RSS
Make: Online
Maker Shed kiosks at Fry's
We're ecstatic about the fact that we now have Maker Shed kiosks, with magazines, books, and electronics kits, in several California Fry's stores. We think this is big news, not only for Maker Media, but for all indie makers -- a major retail chain is now giving small kit-makers this level of exposure. And, we think it's particularly cool that we designed and built these kiosks in-house, and even personally delivered them to the stores! What other publisher could claim that?
Here, Assoc. Publisher and General Manager of Maker retail, Dan Woods explains more:
Maker Shed kiosks are now installed in four of Fry's largest superstores. Each kiosk merchandises current and back issues of MAKE, Make: Project books, and kits, with an emphasis on maker-made kits produced by indie makers like Limor Fried's MintyBoost, Mitch Altman's Brain Machine, Ken Murphy's Blinky Bugs, Dale Wheat's Tiny Cylon and Wee Blinky kits, and Amy Parness and Ariel Churi's DIY Design Electronics kits. This indie maker angle was a really important selling point to Fry's. The kiosk's themselves are all-MAKE in their design and construction. The challenge was to create a merchandising/branding kiosk that could show off maker-made kits, as well as our books and magazines, all in a 2' X 2' footprint. The design we came up with incorporates the Maker Faire workbench framing as the internal structure, refurbished fence boards from West Sonoma, and some nicely weathered corrugated shed aluminum that was locally salvaged. The result is a nice combination of weathered shed and repurposed industrial tubing. They're uniquely MAKE, and Fry's is ecstatic. In fact, they were even trucked down and setup by Heather (Harmon-Cochran) and Rob (Bullington) in one day.
These are the stores that currently have kiosks. (San Diego will be set up by Fry's staff next week)
San Diego, CA
9825 Stonecrest Boulevard
(858) 514-4500
San Jose, CA
550 E. Brokaw Road
(408) 487-1000
Fremont, CA
43800 Osgood Road
(510) 252-5300
Sunnyvale, CA
1077 East Arques Avenue
(408) 617-1300
Posted by Gareth Branwyn | 1:01 PM in Maker Shed Store, Makers | | Discuss (0)
New hackerspace in Chicagoland: Workshop 88
Good news for those in Chicagoland! Planning is underway to form Workshop 88, a hackerspace in the west suburbs of Chicago. Here's your chance to get in on the ground floor!
Read More
Mint tin electronics dev kit packs the essentials
From the MAKE Flickr pool Once you've caught the 'electronics bug', spending time away from the workbench/lab can seem an unpleasant prospect. Luckily, one can carry on learning and experimenting with a minimal amount of hardware. Nick shares his...
Read More
Olympus BioScapes competition winners
Olympus BioScapes competition winners, amazing photos!...
Read More
Mac mailbox
Mac mailbox from Te Atatu in Auckland......
Read More
LHC tweets its first circulating beam of 2009
LHC tweets its first circulating beam of 2009, good luck finding the Higgs gang. Photos here......
Read More
Building a shop presence notification system
As a member of Hack Pittsburgh, our local hackerspace, one thing I've often wondered is if anyone else is there. Well, so did Andy Leer and Marty McGuire, so they decided to build a shop presence notification system.
Read More
Vacuum tube prototyping board
Bruce Heran made this prototyping board for his tube projects. He writes: This is a project that I made to take care of an ever increasing need to prototype vacuum tube (valve) circuits. As you can see from the...
Read More
Free LED Cookbook from TI
By way of Andrew Q Righter of HacDC comes word of this free PDF from Texas Instruments, a 41-page "cookbook" of circuit designs and application notes for TI's LED-related components. [Thanks, Andrew!] LED Reference Design Cookbook [PDF]...
Read More
How-To: Open source intervalometer for Canon, Nikon cameras
Instructables user peterdr has put together a really excellent tutorial on how to build his CT-1 open-source hardware intervalometer for Canon and Nikon digital cameras. There's more info about the project at his personal website, and a parts kit is for sale on Amazon.com.
Read More
PYMT, a multi-touch library for Python
Interested in building programs with fancy multi-touch interfaces? Speak Python? Well, in that case you might want to have a look at PYMT.
Read More
Make: Projects - Pneumatic trough, part II
Last week I wrote about how to construct a simple sheet metal "bridge," which, in combination with an ice cube bucket and a jelly jar, makes an effective pneumatic trough for collecting gas samples over water. This week I'm going to show you how to use this apparatus to generate and collect pure oxygen, and how to use that oxygen to observe the brilliant blue flame of sulfur oxidation.
Read More
Cardboard tube battle
My local library picked up on the festive trend of Cardboard Tube Fighting.
The Boston Globe covered the preparations:
The group discovered cardboard tube fighting last summer in time to incorporate a bit of it into a presentation on Greek mythology at a reading program party.
The weapons are cylindrical pieces of thick cardboard about 4 feet long. The appeal, explains young-adult librarian Ellen Snoeyenbos: "It's totally ridiculous.''
As word of mock combat with reliably harmless weaponry spread among the town's youthful warriors, Snoeyenbos and the Bookmarks seized on the fund-raiser as a chance to exploit their discovery of the fighting fad made popular by YouTube.
Saturday's event will feature one-on-one tournaments, guild-on-guild skirmishes (up to 10 fighters per team), "and an all-out battle for possession of the Royal Crown,'' according to the club.
Read More
Make: Holiday Gift Guide 2009: Gifts for dads
There's a funny thing about dads' toys. Very often, kids borrow dad's supposedly grown-up toys and dad plays with toys designed for a much younger demographic. With that in mind, we present the Gifts for Dads list, filled with stuff that may appeal to more than one generation in your household.
Read More
LEGO-sized hole punch by MUJI
Paper craft meets LEGO with MUJI's quad hole punch and kits, available November 27th at MUJI Japan. [via CRAFT]...
Read More
Cross multi-tool
Dutch designer Michiel Cornelissen sells these cruciform screwdrivers, which are laser-sintered stainless steel. There's a flat-blade, a Phillips head, and an IKEA-sized hex bit. [via Dude Craft]
Read More
How PCBs are routed
One hour of PCB routing with EAGLE, compressed to seven minutes, over at adafruit....
Read More
NEC announces universal translator … sorta, kinda
NEC announced what could be an early, real-life version of the universal translator -NEC said the Tele Scouter was intended to be a business tool that could aid sales staff who would have information about a client's buying history...
Read More
Arcade button MIDI controller kit
DJTechTools' upcoming solder-free MIDI controller kit provides users with 16 arcade button triggers + LEDs and will apparently be released as an open source product at launch - • Release Date: November 30th • Price: Aprox $125 for the...
Read More
