"I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success"
Dallas-area Tadd Myers has for the past few years trained his lens on a range American craftsmen. Myers has taken photographs of business owners who create unique, handmade products using traditional materials, such as the cowboy boots
I’m going to start working on a photo tutorial for makers that will help folks take better pictures of their projects. I’d like to know from you guys: what sort of things would you like to see addressed in this tutorial? Are there any specific questions you’d like to see answered? Let me know, and I’ll do my best to answer them. Thanks!
johngineer is working with us on this project, we’re looking forward to reading it and getting a new camera
We are going to get a (better) drill press for the Adafruit shop, as we do research we’re wondering what all you folks use or have some good suggestions – We’d like it to be a stand-up type, run on 120V and not break after 31 days. We’ll be using it to drill holes in enclosures and stuff, some of which are cast aluminum. Post up in the comments, if we go with your suggestion we’ll send you some type of nice gift, perhaps something made with the drill press
Each hour today we’ve featured a woman we admire who is currently doing amazing work right in the tech/maker/art/science space. There is more women we could write about than hours in the day and now we’re out of time. It was a lot fun and very easy to write these up all day and night – we know we could not include everyone and we hope others around the web posted about them. Post in the comments if you’d like too, that’s what today is all about. Since this is the last post of the day we’re going to break some rules, many/most of the women today have inspired us to break the rules in some way so it seems ok Over the last 24 hours we’ve focused on mostly tech/makers/art but we also wanted to celebrate some of our favorite authors that keep up entertained, enlightened and inspired.
Violet Blue. Violet was a crew member of industrial machine performance art group Survival Research Labs from 1996 to May 2007. She is a top 25 Forbes “Web Celeb” and one of Wired’s “Faces of Innovation.” Blue is regarded as the foremost sexuality and technology futurist and sex-positive pundit in mainstream media (such as The Oprah Winfrey Show, CNN, Attack of The Show and The Tyra Banks Show).
Margery Conner. Margery Conner joined Reed’s electronics-industry portal, e-inSITE, as a technical editor in 1998 and became editorial director in 1999. She created some of the earliest e-mail newsletters for the electronics industry, including narrowly focused niche newsletters. She also developed a video-on-demand news program for the electronics-OEM market. When EDN magazine absorbed e-inSITE, she moved over to EDN as Technical Editor, Online Initiatives. In addition, she covers the Power Systems beat. She has a BSEE from the University of California—Irvine and 10 years of experience as a design engineer and engineering manager.
Xeni Jardin. Xeni is a tech culture journalist. She is a partner, contributor, and co-editor of the award winning blog Boing Boing. She is executive producer and host of the Webby-honored program Boing Boing Video (formerly Boing Boing TV). » She contributes to broadcast, online, and print venues including Wired and NPR, is a frequently-sought “tech expert” in broadcast news. She rides unicorns and drives cupcakes, likes to rock out, and occasionally floats in spaceships.
Annalee Newitz. Annalee covers the cultural impact of science and technology, such as topics on open source software and hacker subcultures. She writes for many periodicals from Popular Science to Wired, and since 1999 has had a syndicated weekly column called Techsploitation. From 2004-2005 she was a policy analyst for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. She is the editor of io9, a Gawker-owned science fiction blog. In 2006 she published a book based on her doctoral research. It’s called Pretend We’re Dead, and it was published by Duke University Press. In early 2007, Seal Press published a collection of essays she co-edited called She’s Such a Geek — it’s about female nerds.
Gina Trapani. Gina is an award-winning author, blogger, and programmer whose work translates cutting-edge technology into insights that boost personal productivity. Gina was the founding editor of Lifehacker.com, the seminal blog which garnered nominations for Blog of the Decade and yielded the best-selling book, Upgrade Your Life, a compendium of the best lessons from the thousands-strong Lifehacker community. Currently Gina is a project director at Expert Labs leading development on ThinkTank, an open source crowdsourcing platform the White House will use.
About today:
Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging (videologging, podcasting, comic drawing etc.!) to draw attention to the achievements of women in technology and science. Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognized. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines, whatever they do. It doesn’t matter how new or old your blog is, what gender you are, what language you blog in, or what you normally blog about – everyone is invited.
