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Building a Green Windows Home Server

Posted By: Sarah Perez | Apr 22nd @ 1:57 PM
I've been following a very interesting series of posts over on the Home Server Hacks blog. They detailing, step-by-step, the process of building a $400 "green" Home Server. The server is encased in a Shuttle KPC housing, which is, according to the Shuttle web site, a low power consumption appliance, using only 55 Watts when in use and 33 Watts when idle. To go even greener, you can use Western Digital Caviar GP series drives. There are five parts to this post about building the green WHS and you can began reading the series here. It's a great idea, and just in time for Earth Day, too!
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Halo 3 Origami

Posted By: Larry Larsen | Sep 25th, 2007 @ 2:02 PM
In case there is any question that Halo 3 fans are absolute fanatics, I give you BillyBob884's Halo 3 Master Chief paper model. The 13" tall iconic warrior consists of 2100+ faces and took almost a month to build.

Instructions and a PDF of the pieces are available for download, should you want to spend a month putting your own together... or you could just go play the game, because the only way I'm building one of these is if my power goes out today.
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Schmall Science

Posted By: Laura Foy | Jul 3rd, 2007 @ 9:15 AM
They may be called Schmall Science but it's definitely a big idea. This group has decided to make science and learning hands on and fun for everybody. Honestly it made me want to be a kid again just so I could take apart my brothers broken down Chevy sitting out in the back yard and put it back together. Check out this clip and see where you just might be able to find the next Schmall Science workshop.
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Justin.tv

Posted By: Laura Foy | Jun 29th, 2007 @ 2:43 PM
Have you ever seen the Truman Show with Jim Carey? Well Justin is the real life version of that except he agreed to it and made it happen all on his own! Justin decided one morning to attach a camera to his head and stream his world live over the internet for all the world to see. I ran into him and found myself being broadcast as I was filming him. It was very meta, check it out.
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Maker Faire 2007: Drum Machine

Posted By: Tina Wood | Jun 25th, 2007 @ 12:14 PM
Meet Tony from San Francisco state.  He built a drum machine that takes a midi signal from a midi device that goes to another device which processes the midi signal.  Got it?  Yea, better to just watch the video. It's short, but sweet.  :) 
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Maker Faire: Lightning straight to the brain

Posted By: Laura Foy | Jun 20th, 2007 @ 12:54 PM
Back in my college days (last year) nothing inspired me more than a teacher who really got hands on, and especially if they let me electricute them! Well UC Santa Cruz is experimenting with particle physics and taking their findings on the orad to enlighten other schools and excite little pyro's like me. Check out this demonstration of power and electricity from this years Maker Faire. And yes, there's a real live person in that metal suit.
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Maker Faire: Bre Pettis gives us...Photo Bot

Posted By: Laura Foy | Jun 19th, 2007 @ 11:59 AM
Channel 10 and Bre Pettis (from Make Magazine and imakethings.com) have been dear old buddies from the very beginning. I found the talented boy down at Maker Faire and he shared with us his latest brain child. A robotic pen that does line drawing portraits, of course!
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Maker Faire: GreatHouse Labs

Posted By: Laura Foy | Jun 13th, 2007 @ 12:18 PM
Walking robots! Fire breathing metallic monsters! Flame shooting motorbikes! And all this just in one mans front yard. Ladies and Gentlemen...I introduce you to Lance from GreatHouse Labs. This is an unbelievable example of what one man can do with some metal scraps, a blow torch, an MP3 player and a whole lot of creativity. I want one!!!
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Maker Faire: Pedal Power

Posted By: Laura Foy | Jun 11th, 2007 @ 6:34 PM
Have you ever wanted to go for a nice bike ride through the park but you stopped and thought to yourself -"Self, a bicycle ride sounds lovely but gosh darnit I wish there was something I could do to help protect our planets precious energy?" Well...now there is! Check out this video from Maker Faire and see how you too can power your laptop while burning off that cheeseburger.
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Maker Fair: RoboWars

Posted By: Laura Foy | Jun 7th, 2007 @ 1:30 PM
What's cooler than one robot playing soccer? TWO robots playing soccer! I went down to maker faire and found these robots with a huge crowd surrounding them. They can flip, roll and fight. Check out this video and see how it's done.
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Maker Faire: Sherman Robots & Robot BUGS

Posted By: Laura Foy | Jun 6th, 2007 @ 1:19 PM
Mark and Bill Sherman have taken their love and passion for robotics and turned it into an artform. And by "artform", I mean ArtBots. I swung by their booth this year at Maker Faire and found out where their inspiration comes from and just what it takes to create your own plantbots. What's a plantbot you say? Well...go ahead and click play and find out :)
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Maker Faire: Electric Giraffe

Posted By: Laura Foy | Jun 5th, 2007 @ 6:01 PM
The electric giraffe (aka 'Rave Raffe') is a shy, nocturnal creature of the Playa. It can sometimes be found roaming the streets of suburbia where it elicits awe amongst the spectators. Native of Southern California, the 'Raffe can sometimes be coaxed further afield for special occasions.

