::JunkieZone::

The concept of a personal dashboard keeps crossing my mind - something that combines the physical world with the digital word.  Give me a picture of the intersection up the street so I know if traffic is bad, tell me when it is going to stop raining and who sent me a new email. I know there are hundreds of ways to do this but they all have some failings. Netvibes  is close, but still feels a bit constrained. What are your thoughts? :TheJunkie:

FreeNAS  - Putting that old hardware to work It seems that every technology junkie has a stash of old hardware and devices. W hat to do with these old systems seem to be the ever popular question.  There is a direct proportion between the usefulness of hardware and it's age.  The older that hardware the less flexible your options until you end up recycling or  upcycling  it (hopefully you are not tossing your old hardware in the dump ) Well this junkie is no different - In going through some I have had sitting in a corner for a few years I found a couple of old desktops systems.  One of these was my a circa 2005 Windows XP machine. Sweet - Now what to do with it?  I can run um..well .... XP?  Linux?  But really what can I do  with it?   Then, as another disk full notification from Time Machine displays on the screen, the beginnings of a cunning plan start to form -- this system is perfect for a home NAS device.   I know - I can purchase an off-the-shelf NAS device  in a s