Willow Brugh, of Seattle's Jigsaw Renaissance, sent us word of this new org, Geeks Without Borders. In the above video from Gnomedex, Johnny Diggz explains the origins of the idea. Right now, they're looking for folks to spread the word to other geeks who might be interested in being involved and they're traveling to hackerspaces to try and drum up support.
Geeks Without Borders (GWOB.org) is an international humanitarian organization of geeks and their technology-friendly friends, working together to assist people whose survival is threatened by lack of access to technology and communications due to violence, neglect, or catastrophe.
We want to have the bases of operation for GWOB be hacker and maker spaces across the world.
BTW: The official launch date for the organization is 10.10.10 at 10:10am PST (1:10pm EST)
Update: We got an email from Paul Luther, who's the director of another org called Geeks Without Borders, that's been around since 2002. Shame that there has to be a conflict/controversy over the naming of an altruistic group. Hope this can be amicably worked out:
One of our board members is an avid follower of makezine.com and just noticed your article titled "Geeks Without Borders," which we are concerned about
as it represents our long-established non-profit organization as a new endeavor by someone unaffiliated with us.
It would be nice if you post a correction to the article pointing out that Geeks Without Borders is not new, or related to Mr. Johnny Diggz, who is not affiliated with the official 501(c)3 organization Geeks Without Borders.
Although his mission sounds good, and we wish him the best of luck, using our name misrepresents his organization as ours, and that's not helpful to either organization.
Levi Strauss & Co. is running an interesting design contest, called Care to Air. They have new garment labels encouraging people to use cold water in washing their jeans, to line dry them, and to donate them to Goodwill when you're done wearing them. It's all better for the environment and you save yourself some dough in the process. As part of this effort, Levi's is running the Care to Air contest, encouraging people to submit designs for easier, more efficient air drying technologies than the tried and true (but labor-intensive) clothesline.
A couple of folks from Levi's were at Maker Faire Bay Area and had a ball. They thought the maker community might like the chance at this contest. $10,000 in prize money is being awarded ($4,500 to the first-place winner). Here are some of the entries to date.
Photo by Alexandra Hiatt, from Follow the line, Washington Post
Hope you are enjoying the wonderful Memorial Day holiday! Whether you are ready for an outdoor barbecue or a simple get-together with friends, try Brookelynn's recipe for a refreshing Elder Scottish Rose Cocktail.
Jartron's creator, Dan Ray, wins a $500 cash gift card, a Maker Faire Bay Area ticket, and a swanky Jameco jacket. Congrats, Dan! You really blew all of us out of the water with this bot, the fun video, your great PDF documentation -- all of it.
BTW: Jartron will be at Maker Faire! Check for details at the Jameco booth. Hopefully we can get some of the other contestants to bring (or ship us) their entries. Matt Mets and I will be talking about the Make: Robot Build at the Jameco booth on Saturday afternoon. We'll post the time when it's confirmed.
Now, the Second Place prize. And the award goes to...
2. UFO (Unidentified Floor Object)!
Congrats to builder Jacky Snipes. You win a Parallax Stingray Robot and a Jameco T-shirt.
And finally, we have our Third Place winner. The envelope please... And the winner is...
3. HUL-10!
This was definitely one of our staff favorites and we love how Steve Joiner involved his two boys in the build and some of the great ideas they came up with. The HUL-10 team wins a $100 Jameco gift certificate and a Jameco T-shirt.
The judging for this contest was amazingly hard. Any of these three entries could have been the winner. And there were a number of other real contenders, too. Frankly, we were stunned, and inspired, by the quality of all the entries. As one of our judges, Tod Kurt, pointed out, it's a significant thing to build a working robot, even from a parts bundle, and even if it only has a simple bump sensor. If you're new to robotics, engineering all of the subsystems, getting them to all work together, programming the bot, and all the rest of it, is a real accomplishment. And we had a number of people who were absolute beginners to robots, microcontrollers, and programming. So congrats to ALL of you! And as we promised, everyone who participated is going to get a Maker's Notebook. We'll get those sent out to you ASAP.
