Djotto

Editor’s Note: At a time when anyone can broadcast their opinions about your startup to the world, public relations requires a new level of engagement on the part of companies and entrepreneurs. But what are the new rules of PR? Guest author Brian Solis, who earlier this month wrote a post for us on the evolution of the press release, explains how public relations has changed and offers up 12 secrets of PR for startups. Warning: This a lengthy post. Its intent is to help companies navigate through the rough seas of traditional PR as it struggles, forcibly, to evolve and adapt to the new rules set forth by the Web (regardless of version number) .

Solis is the Principal of FutureWorks, a PR and New Media agency in Silicon Valley and also blogs at PR 2.0. Along with Geoff Livingston, Solis recently co-authored Now is Gone, a book that helps businesses learn how to leverage new and social media.

I’ve been overwhelmed with requests from executives and PR professionals to explain how this new media (r)evolution applies to them specifically and how they can make PR more effective and personal during these interesting times. I recently discussed it here and have been doing so for a long, long time. But since conversations and attention is discontinuous and distributed, I asked if I could bring this discussion to a more prominent online epicenter to help reach a wider array of those looking for answers.

The Long Road Back to Public Relations

Public Relations is experiencing a long overdue renaissance and its forcing PR stereotypes out from behind the curtain where they operated comfortably for far too many decades. It didn’t begin this transformation because of Web 2.0 or the latest Social Media wave, but instead in the 90’s when the Web gained mass adoption. Yes, it’s taken that long and it will continue to evolve over the next decade as communications professionals struggle with putting the public back in public relations.

Regardless of what we think we know about PR and the New Media or Social Media revolution, the truth is that we actually may know less about everything than we care to believe. These are times where we can lead and learn in order to improve an industry long plagued by misconceptions and the lack of PR for itself.

PR is now more than ever, something more capable and influential than simply writing and sending press releases to contacts generated by media databases. The media landscape has been completely blown open to not only include traditional media, but also bloggers and most importantly the very people we want to reach, our customers.

PR 1.0

About 100 years ago, Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays created and defined the art and science of modern-day PR. Believe it or not, their philosophies and contributions can still be used to further evolve PR today – especially when it comes to Social Sciences.

Over the years, the PR 1.0 publicity machine lost its way and its spark. We got caught up in hype, spin, buzzwords, and spam, and forgot that PR was supposed to be about Public Relations. But, its still how many companies continue to approach PR today.

Enter Social Media and the democratization of the Web and content. Now media and content producers are pushing back, demanding a more targeted and relevant form of outreach. For those who confuse Social Media with online marketing, Social Media is anything that uses the Internet to facilitate conversations between people – it is not the practice of social marketing. I say people, because it humanizes the process of communications when you think about conversations instead of companies marketing at audiences.

PR 2.0 = Conversational PR

The Web changed everything and this ongoing reinvention of PR has been dubbed PR 2.0 or New PR.

PR 2.0, as I defined it many years ago, is the realization that the Web changed everything, inserting people equally into the process of traditional influence. Suddenly we were presented with the opportunity to not only reach our audiences through media gatekeepers, but also use the online channels where they publish and share information to communicate more directly and genuinely.

At the very least, PR 2.0 is going back to the roots of PR to bring back relating to the public back into the process.

Now it’s about listening and, in turn, engaging influencers and stakeholders on their level. It forces PR to stop broadcasting and start connecting.

It is a chance to not only work with traditional journalists, but also engage directly with a new set of accidental influencers, and, it is also our ability to talk with customers directly.

No BS. No hype. It’s an understanding of markets, the needs of people, and how to reach them at the street level—without insulting everyone along the way. Conversational PR is becoming a hybrid of communications, customer service, evangelism, and Web marketing.

The evolution from PR 1.0 to PR 2.0 will result in more informed, effective, and meaningful Public Relations, without a version number. It’ll just be good PR.

So what does this mean for you?

It means you have to start thinking about things more intelligently, differently, and personally.

The Secrets

Maybe you’re an entrepreneur with a recently funded company in need of users, or perhaps you’re bootstrapped and actively seeking financing and you need a little something that will land you a more attractive term sheet.

Every VC, as well as every successful entrepreneur, will tell you that great PR can make you, whereas bad or mediocre PR can stifle your growth and possibly damage existing and prospective relationships. And, they all have ideas on how you should proceed.

But right now, the main thing that stands between you and success is getting those customers – and good press (traditional and new media) builds the bridge between you and them.

