Imagine if your signature automatically had a link to your latest blog post, like this:

I’ve been trying to find a way to add my latest tweet, blog post, and “currently reading” to my email signature. After a lot of searching, I found a Safari/Chrome/Thunderbird plugin called WiseStamp.

You can automatically include your latest blog post to every email signature. Twitter and Facebook, and other RSS feeds too!

Here’s how to add your latest WordPress post to your email signature.

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I got a nice new Fender guitar case for Christmas. I noticed this cool laser cut wood part on the case. Nice to see laser cut wood isn’t just for DIY products!

I wanted to highlight a sample of the amazing biohacker projects all around the planet. Art projects are among my favorite this year, really pushing new boundaries!

1. Real Vegan Cheese

Real Vegan Cheese gives a whole new meaning to the word “experiment”. I love that this breaks the boundaries of normal “synthetic biology”. It’s a group of amateur and professional biologists working together across 2 communitylabs, crowdfunding research money, budgeting funds, and winning at iGEM. Lots of firsts there. All around engineering yeast to make cow’s milk, with the goal of creating cheesy vegan cheese with no animals involved.

Too many synthetic biology projects sound like boring algebra problems: “If we lower the price of X using BIOTECH to X/100, we will revolutionize Y and make $Z billion”. Real Vegan Cheese breaks the mold and pushes science in some breathtaking new directions! (BioCurious and Counter Culture Labs, Bay Area California. Winner, iGEM 2014 – Best Community Lab Project)

2. Grow Your Ink

Grow your own custom ink colors in a biotech lab. Everyone’s is different. I think it would be awesome to write with ink created by celebrities…like “Barak Obama’s Ink” or “Taylor Swift’s Ink”. Get into a biohacker lab and make your own! (La Paillasse, Paris)

Beautiful photo gallery on Flickr

3. DNA Barcoding Plants in Alaska

Ellen Jorgenson and friends from Genspace cram into this tiny plane to go out to the middle-of-somewhere Alaska — to get DNA samples of native plants. Back in the lab in sunny Brooklyn, local high school students learn to analyze the DNA samples to discover and identify what species the plants are. It was all documented on experiment.com, check out their open lab notebook here.

4. Method Quarterly

Do you use terms like “open science”, “ivory tower”, and “democratize biotechnology”? Then you’ve got to check out Method Quarterly. It’s a new magazine, founded by a bunch of cool people like Christina Agapakis. This interview with a scientist named Evelyn Fox Keller from issue #1 is fascinating.

We put up boundaries within science — separating people, disciplines, and careers. We also put up boundaries between science and everything else. How do we create and enforce these boundaries? What separates science from art? From pseudoscience? From technology? How do we cross boundaries? How do we break them down?

5. Car Pools – growing algae fuel in 43,000 pools in LA

“Car Pools is a series of simulations that examine the potential ecological effects associated with the public release of genetically altered algae for biofuel production. The project draws on current open-pond algae production methods to imagine a future infrastructure of fuel producing pools for the city of Los Angeles, a metropolis built for cars, home to more than 43,000 swimming pools.”

I love that this group owned the word “simulation”. It’s not an experiment, and that’s part of why it’s awesome. I hope 2015 is the year of simulation. Winner, iGEM 2014 – Best Art & Design Project (Art Center College of Design, Pasadena)

6. HUM – the vibrator, redesigned by physicists

“The vibrator, redesigned by physicists.  Sleek, minimal, intuitive. This is your gal. This is your little dude. Arduino hackable. An orgasm graph for every woman. The future of sex research. This is HUM”

Awesome article about HUM in Cosmo

Get it on Indiegogo (ends January 16th, 2015)

 Liked this post? Give it your upvote on Quora!

The biggest fear of synthetic biologists is that the public fears synthetic biology?

Read “The Construction of Imaginaries of the Public as a Threat to Synthetic Biology”

Wonderful work from Dr. Claire Marris. Thanks to Christina Agapakis for the link. I’ve included a couple of excerpts here from the paper that resonated with me. “Science outreach” rubs me the wrong way, it comes across to me as shoving “science” down “the public’s” throat. Dr. Marris has some excellent insights about the future of synthetic biology.

Figure 1., An eternally surprising result from surveys on public attitudes to science: more scientific information does not simplistically lead to more positive attitudes. Source: Hart Research Associates

Hooray, Kickstarter is getting into science. They’re hosting a big science hackathon in NYC. Sponsorships are available for scientists and hackers who aren’t in NYC. awesome!

From Aurora at Kickstarter:

A weekend of collaboration and creativity — scientists, artists, designers, writers, and makers working together to bring their ideas to life

February 28 & March 1, 2015 10am-10pm ITP, NYU Tisch School of the Arts

Why are we doing this?

We want to help.

This event will help unite scientists with designers, artists, writers and makers; folks that are passionate about bringing new ideas to life. The Kickstarter Outreach team will also offer help with conveying your compelling idea in a way that appeals to a general audience.

Support is out there.

The science community on Kickstarter is comprised of young makers, experienced enthusiasts, and many more. They’re eager to support and offer feedback, you just need to get your story out there!

Science is for everyone.

Everyone has a stake in exploring the world around them. Science provides the explanations for what we discover. We can work together across disciplines to help bring those ideas to life!

Check it out on Eventbrite

Sponsorships are available for scientists and hackers who aren’t in NYC!