Cool science: hacks that spread technology to the masses

Some scientists focus on a wider mission.  Some like to hack. Johnny Lee does both – he wants expensive technology accessible to wider audiences and his hacks of the Nintendo Wii remote (broadcast through u-tube videos) have made him famous.

Some scientists focus on a wider mission.  Some like to hack. Johnny Lee does both – he wants expensive technology accessible to wider audiences and his hacks of the Nintendo Wii remote (broadcast through u-tube videos) have made him famous.

This TED video (a U.S. speaker series) of the Carnegie-Mellon graduate student demonstrates his creation of an interactive white board (typically a few thousand dollars) for little more than $50 of hardware. He made the software public and in three months, it was downloaded for free over 500,000 times.