If you’re in the Bay Area May 30th and 31st and want to win a free pass to Maker Faire, here’s your chance! Phil is a judge in this CNET contest so go enter! Adafruit will be at Maker Faire this year as usual, hope to see you there!
During the past few years, the world has rediscovered the joys of do-it-yourself (or DIY) projects, and everywhere you look these days, you can see people building things themselves rather than buying them from others.
A big part of this revolution has been Make magazine, and its Maker Faires, festivals–which celebrate the DIY spirit in all its manifestations–which take place each year in San Mateo, Calif…
The event’s organizers have given me 20 passes to award CNET News readers. And all you have to do to win one is tell me, in 150 words or less, how you would use DIY to remake America (the event’s theme).
It’s a broad topic, I admit, and I’m sure there are an infinite number of ideas that could win. But in order to pick the best 20, I’m going to turn to my celebrity judge, Make magazine senior editor Phil Torrone.
So, send your 150-words-max ideas to me at daniel(dot)terdiman-*at*-cnet(dot)com by May 8 (please include the words “Maker Faire contest” in your e-mail subject line, as well as your full name in your e-mail), and maybe I’ll be seeing you at Maker Faire.
The Electronics Flea Market “swap meet” is held on the second Saturday (pre dawn) of each month, March through October (schedule). The flea market is organized by ASVARO for the benefit of non-profit amateur radio organizations in the Silicon Valley. The flea market was held in Sunnyvale in 2004-2005 and in previous years at Foothill College in Los Altos. The organizations that participate in the flea markets are active in amateur radio education, emergency communications, and civic support activities.
Someone needs to do one of those “Google map mash ups” to show where all the electronics flea markets are at in the world (and when!)…
This saturday, I’ll be running 2 workshops for 10 people each wherein we build a mintyboost kit. The event is the EYEBEAM 2006 Hackshop Sign up today & bring a gum tin to put your charger in!
Shown above, a HOPE attendee builds her mintyboost mere minutes after purchase.
Citizen Engineer – Consumer Electronics Hacking and Open Source Hardware
Phillip Torrone
Ladyada
This is a hands-on session on all the things you’re not supposed to do (but want to) with the gadgets that fill our drawers and shelves: transform an old VCR into an automatic cat feeder, use open interfaces to control Roomba robotic vacuums. Projects like these (and others, such as WRT54G hacking, iPod Linux, car-computer hacking, etc.) are part of a growing trend where consumers are going back and hacking what they buy. Just as computer hacking is closely tied to the Open Source software movement, so can such embedded gadget-hacking lead to an Open Source hardware movement.
Saturday 1200
Area A
The Geeky, Personal, and Social Impact Sides of Creating Defensive Technology
Mitch Altman
Ladyada
Ever wish you had the power to turn off a TV in a restaurant or disable an intrusive cell phone? Social defensive technologies are “reality hacking” devices that give us the sort of sociopathic control we’ve come to enjoy on the Internet alone. Three years ago, Mitch decided he’d had enough of televisions and designed the TV-B-Gone, a universal “off” keychain remote. Around the same time, Ladyada designed a personal RF jammer. Together they will discuss these projects in the context of reclaiming personal space, culture-jamming, and how we can design technologies that do what we really want. Don’t expect good WiFi/cell reception.
I had an excellent time at SXSW, culminating in the first ever real-life frogger game.
Basically, as I see it, we are becoming so technologically advanced, that we will be seeing more examples of crossovers between the ‘real world’ and the ‘virtual world’
ps. 6th street is a ‘main drag’: at 1am, cars are driving pretty slowly to avoid all the drunk people on the street. Still, don’t try this at home.
If you have the opportunity to see their current show on tour, [R]Evolutions, I highly suggest it: sort of like an abstract ‘qatsi but less Glass and more minimal/industrial.
