Mass Geek

Easy access to detailed information and pro-quality tools means nearly anyone can become expert in nearly anything. The future belongs to these Mass Geeks: global communities joined by obsessive interest, demanding highly tailored experiences.

• 
  May 20, 2013

  MakerBot - Autodesk Edition

  Autodesk is putting serious effort these days into becoming the go-to software company for the DIY set, first with its push to make 3D CAD more accessible to the casual user, and now with a strategic partnership with MakerBot. Tinkers and Makers who want to start designing and building their own gadgets now have the option of buying an “official” Autodesk version of the Replicator 2, MakerBot’s premier 3D printer. It ships with a spool of plastic for printing, a copy of Autodesk’s 123D software, and access to thousands of models, ready to print. In the world of home fabrication, technology doesn’t get more plug-and-play than this.

  Read Make’s announcement of the partnership, and read the details at 123D.

• 
  May 13, 2013

  A Little Drone of Your Very Own

  A week ago, Harvard researchers announced the flight of the world’s smallest drone. The carbon-fiber Robo-fly weighs a tenth of a gram and can precisely mimic a real insect’s flight with piezoelectric “muscles” beating translucent wings 120 times a second. If the idea of a tiny flying drone sounds tempting, you’re in luck: Crazyflie’s Nano Quadcopter is available as an attractively-priced DIY kit. At 19 grams and about the size of the palm of your hand, the ‘copter’s four horizontal props allow wireless hovering, dives and landing in response to input from a remote controller (ie, an Android phone or hacked Playstation handset). The Robo-fly is still tethered, at the moment, due to its voltage demands, and doubtless cost a bit more than $149…

  Seeedstudio has more on the Quadcopter; read about the Robo-fly on Harvard’s Robobees project page.

• 
  May 06, 2013

  Falcon-Cam for Everyone

  An enthusiast called Dr. Hodie is taking advantage of increasingly tiny, inexpensive cameras to produce videos from a falcon’s eye-view. The falcon in question is Dora, a trained Peales/Anatum Peregrine, and one of the world’s fastest animals–suffice to say the results are absolutely worth watching. It’s a remarkable adaptation of available technology: the camera, power source, and flash storage are fitted into a plastic enclosure about the size of a electronic car-key fob, and harnessed so as not to impede Dora as she hunts, diving to catch other birds in mid-air at speeds over 200 mph.

  Watch the videos at Youtube, or look into the cameras being used at Chuck Lohr’s website.

• 
  April 29, 2013

  Repairing Your Own Material World

  The next time something in your home breaks, you’ve got an opportunity. You could get frustrated, and trash the offending item, or you could get to know that vacuum a little bit better. Tinkering not in your repertoire? Help awaits, at least in Brooklyn and Wuppertal, at The Fixers Collective and hackerspace /dev/tal. Both groups provide tools and expertise to people interested in taking a stab at fixing their own appliances. Did we mention this is free? Like-minded Meetup groups and DIY collectives exist in many other cities, as well, so before kicking that balky toaster or non-functioning fan to the curb, look into fixing it yourself. Aside from the fascinating people you’re likely to meet, you just might learn something.

  Learn more about /dev/tal and The Fixers Collective, or check for a DIY Meetup near you.

• 
  April 22, 2013

  Crowdsourcing Justice?

  Armchair quarterbacking may not be losing its appeal, but in the modern era of fast news cycles and ubiquitous video, it’s being joined by a growing interest in armchair detective work. In the wake of Boston’s Marathon bombings, thousands or even millions of interested onlookers poured their efforts into scrutinizing cellphone and security cam footage, forming discussion groups and sub-Reddits to compare theories and marked up photographs. While it’s unlikely that this crowdsourced sleuthing sped up the formal investigation, it does point to a possible future in which improved visual tools enable citizen observers to crack a case before the feds do.

  Core77 has some thoughts on technology’s role in this trend, and Gawker examines the online communities that come with it.

• 
  April 15, 2013

  FFF versus CNC, You Say?

  3Ders.org has compiled a database of 3D printers, ranging from $189 to over $24k in price. So what, you say: Google’s Shopping tab lets me do that, too. Here’s the difference: 3Ders’ detailed information lets you compare models by specs like “build envelope,” which corresponds to how large an object the printer can produce, as well as delivery lead time, which can vary widely. Different modes of production, from the additive FFF (fused filament fabrication) to subtractive CNC (computer numeric controlled) milling are included, as well as the nation of origin for each machine. Core77 poses an interesting question, mulling this list over: given the industry’s explosive growth, lately, will it be shorter or longer, in a year’s time?

  Read more at Core77, or look into the database itself.

• 
  April 08, 2013

  Reasonably Polite Seattlites are Fixing Your Bike Lanes

  If you want a better, safer bike lane, you could write a letter to your city’s Department of Transportation. Or, if you’re like the charmingly-named activist group Reasonably Polite Seattlites, you could just make the improvements yourself. For a few hundred dollars, this small group of Seattle transportation advocates bought and installed a series of reflective bollards between a particularly busy, high-speed street and the bike lane next to it, using the same materials the city might have used in an official project. Though technically illegal, the bollards are presented as both a prototype and a protest, in which the group hopes to show not just how effective the improvement could be, but how easy — two points they make clear in the politely-worded letter they sent to Seattle’s DOT just after installation was complete.

  See the project and read the polite exchange of emails that followed at Seattle Bike Blog.

• 
  April 01, 2013

  Tools? Check. Materials? Check. WordPress Site? Check.

  Architect Graham Hill designed and built his LifeEdited apartment to show how un-cramped a 420 square-foot studio can feel. The studio is lovely, but what’s more interesting is how supremely well-documented the project has been. It seems lately whenever anyone ambitious – however tech-savvy – starts a project, cracking open a shiny new blog to document the process publicly has become as fundamental as a trip to the hardware store. Mr. Hill recently posted numerous images and explicit technical instructions explaining Voltaic’s installation of solar cells on his window ledge, which charge batteries to power the apartment’s low-voltage lighting system.

  Bask in this high-tech DIY’s well-produced collateral at LifeEdited, or find out more about the lights at Voltaic Systems.

• 
  March 25, 2013

  Geek Out Now, Pay Later

  App Academy isn’t the first school designed to turn interested students into highly employable programmers, but it is the first to do it for free. The San Francisco-based school has created an unusual and potentially lucrative payment scheme for its 9-week, 90-hour-a-week boot camp for novice coders, in which they demand no payment upfront, but take 15% of graduates’ first year earnings if they get hired. The high demand for qualified programmers makes this approach less risky than it sounds — a typical coder makes around $80,000 right out of the gate — and may point to an especially DIY-friendly funding model for other training programs.

  Wired has the story, and App Academy’s website has the details.

  Image (cc) via Flickr user meredith_nutting.

• 
  March 18, 2013

  The Glowing Guitar That Kickstarter Didn’t Want

  NeckFX is a guitar neck that attaches to any common electric guitar body, then lights up in a rainbow of colors as you play. Visually, it’s lovely; on stage, it’s electrified audiences; but on Kickstarter, it fell flat, failing to earn the funding its creators needed to produce it at scale. In a fascinating post-mortem interview, Make Magazine asks NeckFX’s designer about the true potential of crowdfunding, and gets some surprising answers. Promotion prior to a campaign has become a crucial element in successful Kickstarting, it turns out, meaning that financially successful Mass Geeks may have to add Marketing and Communications to their growing roster of necessary skills.

  Read the interview, and see NeckFX in action, at Make.

• 
  March 11, 2013

  Donkey Kong, the Way My Kid Likes It

  One of the great things about hackable technology is that you don’t have to put up with aspects of it that annoy you. Take Donkey Kong, the classic ‘80s Nintendo video game that brought Mario to the gaming world: it’s a great introduction to video games for a kid, but if you’re a young girl, you might wonder why the hero has to be male while the female lead sits there, waiting to be rescued. If your dad has a background in game design, and access to a program called Tile Layer Pro, that can be fixed. Mike Mika, the dad in question, used the software to tweak a copy of Donkey Kong at his daughter’s request. The result, called The Pauline Version, has gained widespread attention, sparking intense conversations about the way pop culture enforces gender roles, and giving his daughter the chance to play as a girl, and let Mario see what it’s like to be rescued for a change.

  Read Mika’s guest article at Wired, and watch a video of The Pauline Edition at YouTube.

• 
  March 04, 2013

  Vegetables as MIDI controllers: The Magic of Arduino

  After Eric Rosenbaum and Jay Silver, founders of Makey Makey, realized their Kickstarter dreams recently, they challenged all the happy new owners of their Arduino-based controller to “make something amazing”. Makey Makey allows anything that conducts even a tiny amount of electricity to send instructions to a computer, similar to those it receives from a keyboard or mouse. Even fruits and vegetables can be pressed into service: DJ J. Viewz used grapes, eggplants, carrots and mushrooms as the ‘buttons’ of a MIDI (musical instrument digital interface) board, cueing samples to remix Massive Attack’s “Teardrop.” His short making-of video is remarkably endearing… this is an illustration of the human side of high tech toys.

  The Fox is Black has more on the project.
  Learn about Makey Makey at their site.

• 
  February 25, 2013

  Didn’t Know You Needed: Bespoke Punctuation

  Everyone with a computer has the tools necessary to create their own punctuation; the rarified domain of font designers has been democratized like so much else, lately. Our culture-wide shared fascination with condensed digital communication means lots of people might appreciate your creations, too: Mike Trapp of College Humor has designed a new set of marks, including the “andorpersand,” “sarcasticies,” and “sinceriod,” which are things we’ve all wished for in text messages past, even without realizing it.

  Read about proper usage and download your own punctuation set at College Humor.

• 
  February 18, 2013

  Take Me Out To The Ballgame--In Your Browser

  Nothing beats a live sporting event. The roar of the crowd, the smell of the hot dogs, the history of a place like Madison Square Garden. Only problem is, attending games across the country isn’t exactly feasible. Google is stepping up to bring at least some of these experiences to bigger audiences by adding detailed ‘Street View’ tours of stadium interiors to the ever-growing Google Maps. First up is Lucas Oil Stadium, home of the NFL’s Indianapolis Colts.

  Read more over at The Verge and then virtually march out of the tunnel at Google Maps.

• 
  February 11, 2013

  Little Distillers Get Big

  Small-scale distillers have followed craft breweries and tiny wineries in the push to diversify the adult beverage market, but a recent announcement by Brooklyn-based Kings County Distillery suggests there’s real growth potential in the field. In New York state, the shift began with a 2007 law that loosened restrictions on hard liquor production and sales, and is now entering a new phase in which an established small producer like Kings County has the market and financing to expand production to 30 gallons a day. It’s not quite Jim Beam levels, but for an industry that was in its DIY infancy just a few years ago, that’s a remarkable level of growth.

  Read more about Kings County and the micro-distilling boom in the New York Times.

• 
  February 04, 2013

  Hey Internet, What Should I Say Next?

  If you’re the sort who gets nervous on first dates, wouldn’t it be nice to have a friend there to give you ideas on what to say? What about a few hundred friends? For artist and programmer Lauren McCarthy, a combination of curiosity, social anxiety and readily available tools (especially Amazon’s “Mechanical Turk” crowdsourcing service) have made it a reality. Lauren arranged to have an army of remote advisers listen in to her dates via smartphone, and paid them around 25 cents a piece to offer opinions on how the date was going, and suggestions on what to say next. Surprisingly, many of the guys sitting across from her had no clue what she was up to until she clued them in, and yes, it does seem to have helped the conversation go more smoothly. A possible app is in the works.

  Read more about Lauren’s unique dating strategy at Fast Company.

• 
  January 28, 2013

  It Sees You When You’re Sleeping

  It’s just an experimental prototype, but a tracking system developed at the University of Washington called the Lullaby may be pointing toward the future of sleep analysis. Unlike popular existing trackers, such as Fitbit, the Lullaby goes beyond accelerometers and temperature sensors by augmenting them with an IR camera and environmental measurements, so that it not only knows if your sleep is disrupted, but what you look like when it happens, and what’s happening in the room to instigate it. Combining all this data, Lullaby’s testers suggest the software they’ve written can help insomniacs pinpoint the sources of their trouble. More intriguing is how willing subjects are to allow themselves to be so surveilled, even in the middle of the night.

  Read more about Lullaby at MIT Technology Review.

