Kickstarter is a micro-investing website where you can post a project and ask the online world (and your friends and family) for funding. The project you post has to be a “doing” project. Kickstarter doesn’t accept “fund my life” fundraisers. Some of the projects asking for funding are Product Design projects. This is great because [...]

I have only seen the Pianococktail once, at an ITP student show (2008) at NYU, in New York City. It is a piano whose keys actuate solenoids that open valves to bottles containing drink mixtures, Red Bull, alcohol and soda. Whatever song you play will mix its own special drink. I’ve always thought this was [...]

This past weekend Ollie and I exhibited at Maker Faire in San Francisco. Many of my favorite organizations were there, Exploratorium, Spark Fun, Digikey, Lego, Etsy, Instructables, Google, NASA (!!!)…. and many smaller individuals who haven’t yet grown into largeish organizations, MaceTech, Ira Sherman (chastity belts!!!), Sensebridge, Mark Lottor. Setup was very easy- we shipped [...]

Last week I worked at the CLEO conference in Baltimore, Maryland. It was a fun week- it was nice and sunny, I got a stylee ride both ways (one way in Diesel Jetta & the other in Nissan Hybrid) and ate some really good seafood. The CLEO conference is a trade show and conference about [...]

I decided to meet a friend tonight at Bull and Buddha in Poughkeepsie, NY. Look at these gorgeous lamps! YUMMY Menu!! And I love the Big Buddha behind the bar.

Hell yeah!

I just found out that I am exhibiting at the Bay Area Maker Faire! I applied after the deadline and was accepted as a last-minute entry. So I will make something new to show and also bring a couple of 2010 pieces. The new thing that I am conceptualizing has something to do with software-less [...]

Hine Mizushima does some great original work…and this one cracked me up.

I just saw this video of Keepon, a robot designed to help autistic children engage socially. It looks like an old style push button toy, but has 2 cameras (!!) in its head and a microphone in its nose. Awesome bonus: this video (@ 1:25) briefly shows off the mechanics that make Keepon interact. The [...]

My new friend Stephanie Alarcon coined the word Make-cation earlier today. Check out her blog, it rocks! The Make-cation is the vacation that you take from your regular life in order to make stuff! Making stuff can take a long time…. from thinking it up, to researching it, to screwing it up, to redoing it, [...]

Yesterday, the open source hardware logo designed by Macklin Chaffee was selected. Over 9000 people voted! From the OSHW definition, the principle is “Open source hardware is hardware whose design is made publicly available so that anyone can study, modify, distribute, make, and sell the design or hardware based on that design.” Yessssssss! Collaboration rocks [...]

Stephen Shaheen designed this bench made from Metrocards on a steel frame. Mr. Shaheen, I salute your imagination!

I ran across this super cool design today while looking at power strips. The folding plug from the UK based Made in M!nd folds to be 0.393″ thin! It will be released sometime this year with a product line designed around it … maybe some folding phone chargers?

An easy way to calculate the power needed to drive the speaker uses Paverage = VRMS * IRMS, or Paverage = Power (Watts) = Voltage squared/ Resistance (Ohms). This uses only the resistive part of the impedance. Watts RMS actually doesn’t exist. The voltage in the formula refers to RMS Voltage (explained below), but the [...]

I’ve never really thought too much about getting sound out into the world. Everything just…works. I have an old Samsung mp3 player, it plays music through speakers into my ear. I can adjust the volume easily. Same for my beloved Droid phone. It outputs both music and voices. Last summer I built something that ran [...]