We'll have more information on Jartron, UFO, HUL-10, and many of the other awesome entries in a follow-up post.
And don't let the ending of the contest stop you from building your own CoasterBot! We amassed a nice corpus of beginner and intermediate DIY bot building information and resources over the course of the contest. Jameco still has the robot bundles we put together, we have all of the back issues of the Robot Build Newsletter, and the robot discussion area in the MAKE Forums will keep going. All of this can be found on the Make: Robot Build Landing Page. (And if you do build a CoasterBot, please load it onto the MAKE Flicker pool and tag it "coasterbot." We'll feature some of these here on the site.
Speaking of which, you can see a number of the other entries here on Flickr and YouTube.
Besides a big thank you to the entire MAKE team who was involved in putting this program together, a special thanks to Jameco for being such a dream to work with, and Tod Kurt, for helping with the judging.
Inhabitat has just launched their annual "Spring Greening" creative reuse contest. There's a $250 prize for the best example of "clever, creative reuse of old objects or materials that might otherwise be collecting dust." Deadline is midnight East Coast time on May 3. [Thanks, Mike!]
MAKE Volume 22 is on newsstands now! Automate your world with remote control. From pet care to power outlets, from toys to telepresence, we'll show you how to add a joystick, push-button, twist-knob, or timer to just about anything.
Remote control projects in MAKE Volume 22 include:
The Lawnbot400 R/C lawn mower--sit back and enjoy the mow!
Kitty Twitty cat toy that tweets (on Twitter) when your cat attacks
Automated chicken coop controlled by iPhone
Motion-detecting Nikon camera remote
Stealthy TV-B-Gone hoodie sweatshirt that turns off TV sets
Remote control pet feeder using web chat
Solar tracking platform that automatically follows the sun
How to hack R/C power outlets--control your whole house from one computer
Robots you can control with your mind! (Okay, this one involves a trick, but it's still cool)
In addition, you'll learn how to:
Replace your broken iPhone screen
Make the Double Pendulum--a simple project that creates absolute chaos
Make fresh cheese from goat's milk
Make a monster USB MIDI controller with 8 microphones
Extract your own perfumes and essential oils
Wind your own electric guitar pickups, and make a Diddley Bow (the primal electric guitar made famous by Jack White of The White Stripes)
Plus, filmmaker and YouTube sensation PES shows how he creates his amazing stop-motion animation; and 8 top hobbyists and industry leaders tell what's hot in Remote Control. What on earth are foamies, Frankensteining, and aqua modeling? Get MAKE Volume 22 and find out.
Don't forget - subscribers can always read the digital edition here.
To celebrate (one last time) the success of our Desktop Manufacturing issue of MAKE, we've teamed up with the folks at MakerBot Industries. We're going to be giving away a CupCake CNC, in the first ever official MakerBot CupCake CNC giveaway and Thingiverse design challenge! One lucky 3D designer will win a Deluxe CupCake CNC kit for his/her contribution to Thingiverse, and five runners up will receive something special too! Here's what you do to enter:
Share the link to your Thingiverse post here, in the comments, by May 5th, 2010 at noon PDT.
Don't have the design chops? Share your idea for a 3D-printable object (step 1 only) in the comments below to still be eligible to win one of five "Poor Person's 3D Fabbing" prize packs each including:
Only those who upload a 3D design to Thingiverse and share the link here are eligible to win the grand prize of a CupCake CNC Deluxe Kit.
Enter as many times as you like, but you can only win one prize. Although we'll allow you to submit Things you've already designed/posted, we highly encourage you to make something new for the challenge! Winners will be announced on May 12.
There is still time left to snatch up some great deals on Maker Faire Bay Area tickets. Buy your tickets before May 12th and save $5 off a day ticket or a whopping $20 off a weekend pass. Advanced purchase weekend passes are going for $30! That's 18 hours of pure creative inspiration, knowledge, networking, learning, and fun for a mere 30 bucks. For more information check out the Maker Faire website.
