User innovation talk links
The following links act a tour of a series of examples of user innovation used as examples to show the breadth of user innovation and community innovation and production for a class by Eric von Hippel's.
RockBox
RockBox is alternate firmware for Digital Audio Players (DAP) including Apple iPods.
- Archos Jukebox
- RockBox Screenshot (video iPod)
- RockBox plugin matrix
- RockBox support devices
- SanDisk Sansa
CHDK
CHDK is a free software/open source firmware add-on for digital cameras.
- CHDK homepage (including supported camera list)
- Time-lapse sample
- Lightning photography
- HDR photography
- Focus bracketing
- Ultra high-speed shutter and flash
- Download pages with several different builds
dotSUB
Is an online community that engages in collaborative translations of videos and film through collaborative amateur subtitling at less than order of magnitude the cost of professional subtitling.
- dotSUB homepage
- Captioning demonstration
- Translation demonstration
- Dance Monkey video with a couple dozen translations
Wikitravel
Wikitravel is a non-Wikimedia collaborative projects that allows communities to create travel guides.
- Ho Chi Minh City on Wikitravel (sample article)
- Wikitravel Press
- Sample Wikitravel Book
Other (more whimsical but no less useful) community travel sites include:
Distributed Proofreaders
Distributed Proofreaders is a group of volunteer proofreaders who have proofread scanned copies of public domain text to produce human and machine readable ebooks. They, over the last 7 years, produced more than 11,000 ebooks.
DDWRT and OpenWRT
OpenWRT is a community produced firmware for home routers including the Linksys WRT. [DD-WRT is a version of OpenWRT that is now distributed commercially on several routers.
Software hacks:
Hardware hacks:
There are now even several books on the topic of modifying a WRT54G machine including this one:
iRobot Create
iRobot is a version of iRobot's popular Roomba vacuum clearning that is designed for hobbiest. A large number of hobbiest had modified and improved their Roomba robotic vaccum cleaners. Create is essentially a Roomba minus the vacuum cleaner that is targetted at hobbyiests.