In order to get to the next level, you need to know the secrets of effective PR, especially in today’s competitive Web 2.0 world.

These are critical times for your business and you can’t simply entrust the future of your brand to anyone who knows how to write a press release, place it on the wire, and send it via email.

Secret #1
Understand You’re Not the Only Story in Town

Bloggers and reporters are some of the busiest people you could possibly hope to meet. They’re actively looking for the most interesting, relevant, and linkable stories out there, preferably before anyone else can run with it. But truthfully, they spend most of their time hacking through the weeds of generic or over-the-top inbound emails, press releases, Facebook messages, Skypes, SMSes, Tweets, and IMs. It’s almost a small miracle that anyone can ever get their story told.

At the end of the day, you’re not the only company with a great story. Just because your story is new doesn’t make it newsworthy.

Bloggers and journalists are interested in good stories and the more time you spend developing that story up front, for each person you’re trying to reach, the more you can help them help you.

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I'm looking for practical, first-person, inspirational stories of how to launch/bootstrap entrepreneurial ideas with little or no resources. The more specific and detailed, the better.

I'm in a life-phase right now of working hard to pay off some significant debt. During the slow and painful process, I'm building up a stack of creative ideas that I'm pretty sure would be successful if I only had the resources to nurture them. (I have no delusions of going "rags to riches", I'd just like to go "rags to being-able-to-pay-my-bills" before I turn 40.)

I hate to let the ideas stagnate, but there are weeks I can barely afford to eat, much less anything else. I just have this sinking feeling how much it will suck to hit 40 and look back to see all those ideas that died on the vine. (I also am starting to resent being referred to as the "guy with a bunch of ideas who never does anything with them" because I'm totally NOT that guy, but I have no resources to prove otherwise.

I realize the pragmatic answer for me (at the moment) is to keep doing whatever I can to get out of debt, but I'm hoping other MeFi's will have some inspirational stories of times you were at the bottom, and found creative ways to jumpstart one of your favorite ideas. Bonus points to anyone who started their own in-house business and eventually moved to it full time.

The world loves the banana - they are the world's most popular fruit and the fourth most consumed food on our planet. According to Johann Hari in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, it appears that the variety of bananas loved the world over - the Cavendish - is headed for extinction due to Fusarium oxysporum (Panama disease).
Apparently, this is not the first time that a variety of bananas has gone extinct. Before 1960, the Gros Michel was the world's most popular banana - it was said to have been bigger and tastier than the Cavendish -until Fusarium oxysporum wiped it from the face of the earth.

By the way, the U.S. Government used Fusarium oxysporum, as a biological weapon in South America in an attempt to eradicate the coca plant.

As you may have gleaned from the articles above, troubled and violent history of the business of bananas (involving the C.I.A.and United Fruit) as well as the future of the seemingly innocuous yellow fruit are explored in David Koeppel's Banana:The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World.

Epsilon. A flash puzzle game with portals, time & gravity manipulation. (via JiG)

I like this prankish pizza leaflet. Link

My friend Joe Hutsko contacted me a few weeks back with the intriguing offer to serialize his novel, The Deal, on Boing Boing. I jumped at the chance.
I read The Deal when it first came out in 1999 and loved the thrilling story about a Apple-like company's undertaking to create an iPhone-like device. It seems fitting to offer the first chapter of The Deal on the weekend before iPhone 2.0 is to be released.

We'll post a new chapter of The Deal every Friday.

Here's Joe's new introduction to the 2008 edition:

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it." --Alan Kay

I had the good luck to provide hands-on technical support and assistance to Alan Kay and his team during my time at Apple, from 1984 to 1988, when I worked as a technology advisor to then-Chairman and -CEO John Sculley.

Alan certainly invented the future: In the early '70s he created the computer language Smalltalk at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), which is recognized as the inspiration and technical basis for the Macintosh and other windowing-based operating systems.

In 1979, 24-year-old Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was given an exclusive tour of PARC, which sparked the epiphany to create a Graphic User Interface (GUI) for the masses. The rest, as we all know, is history. (More on Alan: www.smalltalk.org/alankay.html.)

Alan's quote matters deeply to me because I invented my own version of the future when I began the earliest draft of this novel in 1988. After many rewrites, submissions, rejections, long hibernations, more rewrites, resubmissions, and publishing deals gone awry, I finally decided just to give the novel away as the e-book Undo on Project Gutenberg. With the giveaway I wrote a lengthy explanation of the long, strange trip of the novel's life (and my own). That was that, and I let go of the idea of ever seeing the novel published as a traditional book -- until, that is, Lisa Napoli, my longtime friend and former fellow Cyber-Times contributor to the New York Times, gave a copy of the manuscript to our ahead-of-his-time editor, Rob Fixmer. My pitch was to serialize a newly revised and updated version of the novel in the CyberTimes section of the New York Times website.

