Remember the days before digital? We shared objects and ideas by actually handing over a physical item like a cassette tape, a hand-written note or a photograph. Oksu is a concept that brings back the idea of exchanging physical objects by printing out physical representations of links, songs, articles, movies and letting you pass them on to friends.

Oksu was designed by Alex Zhulin to give people a way to share their favorite things digitally….but with a whimsical physical element. The little cubical printer spits out small speech bubble shaped pieces of paper that include both physical and digital cues to represent whatever you want to share. The physical part of the paper is printed without ink using Z-Ink technology, in which the color pigments are already present within the paper just waiting to be activated by the printer.

When you find a link, story, photo, video or other bit of data that you want to share, you print it out on the special paper which includes an NFC (near field communication) chip in the middle. The person who receives the printout can view the data by placing the printout near any gadget that can read the NFC chip. The printout can then be kept as a permanent physical reference to call up the data again and again, or just to serve as a reminder of some fun thing once shared by a friend.

The post Little Printer Spits Out Combined Physical + Digital Data first appeared on Gajitz.

Peer-to-peer file sharing can be dangerous ground, depending on what you’re sharing. PirateBox offers a safe, anonymous way to share files and communicate with anyone in the same physical space without fear of Big Brother butting in.

Created by art and technology professor David Darts for the purpose of sharing files in class with his students, the PirateBox soon morphed into something even more thrilling: a way to circumvent logging in and exposing personal information.

In essence, the PirateBox is a portable, temporary file sharing network. The box broadcasts an open WiFi network that anyone in the vicinity can join. Users can upload and download any files they wish and communicate anonymously with one another. No user data is recorded, so there’s no fear of the entertainment police coming down on you for downloading an album from the guy at the next table in the coffee shop.

Of course, a lack of accountability also means that the potential for shenanigans is high. Downloading anything from someone you don’t know is risky…so users have to weigh that risk against the benefits of the anonymous network.

Darts says that he isn’t exactly encouraging piracy; the name was meant to be provocative and a play on the infamous Pirate Bay name. If you want to build your own PirateBox and have around $100 to spend on supplies, the instructions can be found here.

The post DIY Box Gives You the Drop on Anonymous File Sharing first appeared on Gajitz.