  Napping Lego-man photo (cc) by Flickr user solsken

• 
  January 22, 2013

  Creative Reuse Gets a Nod From 3M

  Cardboard boxes have always been one of the most accessible targets for re-use, and now 3M wants to make it even easier. Rather than create a new kind of box, the manufacturing giant has focused its efforts on helping used boxes to live longer lives, with a kit of tools for reinforcing, re-labeling and re-sealing them. The tools themselves aren’t all that innovative, but the idea of a major manufacturer supporting this kind of repair process in a formal way certainly is.

  Core77 has a thorough review.

• 
  January 14, 2013

  A Light of Free Information Goes Out

  Every movement has its heroes, and the information sharing movement just lost one of the brightest. The name Aaron Swartz may not ring a bell to casual browsers, but his efforts and advocacy impact anyone who’s ever sought information online — especially the Mass Geeks out there who’ve come to rely on unimpeded access to high-level knowledge that was once confined to professionals and academics. Swartz’s work laid the foundation for modern day information-sharing stalwarts like RSS and Reddit, and the online protests that helped stop the SOPA act wouldn’t have thrived without his leadership. The details of his legal troubles and shocking death have been a subject of intense coverage over the last few days, but they’re also a chance to reflect on the role that freedom of information has had in the democratization of making, and the need for smart, passionate individuals to keep it free.

  The Economist and NYTimes obituaries discuss Swartz’s work, tragic demise, and the future of online information activism.

• 
  January 07, 2013

  Why Recycling Sucks

  Garth Johnson thinks you should recycle less. The founder of the long-running Extreme Craft blog (whose yarn-bomb logo is shown here) recently went on stage in front of audience and camera at a TEDx event in Eureka, California, to argue that upcycling makes a lot more sense. An honest accounting of how inefficient recycling can be makes up part of the argument, but Johnson—in his blog and his talk—suggests that the thoughtful repurposing of worn out or obsolete objects is a basic human tendency, that we’d all be better off embracing.

  Read a quick summary of Garth’s talk at Core77, watch the TEDx talk, and browse through Extreme Craft for some upcycling inspiration.

• 
  December 17, 2012

  Meet Up to Hack Meat Up

  The Hackathon has become a familiar concept, where groups of developers, hackers and coders get together for 24, 48 or 72 hours with the goal of solving a problem. At the end, sleepless participants present what they’ve created. Hackathons have mostly been digitally focused—usually on new video games, security ideas, web solutions etc. Facebook often holds internal Hackathons to create new features for the site. But what would happen if a Hackathon was focused on something outside the digital realm, say meat? Food enthusiasts, meat producers and butchers got together in New York City recently for the Hack//Meat event.

  Click over to Ars Technica to see the solutions Hack//Meat created and how well the Hackathon model translated to a new field.

  Photo (cc) by Mike Lee, via Flickr user Food Tech Connect.

• 
  December 10, 2012

  Nike Brings Startups Into the Fold

  Nike, with its phenomenally successful Nike+ and FuelBand digital fitness devices, has a knack for integrating technology with athleticism, and now they’re poised to share that expertise with a few lucky partners. The Nike Accelerator is a unique type of startup incubator that provides funding, mentorship and tech support for small companies looking to build apps and products that work with existing Nike technology. Headquartered in downtown Portland, 10 miles from Nike’s headquarters, the program will run through the first half of 2013.

  Read Tech Review’s description of the program, and visit the official Nike Accelerator site.

• 
  December 03, 2012

  The Fixer’s Manifesto

  Fixing things is a movement these days, and movements have manifestos — several of them, in fact. In the wake of Make Magazine’s “Maker’s Bill of Rights” (which we featured in this blog here last year), a UK company is taking its own stab, with The Fixer’s Manifesto. Sugru is a formable rubber compound for fixing anything from blown-out sneakers to electronic gadgets, and the company that makes it has created an open source document singing the praises of maintenance and repairability. Getting people excited about repair is certainly in the interest of their business, but the Manifesto’s 12 ideas are written with enough passion and vividness to win over all but the most jaded DIYer.

  Read the full text at Sugru.com.

• 
  November 26, 2012

  Taking the Middle Path on Crowdsourced Design

  Crowdsourced design has gotten a lot of negative press over the last five years, called out by critics for devaluing the role of the designer, and often sacrificing high quality results for a brief, gimmicky appeal at social notoriety. So it was with some trepidation that Bruce Mau Design decided to open up the design process for an upcoming Swedish music festival’s identity to the public. But as a recent article discovers, input from the public can be a good thing if managed right. By asking music fans to comment and riff on early concepts, and valuing the quality of their responses over the volume, the studio’s managed a rare crowdsourcing success, as effective at building buzz as it’s been at producing great work.

  See how the UXU logo project got crowdsourcing right, at FastCoDesign.

• 
  November 19, 2012

  A Room With a Side of Local Knowledge

  AirBnB’s quest to revolutionize how we go on vacation has taken another step, with the launch of its new Neighborhoods feature. Recognizing that AirBnB clientele tend to seek out less touristed parts of town when they visit major cities, the site has compiled neighborhood-specific recommendations and descriptions from users, and combined them with disarmingly candid images by local photographers. The result is a series of pages that capture the flavor of dozens of different neighborhoods in popular destinations like San Francisco, New York and Berlin, in the hopes of drawing visitors further afield, and giving them an experience no Hilton or Marriott could match.

  Read TechCrunch announcement of the new feature, and browse the AirBnB page for one of our favorite Brooklyn neighborhoods, Prospect Heights.

• 
  November 13, 2012

  Chris Anderson Leaves WIRED to “Spend More Time With His Robots”

  If there has to be a single event signalling the shift toward DIY as a major tech movement, Chris Anderson’s departure from WIRED may just be it. After nearly 12 years as editor in chief of the prominent tech/business/culture magazine, Anderson is stepping down to become CEO of 3D Robotics, an online purveyor of parts and systems for building aerial drones. It’s worth remembering that, even ten years ago, leaving a renowned publication to run a geek-oriented retail site would’ve been unthinkable. But as maker culture goes global, and is broadly embraced as an expression of independence and creativity, the move feels strangely inevitable.

  Read WIRED’s official announcement, and browse some of the goodies at 3D Robotics’ DIY Drones store.

• 
  November 05, 2012

  After Sandy, Bringing Power to the People

  While FEMA and local government agencies scrambled to get major services back online in America’s east coast cities, local residents and small businesses have taken the serious task of recharging everyone’s gadgets into their own hands. An Atlantic Cities article documents how bars and convenience stores with access to power (through luck or generator) are offering free charging to neighbors, and ponders whether access to low-volume power is becoming a basic human right. In the meantime, a local bike advocacy group in lower Manhattan earned some social capital by setting up a charging station of their own, with a twist: everyone who wants electricity for their device has to pedal the bike that generates it.

  Read the Atlantic Cities’ discussion of public charging—and recent efforts to privatize it—and check out more photos of the bike-based system at BikePortland.

• 
  October 29, 2012

  A Platform for DIY Everything

  One of the big downsides of Doing It Yourself is that everyone does things differently. An initiative called Open Structures aims to modify that a little, by creating an online repository of simple basic parts, connectors and structural elements that can be copied and combined to create everything from hard-sided luggage to coffee makers. A recent exhibition of Open Structures’ gadgets at the Istanbul Design Biennial shows a wonderland of potential, as contributing designers used various parts from the OS toolkit to design furniture, toys, and even a vacuum cleaner built from an old Thermos.

  Designboom has a great gallery of the show, and the Open Structures website shows plenty of other possibilities.

• 
  October 22, 2012

  Genome Sequenced, Crisis Averted

  While it’s not exactly DIY, recent developments in genome sequencing technology is bringing the once sci-fi level process into the lives of everyday people — especially everyday people with newborns suffering from life-threatening diseases. Commercially available devices like the Illumina HiSeq 2500 can sequence an infant’s entire genome in less than two days, often revealing birth defects at the gene level that would otherwise take months to diagnose, and allowing accurate treatment much earlier. At $13,500, the procedure can be a lifesaving bargain, made all the more remarkable by the fact that it wasn’t even a possibility just a few years ago.

  Read how researchers in Kansas are finding powerful uses for this once academic process at MIT Technology Review.

• 
  October 15, 2012

  We Got So Mad That We Started a Tumblr

  Crowdsourced criticism entered a new era with the arrival of Tumblr, with the finest current example probably being “The Amazing iOS6 Maps.” Apple has already publicly apologized for the shortcomings in its new mobile mapping application, but the Tumblr documenting its many missing features and “melting” landscapes is still up, with submissions from irritated users all over the world. A recent Design Observer article puts the blog in a larger context of “crowdcrit”: the growing tendency for annoyed users to voice their concerns through openly accessible and highly visible forums like blogs, comment boards and DIY videos, among others.

  Read the article , and check out the blog.

• 
  October 08, 2012

  Strangers in Hackerspace

  If DARPA funds a hackerspace, can it still produce hackers? That’s a question being asked by the growing tech community, and by an article in last week’s New York Times that profiles several such facilities that have recently received large grants from the Department of Defense. The DOD’s reasoning is solid: many of the “cutting edge ideas in cybersecurity” have come from informal groups that hackerspaces foster, so it’s in their interest to cultivate them. It’s hard to think of an organization more antithetical to the hacker ethic than the military, though, and that’s where the controversy starts.

  The New York Times has the story.

• 
  October 08, 2012

  What if 3D Printing is Bad for the Planet?

  In all the breathless talk about the rise of DIY and Maker culture over the past few years, it generally goes without saying that this is a good thing for sustainability. After all, what could be better for the environment than people making things themselves again? As it turns out, one of the most celebrated DIY technologies—3D printing—has plenty of environmental downsides. In a balanced and well-researched article, Autodesk “Sustainability Maker Advocate” Ben Chapman breaks down 3D printing’s implications for the planet, pointing out the wasted material inherent to the process, but also argues for its huge potential in repairing products that might otherwise be thrown out. The net impact is up for debate, but honest assessments like this one are a big step in improving the final outcome.

  Read the whole article at Autodesk’s Sustainability Workshop blog.

• 
  October 01, 2012

  Building the $4000 Supercomputer

  A small team of enterprising engineers at Britain’s University of Southampton have conquered a new frontier in open source manufacturing: they’ve built their own supercomputer, by wiring together an array of $35 Raspberry Pi microcomputers. The explicitly hackable units are a recent addition to the DIY/Maker scene, released earlier this year (and blogged here on Mass Geek) as a way to get interested kids more access to hardware and software design. Together with the requisite connectors, power supplies and a rack structure made out of Legos, the entire parallel processing system cost around $4000 — not bad for a device that was the exclusive domain of universities and the military less than a decade ago.

  Read the details at Wired.

• 
  September 24, 2012

  The Shuttles of San Francisco

  This map isn’t depicting a public transit system — it’s showing a private one. In a curious switch of live/work patterns, the startups and tech giants of Silicon Valley are largely populated by young workers who prefer to live in the city, prompting employers like Google and Facebook to create their own networks of comfortable, wi-fi enabled shuttle buses to get everyone to work on time. A recent art/analysis project by local design studio Stamen is giving visible form to the formerly hidden systems, revealing a remarkable level of complexity and volume: together, the major corporate shuttles carry 25% as many passengers as the Caltrain regional rail system. The ability of tech companies to replicate a public transit system is impressive enough, but the way a handful of designers can use freely available resources to accurately map that system puts it solidly in Mass Geek territory.

  Learn how Stamen uncovered the Shuttles of San Francisco.

• 
  September 17, 2012

  Feedback Farms

  When geeks get into gardening, the results are both encouraging and bizarre. Feedback Farms is a project by four tech-friendly collaborators that aims to turn vacant lots in Brooklyn into food-producing gardens. The modern twist is an abundance of soil and plant sensors that allows the gardeners to monitor conditions remotely, in the hopes of improving yields with less of the intense effort and time investment required by traditional gardening.

  See a brief slide show at Wired, and click over to the Feedback Farms official site for more info.

• 
  September 10, 2012

  The Life and Times of Super Mario

  Mario has likely been in more video games than anyone else, from early Nintendo Game-N-Watch handheld games to Mario Teaches Typing to the recent Super Mario Galaxy 2. Nintendo probably never meant for the high-jumping plumber to have a chronologically-logical life, and almost certainly never created any type of cohesive continuity between the games, but several fans have done extensive research to try to create a timeline of all games in which Mario appears. To do this, they’ve scoured the internet for manuals, box art, and logic that only makes sense in the Mushroom Kingdom. If you’ve ever wondered when Mario went to medical school or why his relationship with Donkey Kong is so complicated, well finally your your questions can be answered.