Just a friendly reminder that the 2010 Bay Area Maker Faire Call for Makers ends Thursday, March 31st, so get your applications in soon. We hope to see you there!
We are thrilled to announce that MAKE has been nominated for the 21st Annual Independent Press Awards, put on by Utne Reader. We were nominated in the Science/Technology category. The other nominees are California (the magazine, not the state), IEEE Spectrum, Johns Hopkins Public Health, Miller-McCune, Science News, Stanford, and Technology Review.
Sayeth the press release:
Utne Reader's editors select nominee publications through an extensive reading process and careful, yearlong examination, rather than via a competition with entry forms and fees. In this way, the magazine honors the efforts of small, sometimes unnoticed publications that provide innovative, thought-provoking perspectives often ignored or overlooked by mass media.
Congrats to everybody who works so tirelessly and passionately to create MAKE, Make: Online, and everything else we do. Your work does get noticed!
We're gearing up (gawd, we have got to stop using that!) for the launch of the Make: Robot Build. We sent Dispatch #2 of the project newsletter out today. We have nearly 400 people signed up and we're already starting to hear people's ideas for the build. We're psyched!
Starting next week, we'll get into the real nuts and bolts (okay, we're going to have to retire that one, too). Each Wednesday, the newsletter will contain a tutorial on some aspect of bot building. Next Wednesday's issue will include an overview of the subsystems you'll need to consider and some notes on robot design considerations.
If you haven't signed up for the newsletter yet, you can do so right here:
If you don't know the details of the project/contest, here's the landing page.
A note about the contest being US-only.
We heard from a number of you who were disappointed that the contest was for US-residents only. We looked into why this was the case with our legal folks and it turns out that doing an international contest is a huge can of worms and basically involves us hiring counsel in every country to make sure the contest rules conform to the laws of the land. So, for this reason, we have to keep it US-only. We really wish it wasn't so. Of course, the build itself is open to anybody, anywhere, you just wouldn't be eligible for the prizes.
Last issue of the newsletter, I told the story of, back in 2003, brainstorming (aka napping) the idea for creating mini-development platforms using AOL CDs as the main build materials, only to get up from my nap, do a search and discover dozens of examples of these "CDBots." This was the first one I found (on Robots.Net).
Pi, Greek letter (), is the symbol for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Pi Day is celebrated by math enthusiasts around the world on March 14th. Pi = 3.1415926535…
With the use of computers, Pi has been calculated to over 1 trillion digits past the decimal. Pi is an irrational number meaning it will continue infinitely without repeating. The symbol for pi was first used in 1706 by William Jones, but was popular after it was adopted by the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler in 1737.
Gary Mauler and the folks who put on the RobotFest in southern Maryland each year are expanding their enterprise to include a Mid-Atlantic 2010 Mini Maker Faire! Gary writes:
I work with Maryland College Institute of Art each year to produce the artwork for T-shirts and advertising for RobotFest (and this year's Mini Maker Faire). This year, the challenge was given to about 60 Advertising and Design students for one of their graded semester projects. All the designs that were shown to us were fantastic, so it made our job of picking one design very hard.
I am going to print up a bunch of the Paper Robot posters on index stock to hand out for kids to build at RobotFest.
RobotFest/Mid-Atlantic 2010 Mini Maker Faire will be held on Saturday, April 24th, at the National Electronics Museum, Linthicum, MD. More information here.
The gods of Random.org have crowned Rebecca Karger, a student at Horace Greeley High School, winner of our Lego Mindstorms NXT 2.0 set. This is what Rebecca had to say about what she'd do with the set:
If I had this kit, I'd take it with me to college next year, and build a robot that could go down the hall of my dorm to deliver a note to a friend. And probably 500 different other things. I was on an FLL team in middle school that went to the international competition, but it was the year BEFORE the NXT kits came out! I remember seeing a demo and being highly impressed, but my parents say the kits are too expensive.
Rebecca: so yeah, your FB settings are kinda restrictive. You're going to have to get in touch with me if you want the prize. I'm at facebook.com/nerd1.
