I have been experimenting with Google Latitude this week and I have found it to be very useful. Ham radio operators will find its use similar to Automatic Packet Reporting System (APRS). Latitude accesses the GPS device in your mobile phone and sends a position report to Google. Google then serves map pages with your position as well as the position of your friends. Latitude also supports a built-in chat feature that enables groups of friends to quickly interact as the discover that they are near each other. My only feature request is for Google to support the dissemination of sensor data as well as simple position reports. I can imagine a variety of sensors exploiting this technology that I would be interested in displaying on my map along with the position of my friends. It is obvious to me that Google has spent a lot of time ensuring that the GUI for Latitude is simple yet powerful. I look forward to see new features added to this product while they attempt to maintain the simple interface.

The WAS (Worked All States) Award in ham radio is available to all amateurs worldwide who confirm having contacted each of the 50 states of the United States of America. I thought this might also be an interesting milestone for those of us who put up websites.

The picture above is a national summary of Roteno.com readers as of 04APR09. So if you know any geeks in the states I have not "contacted" (white) let them know to check out roteno.com!

Submit your name to be included with others in a microchip on the Mars Science Laboratory rover heading to Mars in 2011!

- Recorded Live @ 4:30PM EST 30 March 2009 -

Update: We lost our first video due to operator error. Unfortunately, only the live viewers were able to see it. This is the second video. We'll try this again very soon.

NASA will showcase Orion, the next generation of spacecraft that will return humans to the moon on the National Mall in Washington DC. We'll be there to produce our first netcast.

It looks like TI is getting closer to offering a development board for the CC430. If you want to keep an eye on this product, check out their blog.

I have found this cool online RSS visualization tool that maps RSS feeds & tags to a nice looking map at MappedUp.com. In my case I was looking for a screen saver or website to leave on as a background service when I am not using my home theater PC (HTPC) in the living room. MappedUp offers their tool as a screen saver and online. It even scales well when used on larger screens.

This would be a fun tool to use to import ham radio related twitter feeds. Just make sure to add the Roteno feed first.

After a great launch on March 15 2009 I was eager to track the Shuttle and its progress towards the ISS. To my delight I found out this morning that I had the ephemeris (TLE) for the tool bag lost on STS-126. So here it is, my Monday funny.

I'm not really into discussing innovation in an abstract sense. However, Mayer does a great job doing this by focusing on her experiences at Google. Her discussion at Stanford resonated with me. Perhaps it will for you too.

SigmaDSP® Stereo, Low Power, 96 kHz, 24-Bit Audio Codec with Integrated PLL.

Looks like AD is leading in the super cool CODEC with DSP (50 MIPS) capability arena with its new ADAU1761! If any readers are using this component, let us know.

I have been too busy lately to get in some lab time lately but I wanted to share some information on my current project.
I am very close to wrapping up the first hardware prototypes for this system. As soon as I get to a stopping point I'll make sure to move this over to the project pages. (Hit the link for more!)