NanoNote Goes Wireless 83
dvdkhlng writes "Even though completely copyleft, the NanoNote hand-held platform failed to get the attention of many due to its low specs and the lack of wireless connectivity. The objective to keep things open had its price, and wireless technology is a mine-field of patents and NDAs. Now, a few gifted hackers designed an add-on card to bring wireless to the NanoNote. It's not what you would expect; WLAN compatibility was sacrificed, going for the less encumbered IPv6 over the 802.15.4 standard instead. The resulting dongles won't win a prize for the highest bandwidth, but excel at simplicity, energy efficiency and manufacturability. Want to see the ugly details? Designs, source code and production documentation are published under open source licenses."
Re:Scale (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm pretty sure most people already have a small, handheld device in their pocket which can do all of those things, and more, and which has a better screen, better connectivity, more storage, and far better support.
Do they have them for $100?
Seriously, I could think of a few things to do with this, and I'm not all that creative.
Wikipedia in a hand-sized device (although there was that other Wikipedia handheld thing), basic word processing, email and webmail, Telnet / SSH access... Hell, it's running linux, so you could have all kinds of useful utilities on the silly thing as a sysadmin.
Yes, most First World Geeks (and some Second World Geeks) have PDAs and Smartphones, but for underprivileged geeks? Young hackers (in the correct sense of the word) interested in learning basic computer/electrical engineering and code modification? I couldn't afford an iPhone when I was a kid (still can't, really) but this? I could have swung this and had an absolute ball mucking about with it.
Yes, it's not a Smartphone. But it's nothing to just scoff at.