  Click over to Kotaku to read about the surprisingly in-depth process behind this noble and important pursuit.

• 
  September 04, 2012

  DIY: The Final Frontier

  Rocketry is so last century. For the cutting-edge maker, picosatellites are the way to go. As more and more interested amateurs discover that it’s actually possible to put an object into low earth orbit all by themselves, the DIY community is assembling the tools and resources to make it easier. There’s even an instruction book, recently released by Make Magazine publisher O’Reilly Media. For just US$4.99 ($2.99 for the eBook), space enthusiasts can learn how to defend their homebrew satellite from vacuum, radiation and excessive g-forces, and even convert a centrifuge to test its performance before launch.

  Buy your own copy of Surviving Orbit the DIY Way at O’Reilly Media.

• 
  August 27, 2012

  A Better Type of Graph

  Infographics are all over these days, used to explain everything from eating habits to political leanings. Unfortunately, the enthusiasm of new infographics makers isn’t always matched by their ability. Designer Travis Kochel is aiming to level the field a little with the introduction of FF Chartwell, a font that automatically turns numbers into charts and graphs within an existing layout program like InDesign. It’s an unusual approach that strips chartmaking down to a simple type-and-convert process, through the clever manipulation of ligature tables that digital fonts already rely on. At $125 for the full package it’s not dirt cheap, but the ability to quickly crank out accurate, credible-looking graphics could be worth a lot more.

  Check out the story on FastCoDesign and watch the brief but informative demo video.

• 
  August 20, 2012

  Beck Hansen’s Song Reader

  Now that every possible idea for user involvement in commercial music — from build-your-own albums to collaborative songwriting — has been tried, the only thing left is to let your fans actually perform the songs for you. Which is precisely what Beck is proposing for his next release this December, through a decidedly old school medium. The iconoclastic folk singer is publishing his album as a stack of sheet music, in conjunction with publisher/website McSweeney’s, who will also be hosting renditions of the songs as they’re submitted by fans and followers.

  Beck’s website has the details.

• 
  August 13, 2012

  A Science Project That Learns to Save Lives

  Fine Needle Aspirate (FNA) biopsy may not sound particularly thrilling, but coupled with the right analysis, it’s a procedure with the potential to save the lives of thousands of breast cancer victims each year. The right analysis, in this case, comes from a 17 year old Floridian named Brittany Wenger. FNA is a far less painful and invasive procedure than traditional biopsy, but it’s also less conclusive. By running the results of over 7 million trials through a computer program that looks for patterns in various aspects of the test results, Wenger has managed to increase its reliability to over 99% — an achievement that recently earned her top honors at the annual Google Science Fair.

  Read an overview of the project at Scientific American, then check out the app and the research behind it.

  Photo of malignant breast cancer cells (cc) by Flickr user crafty dame.

• 
  August 06, 2012

  Cut, Fold, Ride

  Israeli designer Izhar Gafni’s cardboard bike project has been making the rounds of the internet this past week, primarily because of the price — according to the project website, Gafni’s innovative use of materials and construction means the sturdy, waterproof cycle could be manufactured for as little as US$9. The video that he’s used to publicize the project, though, hints at cardboard’s untapped DIY potential, not just as a material for mocking things up, but for durable goods with real design appeal.

  Watch the video, and read the details.

• 
  July 30, 2012

  Kansas City Schools Get Their Fiber

  You may already know that Kansas City is getting some of the world’s fastest internet connections, through the new Google Fiber initiative. Yes, it will let subscribers stream high-res videos to their hearts’ content, but to find some truly enthusiastic new customers, look to the city’s cash-starved public school system. Unable to afford extras like field trips and advanced classes, administrators envision using their high-speed connections to have conversations with college professors, or virtual visits to educationally valuable places all over the world.

  Read the ups and downs of KC’s digital bounty at The Kansas City Star.

  Photo (cc) by Flickr user ismaSan.

• 
  July 23, 2012

  Helmetcams are the New Airbags

  Any frequent urban cyclist can tell harrowing tales of brushes with inattentive or aggressive motorists, but even when injury results, the lack of clear proof means such incidents rarely come with legal action. Some are now bearing the burden of proof quite literally, strapping helmet cams originally designed for action sports onto their helmets when they ride. The footage recorded this way has already been used to identify and apprehend several drivers, but as a recent New York Times article explains, the greatest impact of this trend may be as a deterrent, prompting better behavior by car and bike operators alike.

  Read more about it at NYTimes.com.

• 
  July 16, 2012

  This Deck Was Made for Hacking

  Kickstarter has a new grand champion of crowdfunding, and it’s not a watch, an album or a graphic novel; it’s a gaming console called Ouya. The project, which earned its first million dollars in pledges in a record-breaking eight and a half hours, is considerably more than just an Xbox competitor. Based on the Android operating system, it’s explicitly designed to give independent game developers a high-quality platform to work on, merging the fidelity of a dedicated console with the free-for-all accessibility of mobile gaming apps. Fully hackable and just $99, it’s the equivalent of giving the punk rockers a slot on the main stage.

  Read Kickstarter’s announcement of the new record, and learn more about Ouya on their own page.

• 
  July 09, 2012

  But Can It Light A Cigarette?

  The pinnacle in concert-going technology used to be a cool t-shirt and a lighter. Not anymore. Recently, LED equipped wristbands called Xylobands have taken up the mantle as a much techier version of holding your lighter in the air. The performing artist (or their crew) can control the Xylobands—which are given to concertgoers for free—via radio signal to create synchronized displays among the crowd. While the lighter has been updated, the cool t-shirt remains an area ripe for innovation.

  Core77 takes an amusing look at some of the issues concertgoers have had with their Xylobands after the music is over.

  Drawing (cc) by Flickr user jacolien_versteeg

• 
  July 02, 2012

  Meet Your Wine and Drink it Too

  There are brewpubs, where beers are produced and served on site, and there are wineries, where wine is made and tasted in bucolic rural settings. Here in Oregon there are a lot of both, along with a strong DIY streak, so it was only a matter of time before the two entities merged. Two unusual ventures, one called Sauvage and the other called Southeast Wine Collective, will give winemakers space to make their product in an urban environment, using locally harvested grapes, then serve them on site in a pub-like setting called an “enopub”. It’s an approach that’s worked well for craft brewers, giving them a steady income while building a local following, without having to depend on distributors to get their goods to market. Whether oenophiles are ready to embrace the bar around the corner as they’ve embraced the classic wine country tour remains to be seen.

  Read the details at Oregon Live.

• 
  June 25, 2012

  Skin Care From Scratch

  German manufacturer Rowenta has an answer for skin care geeks worried about what’s in their favorite products: make it yourself. The Naturalis kit uses a combination of heat and high-speed agitation to let users cook up their own lip balms, moisturizers and facial peels, and comes with measuring and storage devices to make sure the recipes come out right. At $250, it’s not a cheap way of earning DIY cred, but considering the cost (and mysterious ingredients) of high-end skin care products, it could end up being a wise investment.

  Visit the Naturalis website (it’s in French) and the writeup in Fast Company.

• 
  June 18, 2012

  The Conference That Crowdfunding Built

  Kickstarter has helped launch new products, films and online businesses, but recent developments suggests it might also be a powerful platform for creating conferences. The XOXO conference, to be held here in Portland, grew out of a bar chat between two DIY-minded guys named Andy, and has since become the most successful crowdfunded event in Kickstarter history. The model flips typical conferences on their head, by selling tickets first, then organizing the event once attendance is assured. By all accounts it looks to be a fascinating exploration of independent creation and entrepreneurship, but we won’t be able to say for sure: by the time we learned about it, tickets were already sold out.

  Read more about XOXO at Wired, and visit the conference’s Kickstarter page.

• 
  June 11, 2012

  Re-Enter the Dragon

  With the demise of NASA’s space shuttle program, hopeful geeks are looking to the private sector to keep our starbound dreams alive, and not without reason. Dragon, the first commercially operated functional space capsule splashed down in the Pacific last week, after successfully delivering a payload of supplies and equipment to the International Space Station. The company in charge of the mission, Long Beach-based SpaceX, already has several more launches scheduled, and brings up the possibility that tomorrow’s astronauts could be entrepreneurs instead of government employees.

  The New York Times has the details.

• 
  June 04, 2012

  Hacker Friend, Hacker Foe

  We’ve mentioned Kinect several times in this particular trend blog, paying special attention to the growing ranks of hackers, amateurs and enthusiasts who’ve been using the technology to figure out their own unique applications for gesture-based interaction. Behind the scenes, things are less clear. An article in last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine questions whether the flowering of a thousand Kinect hacks occurred because of Microsoft’s encouragement, or despite its efforts to prevent them.

  Read the article in the New York Times.

  Image of Kinect vertex displacement experiment (cc) via Flickr user Gwen Vanhee.

• 
  May 29, 2012

  The Maker Faire, in Sketch Form

  The great annual festival of Mass Geek-dom just wrapped up in San Mateo, California last week, and if you weren’t fortunate enough to visit Maker Faire 2012, you can get a flavor of what went down by looking through this series of diagrams, drawn live by a group of illustrators called ImageThink. Each image encapsulates a single presentation from the two-day festival’s Center Stage. Highlights include a talk by Arduino inventor Massimo Banzi, author Dave Eggers’ plea for communal space for artists, and an explanation of the science behind record-breaking paper airplane flights.

  See the whole collection, or peruse some highlights at Make.

• 
  May 21, 2012

  Kids Build Stuff and Let the Whole World See

  Kids are pretty amazing at making things, once they’ve got the tools, the permission and, most important, an audience to impress. Recently launched social site DIY.org aims to provide all three, and inspire a new generation of makers in the process. Set up in part by one of Vimeo’s co-founders, DIY.org challenges kids to document and share their constructed explorations, fostering a community that will (hopefully) share ideas, information and encouragment.

  Check out DIY.org, and learn more about how it works at FastCoDesign.

• 
  May 14, 2012

  Fixing the Oldest Cars with the Newest Tools

  You may know that stand up comic and Tonight Show host Jay Leno has spent a lot of his hard-earned cash on an extraordinary collection of classic cars, but you might be surprised to learn he’s also spent a bit of it on a 3D printer and 3D scanner. It turns out that one of the hardest parts of maintaining old cars is getting replacement parts — many of the most iconic automobiles use components that haven’t been manufactured in 50 years or more. Leno and his maintenance team use their in-shop equipment to scan damaged parts and 3D print prototype replacements, streamlining what was formerly an expensive, labor-intensive process.

  Make Magazine has the details, and a fascinating (but choppy) video.

  Image (cc) by Flickr user johnkay.

• 
  May 07, 2012

  New War, New Media, New Rules

  Many news outlets called the upheavals in Libya and Egypt “The Facebook Revolution” owing to the role social media played in their development. But if you want to get the details on how Libyan rebels used of dozens of online informational tools to outsmart the Qaddafi regime, this article in MIT Technology Review is a good place to start. From garnering NATO support to sharing instructions on how to build shelters and operate weapons, there’s hardly any aspect of the revolution that wasn’t touched by social and distributed media, and it makes for a fascinating read.

  Take half an hour and digest the whole story at Tech Review.

• 
  April 30, 2012

  How to Make Your iPhone Significantly Less Convenient

  We’ve covered the proliferation of increasingly accessible 3D printing, as well as the newfound speed of nostalgia. Perhaps inevitably, they have collided. The Brickphone is a 3D printed iPhone “case” that turns your iPhone into something Gordon Gekko might have used. Color us at Ziba Trends headquarters officially concerned about a future where memes have made the jump from YouTube and Reddit to the physical world.

  If you feel like there’s not enough 1987 in your life, go pick up a suit with extra wide lapels, then download the specs to 3D print your own Brickphone from Free Art & Technology. You’ll be encouraging the virtues of greed before you know it.

• 
  April 23, 2012

  A Facebook of the Fields

  We hear a lot about the growth of social media in the developing world, but Africans embracing Facebook and Twitter is only part of the story. Tech-savvy folks in sub-Saharan Africa are getting quite good at coming up with their own social platforms that adapt better to local realities than the more familiar mega-networks. One such network, called iCow, was created to help Kenyan farmers gather and share information via text message, augmenting Facebook and making it more accessible in the field. It’s just one example of how the idea of social networking is spreading and localizing, spurring some remarkable innovation in unexpected places.

  Read more about iCow and other home-grown networks at MIT Technology Review.
  .

