<!– Toolbox, Tools –> By Sean Ragan, 2012/10/16 @ 10:44 pm I’ve been following New York-based I Heart Engineering pretty closely since it first appeared on my radar back in 2009. One of a growing number of indie e-merchants who support and promote their retail operations with an online publishing outlet (a la adafruit), I [...]

<!– Gadgets, Mobile, Wearables –> By Adam Flaherty, 2012/10/17 @ 2:30 am Flipping the touch screen paradigm on its ear, a group from Autodesk Research, the University of Toronto, and the University of Alberta have created a new method and apparatus for user interaction. Dubbed Magic Finger, the system consists of a micro NanEye RGB [...]

<!– Weekend Projects –> By Nick Normal, 2012/10/16 @ 9:24 am Later this week we’ll be giving away three Mintronics: Menta kits. This Adafruit-designed kit features an ATmega328 microcontroller. There’s a complex prototyping area consisting of rails, rows, and many pad-per-holes, making it a convenient space for building out all types of circuits. The prototyping [...]

<!– Electronics, Holiday Projects –> By John Baichtal, 2012/10/16 @ 11:00 am Check out this simple kit offered by Eric Thompson’s Low Voltage Labs: This year at the Seattle and Portland Mini Maker Faires I did a presentation on getting started with designing your own PCB using KiCAD. In this presentation as an example I [...]

<!– Bicycles, Recycle –> By Stett Holbrook, 2012/10/16 @ 11:30 am Israeli inventor Izhar Gafni says he ready to mass-produce a 20-pound bicycle made of cardboard. There are no metal parts. The chain is actually a car’s timing belt and the tires are made from reconstituted rubber. The cost? Twenty bucks. From Endgadget: Izhar…spent 18 [...]

<!– MAKE Asks –> By Michael Colombo, 2012/10/16 @ 12:00 pm MAKE Asks: is a weekly column where we ask you, our readers, for responses to maker-related questions. We hope the column sparks interesting conversation and is a way for us to get to know more about each other. This week’s question: One of the [...]

<!– Arduino, Design, Drones, Open source hardware –> By Dale Dougherty, 2012/10/16 @ 12:15 pm Recently, I was invited to speak at Tijuana Innovadora, a regional conference/expo. Mark Hatch of TechShop, Jason Short, an industrial designer by day and Drone programmer by night, as well as David Cuartielles of the Arduino team also came to [...]

<!– Computers Mobile, Events Holidays –> By Stett Holbrook, 2012/10/16 @ 1:46 pm Lady Ada Day celebrates the life of Ada Lovelace, daughter of the poet Lord Byron and a woman credited as the world’s first computer programmer. She reportedly had no contact with her father and took up an interest in science instead of [...]

<!– Halloween –> By Mark Frauenfelder, 2012/10/16 @ 3:07 pm Last week, my kids selected a couple of nice large pumpkins from the local pumpkin patch here in Studio City, CA. They are eager to start carving them, but in my experience jack-o’-lanterns begin to rot just a few days after they are cut, so [...]

<!– Maker Faire, Recreation Entertainment –> By Stett Holbrook, 2012/10/16 @ 3:19 pm I don’t know what the weather is like where you are, but here at MAKE HQ in Sebastopol, Calif. we’re enjoying a great run of Indian Summer weather, deep blue skies, temps in the low 80s and a tinge of fall crispness [...]

<!– Education, Flight Projectiles, Flying, Wind –> By Jake Spurlock, 2012/10/16 @ 3:34 pm Love this great NPR piece about engineering students at University of Maryland trying to win a three-decades-old contest for human powered flight. The Igor I. Sikorsky Human Powered Helicopter Competition offers a $250,000 prize for a human-powered helicopter that can fly for 60 [...]

<!– 3D Printing, CNC, Design –> By Adam Flaherty, 2012/10/16 @ 4:30 am Check out this beautiful 3D-printed guitar by Scott Summit of Bespoke/3D Systems. The body is plastic with minor pieces printed in silver and stainless steel. It’s unique in that it may be the first 3D-printed acoustic guitar. If you’re into electric, you [...]