Many of us here at Invo have been using the Arduino quite a bit. From making claws for costumes to retail environment behavior to coffee electronics – it is incredible what you can do with these microcontrollers. However, there still is not a straightforward way of getting data out of your Arduino, onto the internet and accessible via a web app.

The personal project I've been working on has been tracking physical activity not covered by pedometers (vague, I know) and then having a web app to display that historical data. Coming from a design background with a light technical bend (some C++ and ActionScript) I am in familiar territory... but its been a while.

Here’s what we’re reading online, this week at Involution, on design, tech, and the digital life, in our links round up.

Death to RFPs
A List Apart has a great article on why RFPs are no way to hire a creative firm. While I've heard from some that there's plenty of great work to be had by responding to RFPs, my personal experience is that the process is often arduous and by definition, a one size fits all approach to evaluating proposals. If you can get past the poorly articulated boilerplate language and foam and froth of legalese, you might be able to figure out what the client is actually asking for and craft a proper response. Of course, since most RFPs are a shotgun blast from an organization looking to receive as many proposals as possible, if you play the game, your chances at winning the work are dubious at best.