As part of their campaign to raise money for a new facility, the hackerspace i3 Detroit produced this cute video imploring you to please think of the robots and help their cause. In the short number of months they have been open, they have really established themselves as outstanding members of the community, helping to put on a Mini Maker Faire, sponsoring FIRST robot teams, and offering classes and events, so it is great to see them already looking to expand. Good luck, robots!
Thanks again to everyone who entered the Alex Rider Dream Gadget Contest! As promised, our team at Make: Labs has built the winning gadget: the super-stealth Listening Cup designed by Grand Prize winner Nic. Check it out!
Amid a raft of great entries that were extremely creative, the Listening Cup was deemed the overall winner because it's stealthy and high-tech, but still buildable. It came with detailed hand-drawn plans, even showing what type of electronic parts would be needed. The original idea was a drinking cup with a false bottom and electronics hidden beneath -- a microphone, an amplifier, and a speaker -- so that a person could put the cup to their ear and eavesdrop on conversations from a distance, or listen through walls.
Results
Using electronics available to anyone, we found that the Listening Cup can easily pick up faint nearby sounds and make them louder, though it couldn't listen though walls unless they were paper-thin. Of course, we figure Alex Rider's employer MI6 could afford some awesome miniaturized circuits, like those in expensive hearing aids, that would boost the Listening Cup's performance tremendously.
Overall, the Listening Cup was a pleasure to design and build. It really put us in the shoes of Smithers, the gadget maker for Alex Rider (though we are envious of his lab).
Building the Listening Cup
After judging all the entries on three criteria (creativity of idea, cool factor, and technical realism), tabulating the results, and choosing Listening Cup as the ultimate winner, our troubles were just beginning. Now, how to build one?
We've published quite a few amplifier circuits in MAKE magazine, and built several more that weren't published, so we had a pretty good stash of circuits to try. We went through the magazines and identified 3 potential circuits that might work. On the first day, engineering intern Eric Chu and I reached for the quick-build to test what it would be like to have a amplifier with its microphone inside a cup. We stole the amplifier module from an existing project sitting on our shelf: the "Covert Wireless Listening" device disguised as a book, from MAKE Volume 16, the "Spy Tech" issue. We cut a hole in an ordinary red plastic Dixie cup and shoved the mic in. This became our tester unit for the next few days...
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If you've been following our exploits closely in the last year or so, you've likely caught wind of us working feverishly on something called Makers Market. After lots of heavy lifting and obsessive constructing, arranging, merchandising, and labeling, we're ready to throw open the gates and show off our little marketplace. We think of it as sort of an online Farmers Market for cool geekery (and other "maker-made" goodies), or a "curated marketplace of wonderful science, tech, and artistic creations created and sold directly by some of our favorite makers from around the world," as the official statement reads.
Here are some additional details:
A collaboration between MAKE and Boing Boing, Makers Market brings together our favorite entrepreneurial makers and artists selling products and services directly to DIY enthusiasts...
Most of the sellers you'll discover in Makers Market are makers whom we've come to know through our work producing MAKE, Boing Boing, Make: Online, CRAFT, Maker Faire, and Make: television. Each seller is selected by the staff at MAKE or the Boing Boing crew. The products are "Maker-Made," either made by, rebuilt by, or substantially produced by the maker selling them.
Each maker has their own storefront showcasing their work and sell their products, hosts their own blog, posts pictures and videos, and communicates with their customers and the DIY community at large. MAKE provides the web service, the tools, and the community. Sellers are responsible for doing their own product fulfillment and bringing their unique character, energy, and DIY spirit to the marketplace.
So, come on over and check it out! We're really exciting about this. It's still very much in early beta, so we appreciate your continued patience as we get everything in order.
If you're an indie maker and have a product or service you think you'd like to sell, visit the "Seller's FAQ." Nominating yourself is easy and just takes a few minutes. We'll review your information and generally get back to you in a day or two.
HacDC's (Washington DC's premier hackerspace) next Lightning Talks evening will feature an eclectic lineup of a dozen five-minute talks on anything and everything that's pressing on the minds of today's thinkers and tinkerers, from rapid boat construction to innovative DIY manufacturing. The talks run about 90 minutes total.