Enter now the world of the Electric Giraffe, and behold the beauty of its design, marvel at its engineering and revel in the presence of the World's first robotic giraffe.

Plus, you can ride on him!

 
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Maker Faire: DrunkTender!

Posted By: Laura Foy | Jun 5th, 2007 @ 5:53 PM
So you think the Microsoft makers can't party with the best of them? Well these kids created a way to make getting your drink on easier! Ah, technology! And tasty too :)
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Maker Fair: Phil Torrone...the man, the myth, the Maker

Posted By: Laura Foy | Jun 1st, 2007 @ 1:41 PM
For the second year in a row I attended Maker Fair which is put on by Make Magazine. Now, while last year was a blast- this year was TWICE the fun and excitement. It was bigger and better. I managed to steal a few minutes with Phil Torrone, the Senior Editor of Make Magazine. After congratulating him on the event's success and his stylish white lab coat (who doesn't love a man in uniform?)- he told me what it takes to make the fair happen, to be a part of the fair, and how to get involved in the growing DIY community. Also...stay tuned for TONS more Maker Fair videos coming all this week.
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Fab@Home rapid prototyper and 3D Printer

Posted By: JD Lewin | Jan 16th, 2007 @ 1:51 PM
We saw this last week and it's been on our minds ever since. For the price of your next computer, you could instead buy yourself all the parts, tools, and instructions necessary to build your own Fab@Home 3D printer or 'fabber.' Also included in your kit is the software to drive your new creation.

Once you've got it fired up, your action figure collection can really begin to blossom. Imagine: a collection of esteemed chemistry professors of the 19th century!
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Ignite Seattle! The Popsicle bridge building competition of a life time!

Posted By: Tina Wood | Dec 12th, 2006 @ 6:16 PM
I couldn't resist attending Ignite Seattle!  A bridge building competition held in downtown Seattle to unite those with a little competitive edge.  Okay, it was way more then just a popsicle bridge building competition but that's what got me excited.  We will also have more coverage Thirteen teams either had their bridges crushed by the weight of another human or they literally broke the scale.  This was such a fun event and Bre Pettis from I make things was in true passionate, and I must say adorable form. 
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The Hazard Factory brings you the Power Tools Race and Derby!

Posted By: Laura Foy | Aug 25th, 2006 @ 10:00 AM
Founded in 2000 by Rusty Oliver, Hazard Factory is a Seattle based political, metal, machine, & fire arts studio. Recently they invited their members, friends, enemies and lovers to modify their old power tools and bring 'em on down for a fun filled day of racing and desctruction. Oh, and drinking. Enjoy.
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Strip CPU! Cooling down your hot and noisy computer...

Posted By: Laura Foy | Aug 1st, 2006 @ 5:11 PM
Some like it hot? Maybe- but most don't like their COMPUTERS to be hot, nor do we want them noisy. So we brought in expert Allen Nation to test out an experiment we found on Tom's Hardware where he actually submerged his CPU in a fish tank full of oil. Hey, even if it doesn't work it's at least good old messy fun! Check it out-oh, and it works:)
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Lego teams up with Microsoft Robotics

Posted By: Laura Foy | Jul 31st, 2006 @ 4:15 PM
Lego visited the Redmond Campus of Microsoft to show off their newest home robotics kit, the Lego Mindstorm NXT.  They talked about the collaboration between their products and our very own Microsoft Robotics Studio.  Also check out photos from the event.
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Lego Mindstorm NXT (Teaser)

Posted By: Erik | Jul 25th, 2006 @ 10:00 AM
Yesterday, Laura and I headed over with a video camera and smartphones armed and loaded.  Lego was coming in to show off their new robot the Lego Mindstorm NXT.  I've been getting into some robot building of my own lately (I'm still an extreme beginner) and had seen some buzz around the NXT.  I figured it would be neat, but thought to myself, "it's a toy...how cool could it really be"?  Let me tell you my friends, it is VERY cool!  So cool that a 10 year old can build something awesome with it pretty easily, yet a 35 year old adult (or however old) could customize the open source firmware, write a program to receive blue tooth signals that would command the 3 rotating motors while reading from the different sensors (touch, sound, light & ultra-sonic) to build an extremely cool robot to do who knows what?!?!  To make a long story short...er...shorter...Laura snagged some people to talk to, we video'd them (sorry if the camera was shakey, my programmer arms are made of jelly) and we're working on getting a video ready as I type this.  Expect to see it very soon.  I was so excited after seeing some of the possibilities that I went and ordered one for myself when I got back to my desk.  This is going to be fun!