Rob said yes, and we struck a deal that would see a new chapter a week on the site, with a button to buy the eventual print edition from Amazon.com. This was around 1997, and, unfortunately, book publishers didn't at the time see much value in this new and unfamiliar thing known as the web. After many rejections, my agent said it was time to give up trying to get a book deal and move on. I followed his advice -- for a couple of months, anyway.

On a whim, I contacted an editor named Claire Eddy at Forge (an imprint of the huge sci-fi house Tor), gave her my pitch on the potential big-win that the New York Times serial would offer, and sent her the manuscript. A few days later she called to say she wanted the book. Yet even this wonderful coup, of the first-ever New York Times web serialization of a novel and link to buy the hardback, was not without still another unhappy ending. On the night the serial was to go live I hosted a champagne celebration party at a dear friend's home in San Francisco, everyone's eyes on the WebTV, waiting for the serial to begin.

It never happened.

The decision to pull the serial was made by an editor who'd temporarily been granted the reins of CyberTimes after Rob Fixmer had recently moved to the print edition of the paper. It was said deputy editor's opinion that fiction didn't belong on the technology section of the site. With the serialization shutdown the publisher changed the novel's huge first printing and cancelled a major promotional plan that (would have) included a full-page ad in USA Today and author tour.

(A story about the saga of The Deal can be read at www.joeygadget.com/about.)

As reviews began to appear another terrible twist occurred, when a mix-up with the publication date didn't see the actual book in stores until four to six weeks later.

All the same, it was wonderful to finally see the novel in print, and also as one of the first commercial e-books from Peanut Press, and also as an audiobook and, a year later, as a mass-market paperback.

So why re-release The Deal now?

Two reasons. First, the novel never got the chance it deserved to reach a wide audience. And second, readers may find it interesting that Alan's words ring true in several ways throughout the novel -- most notably in the finale, when the novel's protagonist, Peter Jones, unveils a device that not only bears more than a little resemblance to the iPhone but also closely mirrors Mr. Jobs's own words and actions when he unveiled the iPhone on stage at the Moscone Center on January 9, 2007.

Keep in mind, I wrote the final draft of my story nearly a decade before Jobs took to the stage.

Do I claim to have invented the iPhone? Of course not. But I did conceive of an all-in-one communication device that stows in the pocket. No, some of the technologies and features I envisioned have not come to bear, but then again, the new iPhone's openness to third-party applications could easily make those imaginings a reality.

Life imitates art?

That's for you to decide.

As for me, I'm happy to have regained the rights to this novel to see it serialized on the site BoingBoing.net (thanks to my one-time Wired editor and friend, Mark Frauenfelder), and as a trade paperback, for those who prefer their books in printed form.

Special thanks to all of my friends, my family, and the many smart and interesting people I've had the pleasure to know and work with over the years.

Joe Hutsko
Philadelphia
June 2008
joehutsko.com

Here's a link to Chapter 1 as a PDF or a text file. To buy a paperback copy of the book, visit JOEyGADGET

Michael sez, "I had this wacky idea a few days ago, about writing some Paul-Bunyan kinds of stories from the point of view of a post-Singularity storyteller. I always had a thing for tall tales."

I just LOVE these -- I mean, who wouldn't love stories called "Paul Bunyan and the Spambot," "Bruce Schneier and the King of the Crabs," and "Lord Cthulhu Walks the Desert"? The Spambot one is especially tasty. This deserves to be a meme -- and maybe a podcast!

Naturally, just getting Paul Bunyan online was already no mean feat. There was no broadband available in the remote areas of the woods where they'd been working, so the first thing he had to do was string optical cable from the nearest T1 line, which was clear down in St. Paul. For anybody but Paul Bunyan, that would have been near impossible, but ol' Paul just ordered a couple flatbeds of the finest glass windows Minnesota had to offer, chewed'em all up in a single mouthful, and drew'em out between his teeth to spin three hundred miles of perfect fiber optics. Then he just coiled it all up in a loop, and walked all the way into town, stringing that cable all the way. So getting online wasn't a real problem.

