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October 13, 2009

EFF Warns Texas Instruments to Stop Harassing Calculator Hobbyists...

Pt 2112
EFF Warns Texas Instruments to Stop Harassing Calculator Hobbyists...

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) warned Texas Instruments (TI) today not to pursue its baseless legal threats against calculator hobbyists who blogged about potential modifications to the company's programmable graphing calculators. TI's calculators perform a "signature check" that allows only approved operating systems to be loaded onto the hardware. But researchers were able to reverse-engineer signing keys, allowing tinkers to install custom operating systems and unlock new functionality in the calculators' hardware. In response to this discovery, TI unleashed a torrent of demand letters claiming that the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) required the hobbyists to take down commentary about and links to the keys. EFF represents three men who received such letters.

MAKE was also told to remove our post (here) - we did not... TI is a great company, I think once the folks who run show see what's going on they'll drop all of this...

24-hr Microchip Technology giveaway delta on Twitter - GO!

Tomorrow, Wednesday the 14th, at noon Pacific time, we will be giving away another prize bundle consisting of one Microchip Technology PIC10F Cap Touch Demo Board and one MCP1650 Multiple White LED Demo Board.

This time, the winner will be selected from among our Twitter followers. Follow us in the next 24 hours and you're automatically entered! If you're already following, send us an @reply containing the phrase "Microchip Technology giveaway delta" and your name will be in the hat, too.

The winner will be announced Wednesday afternoon through our Twitter feed.

Make: Halloween Contest 2009

Microchip Technology Inc. and MAKE have teamed up to present to you the Make: Halloween Contest 2009! Show us your embedded microcontroller Halloween projects and you could be chosen as a winner.

Steampunk art exhibit opens today in Oxford

Here's by way of a can-we-still-be-friends for those annoyed by yesterday's steampunk toilet post. The Museum of the History of Science at Oxford's Old Ashmolean building is hosting an exhibit of contemporary steampunk art curated by Art Donovan. It runs from today until February 21, 2010. If you're interested in steampunk and you're anywhere near the UK during that time it's probably worth checking out.

October 12, 2009

New hacker hang out in Seattle

This Thursday, Oct 15, Metrix Create: Space will open its doors in Seattle (at 623A Broadway East). It's hackerspace meets an indie coffee house. They'll have tools and equipment for building projects, 3D fabbing machines, classes on various types of high-tech makery, coffee and snacks. They even have a vending machine that'll dispense Sun Chips, M&Ms, Clif Bars, and Arduinos, breadboards, jumper wires, etc. How cool.

More:
All of our hackerspace coverage on Make: Online

October 9, 2009

Cash awards for amateur scientific apparatus designs

In an effort to advance the cause of citizen science, Michael Wood is offering a total of $400 in prize money to anyone who can produce reliable, low-cost (<$100US) DIY scientific apparatus capable of meeting one of four design objectives:

First, we require a device capable of producing liquid nitrogen at the rate of at least 100mL an hour.
Secondly, we require a vacuum system capable of pumping down a volume of at least 10cm x 10cm x 10cm to, and holding a vacuum at, 0.01 atm (with pressure measurement).
Thirdly, we require the ability to view objects of small scale with up to 1000x magnification.
Finally, we require a functioning oscilloscope, capable of measuring at least two signals at once, and with multimeter capability, accurate in all measurements to within 1%.

Read all the details at Michael's website.

72-hr Microchip Technology giveaway beta - GO!

Beginning at noon Pacific time today, October 9, and closing at noon Pacific time Monday, October 12, we will be accepting comments, below, describing the Halloween-y use (or uses) to which you would put the prize bundle consisting of one Microchip Technology PIC10F Cap Touch Demo Board and one MCP1650 Multiple White LED Demo Board.

We have a lot of these to give away, and in order to keep it interesting I'm going to change up the "prompt" for ideas each time. For this giveaway, the challenge is to use the prize bundle in a device to react to trick-or-treaters who try to take too much candy from a bowl. Be sure to include a valid e-mail address when you fill out the comment form!