There are currently several speaker slots still available, and they need your brilliant ideas, whatever they may be. For more information, contact obscurite@hacdc.org ASAP to secure a spot. Here for more.
HacDC Lightning Talks
7:30 - 9:30PM, Tuesday Feb 23, 2010
HacDC @ St. Stephen's Church
1525 Newton St NW
Washington, DC 20010
Over the years, here on Make: Online, we've had a rather open, anybody can play commenting policy. As long as you didn't use profanity, post patently offensive remarks, or spam, your comments were likely to stand. We also allowed for anonymous commenting.
While this approach allows for the greatest number of voices, we've come to feel that it doesn't necessarily foster the best sense of community. People, especially those new to DIY, to electronics, to the maker's movement in general; people who are exploring a project idea but unsure of the design or its mechanics, frequently don't feel "safe" in speaking up here. We've heard this from makers personally and in surveys we've done. We want to try fostering an online environment where our readers feel that they can more freely share their ideas, ask questions, and basically, think and learn out loud.
We also believe that allowing anonymous commenting, while providing a convenience, and the ability to post without one's name being associated, can also encourage rude behavior and personal attacks. And while we don't think the atmosphere on MAKE is at all caustic (compared to other popular tech sites), we've decided to change our policy a bit in an effort to hopefully create a greater sense of community among makers, a place where people of varying ages, interests, and skill levels, feel comfortable and free to ask questions, seek advice, socialize, and learn.
So, for starters, we're turning off anonymous commenting and implementing a "be nice" commenting policy. Before you post, right above the Submit button, it will now read:
Make: Online has a "be nice" commenting policy. Don't say anything here you wouldn't say to a person's face. We will use our discretion in removing comments we find offensive, spammy, self-promotional, or mean-spirited. See more on our Maker Community Guidelines page.
The Maker Community Guidelines spell out in more detail what we're hoping our readers will take to heart in helping us build a more amiable environment here.
This is not the only thing we're going to be doing to expand our community-building efforts. We're also going to be "datamining" comment threads more, to find new ideas for topic-areas to explore, to elevate comments into stand-alone posts for deeper exploration, and we're even going to be deputizing commenters and turning them into guest authors from time to time. Encouraging more maker participation is also a big priority in our upcoming site redesign, so this is only the first step in that direction. There are also plans in the works for the site that we're super excited about and think will inspire you to become even more involved in what we're doing here. If you've been to a Maker Faire, or felt the energy of a Faire through our site and video coverage -- that's what we'd like to instill here -- a similar feeling of excitement, engagement, skills-sharing, and friendliness. We'd love to hear your ideas of how you think we can best accomplish this.
In the early 90s, I ran an art/science/tech "salon" here in DC, called Cafe Gaga. One of the more fun things we did was dérive, or the act of purposeful drifting through a city to discover forgotten, interesting, strange places. There as so many weird, wonderful, unique locales in every city that we overlook in our day-to-day.
Obscura Atlas is organizing a global day to celebrate "wondrous, curious, and esoteric places" in cities around the world. See if your city is included, and if not, how you can set up your own Obscura Day event.
The DPRG had access to a warehouse in Garland for seven years, from 2002 through 2009 thanks to Mike Dodson, who allowed us to use one of his warehouse buildings and patiently put up with all our geeky shenanigans for almost a decade. In 2009, Mike retired and the building we were in changed hands, so we lost our long time home. After looking at several options for finding a new and permanent space for robot building, we settled on the idea of creating a hackerspace (aka a shared, community workshop). This idea has been used by groups in the US and other parts of the world with great success so it seemed likely we should be able to do it to.
They've set up a Google group -- if you're in the neighborhood and interested in helping out, that's your destination.
We're about to send out the February Make: Newsletter (tomorrow morning). This monthly email letter has all new material you won't find on the site or in the magazine. We try to give you the inside scoop on some of what's going on behind the scenes at Maker Media, original columns, tool reviews, even quick n' dirty projects! We also have sweet subscription and Shed offers, often exclusive to the newsletter.