No, the real problem was using a computer built to the scale of a normal man! To Paul, the biggest font available was like microfiche, and he'd never been fond of reading much but lumber futures, anyway. And the largest screen they could find was no better than an old Nokia mobile phone for Paul.

Link (Thanks, Michael!)

This week I am actually going to be making something that does not require electricity. Although, you may be able to fool people into thinking it does. We are going to be making Heron's fountain out of common household materials. This is a really easy build and would be a perfect project for to build with your kids. Maybe you could even sneak in a lesson on fluid dynamics or perpetual motion?

Heron (Hero) of Alexandria was a mathematician and an inventor. He is well known for his steam engine, the Aeolipile, and many other inventions that use pneumatics. (wikipedia) I am going to try and recreate one of my favorite inventions by Heron, the "Heron Fountain".

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Kids | Digg this!

MAKE was at the FIRST Robotics Competition over the weekend. One of the great things about going to these events is the people we meet. 16-year-old Matthew K. stopped by with his digital camera that he modified to shoot infrared pictures. Naturally, I asked if I could take a snapshot of Collin, one of our authors, to see how it worked. Pretty cool hack.

Related:

HOW TO - Take infrared pictures with a digital camera

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Court Thrones for the Kingdom of the West

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Весенне-летний сезон от H&M полон креативных fashion-проектов. С одним из них, сочной коллекцией от группы Marimekko, вы наверняка уже успели познакомиться. Далее по программе – приобщение к миру искусства и знакомство с молодыми талантами.



ART BY – новая коллекция марки H&M, выпущенная в сотрудничестве с Lina Boden, Jo Ratcliffe и Anna Fredriksson. В ней вы найдёте оригинальные футболки и майки стоимостью всего 14.90 евро.





Источник: MaxiTendance.fr

Windell of EMS Labs writes:

Holy crap-- somebody just went and TORE MY FREAKING USB CABLE IN HALF while it was still attached to my laptop!!!

No-- wait-- sorry. That's just my USB drive. My bad. Never mind.

How to make a Sawed-off USB Key

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This electric skateboard combines an off-the-shelf mountain board with a brake addition, a 300w scooter motor and two 12v batteries to power the ride. Pretty nice construction with a detailed how-to to boot!

Electric Mountain Board [via]

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Web form is often the main communication channel between visitors and site owners. Feedback is always important which is why it’s necessary to make sure that web forms are easy to understand and intuitive to use. Nevertheless, even in form design one can afford some healthy portion of creativity.

Web forms don’t have to be boring and, using CSS or Flash, you can easily make sure that they are appealing and effective. To get noticed, you need to come up with something unique and interesting — symbols, icons, colors, position or the size of web form are often used to achieve interesting design solutions. We’ve searched for some examples and we’ve found them. Creative, original and unusual web forms.

Below we present over 40 (really) beautiful examples of web forms as well as modern solutions and creative ideas related to web form design. Some of the examples are Flash-based; however, in most cases you can easily create similar designs with pure CSS and (X)HTML.

Also consider our previous article

• CSS-Based Forms: Modern Solutions which lists modern solutions for CSS-based form design.

1. Clean, Simple and Beautiful Solutions

Since web form is probably one of the most important sections on the web-site, it’s necessary for you as a designer to make sure that visitors can easily understand what information they need to fill into the form fields. Complex and long web forms increase the cognitive load for users — they are just harder to deal with. In this context, preferring simple and clean solutions seems like a sound approach. However, if the form was designed with an attention to details and looks good, it’s also reasonable to use some attractive imagery in the forms.

Softmail’s newsletter-box comes from Brazil and displays an excellent integration of the message-icon into the form design. The submit-button is clear and attractive. This is a creative design.

Swfir also uses an envelope as a metaphor.

Handwriting in use on Katrin Wegmann’s site. Attractive, eye-catching and playful design which perfectly manages to convey its function to the users.

TheWatchMakerProject impresses with a nice and unusual design. The form is placed at the right hand side of the latest comments.

Frexy.com with a nice and clean solution.

Flingmedia uses a sliding contact form. Depending on the visitor’s intention (general comment, new project request etc.), user can slide to a web form which addresses his/her interests.

Envero.org — the web form is huge and fills the whole layout width. The font-size and the size of input fields are chosen accordingly.

2. Creative solutions

Although web-forms are supposed to enable users to get in touch with site owners, quite often designers risk creative solutions and offer layouts visitors wouldn’t actually expect from a boring, standard web form they’ve used to over years. Many different metaphors are used. Here is an overview of some interesting ones.

