Griffin Technology has introduced SmartDeck, an iPod-to-cassette adapter which senses the tape deck’s movements and sends the appropriate remote control signals to your iPod. While it currently only works with iPods that sport a serial remote control, the device can tell the speed and direction of the small wheels inside your cassette player which are normally used to move the magnetic tape from one tiny reel to the other. Cassette adapters have no tape, so the wheels usually spin free while your play music through your car stereo via your iPod. With the SmartDeck, you can keep your iPod stashed in the glovebox and simply use the tape deck’s buttons to remotely control the iPod. What an awesome idea.

MacMerc has a great overview of the most popular BitTorrent applications for Mac. Personally, I still like using the official Mac BT client, as it fits my needs well enough. In an environment where I need BitTorrent automation, though, I use Azureus with various plugins. What client do you use?

While messing with the Behaviour JavaScript library, I created an interface similar to the iTunes 5 search bar. Behaviour allows you to apply JavaScript functions to elements of a web page using CSS selectors. The end result is clean code that’s uncluttered by JavaScript calls or formatting. The HTML markup can remain semantic, while the CSS does the layout, and Behaviour applies functions without getting in the way. It’s a fantastic way to code websites — it just takes more time. Feel free to mess around with my iTunes search bar, or borrow the code and images. Here’s a zip file containing the entire package, if you want to grab it all at once. (Any CSS fixing would be greatly appreciated, as it looks simply awful in IE. I’ve tested it extensively in Safari 2.0.1, though.)

Here’s a great project I happened to run across while sorting through bookmarks. Henry Arnold’s Cricket is a six-legged walking robot, controlled by a BASIC Stamp II microcontroller. Full wiring diagrams, frame layouts, and source code are all available for you to make your own ‘bot.

While the site doesn’t look like it’s changed in the last five or so years, the project is none the less fun to build and learn from. I put one together one many years ago as my first robot built from scratch, not using pre-made kits or packages of any sort. All the materials had to be bought from various suppliers, cut, assembled, etc. It took a number of weeks to get it going, but it was a great learning experience. During the process, I emailed back and forth with the designer himself, and he was most helpful. The Cricket robot was my first introduction to programming microcontrollers, and that has since spurred on many other hardware projects.

Definitely give it a look if you want to get into electronics or embedded hardware.