The U.S. Postal Service has agreed to hold off on closing any more post offices or mail facilities until May 15, 2012, to allow Congress time to work on a plan to save the service.
The U.S. Postal Service agreed to voluntarily enact a moratorium on closures, after a series of talks with senators, lawmakers said. Sen. Richard Durbin said the postal service agreed to the deal, and he called it a challenge to Congress to “put up or shut up.”
Fun label automation from .:oomlout:. – “Annoyed with manual label application, we’ve decided to go semi automatic ( ) #oneStepCloserToWorldDomination”
Build your own gingerbread geodesic house with our dome template and easy to follow instructions including recipes for gingerbread and icing. Template is laser cut and scored for easy assembly. It’s fun. It’s festive.
The SR Gingerbread Geodesic Dome Kit makes a dome home of approximately 9″ in diameter and 6″ tall.
Kit includes: geodesic dome, templates for gingerbread pieces, base, recipes for gingerbread and icing, and instructions for assembly.
José Gomez-Marquez, who heads the Innovations in International Health program at MIT, calls the MEDIK a “medical Erector set.” The kit, designed for doctors trying to treat people in places where electricity and other basic services are unavailable, contains dozens of parts that can be combined into hundreds of devices, including a cauterizing pen powered by a solar cell and a nebulizer (for inhalation therapy) that fits a bike pump.
MAKE’s “Ultimate Guide to Kits” is out and it’s one of the best things they have ever created for tinkerers, makers and hackers. To promote it and their new Kit Reviews site, they’re running a “Kit-A-Day” giveaway that includes thousands of dollars in Maker Shed merchandise between now (last Friday, actually) and Xmas. Included are 5 Makerbots– 1 was already given away, but 4 are left. The guide has the biggest selection of open-source hardware in one place!
Each week for the last couple years we do a new products segment when we add new things to the Adafruit store – our video editor George edited up a segment that’s just new products for the folks who have asked for this, enjoy!
Getting Started with Parallax. This is a really impressive wiki filled with examples, code and more. Parallax is hands down one of the best “documenters” of learning electronics – they’re also including Arduino code examples too…
Welcome to the Parallax KickStart wiki! Here you’ll find dozens of programming examples to help you jump start your use of Parallax sensors and accessories sold through retail stores such as RadioShack, Microcenter, and Fry’s Electronics.
These KickStarts give you hands-on help for connecting R/C servos, GPS modules, accelerometers, digital compasses, ultrasonic distance sensors, XBee wireless radios, and more to three of the world’s most popular microcontrollers: the BASIC Stamp 2, Parallax Propeller, and Arduino.
KickStarts are basic, no-frills coding samples, made so you can get started, fast. Each example takes no more than a few minutes to set up and try.
Many of the Parallax sensors and accessories offer enhanced features and functionality not covered in the example code. So when you’re ready to move on and explore more, follow the links at the bottom of each KickStart example page for additional info.
KickStarts provide working code and connection diagrams for the Parallax Propeller QuickStart, BASIC Stamp 2 HomeWork Board, and Arduino Uno.
In most cases, the programming code will also work for variations of these microcontroller development boards, such as the BASIC Stamp Board of Education. Adapt the wiring connections as needed.
If you subscribe to MAKE and you’ve received MAKE Volume 28 in the mail, you’ve likely noticed a little something extra that came with it. It’s the first-ever Maker Shed print catalog! We spent many hours putting our great products into a browsable print format for your viewing pleasure. The Maker Shed Catalog is packed with 45 pages of microcontrollers, kits, and gift ideas, as well as a soldering tutorial, maker profiles, and more! It’s perfect for finding holiday gifts for yourself and others (or do what I do and circle items and leave it for others to find).
I live and work about two blocks from Wall Street in NYC, so it’s been an interesting and charged few months — even more than the usual New York City amplifier. Besides my role at MAKE, I help run an open source electronics factory, Adafruit Industries. During the 2008 financial crash, we were able to get a fairly large space when the financial folks were leaving in droves, and since then we’ve witnessed many changes in the area. Some have been good and some I’ll call challenges. Over the years, a common question I get asked is “Why New York City?” And then there’s “Why run a business there? It’s so hard/expensive/crazy/weird/intense.” Also, “Just move to Vegas — no taxes!” And that’s what this week’s Soapbox is all about: “If you can make it in NYC, you can make it anywhere.” I’m going to talk about why I think this is the best city for me, for now, to run a business. My goal is for the maker businesses out there, from one person to many, to post up in the comments on why their city is the best city to run a maker business. Let’s get started.
A special issue of MAKE, the Ultimate Kit Guide 2012, is hitting newsstands this week!
In it, we review over 175 different kits, ranging from rockets, robots, and remote control, to cocktails, kombucha, and cured meat. This wide-ranging kit guide is something I’m really excited about. The MAKE staff and our friends spent a lot of time with a great number of kits, and we picked the ones we feel really good about recommending to others. It reminds me of the Whole Earth Catalog, which was a mind-blowing, life-changing publication for me. I hope the kits in MAKE’s Ultimate Kit Guide will inspire a new generation of people to become active creators of the things that they use in their life.
A while back I was bored and wanted to take a look at the gRaphael JS library, so I made a quick dot chart of our order totals by day of the week. Here it is!
You’ll need to download both the gRaphael library and the dot graph library both from the graphael website and place them in the admin/includes/javascript directory. Our file uses the non-minified version of the dot library, use the minified version if you want to save bandwidth.
Join us Wednesday evening for the next episode of Make: Live, our streaming show and tell! This episode is our Ultimate Kit Episode, in honor of the new Special Issue of MAKE, The Ultimate Kit Guide.
Make: Live 20 – Ultimate Kit Episode
Wednesday November 9th, 9pm ET/6pm PT
Watch at makezine.com/live or on UStream
Please join us in the UStream chat or mark tweets with #makelive to interact live with the show.
There are a lot of Angry Birds products out there, but most of them aren’t officially licensed. Angry Birds is now the most copied brand in China, and we get a lot of inspiration from local producers.
Right now, we’ve proven that there’s demand, and we’re going for 100 million downloads this year for Angry Birds, and again the same demand for the physical products.
The way we look at it is, of course we want to sell the officially licensed, good quality products, but at the same time we have to be happy about the fact that the brand is so loved that it is the most copied brand in China.
It’s great for us to see the demand, and that’s why we’re building our own stores here. And actually we’re building our first stores here, and not in Helsinki…
We hope to have quite a few over the next 12 months.
This is the Stella amp, an amplifier that I’m in the middle of designing. I wanted a battery powered amplifier that was a little more versatile than all of the LM-386 amps that are out there. So I made my own.
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At any rate, I have to say thanks Adafruit for having this great kitbiz resource. You guys are amazing, I cannot thank you enough. I never would have done any of this without you.
Printable catalog (PDF)
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