McFilter

A free one-day conference being (co)organised by the Transition Towns Liverpool group. Not sure I'm in Liverpool when it's on, but if I am then I think I'll be heading along.

Sounds like an interesting conference coming up in Sheffield soon. Heard about it through the Bookleteer guys at #Be2campbrum

I wonder how well this would work when mated to a printer-scavenged stepper motor...

A more affordable option for SMS integration with web apps.

Detailed look at the finances and growth of a co-working space in Philadelphia.

Nice tool to generate character arrays for use in Arduino LCD or LED matrix code. Similar to, but prettier and more polished, something I knocked up during Howduino NCL to help the guys working on their LED matrices.

Interesting-looking performance monitoring tool used by Etsy (i.e. that's where I heard of it).

Good post on the importance of the company's culture. I don't think it just applies to startups really. And rightly shows that process is important, but similarly that there should be as little as necessary and there should be some flexibility in applying it.

Fascinating video showing the techniques used in the 1960s for building prototypes of a new design

Great to see a conference on the Big Society happening in Liverpool. Less great that it's an exclusive £300-odd per ticket event. I also can't find where it's being held... maybe that's because my immediate reaction to finding out about it was to suggest we could hold a better, free, more inclusive rival conference next-door to it :-)

For ages I've been wondering if it's possible to grind up old milk bottles (and any other domestic plastic waste) and use it as the source material for 3D printing on things like the RepRap or Cupcake. It's great to find that lots of other people have had the same idea, and actually gotten on with experimenting with it.

Archive of writing about Liverpool.

Alex on top form. I think I violently agree with every word of this.

Interesting-looking system for data logging, monitoring and control of sensors, building systems, etc.