• 
  April 16, 2012

  Making Twitter Do Something Useful

  Essentially a disaster-specific set of filters, Twitcident takes advantage of the fact that there are a lot of Twitter users out there these days, and they’re among the first sources on the internet for local information about floods, fires, earthquakes and other calamities. The two minute demo video paints a pretty powerful picture, of a near future when surprisingly detailed on-the-ground details are available to any aid or rescue worker with a WiFi connection.

  Learn more about Twitcident at Wired’s Gadget Lab blog.

• 
  April 09, 2012

  Stickers are the New Spray Paint

  Sometimes pixels can be low tech too. The subpixel, recently blogged by Make Magazine, is a simple acrylic frame that holds nine razor blades, letting the itinerant culture jammer turn any subway poster into a pixelated grid with two quick swipes. The resulting field of square stickers can then be peeled back to create a pattern, or—as the instructions suggest—left intact with just one sticker removed, as an invitation for the next passer by.

  See the details at the Make blog.

• 
  April 02, 2012

  Legos Want to Be Free

  It’s easy to get excited about the potential of widely available fabrication technologies, but what about the impact on existing business? MIT Technology Review looks at the rapidly falling price of 3D printing and the growing availability of online 3D libraries to ask a very reasonable question: how long until people stop buying Legos and start “pirating” them?

  Read the thought-provoking discussion at Tech Review.

  Image (cc) by Flickr user Fanboy30.

• 
  March 26, 2012

  Bring On the Five Dollar Downloads

  Louis C.K. isn’t the only entertainer to bypass the middleman and sell his content directly. As this article in last week’s New York Times points out, the success of the comedian’s “risky” ploy to offer a recent performance at low cost directly from his website has emboldened others to follow suit, putting comics, along with musicians like Jonathan Coulton and Radiohead, firmly in the vanguard of DIY distribution.

  Read the article.

  Image (cc) by Flickr user skpy

• 
  March 19, 2012

  I Know Your Technology Better Than You Do

  Khoi Vinh, author of the excellent tech and design blog Subtraction.com, and former NewYorkTimes.com design director, has a few things to say about the changing way we’re embracing technology. Once upon a time, he argues, companies could be trusted to grasp new technology sooner than the average consumer, since they had the deep pockets to adopt it earlier, and the competitive incentive to figure it out. But with the pace of change accelerating, the moderately engaged tech user is often ahead of the company. Case in point: the flat screen TV, which is de rigeur for most hotel chains, yet none of them seem to know how to set the aspect ratio properly — something most home users figured out an hour after unboxing theirs.

  Read the entire post (and supporting commentary) at Subtraction.com.

  Image (cc) by Flickr user schani

• 
  March 12, 2012

  A DIY Superflu?

  Greater access to information and tools has its scary side too. A recent article raises concerns about the growing capabilities of DIY biology researchers, especially the 2000+ members of DIYBio.org, as a possible source of new, more deadly viruses. With techniques and resources at their disposal once limited to professional researchers, but without the constraints of an academic or corporate lab, could an enterprising bio-geek accidentally stumble upon the next great epidemic? The article focuses on recent amateur work with the H5N1 bird flu virus, and balances biosecurity concerns with suggestions from the DIY community that it is perfectly capable of policing itself.

  Read the article, and decide for yourself.

  Image of H1N1 swine flu (cc) by Flickr user hitthatswitch.

• 
  March 05, 2012

  The Overfishing Problem, in Miniature

  Bamboo Sushi is a local favorite here in Portland, an excellent restaurant with an oh-so-Portland focus on sustainability. A recent marketing effort has been getting them attention from far beyond this city though. “The Story of Sushi” is a four minute video that explains some of the current problems of unsustainable fishing practices, using miniature figurines and tiny tableaus of fishing boats and warehouses to get its message across. The unbelievably charming result has already attracted nearly 200,000 views on Vimeo and a mention on NPR — not bad for a sushi joint.

  See the video, and read NPR’s coverage.

  Photo: (cc) by Flickr user PetitPlat

• 
  February 27, 2012

  The New Nike+ Wants to Get to Know You Better

  The next incarnation of Nike+ intends to put an army of statisticians in your shoe. A breathless write-up from Gizmodo describes a line of new Nike shoes with embedded sensors so sophisticated, they’ll offer everyday athletes the kind of performance analysis once reserved for the pros. The details are fairly bewildering, but suffice it to say, no matter how much of a numbers nerd you are, the new Nike+ system has you covered, from vertical inches jumped to calories burned.

  Check out the details at Gizmodo.

  Photo: (cc) by Flickr user wallyg.

• 
  February 20, 2012

  A Workstation That Lets You Under the Hood

  Leading PC maker Hewlett Packard has decided to embrace, not fight, the makers and hackers of the world. HP’s new Z1 Workstation, set for release this April, pops open like a car hood to allow for easier upgrades, repairs and modifications. It’ll be music to the ears of technological tinkers, but may also signal a near future when even average consumers can expect to see the guts of their new gadgets without voiding the warranty.

  Check out the Z1’s details at HP.com, and read Core77’s assessment.

• 
  February 13, 2012

  You Say Brannan, I Say Polaroid SX-70 With Polaroid 600 Film

  Instagram has turned everyone into a master photographer with its instant filters that recreate the look of several styles of vintage cameras and film. However, since we all aren’t really master photographers, most people don’t actually know specifically what they are emulating. The developers behind the iPhone app 1000 Memories have reverse engineered the Instagram filters to discover which cameras and film combination each filter recreates. Boost your photographer credibility and learn the ingredients behind the photos you’re making.

  Click over to the 1000 Memories blog to see the infographic and also how how they figured all of this out.

• 
  February 06, 2012

  Art Lovers Who Like Jackson Pollock Also Liked...

  Art.Sy hopes to open up the art world to a larger, younger audience by putting it through a process much like the one that powers Pandora or Netflix’s recommendations. Using protocols developed by the Art Genome Project, Art.Sy identifies characteristics in different works of art to recommend other, potentially less famous and less expensive artists to potential buyers. Only a tiny fraction of fine art is bought online these days, but by making discovery and purchase easier and more efficient, Art.Sy aims to bring it into the digital world.

  Visit the Art.Sy website, and read about it on Daily Cal and Wired.

  The image on the left is an Andy Warhol. Art.sy used it to recommend the image on the right, a Mark Mulroney.

• 
  January 30, 2012

  The Only Film Tribute to Make the Kessel Run in Less Than 12 Parsecs

  The original Star Wars is perhaps the unifying cultural touchpoint. It’s quite difficult to go through life never having seen it, and thus we all have our own memories of how Star Wars colored our lives. So much so that thousands of internet denizens jumped at the chance to recreate their own slice of the film. Their assignment? Recreate any 15 second chunk of Star Wars in any manner you see fit. The best were stitched into an adorably lo-fi DIY project called Stars Wars Uncut—a shot for shot recreation of the movie.

  Throw on your Jedi tunic and enjoy Star Wars Uncut at Vimeo.

• 
  January 23, 2012

  An Online Protest That (Maybe) Changed the Future

  It’s impossible to say whether last week’s blackout protests by Wikipedia, BoingBoing and dozens of other high-traffic websites were directly responsible for dozens of members of Congress withdrawing support for the SOPA and PIPA acts, but the coincidence is remarkable. Through the relatively simple act of taking down their websites for a few hours, these diverse and often grassroots organizations startled media outlets and politicians by wielding far more influence than anyone was prepared to acknowledge. Given their apparent effectiveness, could information or service blackouts become the go-to protest acts of the next decade?

  See detailed reports of SOPA and PIPA’s decline at Ars Technica and Torrentfreak.

• 
  January 16, 2012

  Tomorrow’s Market is Black

  DIY is more than just making toys in your garage; it’s also an approach to business. And journalist Robert Neuwirth thinks it might just be the approach that’s going to save the global economy. The author of a recent book on black markets throughout the world, Neuwirth recently sat for an interview with Wired magazine, and points out that informal economies now employ half the world’s workers, generate $10 trillion in value annually, and in many countries are the only part of the economy that’s growing.

  Read the interview to see why “System D” is the future.

  Photo: (cc) by Flickr user negrab.

• 
  January 10, 2012

  D&D Enlists the Masses

  When you create something as beloved by geeks as the classic role playing game Dungeons & Dragons, you have to be prepared for some scrutiny. After the game’s fourth edition was released in 2008 to howls of outrage at many of its changes and inconsistencies, publisher Wizards of the Coast is enlisting thousands of fans and die-hard players to help them get the next edition just right. Whether they can all agree on the best way to cast an Invisibility spell is still unknown.

  Read the NY Times’ take, and one gaming expert’s insider view at Escapist.

  Photo: (cc) by Flickr user merydith.

• 
  January 03, 2012

  From Reading Room to Laboratory

  Hackerspaces, where interested DIYers can indulge their maker tendencies in the company of like-minded enthusiasts, are nothing new — we’ve been documenting the spread of these collaborative spaces since the MASS GEEK trend began. But a hackerspace in a public library is worth notice. A recent NPR story talks about two public libraries, in Indiana and upstate New York, that are installing workspaces complete with 3D printers and electronics benches, in hopes of encouraging residents of all economic backgrounds to pursue their projects. In an internet era where information is cheap, perhaps the future of the library is in tools, not pages.

  Read more about hackerspaces going public at NPR.

  Photo: (cc) by Flickr user TonZ.

• 
  December 19, 2011

  Everyone’s a Translator

  Two web startups yield two visions for revolutionizing the way languages get translated, not through better technology but better communication. DuoLingo is an effort by the creators of Captcha to link up language learners with translation tasks appropriate to their skill level, translating huge volumes of web pages while “paying” the translators with skill-building exercises.

  Babelverse, started by two young Europeans who met at a conference, also employs real-life humans to do its translating, but in real time. They envision a time when a Chinese supplier could IM effortlessly with a Brazilian business owner, via two students or freelancers who might be anywhere on earth. It’s a small world, and with services like these, it could soon be a much more connected one.

  Read more about Babelverse and Duolingo on Fast Company.

• 
  December 12, 2011

  The Economist Goes to Maker Faire

  Wondering what might spark the next Industrial Revolution? No less a publication than The Economist is saying the Maker movement could be the answer. The story is familiar to Mass Geek readers: starting from their hobbyist west coast beginnings, Makers are spreading across the globe, bringing new tools, a new culture and a new way of thinking with them. Spanning the physical and the digital, it depends heavily on open-source sharing and user input, an enthusiastic return to ‘hands-on’, and seeks to change everything from the way science and technology are taught in schools to the way physical designs are shared among creators.

  Read about some of the most recent maker innovations here.

  Image via Flickr user Jurvetson.

• 
  December 05, 2011

  A Card-sized Computer That Turns Kids Into Hackers

  Lowering the cost of failure is key to fostering creativity, we’re often told, and now there’s a digital device designed to do just that. At just $25, the Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized mini computer that its creators hope will let parents and teachers stop worrying, and let their kids start hacking. Equipped with a wide array of inputs and outputs, the Raspberry Pi invites kids to actively mess with its operating system, promising that if anything goes wrong, they can just re-install it.

  Read up on this tiny enabling technology at Good, and on the Raspberry Pi blog.

• 
  November 28, 2011

  Born of Frustration, Guerilla Signage Leads the Way

  Here in Portland, the bike commuter crowd is a constant source of DIY ingenuity, whether modifying their rides or the infrastructure they ride on. One anonymous rider, frustrated by the lack of signage for cyclists wishing to ride over the I-5 bridge between Oregon and Washington, took matters into his or her own hands. Almost 30 homemade signs and painted symbols manifested one day, clarifying the route and prompting cheers among the local bike community. The local Department of Transportation’s response was swift: they’re removing the impromptu signage…and replacing it with 29 official signs of their own.

  See the original DIY signs, and the replacements at BikePortland.

  Image by Todd Boulanger via BikePortland.org.

• 
  November 21, 2011

  Facing the Flood

  Navigating shopping cart walkways and commuting via bicycle-powered boats are just a couple of the ways residents of the central Chao Phraya river basin in Thailand are confronting the worst flooding in recent history. Tumblr Thai Flood Hacks captures everything from stilt walking through floodwaters to pet life vests made from old water bottles. Just another reminder that hardship can sometimes provide the catalyst for striking ingenuity.

  See more disaster-inspired cleverness on the Thai Flood Hacks Tumblr.

