Year: 2008

Maker of the day – David Forbes, Nixie-display clocks and wristwatch

Maker of the day – David Forbes, Nixie-display clocks and wristwatch

Maker02TnToday’s Maker from our new book Makers – David Forbes, Tucson, Arizona. Nixie-display clocks and wristwatch. Forbes has an old HP frequency counter and other vintage instruments in his workspace, and of course, everything has old-style Nixie displays. He just likes they way they look. When the vacuum tubes are charged with 170 volts, they shine numbers and letter with a solid, mellow orange hue. “They’re exotic and big and hopelessly impractical by modern standards.” Makers: page 102. View photo! See previous Makers of the day here. View sample PDF. Click here to get Makers the book before the holidays!

The MAKEbot is here!

Makebotguy
The MAKEbot has arrived! This is “beta”, so we’ll see how it goes. The MAKEbot is a AIM/iChat buddy you add to your list. When you type latest, he will give you the latest headlines from Makezine.com. You can type subscribe 1 and he’ll deliver the latest news each hour, lastly – if you type keywords like psp, welding, ipod or whatever he’ll search the Makezine.com site and pages from MAKE and give you a link from our search engine to help you find what you’re looking for…You can also type help to get a list of commands. Here are some screenshots and a little more information…

Make your own 0 laptop…?

Make your own $100 laptop…?

Tn-Laptop-CrankThe $100 laptop is a project from MIT’s Nicholas Negroponte to bring a low-cost open source, windup-powered laptop to the world, targeted at children in developing nations. I really admire what they’re doing, this could be the most amazing thing ever. I am about to leave for a quick trip, but I wanted to post this up before the weekend – is it possible to cobble together “something” like that, using eBay and hunting around for stuff – while trying to stay under the $100 limit? Maybe – so, here it is so far, my version using an old Apple eMate. It’s not practical or scalable, or open source, but it’s going to be under $100 and best of all, it’s green too…

Make your own Flickr slide show…

Flickr Logo Beta-2“Dig those flash Flickr slideshows? All that’s needed is a bit of code to embed them within your website to give your readers something dynamic. Place (the code from here) somewhere on your website or within a blog post. Change user_id from 12345678@N00 to your flickr id, which you can find out with this idgettr.” Excellent start for a Flickr photo frame. You can also include a group, so I made one for our MAKE Flickr photo pool, check it out…