The winner will be announced Monday afternoon at the bottom of the comment thread.

Make: Halloween Contest 2009

Microchip Technology Inc. and MAKE have teamed up to present to you the Make: Halloween Contest 2009! Show us your embedded microcontroller Halloween projects and you could be chosen as a winner.

October 7, 2009

24-hr Microchip Technology giveaway alpha - GO!

The sponsors of this year's Halloween contest have sent us a bundle of, er, bundles to give away in the weeks leading up to the 31st, and we're gonna start chucking 'em up in the air pretty fast now. Beginning at noon PST today, and closing at noon PST tomorrow, we will be accepting comments, below, describing the Halloween-y use (or uses) to which you would put the prize bundle consisting of one Microchip Technology PIC10F Cap Touch Demo Board and one MCP1650 Multiple White LED Demo Board. The winner will be announced tomorrow afternoon at the bottom of the comment thread.

Make: Halloween Contest 2009

Microchip Technology Inc. and MAKE have teamed up to present to you the Make: Halloween Contest 2009! Show us your embedded microcontroller Halloween projects and you could be chosen as a winner.

October 6, 2009

Fascination: Bruce Hood

Are you one of the nine out of ten adults who purportedly believes you can tell when someone is watching you from behind? If so, does it occur to you that this is a kind of supernatural belief? Dr. Bruce Hood, Director of the Bristol Cognitive Development Centre at the University of Bristol and the latest subject of our ongoing series of interviews with notable Makers, has some fascinating theories about how such "routine" supernatural beliefs come about as natural consequences of the normal psychology of child development. He also talks briefly about how his own childhood enthusiasm for the paranormal eventually came full circle in his mature scientific interest in the psychology of paranormal belief. Fascinating stuff.

Garrett Wade tool winners!

We've done the drawing for the winners of the tools that Garrett Wade so generously provided us with, namely a set of their Extra Heavy Duty Screwdrivers and one of their Push Drills.

The winners are:

Jonathan Fulton - Who gets the "tank screwdrivers"
Matt Kaake - Who wins the push drill

Congrats, fellas! Email sent. Please take some pics of projects you do with the tools and upload them to the MAKE Flickr pool. We'd love to see what you do with them.

We had over 270 responses to our drawing, and the question of what you would do with these tools. The comment thread is worth reading. It's a fascinating portrait of the diverse MAKE readership, the many different projects you're working on, or considering, and how you relate to your tools. There are even fond reminiscences of dad's and granddad's tools. All sorts of great stuff. As our editor and publisher Dale Dougherty said: "There are any number of tool makers out there who should read through these comments." It's definitely a decent peek at how a population of makers use and relate to their tools.

Thanks to everyone who participated, and thanks to the folks at Garrett Wade for these give-away goodies.

First Halloween Microchip giveaway happening now

Just a reminder that the first promotional giveaway from this year's Halloween contest sponsors is currently underway. First up for grabs is a PIC32 Starter Kit, shown above, with a retail value of $50, together with a PIC32 I/O Expansion Board, shown below, which sells for $72. To enter, leave a comment on the announcement page describing what cool Halloween-themed project you'd make with it. The winner will be announced this Friday, October 9.

Make: Halloween Contest 2009

Microchip Technology Inc. and MAKE have teamed up to present to you the Make: Halloween Contest 2009! Show us your embedded microcontroller Halloween projects and you could be chosen as a winner.

Posted by Sean Michael Ragan | Oct 6, 2009 03:00 AM
Announcements, Halloween, Toolbox | Permalink | Email Entry | Suggest a Site

October 5, 2009

Ladyada gets EFF Pioneer Award!

We're thrilled to announce that MAKE pal, and Advisory Board member, Limor Fried, aka Ladyada, has been honored with an 18th annual EFF Pioneer Award. Well-deserved, we say. Congrats, Limor!

