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When Robert Haag's son, Michael, was born with about six inches of his left arm missing below the elbow--a condition shared by one in 400 children each year--the standard artificial limbs proved to be of only limited help.

Designing a car from scratch has long been an amusing mental exercise for automotive hobbyists, or a quirky team project for undergraduate engineers at places like MIT or the University of Pennsylvania. But, Germany’s Markus Merz wants to go farther, he’s the brains behind the OScar project, a vastly ambitious plan to design and build automobiles using open-design principles.

“I believe in the basic need of the individual for mobility, but not the way the automobile industry is fulfilling that need from an environmental point of view,” Merz told NewAssignment.Net. “There is space for innovation in this field.”

For Merz, the process of collaborative design for aluminum and rubber is no different than for Linux and Firefox. Or, as Merz would have it, “hardware” over “software.”

“It’s about being modular without having too many modules,” Merz said. He’s broken down OScar’s design to six such modules: Board (the drivetrain), Body (chassis), Engines, Power, Safety, and Information Systems. Once the coupling points are agreed upon, design for each module can run independently. And as a bonus, a modular design allows the theoretical OScar driver to swap parts as needed, easily changing a passenger car to a pick-up truck.

Creative Knitting Taught Online: Photo courtesy BPC on FlickrKnitting is a centuries-old skill, traditionally passed from one generation to the next within families and small communities. After learning by example the basics of knit one, purl one, apprentice knitters pick up more advanced techniques like decorative stitches and buttonholes by imitating

So what's a lone knitter in Malaysia to do? Knitters have gone online; of the many corners of the Internet, the immense knitting blog network is one of the liveliest and coziest.

Along with a general rise in the popularity of knitting in the past few years, the Internet has seen a proliferation of knitting blogs and other online resources like video tutorials and webzines dedicated to the craft. Blog rings, like knitting blogs, can include a loose association of blogs from Nordic Knit Blogs (for Scandinavian aficionados of the craft) to Christian Knitters (for the born-again knitter). Hundreds and sometimes thousands of bloggers -- connect online because of their passion for knitting.

Business resources just became easier to find. "What citizen journalism and YouTube have done for media, CrowdSpirit hopes to do for product development," according to this post on Springwise, a blog on future business ideas.

As the name suggests, CrowdSpirit is part of the crowdsourcing phenomenon, but it takes it into a new wave, where the 'group think' method is used to refine real world hardware products. Crowdspirt "aims to start a revolution in manufacturing by creating the first electronic products driven and inspired by customer's wishes and expectations."

This site encourages inventors to submit electronic product designs to the online CrowdSpirit community, who in open source fashion, refine the original products and vote on which ones should move forward.

Secret Radio Project is not a secret. Next April, 89.5 FM WBEW, one of Chicago Public Radio's three frequencies will begin a completely new and ambitious format. Most of the content will be user-generated.

"What if we had no shows? With no packaged comments?" Torey Malatia, president and general manager of CPR, asked TimeOut Chicago in an interview earlier this year. The answer? Nobody knows.

Without typical hour-long programs, the noncommercial station will instead rely on hosts to navigate two-hour time blocks based on their own musings, but they will be expected to incorporate user audio as well.

Proponents of user-generated media make a lot of lofty claims about the potential of open source. Under the right conditions, it can be a great way of gathering and sorting information. So could it also be used by some of the biggest information sifters on the planet—U.S. intelligence agencies?

This week's New York Times Magazine cover story, "Open-Source Spying," written by Clive Thompson, reports on efforts by the intelligence community to replace its current clutter of outdated technologies with more a responsive and bottom-up "Spying 2.0."

"Spies are beginning to wonder why their technology has fallen so far behind,” writes Thompson. “The answer may lie in the interactive tools the world’s teenagers are using to pass around YouTube videos and bicker online about their favorite bands. Billions of dollars’ worth of ultrasecret data networks couldn’t help spies piece together the clues to the worst terrorist plot ever. So perhaps, they argue, it’s time to try something radically different. Could blogs and wikis prevent the next 9/11?"

Thompson began pursuing the story as a follow-up on how American spy agencies have adapted since the intelligence failures that led to the terror attacks. Even as he learned more about the vast technical challenge of combining incompatible databases from different agencies, it became obvious that this was only part of the story.

The newspaper business is not the only industry reinventing itself for the Web. As NewAssignment.Net seeks to spark innovation in journalism it can find inspiration in otherwise obscure and unrelated places -- from knitting tribes on the Web, to open source prosthetics and even cooking.

Take searching for a guacamole recipe.

In the past, if you wanted to make guacamole, you had few options. You might have looked in the same general cookbook that you would have gone to if you wanted chow mein or chicken parmesan. You could have looked through past issues of magazines and searched every recipe index until you happened upon guacamole. Or, perhaps you went to your favorite Mexican cookbook by a renowned authority like Rick Bayless or Diane Kennedy, and said eenie. meenie. meiny, mo.

The Web offers a new variation on recipe cards and community cookbooks of the past, made of shared recipes from neighbors, friends, and churchgoers. Whereas cookbooks or food magazines might have provided a few recipes to choose, you can visit sites like Allrecipes.com and Epicurious.com, or one of countless others to find a daunting number of recipes. These sites bring together people from all over the world with different personalities and palates. Allrecipes boasts of a community of 10-million cooks.

“This is a recipe I made by taking the best of three or four popper recipes and combining them to make something that tastes wonderful,” wrote Heather Fargis about her "Best Ever Jalapeno Poppers" recipe.

Open source is moving beyond software to book editing. McKenzie Wark, author of the draft networked book, GAM3R 7H3ORY 1.1, is turning to fellow computer game lovers to help write his book.

In collaboration with The Institute for the Future of the Book, Wark made his book available for discussion and revisions online. Gamer geeks can view the book's nine chapters, comment on the content, create new topics and make suggestions in regards to game play. Contributors will receive credit for anything that makes it into the final version of the book, which is trying to "unlock the curious character of video games as allegories for the world we live in," according to Wark. The newest print edition is due out in the spring, but it might not be the last. The book will remain online and will evolve along with the gaming communities comments.

Luke Ford has been chronicling the porn industry on his blog lukeford.net for nearly a decade. But it hasn't always been as fun for him as it sounds.

"I don't think there's any doubt that I am the most sued blogger out there," Ford said. "Overall I think it's terrific that there are libel laws, because the alternative to a lawsuit is that someone would come and break my legs--or kill me."

The writer has been sued five times in seven years, mainly for libel, resulting from stories plaintiffs deem false and reputation-damaging.

Since 2005, Ford has benefited from the legal assistance of Justin Levine, his pro-bono attorney. Levine feels strongly about protecting the freedom-of-speech rights of bloggers--in fact, he is a blogger at SoCalLawBlog.com.

Levine writes about American legal issues on his "blawg," but has also
used the site for something he calls "Open Source Legal Motion."

During Ford's fourth libel suit (which ended up being privately settled this summer), with his client's permission, Levine linked a rough draft of his defense motion on his blog, for anyone (not just lawyers) to improve upon.