Did you ever think of how powerful Linux could be? In your daily lives? Yes? No?

Well, going one step farther than most students, [Rhythm Reloaded], four engineering students at Calvin College are designing an electronic stethoscope that will:

• Record high-quality audio data from a patient’s body
• Store this audio data in a convenient format
• Use a USB interface to transfer the audio files to a computer
• Reduce the amount of ambient noise that a doctor hears
• Be simple, accurate, and easy to use!

(source:RhythmReloaded)

The operating system of choice for the project is µClinux, a very small open source Linux operating system that will run from flash memory! Check out the really cool screenshots of the project and the kernel compiled here: Project page

For those who don’t know much about the OS, µClinux includes kernel releases for 2.6 as well as user applications, libraries and tool chains. To learn more about µClinux and to see whether you can use it in an application somewhere check it out at µClinux.

Edit: I have been informed (via email by David of Rhythm Reloaded) that uClinux also has kernel releases for 2.4 (which they are currently using) and 2.0.

Tags: CoolWarez

For those who are not familiar with Apple’s Time Machine, Time Machine basically is a software that backs up everything on your computer incrementally. What does this mean? Initially, Time Machine takes a backup of the entire computer (no compression) skipping caches and other files that are not needed to restore your computer to its original state.

Then every hour, every day, an incremental backup is automatically made. As many of you are probably thinking of, the possibilities of this feature are endless.

NOW, this is available for linux as well!! It’s a privately developed project called Flyback!

How to use Flyback:

Install the following packages:

Debian: $ sudo apt-get install python python-glade2 python-gnome2 rsync
Ubuntu: $ sudo apt-get install python python-glade2 python-gnome2 python-gconf rsync
Redhat/Fedora: $ yum install pygtk2 gnome-python2-gconf pygtk2-libglade

Then download, extract, change to the new directory and run:
./flyback.py

To use the GUI:
python flyback.py
To perform GUI-less backup:
python flyback.py --backup

Awesome! Right?