• 
  November 14, 2011

  Survival in the Wilds of Manhattan

  Camouflage, fire-building, rope-making — it’s all part of the curriculum in New York’s Central Park. Survival skill schools have been around for decades, but Mountain Scout Survival School takes the unique step of bringing its classes right into the least wild part of the entire US. Their goal is to give hardcore city dwellers the chance to learn what it takes to survive without food delivery, or even grocery stores.

  Read the NY Times review, and visit Mountain Scout’s website.
  Firestarting image via Flickr user US Army Africa.

• 
  November 07, 2011

  Tech Support for Fixers

  At the intersection of the Maker movement and the new austerity lies an army of consumers rediscovering the possibility of repair, rather than replacement, for worn out electronics and appliances. While this might sound like bad news for manufacturers, many are embracing the trend with expert phone support that walks customers through simple repair procedures. The repair experience turns out to be a great brand-building opportunity, and it steers customers away from buying a competitor’s product as replacement.

  The Wall Street Journal has the details.
  Home Mac repair via Flickr user kap4001.

• 
  October 31, 2011

  Design, Divide and Conquer

  As technology continues to be a key driver in establishing connections, Ideacious is a recent community that links creators and buyers to share roles in bringing new designs into the world. Through the platform, “Creators” get access to networks and support to turn their design ideas into market-ready products. Funding is provided by “Buyers” who get the chance to help their ideas and designs come to life, in exchange for a financial stake in the project.

  Pick your next investment at Ideacious.

• 
  October 24, 2011

  Crooks Hiding in The Clouds

  Cloud computing is making all sorts of human enterprises more powerful and less centralized, and that goes for enterprise of the illegal sort too. This recent article outlines the various uses criminals have found for the cloud, both as a source of hackable data and a convenient and anonymous venue for planning their exploits and selling the results.

  Read up on the distributed future of crime at MIT Technology Review.

  “Identity thief” via Flickr user CarbonNYC

• 
  October 17, 2011

  Zero to Maker

  Anyone with a shred of DIY ability can find something useful in Make Magazine’s information dense magazine and enthusiastic, rapid-fire blog posts. Now even that requirement may fall by the wayside, with the new “Zero to Maker” blog, aimed at taking DIY to the last frontier: the clueless. The blog follows “reluctant maker” David Lang as he learns the basics of plastic casting, machining and electronics from a group of patient experts, told with plenty of reflection and humor.

  See what DIY looks like to a newbie at Make.

• 
  October 10, 2011

  Hackers Gone Good

  Presumably tired of being portrayed in every movie as pasty nerds that never leave their apartments and spend all of their time breaking websites, hackers in San Francisco have collaborated with local government to help the city run more smoothly. The Gray Area Foundation For The Arts Summer of Smarts was a series of three hackathons that took place this past summer. Teams created projects that could help solve San Francisco’s biggest problems; now the four winning teams are presenting their projects to the city’s mayoral candidates—to actually be put into use.

  Fast Company explains the winning projects and has more about the hackathons.

• 
  October 03, 2011

  Just Like a Real Leica

  With digital “point and shoots” now capturing the majority of the camera market, film cameras are becoming novelty items. For those who appreciate the craft of Leica but can’t drop a thousand dollars for one, London-based designer and photographer Matthew Nicholson has made it possible to afford your very own. His Leica-like paper pinhole camera is fully functional, with 35mm film, and comes with a ten page infographic guide on how to build it. Nicholson’s project allows just about anyone to experience the luxury of the Leica brand in a playful way.

  Read more at yatzer.com

  Image © Matthew Nicholson

• 
  September 26, 2011

  Hacking Autism

  Touch-enabled technology has tremendous potential to help autistic kids connect with each other and their communities, and overcome the socialization challenges many of them face. But its best days lie ahead. Hewlett-Packard has begun tapping the wisdom of the crowd and the open source movement with its Hacking Autism initiative, an open forum for submitting ideas and highlighting apps that already make a difference in the lives of autistic kids. The initiative’s Autism Hackathon, coming to Cupertino on October 11, aims to expand on those efforts, by pairing technologists with autism experts for a day and seeing what they can invent.

  Visit the Hacking Autism website, and read the write-up at Make Magazine.

• 
  September 19, 2011

  Interactive Guide to Coding for Beginners

  For would-be online entrepreneurs, writing code can be the last great obstacle to turning their vision into reality. Code Academy aims to dismantle even this stumbling block, with an approachable website that uses simple prompts and text boxes to get users writing functioning programs before they realize it. The past decades have seen a trend not just toward more powerful software-building tools, but also toward making those tools faster to learn. With its “come try me!” approach, Code Academy may be the best example yet.

  See how fast you can get nerdy at Code Academy.

• 
  September 19, 2011

  10 Billion Posts Later, Tumblr Hires a Designer

  Tumblr didn’t invent blogging, but they did make it so unbelievably easy that literally anyone can do it. What’s more, they did it with a staff of just 45 — among them only five product managers and one designer. Yet Tumblr has a clear, powerful design culture that permeates their brand and has helped them build a fervent following. As of this month, the tiny powerhouse is finally expanding its design capabilities, having already shown that good design depends less on designers than on innovative thinkers with a commitment to getting it right.

  Read the story in Fast Company.

• 
  September 12, 2011

  The Crowdsourced Birthday Book

  When a world’s worth of crowdsourced creativity is at your fingertips, what do you do? If you’re David Cole, you commission 365 portraits of your friend Tag Savage, and bind them into a book to present to him for his birthday. In addition to using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service to get the portraits drawn (at varying levels of artistry), Cole and friends took advantage of another web-based DIY resource, micropublisher Blurb, allowing anyone else who wants a copy of the book to buy their own. Put these Mass Geek tools together, and you’ve got the coolest present of the year.

  Read more about it on Cole’s Tumblr, and see a gallery of the portraits.

• 
  August 29, 2011

  The Telecommute Comes to India’s Villages

  The popular vision of massive call centers in big Indian cities may be on its way out if a current Xerox initiative succeeds. Along with several other technology companies, Xerox is looking for ways to combine offshoring with telecommuting, granting access to overseas service jobs to millions of rural Indians. With bandwidth and mobile device penetration improving throughout the country, Xerox says, India is ripe for digital solutions that let people make money without having to migrate. The devil is now in the details, as researchers seek to make these system confidential and manageable enough to satisfy the corporations that will use them.

  Read the interview with Xerox’s CTO at MIT Technology Review.
  Xerox image via flickr user Iain Tait.

• 
  August 22, 2011

  Security Specialists to Hackers: Target Your Hacking Victims Better

  Anonymous and LulzSec, two hacker/activist groups once dismissed as nerdy pranksters, are starting to gain clout, and with it, attention from security professionals. But not all of the attention is bad: a recent panel of Internet security experts in Las Vegas has gone on the record to ask that these groups start using the power they wield in more constructive ways. Calling on the community to “build a better Anonymous”, the panel suggested they go after more universally reviled targets, such as child-exploitation sites and corrupt officials. The vigilantes, in other words, are being asked to take a step toward legitimacy.

  Hear more about this unusually exciting panel at Wired.
  Classy Anonymous via Flickr user irrezolut.

• 
  August 15, 2011

  A Riot of Social Media, For Good and For Evil

  In addition to being tragic and widespread, the riots that gripped many UK cities last week were notable for the role played by social media: this may be the first significant social unrest that was both spread by and responded to with massive online and mobile media campaigns. And the diversity of ways in which it was used is astounding. The BlackBerry got bad press for its use in bringing mobs together, but text, Twitter and Facebook played major roles in organizing rapid-response cleanup efforts and anti-riot demonstrations. Police got in on the game too, taking a page from Vancouver’s police and posting photos online to catch looters — then tweeting their identities upon arrest.

  Is civil unrest going digital? Read these accounts from Good, FastCompany, The Guardian and Mashable.

  Image via Flickr user Looking&Learning.

• 
  August 08, 2011

  Using DNA to Sleuth Out Unscrupulous Dogs

  Consumer-grade science comes to the aid of frustrated yard owners. Pooprints is a DNA-mapping service that takes samples of dog waste and sequences them to determine the breed of dog that left them behind. Marketed as “the solution for responsible dog owners”, the service aims to throw some scientific certainty into neighborly squabbles.

  Check out the Pooprints website for details.
  Dog pic via Gem Salsberg

• 
  August 08, 2011

  Autodesk Buys Instructables

  Instructables is a cornerstone of the online DIY community, offering step-by-step instructions on making just about anything to its thousands of devoted users. It’s also, as of last week, a part of Autodesk, the world’s largest 3D software company and maker of pro-level programs like Alias and AutoCAD. This quiet acquisition marks a shift in the relationship between DIY and “real” design communities, as they recognize that the tools they use are rapidly converging, and put their money behind it. Watch this space for some serious Mass Geek advances in the near future.

  Read the official announcement on the Instructables website.

• 
  August 01, 2011

  Using Kinect to Make Music and Art Easier

  Russ Maschmeyer has taken something many people associate with time wasting and brain rotting—the Microsoft Kinect video game controller—and put it to a use more associated with creative intelligence: music. Maschmeyer has hacked the Kinect to track his body movements, not to move an onscreen character but to create different musical notes. He can even grab notes out of the air. The really impressive part is how accessible it becomes for non-musicians to create challenging music. Suddenly you can use your video game console to give Bach a run for his money.

  The New York Times takes a look at this project and the larger trend of Kinect hacking.
  3D Graffiti hack via Flickr user jcnaour.

• 
  July 25, 2011

  A Trophy for the DIY Enablers

  In a Mass Geek world, gadgets are more than just useful and fun, they also bend to your will. Make Magazine recently announced The Makeys, an awards series that recognizes platforms and programs that go the extra mile to encourage people to tinker and hack. The winners, in categories like “Most Hackable Gadget” and “Most Repair Friendly”, will be announced at the New York City Maker Faire in September.

  See the nominees at Make.

• 
  July 18, 2011

  How To Make a “How To”

  The recent explosion of online tutorials, with instructions for everything from soldering a circuit board to baking a pie, has advanced the Mass Geek trend immeasurably. Now there’s a platform for making your own. Tildee is a website that makes creating and posting a step-by-step how-to as easy as blogging something on Tumblr — which is to say, effortless. The lightweight interface lets you incorporate images, text and video with a single click, and the resulting assortment of tutorials is searchable, rate-able, and predictably haphazard.

  Share your wisdom with the DIY world at Tildee.

• 
  July 12, 2011

  Astrometry.net Turns Your Photo into Astronomical Gold

  In an era where millions of people take pictures of the sky every night, what’s keeping astronomers from using them for research? Accurate location data, that’s what. Fortunately, Astrometry.net’s “astronomy engine” is here to help: simply upload your photo and it identifies the exact portion of the night sky depicted. While that may not sound earth-shattering, it’s already yielding results for astronomers, two of whom recently used the site to process 2500 images from the web, and determine the exact track of a short-lived comet… from 2007.

  Read the astro-sleuthing story at MIT Technology Review, then check out Astrometry.net

• 
  July 05, 2011

  You Can Be the Next Philip Glass...For an Afternoon

  Despite maybe lacking the talent, all of us at some point wanted to be a musician. Recently, composer Aaron Siegal and iPhone developer Larry Legend teamed up to create GROUP, an app that, for one afternoon at least, allowed anyone in New York to become part of an original symphonic performance. Working kind of like a scavenger hunt for sound, the app directed users to walk slowly toward a central location, playing a small piece of a multi-part composition as they go. As they converged toward the New York Stock Exchange, the parts built in volume and complexity, until dozens of strangers found themselves bound together in an impromptu orchestra.

  The performance is done, but learn more about it at the GROUP website.

• 
  June 27, 2011

  Focus Frustration No More

  We’ve all had a photo or two ruined by our camera thinking it’s smarter than we are and auto-focusing on the wrong part of the picture. That wall looks super sharp, but Uncle Bob’s face is completely blurry. But if Dr. Ren Ng realizes his vision, focusing will never be an issue again. Dr. Ng has created Lytro, the camera that lets you choose your focus after you take a picture. Instead of capturing just the information necessary to recreate a single photo, it takes all of the visual information available. It’s as if with one push of the shutter button, Lytro takes all of the photos possible at that moment, then lets you choose the one you wanted.

  Click over to Mashable for an in-depth look at Lytro and a preview of the experience.
  Never again an out of focus cat for Flickr user michele aquila.

