Ed Felten writes about the Freedom to Tinker, "the right of technologists and citizens to tinker with technological devices." Anyone who has ever pulled something apart and tried, successfully or not, to put it back together understands the freedom Felten is talking about. While Felten focuses mainly on the legal and policy issues, there is now a blog (not associated with Felten) dedicated to practical examples of the "Freedom to Tinker," though Felten might not like the name too much.

mehack describes itself thus:

extend, personalise, break, poke, peek, learn. hacking hacking hacking. ever had that desire to pop open your tivo, your xbox, cell phone, or your car? ever wanted to know what the hardware and software hackers are up to? this is what mehack is all about.

we all know the frustration in discovering that there isn't something out there that does exactly what you want it to do. we've all fantasized about doing it ourselves, or taking something off the shelf and modding it. we're going to be tracking people, projects that are doing both -- we're interested in those that take the "hell with it, i'll just build it" attitude, and we're interested in those that buy those things off the shelf and pop them open to coerce them into doing what they want. and we're interested in the tools they use too.

our agenda is simple -- we want to learn from others. we're not interested in doing anything destructive. and we're not interested in piracy. we just want things that we can hack on. and most of all, we want to make it simple for people like you to start building.

There are already some good posts on the hecklebot, audiotron api, and playing with linksys access points upping the firmware.

Add it to your RSS feed when adding the new gadget blog, engadget.

via PVR Blog