The price of a typical gadget reflects two factors: the cost of making it and the price its inventor is charging for the intellectual property in it. Often the second can be many times the first (as in the case of an Intel processor chip, for example, which costs just a few dollars to make but can sell for hundreds of dollars).
But if you don’t charge for intellectual property, gadgets can get a lot cheaper, and potentially reach a much larger market. That’s the philosophy behind “open source hardware”. You give away all the intellectual property (schematics, PCB files, firmware, software, assembly instructions, etc.) but sell the completed units, charging only a set markup on the cost of the hardware itself, which you disclose.
But what’s the right markup that leads to the lowest cost for consumers and still makes money for you? With the help of some open source hardware experts (Lenore Edman, Limor Fried and Phillip Torrone), Chris Anderson found the business model he settled on.
Meh is a very simple screen capturing utility which works similar to the Mac OS X built-in screenshot hotkey functions. I just wanted something similar. Here it is.
Recently I started to make up my mind to create a simple but yet complex game that is playable via E-Mail. About a year ago I watched my inmate playing Diplomacy. A very simple tabletop that advanced to a very good pen and paper game.
But as the match progressed I found it very boring and way too linear and somehow too static. So I thought about modifications and such, but always ended up changing to many things to call it just a modification. The idea was born.
With all the things in mind I asked some friends if they would like to assist in testing and further developing the game. Fortunately they all agreed, so we collected all our ideas and tried to measure the efforts to get things done.
Here are some of the project goals and features:
Extend diplomatics
Tactically helpful and rich detailed map
Keep the game leader role and slightly giving it more permissions
More units like: Infantry, Artillery/Tanks, Submarines, Transporters etc.
Units can have different troop strength
Implement random events (like card stacks)
A piece of software that helps managing the game data
Modified commands and rule-sets
I am currently fiddling the game rules and the world map, as well as all the units, participating nations and such. Most of the things that we’re already written are in German language, so it will take a while till everything is translated.
I recommend watching this video! His Their (bewegtbildbau) artwork is absolutely outstanding and I’ve had the honor to have BBBs picture following my sound. Thanks Erik!
Yesterday some protesters tried to pull down a section of controversial Israeli barrier during a protest in the West Bank village of Bilin, near Ramallah, February 19, 2010.