Note: Lego did NOT pay us to say this  ;)

The team that builds Microsoft Robotics Studio (MSRS) was also there to show off MSRS, what it could do and how you could easily write code against the NXT to do some really neat stuff.  One of the demos was a guy who had built an NXT robot that connected to his PC through blue tooth so he could control it remotely as well as having his cameraphone that was mounted on top of it that would send video back to the PC through the NXT while driving it around.  Sick!

Check out the photos I snapped with my smartphone while we were there (apologies for the low quality).

Again, there will be a video coming soon.  Watch for it!
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San Diego to Alaska with a blog, a camera, and two wheels.

Posted By: Tina Wood | Jul 19th, 2006 @ 5:15 AM
Which word looks out of place here: Flickr, YouTube, WiFi, gasoline, GPS? For most of us Chevron and Shell don't figure into our daily internet existence, but then none of us are Brian Galloway. The idea of traversing the entire Western seaboard on a motorbike isn't exactly our cup of tea, but publishing all of it on the net sure is! Brian walked us through his project, and thankfully we didn't have to go all Mad Max and interview him at 80mph.
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Phil Torrone brings Make to Microsoft

Posted By: JD Lewin | Jul 7th, 2006 @ 4:37 PM
Picture this: It's a sunny Friday a little after lunch, and you're dreading the hike back to your desk and the piles of work that scared you towards the solice of your burrito in the first place. Typically this is the most depressing moment in a day at Microsoft. Once in a while though there's a glimmer of hope. Recently that glimmer took the form of Phil Torrone and Make Magazine presenting to anyone on the MS campus! Settle in and watch Phil spin a web of homebrew madness...
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Metal Crushing Armored Fun!

Posted By: Laura Foy | Jun 8th, 2006 @ 7:27 PM
Ready...FIGHT! We're taking you inside the ring with battling bots. In combat robot competitions competitors bring remote-controlled, armored and weaponed machines which they have designed and built, and put them in an arena to fight in a single-elimination tournament. The goal is for one robot, or "bot", to dominate or disable the other. Ultimate destruction wins. I love it :)
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Brush up on your military history via Podcast!

Posted By: JD Lewin | Jun 2nd, 2006 @ 6:00 PM
Duncan and I headed over to Seattle to chat with George Hageman, a local Seattle teenager who reaches more than 8,000 subscribers with his podcast on military history. Find out why he decided to do a podcast, why he chose this particular topic, and just how little equipment he needed to get started.
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Maker Faire: Putting a StreetDeck PC into your car

Posted By: Laura Foy | May 22nd, 2006 @ 9:00 AM
Cars, cars, cars. It's all about making your ride custom to your needs. At Maker Faire I met up with Damien Stolarz, author of Car PC Hacks, and he introduced me to the all-in-one mobile electronics package StreetDeck. StreetDeck delivers all the extras you want (GPS, Music, DVD, the works!) and need in your car, so you can go from zero to loaded with one installation. It's pretty sweet...
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CalCars... Taking a Prius Hybrid to 100+ MPG!

Posted By: Tina Wood | May 10th, 2006 @ 4:00 PM
So Laura heads to Maker Faire and gets indepth information on those ridiculously high gas prices. Okay, well kind of. She talks to the founder of CalCars and learns how they can convert a Toyota Prius so that it can be charged using your household electricity ... power that is a whole lot cheaper than the gas a normal Prius uses to generate all of its electric power. Learn how they make this work, and how much easier it would be for Toyota to make their hybrids work this way in the first place. Enjoy! Oh and Laura's not so bad either.
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You make things? Yeah, well imakethings (.com)

Posted By: Laura Foy | May 5th, 2006 @ 1:00 PM
Bre Pettis is the man of my dreams, and perhaps yours as well. He is an artist, maker, podcaster, teacher, videographer, blogger, innovator and inventor. He stopped by our studios to talk about his latest robot, what he's been up to and where you can find him next-- which by the way is as a correspondant for RocketBoom with Amanda Congden. Marry me now Bre!
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What is Maker Faire??

Posted By: Laura Foy | May 1st, 2006 @ 1:00 PM
Join me down in San Mateo, CA as I check out Maker Faire! I chat with Dale Dougherty, editor and publisher of Make Magazine, to find out what this event is all about, and I learn about the Maker's Bill of Rights from Mr. Jalopy himself!

Want to see more? No worries, more Maker Faire coverage coming soon!
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