Who was Ada? Ada Lovelace Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852) was one of the world’s first computer programmers, and one of the first people to see computers as more than just a machine for doing sums. She wrote programs for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, a general-purpose computing machine, despite the fact that it was never built. She also wrote the very first description of a computer and of software.
And that’s it folks, we need to go back to work and ship a lot of kits! Thank you for reading today!
Each hour we are featuring a woman we admire who is currently doing amazing work right in the tech/maker/art/science space. Woman of the hour, Amy Smith.
Amy Smith is a senior lecturer in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT specializing in engineering design and appropriate technology for developing countries. She founded the D-Lab program at MIT which introduces students to technological, social, and economic problems of the Third World. She teaches the courses SP.721/11.025: D-Lab Development, SP.722/2.722: D-Lab Design, and SP.784: Wheelchair Design in Developing Countries. She has taught in the past 2.72: Elements of Mechanical Design.
Smith encourages women to become engineers although she dislikes being referred to as a woman engineer. “Actually, because my class involves humanitarian engineering, I very rarely have more men than women. There have been times where there have been ten women and one man. This isn’t surprising, given that women often want to see an application to what they’re learning that they feel is worthwhile”, says Smith. “But I’m not involved in any particular projects to encourage women engineers, because I dislike being referred to as a woman engineer. I don’t like programs that single out woman engineers as particular achievers just for being women. I think that it should be coincidental.”
Smith’s designs include the screenless hammer mill and the phase-change incubator, and she is also involved with the application of the Malian peanut sheller in Africa. She is also one of the founders of the popular MIT IDEAS Competition.
In 2000 Smith won the Lemelson-MIT Student Prize that honors inventors who are also good role models. Smith is the first woman to win the prize. Amy also won a MacArthur Fellowship.
Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging (videologging, podcasting, comic drawing etc.!) to draw attention to the achievements of women in technology and science. Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognized. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines, whatever they do. It doesn’t matter how new or old your blog is, what gender you are, what language you blog in, or what you normally blog about – everyone is invited.
Who was Ada? Ada Lovelace Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852) was one of the world’s first computer programmers, and one of the first people to see computers as more than just a machine for doing sums. She wrote programs for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, a general-purpose computing machine, despite the fact that it was never built. She also wrote the very first description of a computer and of software.
Each hour we are featuring a woman we admire who is currently doing amazing work right in the tech/maker/art/science space. Woman of the hour, Esther Duflo. She appears in the video series above.
Esther Duflo is a French economist, currently the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is also co-founder of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, and in 2009 was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow, otherwise known as a “genius” grant. She first studied at the French École normale supérieure, where she graduated in history and economics. In 1999, she was hired as an assistant professor by the MIT department of economics, joining the department immediately after she completed her Ph.D., also at MIT. She was promoted to associate professor (with tenure) in 2002, at the age of 29, making her among the youngest faculty at the Institute to be awarded tenure.
Her major research focus is on Development economics, with an emphasis on health, education, gender and politics, and provision of credit. In 2005, Le Monde awarded her the Best Young French Economist prize. She was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2009.
Esther Duflo serves as founding editor of the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, and co-editor of the Review of Economics and Statistics and the Journal of Development Economics, and is a member of the editorial committee of the Annual Review of Economics. She is currently a co-director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at MIT, and writes a monthly column for Libération, a French daily. The US magazine Foreign Policy named her as one of the top 100 public intellectuals in the world in May 2008. The Economist lists Duflo as one of the top 8 young economists in the world.
Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging (videologging, podcasting, comic drawing etc.!) to draw attention to the achievements of women in technology and science. Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognized. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines, whatever they do. It doesn’t matter how new or old your blog is, what gender you are, what language you blog in, or what you normally blog about – everyone is invited.
Who was Ada? Ada Lovelace Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852) was one of the world’s first computer programmers, and one of the first people to see computers as more than just a machine for doing sums. She wrote programs for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, a general-purpose computing machine, despite the fact that it was never built. She also wrote the very first description of a computer and of software.
