Bug labs

Bug Labs is making the blog rounds (my RSS reader has lots of “open source hardware” mentions today)… We haven’t met with them and I’m not sure what they’re doing or shipping yet, but if/when we do we’ll post up a full report, here’s a snippet from their blog about what they’re up to (open source hardware maybe)…

Bug Labs is developing BUG, an open, modular, consumer electronics web services + hardware platform. Designed for the general audience, not just the technically inclined, BUG is intended to bring to the world of hardware gadgets what the Internet, open source, XML and web services have brought to the world of software and media.

…We see ourselves, our company and our product as a “bug” in the system of traditional CE; an agent for change. We want to put more power in the hands of the individual to decide what gadgets they want and what features they should include. We envision a world where CE stands for community electronics, where the long-tail of devices profitably exists and hardware mashups are as prevalent as their software counterparts.

So what is BUG exactly? It’s Legos meets Web services & APIs. Imagine being able to build any gadget you wanted by simply connecting simple, functional components together. Now imagine being able to easily program, share and connect these gadgets in interesting ways. In essence, we’re building an open source-based platform for programmers to build not only the applications they want but the hardware to run it on. Over the coming weeks and months I will update this blog with our latest progress. And while I used wooden blocks at the dinner last night (easier to get thru airport security!) I will show pictures of the actual products soon.

Bug Blogger – Link & site.

Sounds interesting.

For now, if you’re interested in what open source hardware is, examples and some thoughts on all this we have a start here… It’s all very new, very open and it’s so early it’s actually a lot of fun :)

• Open source hardware slides from OSCON – Link.
• Open source hardware video from OSCON – Link.
• Open source hardware … article – Link.
• Open source hardware archive @ MAKE – Link.
• The MAKE store is one of the only places to actually buy open source hardware and support OSH – Link.