Blizzard Ba Bumping in Virginia.

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Ever wonder what some hams do in snow storms? Listen to the weather reporting from weather spotters live during the Brutal Blizzard of 2010!

Over the last few days I have heard an amazing amount of buzz over the new Apple iPad. To be honest, I'm kind of shocked. Before I get into my opinion of the iPad let me state the standard "I'm just an engineer" disclaimer. Engineers are not the best at identifying new markets. I mean what engineer would have ever guessed there would be a demand for The Jersey Shore. :)

A good example of this buzz is Mike's post on the iPad being "potentially one of the most important, culture-changing products in history." For me the bar for important culture-changing technologies is quite high: Light bulb, refrigerator, radio, TV, cell phone, internet and so on.

(Hit the link for more!)

This is the story of two iPhones lost without one another. The first iPhone decided to take a dive into a large soda cup. After the dive it was unable to stay powered for longer than 5 seconds! The second iPhone had a worse fate and fell on to a hard floor and destroyed its touchscreen. Over the holidays we decided to help and perform a touchscreen transplant. I am glad to report that the patient is alive and well.

I got an iPod Touch for Christmas this year and it is awesome! I tried it with our Internet Remote Ham Radio Station and I was amazed at the audio quality. Definitely sufficient as communication grade audio. I'm able to operate HF/VHF/UHF with a small device from anywhere in the world that has WIFI. I have done this before using my HTC Touch Pro but the iPod Touch is so much easier to use for remote operation that I'll likely never go back.

I have a bunch of videos to get ready to post that I think might be the first HF/VHF/UHF contacts via an iPod Touch. :)

Until then here is a quick video of the iPod Touch tuned to WWV.

Just ordered some parts for two new projects at the labs. One is a commercial effort and the second will likely be open-sourced. Fortunately, there is plenty of overlap between the two projects that I hope to be able to post some interesting videos along the way. Stay tuned!

I have had a few emails suggesting center column width was to small making the content difficult to read. Here is my attempt at a solution until we move the site over to WordPress. To be honest the "Logon Menu" was not getting much use. When we move over to WordPress we hope to be able to allow anonymous comments without letting too much spamyness in.

Thanks for all the emails and comments on the RFiDJ project. The experience has been a lot of fun. After the project hit the net I reached my Worked All States (WAS) goal in no time! Next stop: Worked All Continents.

How are we going to get someone from Antarctica to check out our site? :)

Head on over to the project pages to see the complete build of RFiDJ. The source has been posted and I hope someone finds it useful.

Calling the state of Wyoming. One more state before I can claimed I have "contacted" all the states in the nation. The Worked All States (WAS) is an old amateur radio tradition that I am bringing to Roteno Labs. So if you know any geeks in Wyoming pass along a recommendation to check out Roteno Labs. Thanks!