• 
  June 20, 2011

  The Power of the DIY PSA

  What began a few years ago with clever video rants about tech support and airlines that damage luggage, has turned into a full-fledged art form. Now that making and distributing video is almost universally accessible, the quality and cleverness of the protest video is reaching new heights. The latest example comes from Casey Neistat, a New York City filmmaker who got ticketed for riding his bike outside of the bike lane, and responded with a hilariously entertaining three minute movie that demonstrates the many obstructions an urban cyclist faces. 3.5 million views later, it’s garnered international attention, and done more to prompt discussion about bike lane conditions than a dozen letter-writing campaigns.

  Watch the video, and read an interview with Neistat at New York Magazine.
  Santa Monica Door Lane by Gary Rides Bikes

• 
  June 20, 2011

  On This Album, The Track List is Up to You

  Punk/art rock band Kaiser Chiefs are stretching the limits of fan empowerment by releasing their latest album, “The Future is Medieval”, on a pick-and-choose model. Twenty tracks are posted on their website, and listeners are asked to choose ten and assemble them into an album. Critic Stephen McLeod points out that the interface and selection process are as much a part of the album experience as the songs themselves, which helps dispel concerns that the band is sacrificing artistic integrity for a PR stunt. Carefully applied, this approach could revive a hint of the curatorial joy that we lost with the demise of the mixtape.

  Check out the album and read the review on Artrocker.

• 
  June 13, 2011

  A Little More Botox in Mine, Please

  There’s nothing new about a cosmetics company giving you recommendations based on your user profile, but the level of detail and control that French brand MyCodage offers is extraordinary. In addition to the site’s extensive profile worksheet, it offers extremely specific information on ingredients and their effects, and the ability to adjust their ratios directly, including such technical compounds as “botox-like” muscle relaxants and “not over-the-counter” acne medication.

  Explore the fantastically detailed MyCodage site.

• 
  June 06, 2011

  Fighting Crime, One App at a Time

  Scroll down to October 4th in this very column, and you’ll see a post about a writer in the Bay Area who recovered her stolen GPS using a clever combination of social media and online research. Just eight months later, there’s now an app for that. Several stories have hit the web recently about people using programs with names like “Hidden” and “Prey” to recover their snatched MacBooks. Both use a combination of triangulation and clandestine photography to determine the thief’s appearance and whereabouts, making the tech-empowered citizen sleuth that much more effective.

  Read about a California man’s successful recovery at NY Daily News.
  Image via the blog thisguyhasmymacbook.tumblr.com.

• 
  June 06, 2011

  Turning Astronomy Into a Green Lantern Game

  It’s all a bit confusing, but the upcoming Green Lantern movie is taking some unusual steps to build anticipation online, including giving fans the opportunity to help out with some real world astronomy research. The Milky Way Project is an actual crowdsourcing effort, led by a consortium of astronomers and Chicago’s Adler Planetarium, that uses a simplified, game-like interface to let amateurs help identify unusual stellar entities. With a bit of clever phrasing (“please note you are taking part in a confidential project”) and a tie-in from the blog of one of the film’s fictional villains, the promotional team has directed a lot more traffic to the MWP, and added a sheen of credibility to the film’s backstory.

  Check out The Milky Way Project, read the blog of supervillain Dr. Amanda Waller, and read the history behind this unique collaboration.

• 
  May 31, 2011

  Students Answer Your Environmental Questions

  Stanford students in environmental science, engineering, business and journalism are doing research with a dual purpose. Rather than look up answers to theoretical questions, the students are fielding queries about sustainability from the public at large, through an online service called SAGE. “No conundrum [is] too picayune” says the SAGE website, and requests have run the gamut, from the environmental impact of paper vs. plastic, to the carbon footprint of bio-fuels. The program puts academic-quality research in the hands of average folks, and educates future environmental leaders in the process.

  Read a description of SAGE at the Stanford Alumni website, and see Treehugger’s take.

• 
  May 23, 2011

  Getting the Straight Political Scoop, via YouTube

  Political junkies and civic-minded voters have a new way of getting informed, and politicians have a new way of getting to know their constituents. YouTube recently launched Town Hall, an elegantly designed debate platform that lets viewers browse short, targeted video clips by dozens of American politicians, on issues ranging from Afghanistan to long-term energy policy. The service hopes to cut through the sound bites and attack ads to give voters reliable information about where senators and representatives stand, side-by-side and without external spin. Viewers who hear a stance they like can hit the “support” button; results are tallied and displayed, giving a more nuanced view of voter sentiment than the average telephone poll.

  Visit Town Hall yourself, or read FastCompany’s description.

• 
  May 16, 2011

  Like Google Goggles for Live Events

  You’re watching a basketball game, and suddenly wonder what the free throw percentage is for that rookie who just stepped up to the line. A new SF-based company called CrowdOptic plans to make that sci-fi scenario a reality, via (what else?) your iPhone. Matching your phone’s GPS and orientation data with a real-time database of major events, CrowdOptic’s app shows you info and stats on whatever your device camera’s pointing at, be it an athlete, band or actor. Details are still scarce, but the hyper-targeted ad potential could make this the augmented reality app that breaks into the big time.

  Peruse CrowdOptic’s official site, and read Fast Company’s overview.

• 
  May 09, 2011

  Make Any Product You Want This Weekend

  Bug Labs creates separate electronic modules equipped with GPS, cameras or other sensors. Users decide what they want to make, buy the proper modules, and put them together to create a new device, quickly and easily. In other words, say goodbye to waiting for a big tech company to create the product you want. Peter Semmelhack is the founder of Bug Labs, and the man behind many of its ideas and direction. In a recent New York Times interview, he explains how he sees this idea growing, and gives a peek into the mind behind one of Mass Geek’s iconic products.

  Read the The New York Times interview with Peter Semmelhack.

• 
  May 02, 2011

  The Camera For All Your Wildest Camera Dreams

  A carpenter that wants to build a never-before-seen type of bookcase still knows where to start: with wood. But where do you start if you want to create a new type of camera? A group of Stanford graduate students hopes that the obvious choice becomes the Frankencamera. They created this easily hackable camera to allow for experimentation and customization that’s not possible with current market consumer or pro cameras. Imagine it as a lump of clay that can take pictures, waiting to be molded into use for whatever purpose you can come up with.

  Watch a video about the Frankencamera at MIT Technology Review and then read more from the Stanford Report.

• 
  April 25, 2011

  Build Your Own Geiger Counter

  After the devastation of earthquakes, tsunamis, and related nuclear power problems in Japan, some citizens are taking measures to keep themselves. One of the more recent trends is to create DIY Geiger counters. Enterprising citizens are gathering online to share the best methods to make these radiation detectors and then crowdsourcing maps of problem areas.

  MAKE Magazine culls together many of the DIY Geiger models.
  Tokyohackerspace’s Geiger Counter Model Number Two from image via Flickr user Nokton.

• 
  April 18, 2011

  A Picture Worth 1,000 Calories

  Dieters know all too well the effort and attention to detail required to properly count how many calories you eat every day. iPhone app Meal Snap wants to give you one less excuse for eating that second helping of mom’s meatloaf by streamlining the process. Just photograph your meal and the app tells you how many calories it contains. It sounds like something out of a science fiction movie, and the debate about how it actually works is ongoing. TechCrunch speculates that actual humans may be making the magic happen on the other end, looking at the photo and looking up the food’s calorie stats in a database.

  Read the writeup on Mobile Crunch and venture your own guess.
  Grouchy BF bento via Flickr user Sakurako Kitsa.

• 
  April 11, 2011

  Answers To Your Most Asked Questions

  Haven’t you always wondered what makes glass transparent? Or how many satellites are currently in orbit? Armchair researcher Jarret Green let curiosity get the best of him, and created I Always Wondered, a collection of cleverly illustrated answers to the world’s most nagging questions. Memorize this website, and you’ll surely be the life of the next party when you give an authoritative explanation for why curly hair is curly.

  Find your answers at I Always Wondered.

• 
  April 11, 2011

  What To Do When a Snowy Forecast Isn't Enough

  How about that weather? That oft-repeated small talk question holds the key to a fun weekend for some people. Skiers, snowboarders, and surfers rely on hyper-specific weather forecasts to make plans — not just whether it’s snowing, but how’s the powder? That need, combined with the accessibility of the internet, has led to a new kind of tailored weather service. However, this isn’t the Weather Channel, or even local news filling the gap. Snowboarders and skiers turned amateur meteorologists are using DIY methods to get and report the weather forecast that they really need.

  Wired takes a closer look at some of these services.
  Orchard, GA weather station (see rock) via Flickr user The Rocketeer.

• 
  April 04, 2011

  Comparing DIY and Corporate Innovation, From a Master of Both

  From DIY Wii-mote hacking to heavily-funded Microsoft Kinect research, and now at Google, Johnny Lee has innovated up and down the spectrum. Over at Make magazine, he takes a look at where hobbyists have the advantage in creating new ideas, where the money matters, and what stays the same regardless. Start your Dremels and your soldering irons—it’s an earnest and inspiring take on how new technology is made that’ll have you taking apart your expensive gadgets in no time.

  Read the entire essay at Make.
  Inside your iPhone by Flickr user John Biehler.

• 
  March 28, 2011

  DIY Biolabs on the Rise

  Six months after GenLab opened its doors in Brooklyn, DIY genetics labs are taking the country by storm. A brief post from Discover Magazine’s “Gene Expression” blog mentions several California-based DIY bio labs, as well as linking to some of the proliferating online resources for budding biotech entrepreneurs.

  Is there one in your neighborhood? Check the blog.
  Buy your own knit frog from aKNITomy.

• 
  March 28, 2011

  Sing for Your Supper; Teach for Your Class

  Trade School is vocational education with a healthy dash of social innovation. Operating in New York City for just over a year now, the organization invites interested city folks to teach practical skills in a classroom setting. In return, they gain access to a wide array of other classes. A part of “barter network” OurGoods.org, Trade School has already attracted plenty of media attention, and features a jam-packed schedule of lessons on everything from belly dance to felting and online marketing.

  See the schedule at Trade School, and see what else OurGoods is up to.

• 
  March 21, 2011

  Summer Camps for the Tech Set

  “Computer Camp” had an irredeemably nerdy connotation in the ’80s, but no longer. As geeky goes mainstream, technology-focused summer camps are popping up all over the country, offering precocious kids and teenagers the chance to immerse themselves in skills like animation, robotics and app design. Swimming and kickball still feature in the schedules, but presumably, the cool kids will all be coding.

  See what summer vacation looks like in the future.
  Certificate in Pascal earned by Flickr user Dimmerswitch.

• 
  March 14, 2011

  'War Against Makers' Yields Hackers' Protest

  The makers at Make have some grievences to air regarding Sony’s aggressive moves to curtail the whims of tinkerers and inspirational visions of innovators. While Sony may regard its legal roadblocks against software hacking as necessary to the protection of its intellectual property, hackers regard it as an affront to fun . . . and technological progress.

  Read more about Phillip Torrone’s top 7 sins of Sony at Make Online.

  The BBC takes on Hardware Hacking.

• 
  March 08, 2011

  Coke, Maroon 5 and a Few Thousand Fans Write a Song

  Coca-Cola is embarking on an unusual collaboration in London, by challenging the band Maroon 5 to write a song in 24 hours. Fans who RSVP for the event, scheduled for March 22, will be able to suggest lyrics, melodies and rhythms, and to comment on the progress of the song as it develops. Whether the resulting track makes a dent in the charts remains to be seen, but as a publicity effort it’s likely to be a hit — Coke will be publicizing it through its own Facebook page, which already has over 20 million fans.

  Watch the countdown on Coca-Cola.com, or read the announcement on Mashable.

• 
  February 28, 2011

  The Muriel Awards

  Fed up with the politics and irrelevance of the Academy Awards, a group of film critics and writers have taken things into their own hands. The Muriel Awards, named after one of the founders’ pet guinea pig, is remarkable for its transparency (votes and runners-up are clearly indicated), and its inclusion of some interesting categories that belie the passion of the folks who put it together: Best Cinematic Moment, Best Body of Work, Best Film From 10 (and 20, and 50) Years Ago, and more.

  Turn off the Oscars, and turn on this.

• 
  February 28, 2011

  Make Your Own Safety

  Two stories of guerilla signposting that worked. Recently, a still-unidentified resident of Cranston, Rhode Island got the backing of the town government, when they elected to keep all but 21 of the 600 signs he or she planted at dangerous intersections. This echoes a story from last year, when Good magazine documented the efforts of a Los Angeles artist to paint a much needed off-ramp sign above one of the city’s crowded freeways. This too was finally made official by government decree, though it took considerably longer — it stayed put for nine years before Caltrans finally incorporated his “suggestion” into new signage.

