" />Comments</a>] http://www.hackszine.com/blog/archive/2006/10/how_to_write_a_hack_for_oreill.html?CMP=OTC-7G2N43923558 http://www.hackszine.com/blog/archive/2006/10/how_to_write_a_hack_for_oreill.html?CMP=OTC-7G2N43923558 Hacks Series Thu, 26 Oct 2006 05:48:25 -0800 More than just a foreword to Wireless Hacks, Second Edition (by Rob Flickenger and Roger Weeks) Glenn Fleishman's praise of the book reads like paean to the maker/hacker spirit in general: Wireless Hacks feels more like a device constructed by... More than just a foreword to Wireless Hacks, Second Edition (by Rob Flickenger and Roger Weeks) Glenn Fleishman's praise of the book reads like paean to the maker/hacker spirit in general:

Wireless Hacks feels more like a device constructed by the love child of The Professor from Gilligan's Island and Mr. Spock: it beeps, it twitters, there are coconut shreds, and then, surprisingly, it produces a glass of tea out of thin air or transports several people to geosynchronous orbit. ... Wireless Hacks isn't about breaking technology to serve your needs. Rather, it's about bending it. So much of today's wireless networking hardware, software, and firmware has been carefully tailored to suit what the manufacturer or service provider feels you are entitled to do with it. But we own the tech and, for unlicensed networks, we own the airwaves. Wireless Hacks stands up, raises its hand, and says, "Excuse me, I don't buy into your world view."

It has been occasionally noted that Greasemonkey is a hacker's tool. I take some pride in that, since I come from a family of relentless hackers.

The next time you find yourself frustrated by a broken website, you won't have to live with it. You'll have the tools and knowledge to fix it yourself.

I'd like to thank ... Erika, my inspiration, who makes me smile every day. Erika, I feel so lucky to have found you. With you, every day is beautiful and new. Nothing would make me happier than to spend the rest of my life with you...Erika Anderson, will you marry me?