Announcements

ETel: Makers Wanted!

From Nat “Are you hacking something cool around voice-over-IP, Skype, Google Talk, gaim, Asterisk, VoiceXML, or similar technology? We want to know about it! We’re looking for participants in the ETel Fair at our Emerging Telephony conference (conference is Jan 24-26, San Francisco; Fair is the evening of the 25th). We want cool hacks, funky devices, awesome apps. The fair is like a poster session with booze: you and a dozen others each have a demo of your system and a poster describing it, and conference attendees and the general public get to walk around, drinks in hand, grilling you about how it works, how much work it would take to add feature X, or whether you want to work for them/be acquired by them/come back to their hotel room for drinks and “session initiation”. If that sounds like you, drop mail to me (gnat AT oreilly.com) and Surj (surj.patel AT gmail.com) and tell us what you’ve got …” Link.

Continue Reading November 21st, 2005 Phillip Torrone

MAKE’s Kits For The Holidays!

In MAKE 04 we featured some great kit gift ideas in the magazine, “Kits for the Holidays”. But we didn’t have room for all the kits we found, so here’s another round for elves with makers on their list. MAKE subscribers can log in and view the full article here…Link. We also have our own kit for taking high speed flash photography to capture high-speed events — A splash. Popping balloons. Breaking glass. It’s an amazing adjustable flash controller triggered by light or sound. Link.

Continue Reading November 21st, 2005 Phillip Torrone

The end of Spiral Island…

Giorgio write “Hi, with respect to the post you wrote about Spiral Island, well it seems that island was destroyed during the past hurricane season.” – Spiral Island was a floating artificial island in a lagoon near Puerto Aventuras, on the East coast of Mexico south of Cancun. It was built by British expatriate Richie (or “Reishee”) Sowa beginning in 1998; he filled nets with empty discarded plastic bottles to support a structure of plywood and bamboo, on which he poured sand and planted numerous plants, including mangroves. The island sported a two-story house, a solar oven, a self-composting toilet, and three beaches. He used some 250,000 bottles for the 66-by-54-foot structure. Spiral Island was destroyed by a hurricane in 2005. Mr. Sowa plans to build a stronger island in a more sheltered area. Link.

Continue Reading November 20th, 2005 Phillip Torrone

What Would MacGyver Do?

This looks like an excellent book “What Would MacGyver Do? is a book-in-progress. When it is finished, it will be a collection of 75 to 100 original stories by and about people who have exercised MacGyver-like ingenuity in solving their everyday problems. The stories will be selected and edited by Brendan Vaughan, an editor at Esquire magazine.” Link.

Continue Reading November 17th, 2005 Phillip Torrone

EFF’s Bloggers Right Fundraiser

We’ve added a badge on our /blog section for the EFF Bloggers Rights fundraiser, we hope Makers out there will consider supporing the EFF too – “EFF is a donor-funded nonprofit group of passionate people—lawyers, technologists, volunteers, and visionaries — who depend on your support to continue successfully defending your digital rights. Litigation is particularly expensive; because two-thirds of our budget comes from individual donors, every contribution is critical to helping EFF fight —and win—more cases.” [via] Link.

Continue Reading November 16th, 2005 Phillip Torrone

The New Inventors

Nick writes “In reference to Xeni Jardin’s mention of the “American Inventor TV Series” on Boing Boing, I thought you might be interested in a TV series that runs on the Australian national broadcaster called ‘The New Inventors’ – It’s a revival of a late 70’s series called ‘The Inventors’ and each week features three makers and their projects which are assessed by a panel of design and engineering experts. The linked page doesn’t reference more recent episodes, but should give you some idea of the kind of ideas presented.” Link.

Continue Reading November 16th, 2005 Phillip Torrone

MAKE @ American Inventor – November 17th

MAKE will be covering ABC’s American Inventor’s auditions November 17th at 8am in San Francisco. If you’re going, let us know (before or after if you want to share your experience). “AMERICAN INVENTOR is an exciting new primetime reality show for ABC from Simon Cowell and the producers of American Idol. Set to premiere in early 2006, the show will undertake the biggest search ever for America’s best new invention. An embodiment of the ultimate American dream, the show will uncover the hottest new product and make some struggling inventor’s dream come true. The show will celebrate the best in homespun American ingenuity and will turn one person’s idea into the next big thing.” – Link. Look for our special write up this week!