Created201.com takes a look at the contact form from a quite different perspective. The effect is created using Flash.

Ok, this is really different. If you’d like to get in touch with Edward Pistachio, you’ll need to solve a puzzle first. This approach isn’t applicable for blogs or business web-sites. However, it perfectly fits to the concept of the site. The visitors are amazed.

Chemistry Recruitments uses a folder, stick-it-notes and few sheet of paper.

Alexandru Cohaniuc presents a huge web form with a sketch and a stamp.

Tony Yoo’s contact form shows the contact details on the left hand side. No happy talk, just getting to the point. And some designers need an extra-page for contact details!

Qwert City enables users to send the designer a “postcard”…

… so did Wildvuur.com (currently offline) — the web form was perfectly integrated into the site layout.

BubblesSOC has a ribbon on the top of a large, laaarge, really laaaaarge web form.

3. Use illustrations to brighten up the form

When a user clicked on the link which leads to a web form, he or she is one step away of getting in touch with site owners. Some designers try to make sure visitors actually fill in the form by using attractive characters and illustrations which serve the purpose of making users feel more comfortable with the form.

Intuitive Designs tries to impress visitors with a busy mailman. Doesn’t he actually have enough to do?

X-Grafik.sk with a mail stamp from Slovakia.

Kgoule.com has a friendly buddy who invites visitors to post a comment.

Dressfordialogue.com (the design is different now) uses a tiny illustration at the top right of the form. Nevertheless, it works. Sometimes a tiny detail is enough.

4. Integrate more functions

Searching for creative web forms, we’ve observed some new functionalities which haven’t been that popular last year. Among them are WYSIWIG-editors and sliders. Editors are used to provide users with rich text-editing for text formatting, different header levels and images. A slider can be used to define the budget limits for a given project.

InfectedFX has a rather complex web form with hints, options and buttons. The form integrates a WYSIWIG-editor into the textarea.

Sidebarcreative.com offers a a slider potential clients can use to limit the project budget.

5. Use icons to communicate required information

From the usability point of view, there is nothing more painful than a long web form with plain-text labels and without any visual indicators. Such forms are boring, unattractive and uncomfortable to use. You can design web forms better. In fact, not much is required. Often icons are used to visually indicate the information required from the user to fill the form.

DesignDisease Wordpress Theme uses simply symbols to indicate the required information.

Bouctoubou.com has very basic and simple symbols. However, they manage to make the form more interesting.

6. Hand-writing and grunge in use

We’ve already written about the popularity of hand-drawing and grunge in modern web design. Such design elements are also being used in web forms as they are always unique and convey the personality of the designer. Particularly Flash-based solutions prefer this approach.

Redblu is presented as a sheet of newspaper. To get to the contact form you need to drag the newspaper accordingly.

Fivecentstand offers a Flash-based solution which is seamlessly integrated in the overall site design. It might be difficult for new users to find the form, though.

Pointofe.com with a web form presented as a stick-it-note. The font-size should probably be increased.

Swiths.com with a vintage design. The hover-effect is provided as well.

7. Experimental solutions

Below you’ll find an overview of some unusual solutions which can serve as a starting point for your further design. Not all of them might look good, but they have something and you may want to improve the ideas further.

Adorama.com offers a nice-looking and compact solution: a newsletter-box in the sidebar.

Different language — different style. On Booloob.com the submit-button is placed on the left hand side of the form.

Paregonta.com: cubism meets minimalism. Colorful yet extremely compact form which uses little space. This is a contact form.

Sunmatecushions.com with a really different style which somehow fits in the design.

Well, why not? Wallpaper for the textarea on GeekAndHype.com.

Revota.com is dark and shady, but uses a light hover-effect to display the current field.

Catydesign is also dark. The form impresses with a clever placement of the hints.

Designorati.com: this comment form is hard to overlook.

MyMileMarker: the web form gone in width. Sometimes horizontal approach is more useful than the standard vertical approach.

Jaroslav Cerný shows how to combine an e-mail with a web form. The form isn’t online any longer, but it’s definitely worth mentioning.

Xyarea.be: unusual and original. This is probably the thinnest newsletter box in the world.

Further Resources

• Blog Comment Forms
  A growing collection of examples of blog comments forms by Christian Watson.

Automatic spell check has been built into many browsers for years, but typos continue to plague even the most reputable websites (and print media, for that matter). Recognizing this fact, a number of services have emerged that will continuously monitor your site for spelling errors.

