Welcome back, Heroes!

Welcome back, Heroes!
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If you’re coming to our site after having seen MAKE’s Editor-in-Chief Mark Frauenfelder on The Colbert Report, welcome! We thought we’d take this opportunity to introduce Stephen’s viewers (and others who might be new to MAKE) to some of what we do and why. We’ve got a lot of different things going on and are tremendously excited by the work we do and the global community of do-it-yourself (DIY) enthusiasts we collaborate with.

We’ve put together a page of links and a (free) PDF for the projects Mark brought on the show. You can find that here.

Maker Media is the name of our company, we’re a division of O’Reilly Media, the highly regarded technology publisher. Under the Maker Media banner, we produce the quarterly MAKE magazine, run two busy websites, Make: Online and CRAFT, produce annual DIY festivals, called Maker Faire, run a store, called Maker Shed, and curate a science fair meets farmers market, called Makers Market. We also worked with Twin Cities Public Television to create the Emmy-nominated Make: television show on PBS.


MAKE magazine > >
MAKE_V18_275.jpgMAKE magazine is how we got started in all of this. It’s a quarterly technology projects magazine and a sort of house organ for the maker/DIY movement. Projects in the magazine range from old-school balsa wood and tissue-paper airplanes to what to do to keep aging high-tech gadgets alive to building autonomous robots from junk. Our current issue, Volume 22, is entitled “Remote Control Everything,” and hey look, it shows you how to build an R/C lawn mower! We produce both print and digital editions of our magazine. You can subscribe here and find back issues here.

 

Make: Online > >

Make: Online is the award-winning website that you’re reading right now. It’s one of the most popular online watering holes for makers, crafters, inventors, tinkerers, and amateur tech and science nerds of all stripes. People come here for breaking DIY news and information, original content on building, repairing, and modifying tech, and for step-by-step project articles. We also have several popular video series that run regularly on the site: Weekend Projects, MAKE Presents, and Collin’s Lab, among others, which showcase cool projects, kit builds, and explain (in plain English) how various technologies work. Here’s a recent Weekend Project:

 

CRAFT > >

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CRAFT is MAKE’s sister site. This ain’t your momma’s home ec class, oh no. This is sewing, knitting, cooking, gardening, and decorating for the tech-savvy 21st century. Take a look each day for a new how-to project or recipe. Bookmark the blog and find the best of what’s happening in the craft world as well as bi-weekly videos and downloadable patterns.

 

Maker Faire > >

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Maker Faire is our annual DIY festival, makers meet-up, show and tell, and celebration of creativity, invention, and the incomparable joys of making stuff. We’ve held Faires in the SF/Bay Area for the last five years, Faires in Austin, Texas, and soon, Faires in Detroit (July 31 – Aug 1) and New York City (Sept 25 – 26). This year’s Bay Area Faire attracted some 80,000 people. Apparently, there are more people interested in giant flaming neurons, a life-size Mousetrap game, human-powered carnival rides, robot giraffes, and musical Tesla coils than you might think.

 

Maker Shed > >

The Maker Shed is easy to describe. Quick: think of the coolest, nerdiest bookstore, museum gift shop, arts and craft shop, and electronics emporium you can possibly dream up — now roll them all into one. You’re in the Maker Shed! It’s an irresistible collection of books, kits, robots, microcontrollers, science sets, electronics, craft tools and supplies, all curated by us, the people behind MAKE and CRAFT. It’s all of the wondrous stuff we’d hope to find in such a store. Maker Shed is a year-round online store and we also set up pop-up retail operations at each of our Maker Faires.

To introduce you to MAKE and the Maker Shed, we’ve put together a special Cigar Box Guitar Bundle. It includes two issues of MAKE, Volume 04 and Volume 21, the two issues with cigar box guitar projects. That’s a $30 value, for only $10! It’s our cigar box special — just add the box.

We hope you enjoyed our little tour and will join us in our quest to put the joy of making back into our hectic modern lives. The full title of our magazine is “Make: technology on your time.” We’re all about taking back control of our technology rather than having it overwhelm us. We do everything we can to learn about that tech, to improve it, make it ours, and to share what we’ve learned with the growing community of fellow makers. We hope you’ll join in the fun. And if you want to get a truly thrilling and eye-opening experience of the length and breadth of the DIY movement, come to a Maker Faire. We can assure you it’s like nothing you’ve ever experienced and that you will come away truly inspired.

Here are the projects that Mark discussed on the show, such as the useless machine, the BlinkM, and the Guitar Box Guitar project PDF, just some of the how-to articles found in MAKE magazine.

If you have questions about Maker Media, or any of our projects, please feel free to ask in the comments below, or email us.

4 thoughts on “Welcome back, Heroes!

  1. SaskView says:

    Hats off to Mark for showing the Useless Machine on the CR!

    I’m a regular viewer of the show, and knew that Mark was going to be on but I had no idea he would be bringing some gadgets. Needless to say I was floored.

    Mark did send me a heads up, but I didn’t receive it until after watching the show. I’m glad I hadn’t checked my mail and spoiled the surprise. What a rush.

    Mark also apologized for not giving credit. No biggy, I don’t crave the limelight!

    Cheers,
    Brett

  2. Gareth Branwyn says:

    @Brett,

    I had that same surprise when Mark was on the show in 2007. He brought on one of my Mousey the Junkbots. I didn’t know it was going to be on and I flipped out with joy when he produced it and put in onto the table. And it made for a great TV moment when Stephen turned it on and it raced off the desk and smashed to bits. The useless machine made for similar great TV. And now you can say “As seen on the Colbert Report.”

    So thanks for being a part of that. When Volume 23 of MAKE comes out, we’ll definitely do something here on the site about the machine and link back to the episode.

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Gareth Branwyn is a freelance writer and the former Editorial Director of Maker Media. He is the author or editor of over a dozen books on technology, DIY, and geek culture. He is currently a contributor to Boing Boing, Wink Books, and Wink Fun. His free weekly-ish maker tips newsletter can be found at garstipsandtools.com.

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