Each hour we are featuring a woman we admire who is currently doing amazing work right in the tech/maker/art/science space. Woman of the hour, Natalie Zee Drieu.
Natalie Zee Drieu is an author, writer, designer, and crafty mom living in San Francisco. She is the founder and editor of Coquette, a blog that merges her love of fashion and technology, rated one of the top 50 fashion blogs in the world. Her new online venture, Coquette Maman is a blog that focuses on fashion, style, and life topics for new moms. All that is on the side to her day job as the Editor-in-Chief for CRAFT, one of the largest crafting web sites covering the modern craft movement. In 2008, Folio named Natalie one of the Top 40 Magazine Industry Influencers and Innovators. She has brought her crafting know-how to TV appearances for shows such as KGO/ABC San Francisco’s ‘The View from the Bay’, KRON’s ‘Bay Area Backroads’, and nationally on ‘The CBS Early Show’. When she’s not at the computer, you can usually find Natalie knitting or crocheting with her daughter Chloe and Pomeranian Lulu nearby.
You can check out Natalie’s site here and recent articles/post here. On a personal note, Phil (pt) who works with us at Adafruit and at MAKE says that “Natalie is a wonderful friend and inspiration, we’ve both journeyed through various careers over the last 10 years or so – companies and geographies, Natalie always does amazing things each time and each place. She has designed gorgeous sites in her advertising days used by millions and taught thousands how to knit, that’s range!”.
About today:
Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging (videologging, podcasting, comic drawing etc.!) to draw attention to the achievements of women in technology and science. Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognized. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines, whatever they do. It doesn’t matter how new or old your blog is, what gender you are, what language you blog in, or what you normally blog about – everyone is invited.
Who was Ada? Ada Lovelace Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852) was one of the world’s first computer programmers, and one of the first people to see computers as more than just a machine for doing sums. She wrote programs for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, a general-purpose computing machine, despite the fact that it was never built. She also wrote the very first description of a computer and of software.
Each hour we are featuring a woman we admire who is currently doing amazing work right in the tech/maker/art/science space. Woman of the hour, Diana Eng.
Diana Eng is a fashion designer who specializes in technology, math, and science. Her designs range from inflatable clothing to fashions inspired by the mechanical engineering of biomimetics. At 22, her inflatable dress (cocreated with Emily Albinski) made the cover of ID Magazine. In 2005, she was a designer on season 2 of the Emmy nominated hit TV show, Project Runway. She won Yahoo Hack Day in 2006 along with her two-team mates for designing and creating a blogging purse in less than 24 hours. She has worked as an assistant designer in research & development at Victoria’s Secret. She is the author of Fashion Geek: Clothes, Accessories, Tech. Her work has been featured in exhibits both in the U.S. and internationally around the globe, and has graced the pages of such publications as Women’s Wear Daily, Wired, and Craft Magazine. Diana is Make’s ham radio correspondent. Diana currently designs in the NYC fashion industry and is a founding member of Brooklyn based hacker group NYC Resistor.
Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging (videologging, podcasting, comic drawing etc.!) to draw attention to the achievements of women in technology and science. Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognized. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines, whatever they do. It doesn’t matter how new or old your blog is, what gender you are, what language you blog in, or what you normally blog about – everyone is invited.
Who was Ada? Ada Lovelace Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852) was one of the world’s first computer programmers, and one of the first people to see computers as more than just a machine for doing sums. She wrote programs for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, a general-purpose computing machine, despite the fact that it was never built. She also wrote the very first description of a computer and of software.
Each hour we are featuring a woman we admire who is currently doing amazing work right in the tech/maker/art/science space. Woman of the hour, Kate Hartman. Kate is featured in the video above showing how plants can be made to call you on the phone when they need to be watered.