If you want to sign up, here's the form. You can also peruse previous issues here.
Bletchley Park, the historic site of secret British code breaking activities during WWII and the birthplace of the modern computer, is again in the news thanks to John Graham-Cumming's book The Geek Atlas. O'Reilly pledged to give 50p per copy of the book sold in the UK to the Bletchley Park Fund and we are delighted to send our first cheque for £1000.
Unfortunately not everyone has heard of the plight of Bletchley Park. The Bletchley Park Trust is aiming to preserve the core heritage of the site and to build on the work of the wartime pioneers through education and technology innovation. The Trust does not receive on-going operational funding and therefore is dependent on money generated from donations or any additional on-site or off-site activities such as their online shop to enable it to continue its work.
If you're in the UK, and haven't bought a copy of the Geek Atlas, definitely consider it -- not only is it a great read, but John and O'Reilly are sending a little love to this magnificent geek landmark with every sale. Also check out my review of the book on the GeekDad blog.
No, it's not a joke from Family Guy (although it would be very cool if Seth MacFarlane showed up!) Rhode Island's first hacker con is shaping up to be an exciting event.
QuahogCon is a regional conference for the hacker culture in all forms. Hardware, Software, Security, Social, Eco Hacking, Zero Impact Living. Like most hacker cons, it will run Friday to Sunday. We'll have two tracks: one for InfoSec topics and the other track will be a mix of all the other topics with a bit of an emphasis on hardware hacking and DIY electronics. Besides our perennial InfoSec favorites, we want to hear from some new voices on a wider range of topics. If it's a good hack, we want to hear what you're doing.
Along with the two talk tracks, we'll have a hardware hacking lounge where you can work on the hackable badge or anything else you're inspired to do. While we all have the utmost respect for Joe Grand, his badges aren't as hackable as we'd like. We'll be going with an open source, open hardware platform for the QuahogCon badge.
The organizers are limiting registration to 150 attendees, which I expect to fill up quickly. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to a local hacker space, AS220 Labs.
Mitch Altman will be a guest on Adafruit's ASK AN ENGINGEER live video chat tonight at 10pm ET (Saturday 1/16/2010) - He is inventor of the TV-B-Gone, co-founder of the hacker space NOISEBRIDGE and works with Adafruit & MAKE on the TV-B-Gone kit! We're very excited to have Mitch in our NYC shop, he'll be here answering all of your questions with Ladyada! See you tonight at 10pm ET!
Five lucky survey participants will win $50 Maker Shed gift certificates (don't forget to enter your contact info so we can notify you if you win)! This survey will help shape Make: Online in 2010, so tell us what you think!
Happy new year, everybody! We sure had a great 2009 and are so happy to keep going strong in 2010. To that end, please help us out by completing our survey and let us know how we're doing. Complete the survey and you'll be eligible to win one of five $50 gift certificates to the Maker Shed.
Once in a blue moon there is one on New Year's Eve. Revelers ringing in 2010 will be treated to a so-called blue moon. According to popular definition, a blue moon is the second full moon in a month. But don't expect it to be blue -- the name has nothing to do with the color of our closest celestial neighbor. A full moon occurred on Dec. 2. It will appear again on Thursday in time for the New Year's countdown. "If you're in Times Square, you'll see the full moon right above you. It's going to be that brilliant," said Jack Horkheimer, director emeritus of the Miami Space Transit Planetarium and host of a weekly astronomy TV show.
Many years ago, back in the early days of computer modding, I did a piece for Details magazine where I "predicted" that PCs would become the next generation's muscle cars. That's pretty much become the case (...er no groaning puns intended) and that's what the San Francisco Exploratorium will be celebrating in their "Rods & Mods: The Kustom Kulture of Radical Computer Modification" show, Thursday-Saturday, February 11, 12 and 13, 2010.