Here's the little bio from the EFF announcement:

A pioneer in the field of open-source hardware and software hacking, Ladyada helps the general public engineer and adapt consumer electronics to better suit their needs. Her do-it-yourself ethic is founded on the idea that consumer electronics are best modified for use by customers, not corporations. Fried runs her own company, Adafruit Industries, which sells unique and fun do-it-yourself kits to help consumers make gadgets such as backup iPod chargers, green power monitors and programmable displays for bicycle wheels. She also hosts an Internet video program called "Citizen Engineer" that provides step-by-step instructions to help consumers build and alter their own home devices.

Congrats also to fellow recipients Carl Malamud (of public.resource.org) and Harri Hursti, creator of the "Hursti hack," which uncovered vulnerabilities in Diebold optical scan voting machines.

Join EFF for the 2009 Pioneer Awards fundraiser honoring: Limor "Ladyada" Fried, Harri Hursti and Carl Malamud

October 2, 2009

First Microchip Technology Halloween promo giveaway

The sponsors of this year's Halloween contest will be providing us with a number of product samples to give away throughout October. First up for grabs is a PIC32 Starter Kit, shown above, with a retail value of $50, together with a PIC32 I/O Expansion Board, shown below, which sells for $72. To enter, leave a comment describing what cool Halloween-themed project you'd make with it. The winner will be announced next Friday, October 9.

Make: Halloween Contest 2009

Microchip Technology Inc. and MAKE have teamed up to present to you the Make: Halloween Contest 2009! Show us your embedded microcontroller Halloween projects and you could be chosen as a winner.

RSS all over again

Yesterday, our online tech team, ever-vigilante to keep our site ship-shape, updated our RSS templates. Unfortunately, this caused RSS reader applications to think all the entries in the feed were new and downloaded them again. Oops.

We're sincerely sorry for any problems, inconvenience, or hair-pulling this may have caused. We'll try to make sure it doesn't happen again.

- The Mgt.

An older human ancestor than Lucy

Yesterday was a big day for anthropology, seeing the first publication of some 15 years worth of analysis of a 4.4 million-year-old fossil skeleton of Ardipithecus Ramidus first discovered by Gen Suwa, then a graduate student of Berkeley paleoanthropologist Tim White, in Ethiopia, in 1992. Science magazine has made all eleven papers freely available to anyone willing to register at their site.

The monthly Make: Newsletter is back

Just wanted to make sure that everybody knows that we've started publishing the monthly Make: Newsletter again. The new version will have some original columns, exclusive features, special deals on subscriptions and Maker Shed products, and provide a bit of a behind the scenes look at Maker Media.

One of the new columns introduced in this first, October, issue is the Maker's Dictionary, a growing glossary of technical terms, jargon, and slang of interest to makers. I'll be writing this and am very excited to be back in the jargon and slang business. I was a co-creator of the "Jargon Watch" column in Wired and edited it for 12 years. I've missed being a "professional" word nerd, although I've never stopped being an amateur one. Now I have a place to publish some of the terms I've been scribbling in notebooks for the past five years.

Here's the October, 2009 Make: Newsletter
Here's the form if you want to subscribe.

September 30, 2009

Free sample chips available from Microchip Technology

The sponsors of this year's Halloween contest are giving away microchips! To score some, go here, register, then choose the product line and device family you're interested in and click on the orange icons to order free samples. From their press release:

Hey Makers in the United States, UK, Germany, France and Italy... We have the exclusive on some great news from Microchip! Beginning Friday, October 2, you will be able to get free microcontroller, analog and memory samples from http://www.microchip.com/samples/. That's right, you don't even have to pay for shipping and handling! This is a great opportunity to get some parts for your embedded microcontroller project in the Make: Halloween Contest 2009.

Make: Halloween Contest 2009

Microchip Technology Inc. and MAKE have teamed up to present to you the Make: Halloween Contest 2009! Show us your embedded microcontroller Halloween projects and you could be chosen as a winner.