Kate Hartman is a researcher, and inventor. She is interested in how people communicate and what makes them tick. Kate creates new tools for expression through innovative applications of technology. Her individual and collaborative projects span the fields of wearable computing, mobile telephony, video installation, and conceptual art. Whether it be houseplants that make phone calls or hats that amplify the voices in your head, her work explores the idea of enhancing relationships and illustrating the unseen. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is featured in the recently published book “Fashionable Technology”. She’s also a professor at OCAD and has taught classes and workshops at ITP/NYU, Parsons, the Banff Centre, and NYCResistor.
Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging (videologging, podcasting, comic drawing etc.!) to draw attention to the achievements of women in technology and science. Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognized. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines, whatever they do. It doesn’t matter how new or old your blog is, what gender you are, what language you blog in, or what you normally blog about – everyone is invited.
Who was Ada? Ada Lovelace Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852) was one of the world’s first computer programmers, and one of the first people to see computers as more than just a machine for doing sums. She wrote programs for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, a general-purpose computing machine, despite the fact that it was never built. She also wrote the very first description of a computer and of software.
Each hour we are featuring a woman we admire who is currently doing amazing work right in the tech/maker/art/science space. Woman of the hour, Becky Stern.
Becky Stern, is an artist, tutorial maker, and Associate Editor for Craft (craftzine.com) and Make: Online (makezine.com). She has a background in design & technology from Parsons the New School School for Design and enjoys freely sharing projects online through excellent documentation. Some of her favorite creative disciplines are sculpture, video, electronics, sewing, knitting, and cooking, sometimes all at once. She produces Craft’s bi-weekly tutorial video podcast covering topics from metalsmithing to homebrewing, machine knitting to electronic embroidery, and everywhere in between.
Her work is currently featured in the Open Source Embroidery exhibit – Museum of Craft and Folk Art, San Francisco, California, USA.
About today:
Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging (videologging, podcasting, comic drawing etc.!) to draw attention to the achievements of women in technology and science. Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognized. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines, whatever they do. It doesn’t matter how new or old your blog is, what gender you are, what language you blog in, or what you normally blog about – everyone is invited.
Who was Ada? Ada Lovelace Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852) was one of the world’s first computer programmers, and one of the first people to see computers as more than just a machine for doing sums. She wrote programs for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, a general-purpose computing machine, despite the fact that it was never built. She also wrote the very first description of a computer and of software.
Each hour we are featuring a woman we admire who is currently doing amazing work right in the tech/maker/art/science space. Woman of the hour, Christy Canida. Pictured above with DIY elf ears.
Christy Canida earned her SB in Biology from MIT, and worked in transgenic mouse labs, an aquarium, and the biotech industry before joining Instructables. She loves cutting things up, experimenting with food, and dancing in costumes.
Christy makes amazing things we love to read (and make) and also runs Instructables with the great team there. She’s the originator of the LED rat throwie. You can see all 115+ of Christy’s how-tos and Instructables here.
About today:
Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging (videologging, podcasting, comic drawing etc.!) to draw attention to the achievements of women in technology and science. Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognized. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines, whatever they do. It doesn’t matter how new or old your blog is, what gender you are, what language you blog in, or what you normally blog about – everyone is invited.
Who was Ada? Ada Lovelace Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852) was one of the world’s first computer programmers, and one of the first people to see computers as more than just a machine for doing sums. She wrote programs for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, a general-purpose computing machine, despite the fact that it was never built. She also wrote the very first description of a computer and of software.
Each hour we are featuring a woman we admire who is currently doing amazing work right in the tech/maker/art/science space. Woman of the hour, Robin Chase.
Robin Chase is the co-founder and former CEO of Zipcar, an innovative car sharing service, and is currently the CEO of GoLoco.org, a venture combining online carpooling and social networking. She is also founder of Meadow Networks, a transportation consulting firm, and maintains a blog Network Musings on the topics of climate change, transportation, and wireless networks.
Chase is known as a global thought leader in the transportation sector. Her work is an illustration of the ways in which resource sharing, open platforms, and end-user participation can prove beneficial to individuals, businesses, and governments. Craig Newmark wrote “Robin’s work illustrates what’s best about people using the Internet: not well-intentioned yet futile do-goodism but business that’s also a community service. It’s about people using the Internet to work together in the service of one another.”