Spellr.us, currently in a registration-required beta, plans to offer hourly, daily, and weekly sweeps of your site, and will provide a visual snapshot of a page with errors clearly marked with strikethroughs. Their main competitor at this point is NetMechanic, which has been available for years but lacks any of the visualizations promised by Spellr.us.

This space is still in its infancy, but I can imagine that these services will be a boon to bloggers and other website publishers. The company’s current questionnaire alludes to a price range of around $50 - clearly a worthwhile investment for many sites. Keep a look out for Spellr.us in the near future.

CrunchBase Information Spellr.us Information provided by CrunchBase

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

These floating globes called "Bubble Bobbles" have an embedded tri-color LED that changes its color based on the tilt of the globe. Meant to be placed in a lake or a pool, every passing gust of wind or disturbance in the water causing a resulting color change.

Bubble Bobble, [via]

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These students came up with a great solution for expanding their wireless network. Apparently there wasn't any power source available for the network repeater, so they build a wind turbine. These should be on every rooftop, in every city.

Dan built the charging circuit himself. Essentially the windmill recharges two 12V batteries and the circuit exists to make sure it does not over charge them. The wireless AP/repeater (not in the picture) is connected to the battery terminals. We "waterproofed" it using plumber's putty, the plastic tuperware box, and that metal box that Dan got off ebay).

Read more about the Wind-Powered WiFi repeater

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Today, in most schools, science is taught as a body of acquired knowledge, but not as much as a set of tools and practices that were used to discover that knowledge and expand upon it. Students are expected to learn from lectures and textbooks, not labs with hands-on learning and experimentation. Nothing quite embodies the practice of science like a chemistry set, a home lab that once was a favorite childhood gift has now vanished from the shelves of toy and hobby stores.

In 1964, Robert Bruce Thompson got what he wanted most for Christmas and his first chemistry set introduced him to a fascinating, new world. He went on to major in chemistry in college. Recently, a neighbor's teenage daughter started asking him questions about science, which she wished to pursue as a career, but she admitted she wasn't learning much science in school. Robert wanted to introduce her to the chemistry lab but realized it was nigh impossible to buy a good chemistry set in a store and he couldn't recommend any of the exisiting books on chemistry. So Robert decided that he could write a book himself and that it would start with describing how to build your own chemistry set and set up a lab.

The
Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments is Bob's seventh book with O'Reilly; he's written previously about PC hardware and astronomy. A man of many interests, Bob has put together a wonderful book that I'm proud to publish and it completely fits with Make's DIY ethic. Bob's book has the subtitle: "All Lab, No Lecture." What surprised me most about the book was how much Bob had tailored the book to home schoolers and other students who might be getting "chemistry-lite" in school. ("A student who completes all of the laboratories in this book has done the equivalent of two full years of high school chemistry lab work or a first-year college general chemistry lab course.") It also works for adults, like me, who were bored by chemistry in school and did poorly yet could see the fascination of a lab filled with vials, flasks and burettes.

The book is also a great example of collaboration as Bob has worked with Dr. Mary Chervenak and Dr. Paul Jones, each of whom hold Ph.D's in organic chemistry. Their insights are featured throughout the book, not just as subject-matter experts but also as experienced teachers and practitioners. Says Dr. Paul Jones: "Most students are aware of acids and their dangers but are more or less ignorant of the dangers of alkali (base). For instance, aqueous sodium hydroxide can blind you in a matter of minutes if not cleansed thoroughly and I've seen lots of kids who are quick to put on goggles to work with 0.01 M HCI but throw 6 M NaOH around like it's candy. Aqueous bases are every bit as dangerous as aqueous acids."

Concerns about the liablity of practicing science in school have led schools to offer less of it. (Sports is a more common source of serious injury.) This book offers a "real science" alternative. Bob writes: "One of the recurring lessons throughout this book is the importance of assuming personal responsibility for useful but dangerous actions -- understanding the specific risks and taking the necessary steps to minimize or eliminate them."

Bob will be featured at this year's Maker Faire, talking about his love of chemistry and his new book. He'll be in the Maker Shed area all weekend, doing some of the experiments from the book. His talk on the Main Stage on Sunday at 1pm will be "What's Happened to the Chemistry Set?"

Canadian online retailer IndoChino offers a traditionally offline product, tailor-made suits.

In 2006, founder and then university student All Heikal Gani wanted a suit that looked good at a reasonable price but couldn’t find anything he liked. “Designer suits were way too expensive, but the polyester suits he could afford were of poor quality and just didn’t fit” is the official line, and as anyone who has purchased a suit knows, it’s also 100% right. Gani wrote a business plan for tailor-made men’s suits sold over the internet, then teamed up with fellow student Kyle Vucko to bring the idea to market.