  Read the Rhode Island story and the LA one too.

  Image via flickr user Wootpeanuts

• 
  February 21, 2011

  NBC Looks to Tweets for Local News

  Occasionally referencing the Twitter feed of a famous politician is commonplace on national news these days, as is mining the American mood through the postings of its citizens. NBC, however, recently announced that they’re taking the trend local with “The 20,” a tightly curated collection of prolific tweeters in New York and Washington DC. Contributers will not only provide 140-character news tidbits to the media giant, but also be introduced as real, actual people through video interviews. A bold step toward granting reporter-level recognition to thoughtful social media users.

  Read about The 20, and NBC’s plans for a nationwide roll out, on Media Bistro.

• 
  February 14, 2011

  Professional Confessional

  Ever been tongue-tied in the confessional? Now, thank gawd, there’s an app for that. Confession: a Roman Catholic App, shepherds penitents through the Confession process and allows them to examine their consciences against the 10 Commandments. Users can create a checklist that details their sins and add new sins. Penitents must still visit a priest for absolution, but the app helps them get a head start.

  Read about the app here

• 
  February 07, 2011

  Introducing Make:Live

  Make Magazine has been at the heart of the Mass Geek movement for years, first with their print magazine, then with their Maker Faires and DIY wikis. Make:Live takes an obvious and necessary next step for the publication, offering video walkthroughs of basic maker skills like soldering and wiring. Viewers who watch live can pipe up with questions via Twitter or UStream, letting demonstrators fine-tune their presentations for the community in real time.

  Warm up your soldering iron and head over to Make:Live for more.

• 
  January 31, 2011

  Qwiki

  Qwiki is a visual-based wikipedia, combining video, imagery, sound and information into easily digestible entries. Employing “storytelling instead of search,” Qwiki hopes that this more experiential presentation of information will inspire users. In the Alpha phase, they are also asking users to suggest additional images, information and videos to bolster and improve entries. One recommendation from us: fix the friendly, but haltingly digital voice.

  Brush up on your knowledge of millions of things at Qwiki.

• 
  January 24, 2011

  YouTube Symphony Orchestra Enters Second Year

  When we hear “YouTube Symphony” we think of yet another clever web-enabled collaboration—something that lets a violinist in Helsinki, say, jam with a trombonist in Cape Town. But this is the real deal. Now in its second year, YouTube Symphony uses video sharing to audition members and rehearse parts, but then takes a bold step into the real world: last year’s season culminated in a performance at Carnegie Hall, and this year brings the international musicians together at the Sydney Opera House. The group’s deeper goal is to spread music to the masses: by offering video tutorials, jam sessions, and even some innovative online instruments, the Symphony hopes to make classical as accessible as punk rock.

  Read (and watch) Mashable’s video-heavy explanation of the phenomenon.

• 
  January 18, 2011

  The Science Fair Moves Out of the School Gym

  Google, in partnership with CERN, LEGO, National Geographic and Scientific American, is accepting entries for their global online science fair. Kids aged 13 – 18 can submit their project for a chance to win scholarships from Google, a trip to the Galapagos islands with National Geographic Expeditions, and more. This new format gives all kids the opportunity to engage in their passion for science.

  See more at Google.
  Image via Flickr user mightyohm.

• 
  January 18, 2011

  DIY Dye Kit for Denham's Denim

  Dutch denim brand Denham has teamed up with Woad-inc to release a DIY dye kit. Professional quality dye is made from the woad plant, grown on a farm in Norfolk, England. Looking like a cross between spinach and sugar beet, and with origins dating back to ancient times, woad offers a healthy alternative to harmful chemicals that exist in synthetic indigo dyes. If dyeing your own sounds too daunting, Denham is also releasing 75 pairs of hand-dipped Woad-inc dyed jeans available in their Amsterdam, London and Tokyo stores.

  Learn more about the collaboration and the history of woad at Denham.

• 
  January 10, 2011

  Unlock Your Front Door the Extra Nerdy Way

  Mass Geek on several different levels. First, there’s the uber-geeky web developers of Apartm.net who hooked up their apartment’s front door to Foursquare, letting guests of their New Year’s party unlock by simply checking in. Then there’s the video they made to publicize the system (with a bit of the new Tron: Legacy soundtrack playing in the background). And now there’s the possibility, according to FastCompany, that they’ll soon put together and sell a kit that lets anyone do the Foursquare thing with their own front door. And then there’s the apartment itself, which has to be seen to be believed.

  Read FastCompany’s story, and watch the video at Apartm.net.

• 
  January 04, 2011

  DIY Biotech Lab opens in NYC

  Shared shop spaces like TechShop are gaining popularity all over the country, but now the DIY hobbyist has a new field in which to tinker: biotechnology. GenSpace, recently opened in downtown Brooklyn, is the nation’s first public biotech lab, where homespun investigators can do their own research in a well-equipped, CDC containment level 1 facility.

  Tour the lab at Wired Science, and read the New York Times’ review of its Dec 10 opening.
  Image via flickr user Bookhling

• 
  January 04, 2011

  Vimeo Video School Tutorials

  Vimeo brings video education to its already active user community. The site describes its purpose as “a fun place for anyone to learn how to make better videos.” Tutorials include a DIY video guide on how to build a camera dolly for $50 and how to “paint with light.”

  Learn how to be a better videographer at Vimeo.

• 
  December 21, 2010

  High-end Photos on the Cheap

  The sorts of incredibly detailed high-speed photographs that make us stare and gasp are now within reach of the dedicated amateur. Wired Magazine chronicles the efforts of British pharmaceutical developer and talented hobbyist photographer Linden Gledhill, as he pushes his craft into the realm of the astonishing. Using low-cost accessories from small Michigan-based company Cognisys, he captures milk droplets in mid-air and insects in mid-flight, for a fraction of what a professional setup costs.

  See more of these incredible amateur shots at Wired

• 
  December 13, 2010

  Hacktivists, Armchair Pundits, and Other Soldiers of the Infowar

  The recent WikiLeaks phenomenon has the potential to make pundits out of millions of observers, but are we up to the challenge? The unfiltered text and dubious quality of this new slew of sources is demanding information literacy skills that were once confined to professional analysts. As media is increasingly placed in the hands of skilled amateurs, there’s no doubt that many will try, but is the non-professional pontificator up to the challenge?

  Read the New York Times’ cache of cables and analysis, and decide for yourself.

  At the other end of the Mass Geek spectrum, legions of amateur “hacktivists” have taken up the WikiLeaks cause, mounting loosely organized Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks on websites they see as hostile to free electronic speech. Web-enabled activism is nothing new, and DDoS attacks have been around for years, but the ease with which people can participate, using “hacking” tools that are push-button simple, means nearly anyone can be a potential info-warrior.

  Learn more about “Operation Payback” and friends at GigaOm.
  Image via Flickr user Anonymous9000.

• 
  December 09, 2010

  Student Protesters Out-map the Police

  Via BoingBoing, some breaking Mass Geek news. A group of students in London protesting proposed educational fee hikes in sub-freezing conditions are using a frequently updated Google Map to report police anti-protest activity, allowing them to avoid being “kettled” (rounded up and detained outdoors) or dispersed. The blogger referenced in the story explains that “…with this, with Wikileaks, and…underground video news outlets like Undercurrents…it does feel a bit as if tools traditionally only available to the state for things like surveillance, evidence gathering, coordination and dissemination are being democratised.”

  Read the post, and watch the map update in real time.

• 
  December 06, 2010

  Intelligentsia Brings Coffee Connoisseurship to the Kitchen

  Chicago coffee authority Intelligentsia is demystifying and democratizing the science of a perfect cup of joe with a new iPhone app. The beans’ origins and tasting notes are described before next instructing specific directions for whatever your brewing mechanism may be. A brew timer rounds out the app’s directions before connecting to Facebook for larger commentary with your community of fellow coffee connoisseurs.

  Take a closer look at the iTunes App Store and read a detailed review at DearCoffeeILoveYou.

• 
  December 06, 2010

  A DIY Camera for Kids

  Bigshot camera ships as a kit of parts, challenging kids to assemble it before they can shoot with it. More than just keeping the cost down, this process also teaches a number of lessons about science and photography, and the Bigshot Connect website encourages kids from all over the world to compare how they’re using it.

  Read the Bigshot story at Change Observer.

• 
  November 30, 2010

  Artist's Eye on Google's Street

  Google Street View is available to anyone with an internet connection, but to find images like these takes the eyes of an artist. Montreal-based Jon Rafman scours the globe looking for frame-worthy stills from Google’s wandering vans, and the results are now on display at the New Museum in New York City.

  See a few examples of the art that’s all around us at Coolhunting.
  His original Tumblr blog (Note: occasional non-blurred nudity) 9eyes.tumblr.com

• 
  November 23, 2010

  The Internet of Walls

  “Dead Drops” is an ominous sounding name, but the idea is mostly harmless. By permanently affixing USB flash drives into publicly accessible spaces, a group of NYC artists is hoping to take the digital concept of file sharing and make it analog, and therefore more tangible and engaging. Interested participants are urged to grab an unknown file off a drive and leave their own, restoring a bit of fun and mystery to the file sharing experience, but also creating a new (albeit high-effort) opportunity for purveyors of viruses and other malware.

  Read the story and watch the video.

• 
  November 15, 2010

  The Story of Glif

  When we hear about DIY-enabling technologies like rapid prototyping, we feel a rush of potential tempered by skepticism: interesting, yes, but can you really get a product to market this way? As recent start-up Glif demonstrates, you really can. The two New Yorkers who came up with the idea to manufacture a small iPhone tripod attachment used new, inexpensive, accessible technology to help every step of the way, from raising capital through Kickstarter, to prototyping with a Dutch service called Shapeways, to getting rapid tooling built inexpensively at Protomold. After raising $70,000 in the first three days, the duo earned attention from no less than The Economist, whose coverage points to the project as a real example of technology dropping the cost of entry to manufacturing in a dramatic way.

  Read the story at The Economist, and check on The Glif’s progress at Kickstarter.

• 
  November 08, 2010

  New Tools Let Hobbyist Investors Trade Like The Pros

  The democratization of professional level investing tools continues. A recent BusinessWeek article surveys the growing ranks of analysis and trading tools, including websites like Fidelity and tradeMONSTER that offer “features that online traders couldn’t have dreamed of little more than 10 years ago.”

  Read the article on BusinessWeek.com.
  Image via Flickr user Christopher S. Penn.

• 
  November 01, 2010

  Plastic Recycling on Your Countertop

  For the eco-conscious technophile, it’s no longer enough to simply collect your plastic for recycling—the Japanese-built Blest Machine now offers the ability to bring the entire process into your home. Inventor Akinori Ito has simplified and miniaturized plastic recycling, packing an entire factory’s worth of technology into a single home-friendly unit that converts old yogurt containers and detergent bottles into usable oil, with nothing more than a carefully controlled electric heater. The company’s website claims it fits on a tabletop, converts a kilo of plastic into a liter of oil, and costs just under US$10,000.

  Read the review at Coolhunting, or check out the Blest website for details.

• 
  October 25, 2010

  Mass Foraging for the Obscure in Oregon

  While the locavore movement is gaining traction in foodie circles around the globe, here in Oregon it’s approaching the level of religion. The New York Times’ T Magazine profiles the growing popularity of gourmet foraging: chefs and experts in local plant lore work together to track down edible plants in the wild, and teach interested food geeks how to do the same.

  Learn the difference between pickleweed and wood sorrel on the T Magazine blog.

  Image via Flickr user jen_maiser

• 
  October 18, 2010

  Phone Photography Made Professional

  The convenience and ease of camera-phone photography are beyond dispute, but the results aren’t quite the high-quality finish you’d appreciate. Now, fisheye, macro and wide angle lenses for any camera phone make the professional accessible as they snap on magnetically and dramatically improve the quality and variety of shots you can achieve.

  Check out which lens (or bundle!) is right for you.

• 
  October 18, 2010

  McCormick's Flavor Forecast 2010

  One of the biggest spice manufacturers in the world gives professionals and consumers their 2010 flavor forecast. For professionals, it inspires products like the next Doritos flavor, but evolving foodie consumers want in on the trends too. This year’s forecast seeks to make holiday entertaining more professional and on-trend than before, targeting and updating specific holiday flavors and pairings.

