BASIC, Chip companies & Robots - Pernicious Projects, Puppies in Peril

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This week it’s back to just Dave and Chris…almost feels weird without more people! We’ll get more guests on soon.

• • Dave is in his studio with freshly made acoustic panels!

• Throughout the week, Chris has been mistaking BAMF to mean "Badass MotherF*#$%@!" when in fact they've been talking about the Bay Area Maker Faire. Whoops!
• The Hamvention also happened in Dayton. If you know of local electronic "Flea Markets" be sure to let us know in the comments!
• The IEEE Spectrum had a special issue out about robots, it was a great read!
  • A full size personal robot? It might be cheap and a game changer, but still looks like an air filter. It reminds Dave of the Omnibot from the 1980's
  • Whatever happened to BattleBots? New competition is RoboGames, with many of the same elements. Good for getting kids excited/involved!
• How many Multimeters does one man/woman need? Excavatoree from the EEVforum shows off his collection! (and has another 88 meters that aren't shown!)
• The Maximite is a new board with a single PIC chip that has a BASIC interpreter for beginner projects.
• Maker of the BASIC STAMP, Parallax, is now selling their Propeller chip by itself. And from the looks of it, they have LOTS of stock.
• The Touchstone Semi contest mentioned in episode 42 of The Amp Hour have revised their contest rules. They aren't using the OSHW license unfortunately.
• Corporate lawyers? As bad as corporate finance perhaps?
• Intel announced that there are multiple phones being released in 2012 with Intel embedded chipsets. They recognize the market but aren't dominating like they do in PCs.
• Google is moving into the car business and wants to be able to have computers drive cars in Nevada!
• Maxim recently(?) changed their slogan to "Innovation Delivered". The second part is what they're not known for historically. What perceptions do you have of chip companies??
• Our forgotten shoutout for the week, (Maker)Dino is up to his 8th HackAWeek episode! Great job!
• Dave's continuing his trend of calling people out for bogus numbers! Getup.org in Australia didn't do their research!
• Chip of the Week: The LT3080, a great "toolbelt" part that allows you to make programmable current or voltage sources quite easily.

As always, we'd love to hear your thoughts on the episode and anything we might have missed! Thanks! PS. To be clear, no puppies were hurt in the taping of tonight's episode.