Monday, March 4, 2013

March 4, 1877: The Microphone Sounds Much Better

Emile Berliner invents a new kind of microphone. It assures the future of the telephone, but not fame for Berliner.

Tolino Shine eReader with HD Screen, Android, and Frontlight Hits Germany

The Tolino Shine is a new ebook reader that is going to be available in Germany starting March 7th. The Tolino Shine was born through a partnership with Bertelsmann and Deutsche Telekom and Germany’s leading bookstore chains—Thalia, Weltbild, and Hugendubel. The device will sell for €99 (about $129 USD) from 1500 partner retail stores and [...]

The MagPi, issue 10

There’s a new MagPi out: download it for free over at www.themagpi.com. This month’s edition has a great mix of hardware and software projects. You can read from the cover what’s on offer: my absolute favourite for this issue is this month’s Scratch Patch, where you’ll be using Scratch to draw Julia Sets.

There’s a competition to win a Pi, too: this one is not blue, but it’s still pretty nifty. Get downloading!

Blue Pi!

To celebrate our first anniversary, RS Components, one of our two main manufacturing distributors, are releasing a limited edition of 1000 blue Raspberry Pis. These Pis are very cute: there’s something really handsome about that blue. They come with a certificate of authenticity signed by Eben and a matching blue case from One Nine Design in Wales; and blue, as drinkers of Slush Puppy should be aware, is the canonical colour of raspberry flavouring. (Do not eat this Pi.)

There’s a catch. You won’t be able to buy these Pis. The majority of them are being donated to charitable causes involving kids and education. But some are also being held back as competition prizes, and you can win one yourself.

For four weeks from today, everyone who tweets #bluepi to @RSElectronics along with a suggestion for uses for a blue Pi, or with a great Pi design idea, will be entered into a competition to win one. (Please tweet your entries to @RSElectronics – don’t leave your entry here in the comments, because it won’t be counted.) Every week, the top ten entries will be selected by a panel from RS and the Raspberry Pi Foundation, and those ten winners will be sent a blue Pi. Easy! There will be another competition when these four weeks are up – RS will be running Blue Pi events until June.

Terms and conditions are available at RS’s website.