  Plan your foodie feasts with flavors and recipes at McCormick.com.
  Dorito Cheesburger flavor bag image via Flickr user nano

• 
  October 11, 2010

  Family Space Camera is Homeschool for Tomorrow's Inventors

  When someone uses balloons to send an HD video camera into space for some high-altitude shots of the earth, that’s geeky. But when it’s a father and his kids doing it, it’s charming, fascinating and maybe even prescient. As attested by the seven minute video they created, this was no small undertaking — eight months of designing, modifying and testing, followed by a launch, GPS-enabled recovery and post-flight evaluation. The fact that it was a technically complex family project takes this beyond the realm of DIY photography and into DIY education of the most creative sort.

  Watch the remarkable video, and wish your dad was this cool.

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  October 11, 2010

  The People's Hackintosh

  The Hackintosh has been around for a while, describing what happens when tech-inclined hobbyists do some surgery on a generic laptop to coax it into running the Mac OS, at a fraction of Apple’s price. But recently, California-based Quo Computers has been making this process easier by selling desktops that can be configured to run OS X, Windows, Linux or any combination of the three. It raises the question of how Apple will respond: by acknowledging a broader, geekier audience that wants more control over their hardware, or by suing Quo into oblivion.

  Read the summary on Tuaw.com.
  Organic Hackintosh by Flickr user SanGatiche.

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  October 04, 2010

  On the Internet, Everyone Knows Who Stole Your Stuff

  A Bay Area writer uses Craigslist, MySpace, a dating site and a few phone calls to track down the man who stole her GPS, then writes about it on Salon. MASS GEEK is full of stories about engaged and savvy citizens using newly available tools to do professional-level tasks, but in this case, a cop is the professional being emulated.

  Read the thrilling tale of crime, justice and social media on Salon.
  Great use of the “Interrupting Kanye” meme image via Carissa Marie.

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  September 28, 2010

  Your New Kitchen is In The Bag

  It used to be that a customized selection of swatches and material samples was something you paid an interior designer handsomely to assemble. Now, for a fraction of the cost, “Design In a Bag” will ship you all the tile, wood, paint and trim samples you need to step boldly forward with your kitchen plans. About 50 different “bags” with twee names like ‘Marshfield’ and ‘Windsor’ are sorted into palettes and genres, and come with hand-drawn renderings of a generic kitchen to demonstrate final effect. While we can’t say if the result will be anything spectacular, it’s definitely a page in the ongoing empowerment fable of MASS GEEK, and might even avoid a stylistic train wreck or two.

  Warm, cool or neutral? Vintage, classic or modern? Make your pick and order your bag.

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  September 20, 2010

  Outlasting Zombies Using Art and the Internet

  Combining know-how from Army and FEMA manuals with his own artistic inclination, Albuquerque resident Chad Person has created the ultimate survival shelter for the upcoming zombie/robot apocalypse. This is more than just a well-stocked bunker: security measures include a video-based sentry wielding a homemade shotgun, and the entire cinder block and concrete affair is concealed by landscaping to disappear once the 300-lb. steel door is closed. What’s even more remarkable is that Person has no formal construction background—he completed the entire project using free information found online.

  Read the article and prepare for the coming plague.

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  September 13, 2010

  Code for America

  Open source technology projects have been around approximately forever, and often produce phenomenal work, as any user of Linux or OpenOffice will tell you. With its appeal to civic duty and decidedly un-techy aesthetic, however, Code for America is taking open source down the Web 2.0 path. Starting with a video call to action from luminaries at Twitter, Facebook and O’Reilly Media, the project seeks to hook social media-savvy coders up with governmental agencies, in the hopes of making them “more efficient, transparent, and participatory.” If an app could do all that…it’d be worth at least $1.99.

  Use your geek superpowers for good, not for evil, at Code for America.

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  September 13, 2010

  OpenBuildings

  OpenBuildings is a beautifully designed, openly editable encyclopedia of buildings from around the world. The site pulls in images, films, plans and commentary from throughout the web and invites its network of contributors to massage it all into a useful reference for architects, historians, tourists and enthusiasts. The interface includes a “completeness bar” to encourage contributions, and makes submitting new building data a snap. Let a thousand architecture geeks bloom!

  Visit the site, click the “Submit Building” button, and you’re on your way.

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  September 13, 2010

  AP Begins Officially Crediting Bloggers

  In a reversal of its policies of the past decade, the 160-year-old Associated Press has announced that bloggers are to be officially credited as news sources. We’ve heard for years about the democratization of media, but in truth the vast majority of blogs don’t break news; this announcement could help change that. An article at TheNextWeb points out that “it could mean that bloggers are approached with the right information and maybe even given exclusives ahead of traditional publications.” With newspapers and networks relentlessly cutting staff, is this a move toward better journalism, or just lower overhead?

  Catch the excitement and the implications on TheNextWeb.
  Blogger hat photo via Flickr user DexterPerrin.

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  September 07, 2010

  Tweeting Weed(s)?

  “The Micro Grow Project’s LabBox Grower is a small automated hydroponic growing system that uses a microcontroller to automate watering cycles, light schedules, and temperatures. It can be controlled and monitored via the Web or mobile phone, and can tweet about its condition.”

  Our favorite comment: “Tweeting your ‘medicine’ growing? What could possibly go wrong?”

  Read about it at Boing Boing and see it at PocketGrow.

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  September 07, 2010

  Inside the Museum Walls

  Like the website says, “Museums and galleries not only house fascinating collections, they are also the home to leading experts who love to share their passion…” For one day (last Wednesday in fact), curators from 23 different countries opened themselves up to questions from anyone with a Twitter account. Response was so great that #askacurator became a trending topic, and global experts found themselves awash in questions about paintings, fossils, Van Gogh’s ear…and spam.

  Visit the site, follow the Twitter stream, and read a review at Columbus Underground.

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  August 31, 2010

  Gaming the Lawyers

  Digital Rights Management has been a topic of hot contention almost forever, it seems, but now one particular group of consumers is taking action. Hardcore gamers, not copyright policy wonks, are the newest thorn in the side of pro-DRM media producers. Their complaints about limits on gameplay, and the ingenious ways they’re circumventing them, are spurring some real policy changes from game companies like Ubisoft.

  Read more about it at Technology Review.
  Cosplay lawyer photo CC via Flickr user stargonautone

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  August 30, 2010

  Levi’s Workshops Expand

  Levi’s spreads its brand by spreading skills. Pulling in big name creative folks like Bob Mould and Stefan Sagmeister, Levi’s Workshops bring everyday folks into an educational version of a pop-up store, to learn anything from letterpress printing to short filmmaking.

  Get schooled (and branded) here.

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  August 23, 2010

  Citizen Scientists and Linked Home Computers Lead to Pulsar Discovery

  Astronomers are no slouches, but with massive amounts of computing power within reach of hobbyists, a new community of “citizen scientists” is occasionally beating the pros to the punch. Most recently a pulsar called SR J2007+2722 was discovered by a global amateur network of over 250,000 computers, linked through a program called Einstein@Home. Not only did they crunch the data at record speed, but generated tremendous excitement in the process. “It was like watching 5-year-olds tearing Christmas presents,” notes one researcher.

  Get in on the science at Tonic.

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  August 23, 2010

  Hipster Moonshine

  Now that home brewing, home winemaking and home infusing are commonplace, what’s a DIY-minded hipster to take on next? According to this Atlantic article, they’re turning to moonshine. Though still illegal in the US (and most everywhere else), independent distilling is seeing a resurgence in popularity, stretching beyond its rural roots to be embraced by younger, more urban enthusiasts, empowered by online knowledge and the thrill of the vaguely illicit.

  Read the article.
  Learn the details.
  Image CC via Flickr user Lyle58

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  August 16, 2010

  DIY Research: Threat or Opportunity?

  The CEO of SurveyMonkey answers some questions on the world’s premier DIY polling tool, starting with an acknowledgement of how commonplace surveys have become, even for everyday activities like planning a family reunion or getting feedback on an office meeting. He also discusses the Monkey’s relationship to traditional market research and how it’s viewed by research professionals: “It’s not a research tool, it’s a decision making tool…It’s not something to be fearful of.”

  Watch the video at Research Live.

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  August 16, 2010

  Hello my Beautiful Makeup Geeks!

  While cosmetic tutorials are certainly nothing new, online or otherwise, the level of specificity and complexity that we’re seeing on sites like MakeUpGeek.com is breaking new ground. This recent video (the 187th posted so far) goes for an elaborate Bollywood-inspired look, clocking in at just over seven minutes and going through 21 separate products in the process.

  Improve your skills at Makeup Geek.

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  August 09, 2010

  Handcuffs Off iPhone Hacking

  Locked devices, turnkey software and digital rights management (DRM) have all lost ground to the growing ranks of geeks and consumer activists demanding full rein and control over their purchases. Even more frightening for mobile phone carriers is the newly legal opportunity to break DRM for switching carriers. The news is the first signaling a change of policy toward consumers and hackers and away from big computer/media companies.

  Read more at Fast Company.

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  August 09, 2010

  Molecular Gastronomy Comes Home

  For cooks intrigued by the bizarre world of edible foams, gels and popped candies, Cuisine Innovation is a new online shop that offers all the specialized gadgets and ingredients necessary to relive the glory days of El Bulli in their own kitchens.

  Visit Cuisine Innovation for more.

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  August 02, 2010

  Make:Projects

  Make Magazine unveils a wiki where anyone can post step-by-step instructions for their favorite DIY projects, from a $30 micro forge to a batch of bourbon chicken wings. While sites like eHow and Instructables have been doing this sort of thing for a few years now, the fervor and mutual support of Make’s existing online community of makers has us expecting even more.

  Find your next project at Make: Project.

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  August 02, 2010

  Build Your Own Engine

  For an additional US$5800, Chevy gives fans a chance to travel to one of their factories and assemble their very own Corvette engines—with their bare hands. It may seem a lot to pay for the opportunity to do manual labor, but as the article points out, “for some people, it’s impossible to put a price on the special connection with one’s car.” (We’d call them MASS GEEKS.)

  See more at Sub 5 Zero.

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  July 26, 2010

  Drag ‘n’ Drop Invention

  Google’s recent release of “App Inventor” for the Android operating system allows just about anyone to create a smartphone application. While the results are rarely iPhone-pristine, the ability for regular users to rapidly generate custom solutions is a bold step toward fulfilling Android’s promise of an open source utopia. Equally important, its accessibility could help inspire a new generation of code writers.

  Full article available at Fast Company.
  Image via flickr user laihiu

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  July 20, 2010

  Homemade Cosmetics

  This wholesale and retail supplier of natural ingredients and cosmeceuticals for skin care, hair care color, cosmetics and soap allows you to concoct all your beauty products at home. Will future Lauren Lukes also share their own recipes with the world, in addition to makeup tips?

  Figure out which type of zinc oxide is right for you at MakingCosmetics.com.
  Image via flickr user m-louis.

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  July 12, 2010

  iPad Makes Education Couch-Friendly

  The iPad provides an attractive platform for highly visual edutainment apps, such as Theodore Gray’s striking “The Elements”.

  Read about the making of this app on PopScience.
  Image: The Elements

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  July 12, 2010

  Universities Open Up

  As more educational institutions begin to place their course materials online for free, the worldwide demand for learning is beginning to increase. iTunes U hosts more than 250,000 courses, including lectures from MIT, Standford, Yale and Oxford — all of them ready to download for free. Recently UK-based Open University boasted 20 million downloads of its courses alone. For those seeking expertise in niche subjects, there has never been more opportunity. You may not be able to get a diploma from MIT by following along online, but you can certainly put your knowledge to good use.

  Read more about Open University’s success.

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  July 12, 2010

  Making Complex Issues Accessible...and Beautiful

  Big ideas, issues and complex knowledge domains undoubtably have a lot of data behind them. But the number of facts and figures flooding through our mediasphere today can be overwhelming. The ascending art of infographics holds promise for helping us better visualize and comprehend perplexing problems. Information Is Beautiful is a great example of a site that helps us become better informed by transforming chaos into comprehensible abstractions. The author, David McCandless, even encourages the crowdsourcing of data to help him craft his representations of information.

  Behold the drool-worthy infographics at Information is Beautiful.

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  July 12, 2010

  Sartorial Splendor, Accessible Anywhere

  With over 250,000 hits a day, Scott Schuman’s site The Sartorialist has been described by Time Magazine as a Top 100 Design Influencer. From the comfort of our own homes, we can view the daily wear of the fashion elite in their natural habitats — whether they be in Milan, Paris or New York. The site has introduced these fashion-forward sensibilities to the mass market. GQ magazine now regularly features photos and analysis from Schuman.

  Read The Sartorialist.

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