We were all pretty wowed back in January of last year when Parrot introduced their Parrot.AR quadrotor drone. Wowed because A) it’s a quadrotor, and we’re still kind of on our collective honeymoon with the quadrotor concept in general; B) its fancy fly-by-wire system makes it so stable and easy to fly that virtually no training or practice is required…
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And it’s not just because the Android and Makeys mas-bots were apparently separated at birth.
And yes, we know Android is technically an operating system, and Android-compatible phones are really an entire class of gadgets. But in one sense, that’s the whole point. Gadget-lovers will debate the pros and cons of particular handsets endlessly, and there are significant other players in the smartphone market, but increasingly the most informative demographic among smartphone users these days is “Android or iPhone?”
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Founded in Japan in 1962 by a nightclub owner and an accordionist, Korg has been designing, manufacturing, and selling electronic musical instruments since the beginning. Their products have introduced ground-breaking features into keyboards and synthesizers and many of their older models are considered “classics.”
Continue ReadingThe idea behind Volkswagen’s The Fun Theory program is simple: reward socially useful behaviors by making them into opportunities for play. Or, to quote a great sage, “You find the fun and snap! The job’s a game.”
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Back in June, 2010, we posted this photo submitted to the MAKE Flickr pool by user Lee C. (aka Triggerdog7). It shows the custom wooden crank Lee built and retrofitted to his Model 201 because he “got fed up with the super slow to turn knob on the Panavise Jr.” A neat, classic little maker story.
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It is my great pleasure to kick off the first ever MAKE Magazine Industry Maker Award season with a nomination that will probably raise a few eyebrows: Microsoft Corporation, for the”Most Hackable Gadget,” the Kinect, their gestural and natural-language video game controller.
Continue ReadingI love how Jeri Ellsworth almost always shows up at events with an impressive hack, from her infamous NES Purse, to the “Brain Bulb” she wore at Maker Faire Bay Area, to this glorious geek sartorial, the Barbot LED Dress. She wore this to the BarBot 2011 event at this year’s RoboGames. Underneath the dress is a string of delay chain LEDs triggered by a PIR (Passive Infrared Sensor) motion sensor detecting people around her.
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