September 29, 2009

Designing a better world

Following closely on the heels of Maker Faire Rhode Island is more big excitement for the littlest state. A better world by design is a conference focused on applying technological solutions to the needs and challenges of society. This year promises to be very exciting, with an all star-speaker line-up including Jan Chipchase of Nokia, Maker Faire Africa organizer Emeka Okafor, Emily Pilloton of Project H Design, architect Teddy Cruz, and prosthetics engineer Stuart Harshbarger.

The conference also boasts a range of panels on various issues, hands-on creative workshops, and a design challenge hosted by Core77.

I dig the grassroots nature of this event. Students from Brown University and Rhode Island School of Design conceived of, organized, and run the conference. In their own words:

A Better World by Design brings a global community of innovators to Providence, Rhode Island, to reach across disciplines and unite under a common goal. Presenters share engaging stories, workshops teach creative skills, and discussions reframe perspectives. A Better World by Design is an immersive experience that deepens our understanding of the power of design, technology, and enterprise to reshape our communities and sustain our environment.

I am very much looking forward to the Maker Meetup during lunch on Friday, October 2, where I'll be sharing my experiences organizing Maker Faire Rhode Island with other Maker Faire organizers from California and Ghana. I'm also looking forward to moderating a panel on the Future of Transportation. It is going to be a fun, interesting, and educational weekend!

September 28, 2009

Sign up for the Make: Online Newsletter

Did you know that Make: Online has an electronic newsletter? Well, we used to. We haven't put an issue out in awhile, but we're going to start republishing it in October.

The newsletter is a great way to get more of an inside look at what's going on at Maker Media, and to get content you won't see on the site or in the magazine. We'll be launching several new columns, including "The Maker's Dictionary," a glossary of DIY technical terms, jargon, and slang that I'll be doing for each issue (I was the "Jargon Watch" editor at Wired for 12 years). We'll also run special newsletter offers and contests from time to time. And and even include some mini-projects.

If you're already signed up for the newsletter, you should see one in your inbox soon. If you haven't signed up, you can do so here.

Garrett Wade tool giveaway time!

GW_logo_newtagline[1].jpg

Ok, we admit it, we're tool junkies. Some people have it for gadgets, but who can resist a great-looking (and great-functioning) hand tool? Make: Online and Garrett Wade would like to give you some.

The Garrett Wade Push Drill is a special tool that drills holes by rotating as you push down on the handle. When you release, the handle springs back, clearing the hole. From the product description:

Remember the classic Yankee Push Drill that was once found in every shop and every jobsite tool bag? Made by Stanley for decades until they dropped it about 4 years ago, it was made of chrome-plated solid brass, and beautifully finished. Now we have had it custom-made for Garrett Wade in Taiwan.

Our own Sean Ragan describes the Extra Heavy Duty Screwdriver Set (which he reviewed in MAKE, Volume 19) as "military-grade awesome:"

These are full-tang, forged-steel, flat-blade screwdrivers that serve equally well in turning screws, prying stuff, and, you know, killing people who try to open your hatch. They're heavy and nigh indestructible, and they have an anomalously sleek, streamlined shape that feels great in your hand and is not bad looking in your boot, either.

And you can win one of these Garrett Wade tools! Just leave a comment on this post and tell us how these tools would help you complete a project you're working on, or one you've yet to start! Please be sure to include your email address in the comment form field (won't be published). All comments will be closed at noon PST on Wednesday, September 30, and the two lucky winners will be announced next week here on Make: Online. Good luck!

September 26, 2009

"Ask an engineer chat" tonight, 10pm ET, w/ special guests

Adafruit's weekly "Ask an engineer chat" is tonight, 9/26/2009, 10pm ET. Tonight, Phil and Limor will be joined by special guests, the folks from Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories and MakerBot Industries. They'll be experimenting with doing live video, chat, and mobile again.

"Ask an engineer chat" tonight 9/26/2009 - 10pm ET with special guests EMSL and Makerbot