For three days in February, the Exploratorium showcases the innovations and outlaw aesthetics of custom computer culture at Rods & Mods: The Kustom Kulture of Radical Computer Modification. An outgrowth of the hacker community, personal computer modding was born from the need for speed and personal style. From Thursday through Saturday, February 11-13, from noon to 5pm, look under the hood of this creative subculture and explore the hacking geekery that ignited a billion-dollar design industry. Rods & Mods features a showroom of souped-up PCs, restored classics, and experimental computers, as well as workshops, presentations, and a parts swap. Modders will be on hand throughout the event to discuss their work. This event is included in the price of admission.
On Saturday, December 19, The Franklin Institute and Body World 2 will be hosting an Operation® game tournament. Body World 2 teamed up with our pals at MakePhilly and Hive76 to create a life-size 'Ben Franklin' version of Hasbro's popular game Operation. Quoth the PR:
Competitors will play on regulation-size Operation boards during the preliminary rounds and finalists will have the chance to skillfully remove Ben Franklin's ailments on the life-size version of Operation! The lucky Grand Prize winner will receive four complimentary tickets to the Body World 2 & The Brain exhibition, an exhibition catalog, and DVD, and -- of course, a regulation-size Operation game. The tournament promises to bring out the most highly-skilled and steady-handed players in the world of competitive Operation play.
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Early registration for the tournament is highly encouraged. Check-in on competition day is from 12:30 to 1p.m. and the tournament introduction will start at 1pm sharp. WMGK-FM on-air personality Debbi Calton will guide contestants through each round leading up to the final event. There will be related make-n-takes and activities for young visitors. The event takes place in Franklin Hall at The Franklin Institute. For more information, log on to www.fi.edu.
Today, on O'Reilly Radar, Brady Forrest announced that Ignite, the popular five-minute presentation events that have spread from Seattle to cities across the US, is going planetary in 2010:
This March, it gets much, much bigger. O'Reilly is launching the first-ever Global Ignite Week, to bring together as many local Ignites as possible. As of right now there are almost 40 Ignites scheduled from March 1st through the 4th. The Ignites will span the globe and you'll be able to watch them streaming online every day. So far, Global Ignite Week is represented on 4 continents and 10 countries. Our goal is to have participation from all 7 continents (Nairobi is looking good, and we're working on Antarctica).
Check out his post to see the list of cities that have signed on (so far)
Get ready Crafters! Coming soon in early December, CRAFT will soon have a fresh new look and feel, gleaning the finest features of our former print publication and presenting them to you in a beautiful and versatile online format. You'll find your favorite features, crafter profiles, 101's, videos, patterns and more, as well as our daily blog showcasing the best happening in the craft world. You'll continue to get all this great DIY content online for free too!
We've got lots of fun things planned for our new launch including fantastic giveaways and Tweet-up events. Stay tuned for more soon!
Pictured above (clockwise): Crafters' profile on Anna Maria Horner, Handmade: Patrick Dougherty sculpture "Toad Hall", Curio: Charles Clary paper sculptures, and Bazaar: Fashionflat Sketchpad.
I hope you've all been enjoying our gift guides so far on CRAFT! If you can't get enough or have other creative types on your list, head over to Make: Online to see Gifts for Dads, Science and Chemistry, Gifts for Kids, the Mischief Maker's Guide, and much more. We're bringing you a new guide almost every day until it's too late to ship orders, so keep checking back!
Microsoft is running another contest for 2010 centered on embedded systems and their embeddedSPARK platform, the Windows embedded software for hobbyists. The grand prize this year is a $15,000. The theme is "Fun & Games." See the embeddedSPARK website for all of the contest details.
It's here! The Alex Rider Dream Gadget Contest launches today! Put on your thinking caps and dream up some awesome gadgets! To celebrate the release of the newest Alex Rider book, Crocodile Tears, and the Kids of All Ages edition of MAKE (both at bookstores today), we're thrilled to be running this contest.