The suits are sourced from China, with company maintaining an office in Shanghai to oversee production in addition to their head office in Victoria, British Columbia.

The site closed its second round last week from Burda Digital Ventures. Canadian investor Boris Wertz (W Media Ventures) led the original seed round.

Suits start at $199 (USD) and they would appear to ship outside of North America as well. There is advice on the site on how to obtain your measurements and each suit comes with a perfect fit guarantee.

CrunchBase Information IndoChino Kyle Vucko Heikal Gani Information provided by CrunchBase

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I was searching the web trying to learn more water pumps for a future project when I came across this great website. It details the making or a ram pump. I am amazed at the lack of a motor or any user input. I wish I had a stream near by to try it out!

This is a pump that uses the power of water flowing downhill to deliver a supply of water to a much higher level. Pumps like this are relatively easy to build at home, for very little cost.

Learn how to make a Ram Pump

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It's amazing what a little lens flip can do - check out this simple how-to on webcam to microscope conversion - Convert webcam to microscope (google translation)

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This is a 3-part article on building a solar lantern. It's a well-documented project, and there are a lot of pictures of the build process. Make sure to check out parts 2 & 3 for the complete build. The links are at the top of the article.

The solar lantern is composed of 2 main modules. The charging module, and the lighting module. The lighting system would be an LED or a number of LEDs connected to a power source. The charging system would be a way to charge the battery via small solar cell.

Read more about making your own Solar Lantern

Realted:

How to make a Sun Jar

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If you want to make high quality hand crafted books, then this is the DVD for you. By the time you are done watching this instructional video, you will have all the skills necessary to make your own heirloom quality books.

There are a lot of little tricks that you are not going to figure out by yourself. I really like how he found the grain of the paper by rolling the paper back and forth. Also, he describes how to make your own organic, white rice, glue as an alternative to wheat paste.

If you want to make you own books, this is a must watch DVD. The instructions are clear and the audio and video are very well done. I really enjoyed it from start to finish.

Read more about The Book Binding Guy

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Another day, another set of expansive keynotes.

John McCarthy, father of LISP, a giant in artificial intelligence, gave a sit-down high-level talk about Elephant 2000, a proposed programming language intended for transaction processing and electronic data interchange. He described Elephant in terms of its ability to capture "speech acts," which I'll define roughly as words that lead to actions. (One of McCarthy's examples: "I now pronounce you man and wife.") McCarthy said these words "create obligations." They're promises, questions, requests, etc. As anyone who has read the code to programs I've written (many of which include the words "hello" and "world" in the title) will know that I'm no expert. If anyone in the ETech audience can do an ace job of explaining the most provocative line in McCarthy's talk, "ascribing beliefs to thermostats is like adding 0 and 1 to the number system," I'll send you a free O'Reilly book of my choice.

Steve Cousins of Willow Garage proposed an open source platform for personal robots. Those personal robots would perform useful activities, and he showed some very enjoyable film clips of humanoid robots performing basic tasks such as picking up a living room. And Willow Garage is balancing its philosophical and business imperatives:The company is privately funded and "focused on impact before the return of capital...The goal is to produce 10 robots and make them available to researchers so we can all be on a common platform."

Kathy Sierra, who ran an inspiring storyboarding tutorial on Monday, told us how to kick ass. Her talk was not merely a paean to mastery, but also a brisk walk through recent neuroscience to "show that the difference between world-class and average is not about natural talent." The research, she said, reveals "that most common thread separating world-class and average is the ability to put in the time, to focus, concentrate, and practice." Expertise, she noted, is not so much about what you know, but what you do. She showed how mirror neurons let us run similations of another persons bran inside our brain -- but she emphasized that the quality of simulation depends on experience. There's still only one way to get to Carnegie Hall.

(Then Tom Coates spoke about fire eagle. My post about that is here.)

Finally, Peter Semmelhack, CEO and founder of Bug Labs, talked about community electronics, a term intended to turn the tradition term "consumer electronics" on its head. He posited a long tail of gadgets. Today, there are relatively few devices, marketed to millions. In the future, he's hoping for millions of devices targeted for the few. To develop these niche devices and custom gadgets, Bug is building a hardware innovation platform that goes from idea through functional spec, all the way to manufacturing. It's not the only way, Semmelhack noted, but it's the way Bug is trying to make it happen.