Zipcar provides a platform for people to share cars; GoLoco, a platform to share rides. She is also a champion for the creation of a mesh network so that end-user devices can create a shared wireless network. She is a proponent of expanding internet access, participating in the InternetforEveryone kick-off event.
About today:
Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging (videologging, podcasting, comic drawing etc.!) to draw attention to the achievements of women in technology and science. Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognized. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines, whatever they do. It doesn’t matter how new or old your blog is, what gender you are, what language you blog in, or what you normally blog about – everyone is invited.
Who was Ada? Ada Lovelace Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852) was one of the world’s first computer programmers, and one of the first people to see computers as more than just a machine for doing sums. She wrote programs for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, a general-purpose computing machine, despite the fact that it was never built. She also wrote the very first description of a computer and of software.
Each hour we are featuring a woman we admire who is currently doing amazing work right in the tech/maker/art/science space. Woman of the hour, Lenore Edman.
Lenore M. Edman, a veteran bike commuter, used to live in Portland, Oregon, where her son Chris got to ride in her bike’s sidecar. Abandoning wet for warm, she moved to Austin, Texas, where she designed and sewed her own wedding dress. Later, as a regular of the Boulder, Colorado weekly cruiser bike ride, she overhauled a mid-century Hawthorne ladies bicycle (named Stella) which she has only crashed once—and it wasn’t her fault. Since moving to Sunnyvale, California, she has helped to popularize edible origami and has learned to make some wicked curries. Her college studies in classical Greek prepared her well for her career working with professors, librarians, engineers and scientists.
She’s part of Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories, be sure to visit their site, store and check out all the open source make/craft/hack/art projects they release, incredible stuff.
About today:
Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging (videologging, podcasting, comic drawing etc.!) to draw attention to the achievements of women in technology and science. Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognized. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines, whatever they do. It doesn’t matter how new or old your blog is, what gender you are, what language you blog in, or what you normally blog about – everyone is invited.
Who was Ada? Ada Lovelace Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852) was one of the world’s first computer programmers, and one of the first people to see computers as more than just a machine for doing sums. She wrote programs for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, a general-purpose computing machine, despite the fact that it was never built. She also wrote the very first description of a computer and of software.
Each hour we are featuring a woman we admire who is currently doing amazing work right in the tech/maker/art/science space. Woman of the hour, Shafi Goldwasser.
Shafrira Goldwasser is the RSA Professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, and a professor of mathematical sciences at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. She is a member of the Theory of Computation group at MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
Goldwasser’s research areas include computational complexity theory, cryptography and computational number theory. She is the co-inventor of zero-knowledge proofs, which probabilistically and interactively demonstrate the validity of an assertion without conveying any additional knowledge, and are a key tool in the design of cryptographic protocols. Her work in complexity theory includes the classification of approximation problems, showing that some problems in NP remain hard even when only an approximate solution is needed.
Goldwasser has twice won the Gödel Prize in theoretical computer science: first in 1993 (for “The knowledge complexity of interactive proof systems”), and again in 2001 (for “Interactive Proofs and the Hardness of Approximating Cliques”). Other awards include the ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award (1996) for outstanding young computer professional of the year and the RSA Award in Mathematics (1998) for outstanding mathematical contributions to cryptography. In 2001 she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in 2004 she was elected to the National Academy of Science, and in 2005 to the National Academy of Engineering. She was selected as an IACR Fellow in 2007. Goldwasser received the 2008-2009 Athena Lecturer Award of the Association for Computing Machinery’s Committee on Women in Computing. She is the recipient of The Franklin Institute’s 2010 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science.
Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging (videologging, podcasting, comic drawing etc.!) to draw attention to the achievements of women in technology and science. Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognized. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines, whatever they do. It doesn’t matter how new or old your blog is, what gender you are, what language you blog in, or what you normally blog about – everyone is invited.
Who was Ada? Ada Lovelace Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852) was one of the world’s first computer programmers, and one of the first people to see computers as more than just a machine for doing sums. She wrote programs for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, a general-purpose computing machine, despite the fact that it was never built. She also wrote the very first description of a computer and of software.
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