All of you adventure-seekers and gadget lovers out there are invited to join in. If you were Alex Rider, what gadget would you want in the upcoming adventure "Crocodile Tears"? Design your dream Alex Rider gadget, inspired by an everyday object (i.e. an iPod, toothpaste, a pen). The winning gadget will be built right here at the MAKE Labs. Send us a schematic of what your gadget is made from and how it works. (Your schematic can be a diagram, a drawing or an explanation by you). Remember that the winning gadget will be inspired by an everyday object that one could realistically build (as much as we wish we could create a pair of scissors that could fly us to the moon)!
So what do you do? Dream up a gadget, of course! And what could you win? We're so glad you asked:
Grand Prize (one winner):
A signed collection of hardcover Alex Rider novels
iPod nano with a personalized message from author Anthony Horowitz
A backpack full of goodies and gadgets from the Maker Shed
The opportunity to have the winner's dream gadget produced in MAKE Labs and featured on Make: Online
Runner-Up Prize (two winners):
A signed hardcover copy of Crocodile Tears
An Alex Rider t-shirt
With prizes this good, how could you not want to enter?! The Alex Rider Dream Gadget Contest is open to kids ages 8 to 18, so get your kid, nephew, niece, grandkids, and yourself involved!
Need some inspiration? Check out these gadgets and book excerpts from previous Alex Rider novels to get those brain juices flowing:
The YarnCraft podcast run by our friends Zontee and Liz of Lion Brand Yarn are up for a People's Choice Podcast Award in the "Cultural/Arts" category. Voting just opened today through Nov 30th. Vote and show your crafting support!
For folks interested in the intersection of arts and science, the PBS series Independent Lens is presenting a fascinating in-depth look into origami titled Between the Folds. The film documents "a determined group of theoretical scientists and fine artists who have abandoned their careers and scoffed at their graduate degrees to forge new lives as modern-day paper folders."
Featured in the film are MIT's youngest-ever tenured professor Dr. Erik Demaine; mathematician, sculptor, puzzle maker, and self-taught computer scientist Marty Demaine; master free-style folder Vincent Floderer; pioneering Israeli educator Miri Golan; mathematics professor Dr. Tom Hull; trained artist and instructor Paul Jackson; one of the most technically accomplished folders in the world, Eric Joisel; one of only a few handmade origami papermakers in the world, Michael LaFosse; origami "hyper-realist" and physicist Dr. Robert J. Lang (who was profiled in CRAFT Volume 05); material artist with a masterful understanding of patterns and geometry, Chris K. Palmer; and the father of modern origami, Akira Yoshizawa.
Between the Folds will be showing in the Bay Area in Oakland on Tuesday, November 17 at 6:00 p.m. at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center and in San Francisco on Wednesday, November 18 at 5:45 p.m. at the San Francisco Main Library. For a list of screenings taking place across the country, check out the film site.
Here are a couple of interesting excerpts from the documentary to get a flavor for it. The following clip features Paul Jackson, an origami artists and art teacher living in Tel Aviv, Israel, speaking of the "one fold":
And this clip shows Michael LaFosse, a master artisan who not only makes origami, but is one of the only handmade origami paper makers in the world, providing a window into his workshop and processes:
Halloween may have come and gone, but there's still 24 hours to get your entries in to our Make: Halloween Contest 2009! We want to see your embedded microcontroller Halloween projects! All you have to do is fill out the form.
Make: Halloween Contest 2009
There's still time left to enter the Make: Halloween Contest 2009! Deadline is 11:59 PM PST, November 3rd. Show us your embedded microcontroller Halloween projects and you could be chosen as a winner.
As a special preview for our upcoming Alex Rider Dream Gadget Contest, we're giving away two copies of Skeleton Key by Anthony Horowitz, the third book in the Alex Rider series. Just leave a comment in this post and tell us why you or your kid(s) needs one of these books. Please make sure you include your email address in the comment form field (it won't be published). All eligible comments will be closed by Noon PST on Sunday, November 1st. The winners will be announced next week on the site. Good luck!
Over the years, here on Make: Online, we've had a rather open, anybody can play commenting policy. As long as you didn't use profanity, post patently offensive remarks, or spam, your comments were likely to stand. We also allowed for anonymous commenting.