And now to the breakout sessions: Why are there always two I want to go to scheduled at the same time?

This giant, mysterious two-wheeled mine-clearing tank was taken from the Nazis by the Russians at the end of World War II. As Coop notes, "We have achieved total Hell Yeah. It looks like the car Darth Vader drove to high school." Link (Thanks, Coop!)

Angela writes -

This is a video of my take on the automated Etch-A-Sketch. It's an EAS that automatically draws out the time then erases itself, every minute. It's built on the Arduino platform and references Scott Fergerson's awesome CNC EAS as well as Douglas Jones's excellent site on steppers.

Etch-A-Sketch clock on Revver - Link

Related:

Control an Etch-A-Sketch with a serial mouse - Link

James Lebron Etch-A-Sketch art - Link

MAKE VIDEO PODCAST: Computer Controlled CNC Etchasketch - Link

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Last Chance Heavy Duty Belt

I've never been a fan of notches. But most cinch belts just don't do the job. Inspired by the belts worn by smokejumpers, this one's made of two nylon strips sewn together with a foot-long strip of Velcro running along one side. Once it's on and the Velcro touches, I never have to re-cinch it. Though the nylon is substantial, much thicker than a seatbelt, the aluminum buckle is very light; I hardly notice it. Ideal for everyday casual wear, the belt is plain and quite handsome. I've worn it with a tie and blazer. It didn't fly under the radar -- it looked great. Never again will I hole-punch another post-holiday notch.

-- Steven Leckart

Last Chance Heavy Duty Belt
$23
(small - xl)
Available from Bison Designs

Also available from Amazon
(only med. - xl)

*

Tech Web Belt

Better than the smoke jumper belt (I've tried it) is Patagonia's Tech Web Belt. It's lighter and handsomer, comes in colors, and you don't have the noise and debris-collection of Velcro. I've worn mine for six months at all occasions from dressy to sweaty. Trim your new belt to the exact convenient size you want, flame-melt the cut end so it doesn't fray, and you've got the perfect custom belt.

-- Stewart Brand

Tech Web Belt
$26
Available from Patagonia

Related items previously reviewed in Cool Tools:

Eagle Creek All-Terrain Money Belt

Duluth Trading Suspenders

Blaklader Heavy Duty Work Pants

With this DIY project you can record earthquakes from around the world. This is a well-documented build, but you will have to purchase some software to interface with your seismometer. This site is a good place to start your amateur seismology and research.

The following papers contain descriptions of a seismometer sensitive enough to detect and record earthquakes from around the world. It can be built using readily available parts from your local hardware store and from any general- purpose mail-order electronics supplier.

Build Your Own Seismometer - Link

Related

SeisMac - Turn your Macbook into a seismograph - Link

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Over on the Play This Thing blog, master game designer Greg Costikyan describes "My Life With Master:" "as seminal a work in the history of tabletop role-playing games as Frankenstein was for literature."

Imagine a gothic countryside burg, like the quite Bavarian steppes where Victor Frankenstein might have lived, or the brambly swamps of Dracula's castle. We're talking Eastern Europe before communism, when science was just kissing the brittle lips of superstition and stable poverty. The game begins by the group collectively designing a "Master", the otherworldly antagonist who dwells in some archetypal castle or haunted house or ancient catacomb. This master has some kind of M.O. - discovering the secret of eternal life, rejuvenation, astral projection, or maybe just a nice skin suit, get creative. Then the players design their characters, minions of this master, complete with a tragic flaw and constrained power. Then the real game begins.

The game is based on a few variables: Love, Self-Loathing, Weariness, and Fear. If you have any game design experience, you may be experiencing a form of cerebral arousal right now - we're talking about a spreadsheet soaked in procedural theme, yet elegant to the scale of Euclidean geometry. This sets the incentives for players to act a conflict of love versus self-loathing, where doing work for the master increases self-loathing, and making overtures to villagers increases love. Remember in Bride of Frankenstien when he smokes the pipe with the blind man? Stuff like that, but in the context of your character design, and acted out with your own pathos.

Eventually the contours of the dynamic, the way the spreadsheet algorithmically tends to move, puts the dramatic arc toward a climax, with one minion swelling with enough love to rebel against the master. Then everything goes crazy, the villagers start attacking the minions, and the fight with the master goes back and forth. After the master is killed, each character gets their own epilogue scenario based on what their numbers were at the finish.

Link to review, Link to buy My Life With Master