Future Technologies, Ideas & Opinions, Products & Services

Tinkering with the future

By JBC on 21 September 2009

GLOBAL – If you’ve been wondering just how you can get your N900 to interact with a Speak ‘N’ Spell, View-Master or a rolodex, then fear not, as the folks at Tinker.it have released some more details on how they did it. Okay, so you’ll be short of an N900 until they actually go on sale (soon, we’re told) but at least you can start assembling the required parts in time for your very own hackathon.

First up, you’ll need to grab yourself an eighties legend. It shouldn’t take too much to grab an old Speak ‘N’ Spell from auction sites such as eBay for not much money – we found one for less than £5. Then you’ll need some open source hardware in the form of an Arduino. After that, things get a whole lot more complicated, and we might recommend you get yourself a background in programming before proceeding any further. As such, I’ll let the Tinker.it folks explain what each hack is, and how it works.

No, we weren’t really suggesting you take your new N900 and start sticking it into 80s throwbacks. We just wanted to highlight again the clever stuff that was thought up as part of the PUSH N900 competition recently. When we first wrote about, information on how it all worked was thin on the ground. Now the Tinker.it folks have revealed all, it starts to open your mind as to the actual possibility of what could be done with an N900 – it does actually look limitless.

When we were at Nokia World we spent some time with the guys behind the Ovi SDK. The Software Development Kit is designed to open up the various Ovi services to application developers. Combining those services, with new applications, and devices such as the N900, means the future is unbelievably hard to predict. That might sound like a pointless statement, but the resulting applications we’re going to see, as a result of open services and products coming together, will take us down new and exciting avenues. Did anyone see Sports Tracker coming? Or what kind of success it would be?

So, if you could take a service, and a hugely capable device, what kind of app do you think you would like.

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N900 hacked to replace the innards of a Speak & Spell, can never bring back your childhood | Rerters Says:
September 22nd, 2009 at 1:19 pm

[...] Nokia Conversations] Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds, [...]

V-Technology World Says:
September 22nd, 2009 at 2:21 pm

[...] Nokia Conversations] Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds, [...]

N900 hacked to replace the innards of a Speak & Spell, can never bring back your childhood | NewGadget.Info Says:
September 22nd, 2009 at 3:21 pm

[...] [Via Nokia Conversations] [...]

GPS Navigation » N900 hacked to replace the innards of a Speak & Spell, can never bring back your childhood Says:
September 22nd, 2009 at 7:13 pm

[...] Nokia has been handing out the N900 for selective “artsy” uses lately through its “Push” program, and the folks at Tinker it now! sure seem to have put their model to good use. They’ve paired the device with all matter of nostalgia, including a Rolodex, FM radio and a 3D Viewmaster. Our favorite by far, however, is the Speak & Spell hack, which puts the gargantuan Speak & Spell keyboard to good use in penning text messages for the N900 — which displays them in the classic font and even articulates your words with a speech synthesis engine. It’s all a testament to the flexibility of Linux, hacker ingenuity and of course liberal application of Arduino, but it’s also a little advertorial-ey, so you might want to leave your gag reflex at home for this one. [Via Nokia Conversations] [...]

N900 hacked to replace the innards of a Speak & Spell, can never bring back your childhood – 156th Edition | Apple Iphone Reviews Says:
September 30th, 2009 at 2:42 pm

N900 hacked to replace the innards of a Speak & Spell, can never bring back your childhood | wizteq.com Says:
October 26th, 2009 at 10:15 pm

[...] [Via Nokia Conversations] [...]