Announcements

A MAKE reader sent in Bruce Sterling’s year-end “State of the World 2006” discussion over at The Well with MAKE mention! – “so there’s a lot of renegade tech going on these days. seen any you think portends larger good for us? That depends what one means by “renegade” and “larger good.” I’m pretty cool about today’s tech hippies with solder-guns; I think MAKE magazine has got a lot going for it, it’s really brisk and unpredictable. The distributed-knowledge, web-autodidact thing is a happening scene. Alpha geeks can make a dent in the tech scene, and they don’t have to sell out to VCs and ask permission first. I don’t underestimate this development; I’ve got an eye on those guys. Discovery Channel has got almost a franchise on this wack tech stuff; mythbusters, weird people with filthy jobs, huge unlikely gizmo s… there’s a zillion home-repair shows all of a sudden. It’s some kind of popular groundswell.” Link. The whole thing is an excellent read.

You asked, you sent us emails, you called our Skype payphone at 3am – and now they’re here – MAKE has forums!@!@! We’ll be fine-tuning things in days to come, so please be sure to let us know if you notice any problems (either by posting a message or by sending email to webmaster@makezine.com). So far we’ve been thrilled with the Vanilla forums software we’re using, and want to thank Mark O’Sullivan at Lussumo for helping with the implementation. And it couldn’t have happened without the great development support from our own Jay Laney. These forums have RSS, so you can subscribe to anything you post or other topics. The MAKEbot will also tell you the latest posts, by typing “forums.” Link.