In its third acquisition this year, Autodesk, maker of design, engineering and entertainment software, has acquired San Francisco-based Instructables, a popular online community where people can upload, discuss, rate and collaborate on a wide variety of do-it-yourself projects.
Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. → Read More
Musical acts can always do better if they have some sort of gimmick. The band Future Dancing is using a nostalgic-looking light organ as theirs. There is an Instructable on the neat light organ showing off the organ’s 12 bulbs that correspond to 12 notes in the octave (minus the octave note). The lights are positioned where the pipes on a pipe organ would be and the bulbs light up whenever a key is pressed on the MIDI keyboard. Also, the sustain pedal is recognized and can hold the light accordingly.
Check out the video after the break. → Read More
Many digital point-and-shoot users often overlook the need for a tripod. Often times Facebook photos are full of blurry pictures, and that’s just not professional. One of the most often used portable tripods is the Gorillapod. They’re great for fixing your camera in almost any position. But all that comes at a price.
Read on for the How To. → Read More
So yesterday, I notice there’s a new article up on Google’s main blog, head on over there and see it’s merely a post featuring the latest video in the company’s Search Stories series, video ads which essentially aim to highlight how all kinds of people use Google Search. They’re nice and all, if pretty pointless in my book, but nothing particularly spectacular about them.
But this latest one, labeled ‘Brother and Sister’, caught my attention because of something entirely different than the narrative or the concept.
First, watch the video (after the jump). → Read More
So you bought the EasyBloom to take precise soil moisture readings. You have a spreadsheet plotting plant growth over time. But you’re still schelpping out to water the lawn like all your Luddite neighbors. Where’s your sense of pride? You’re a geek! You should be using technology to make your life better. Here, we’ll help get you started with this Instructable on using Linux to water your lawn! → Read More
I have what I consider to be a modest number of gadgets lying around the house. The exact number is usually in flux, depending on what I’m reviewing for CrunchGear. Nonetheless, there’s almost always something sitting in my living room plugged into an outlet to charge. My lovely wife just barely tolerates this, and regularly asks if I need to have all these things lying about. She would love to see me start using a hidden gadget charging station, like the one pictured here. Nestled under the lovely fake plant are a number of connectors to charge gadgets, while keeping them politely out of sight. → Read More
How-to sites are always popular on the Web because they give people practical instructions on how to perform specific tasks and projects. They are also search engine optimization (SEO) machines, getting most of their traffic from search engines. About.com and eHow are the biggest sites in the category, but there are a slew of others, including wikiHow which just crossed the 20 million monthly unique visitor mark (see Google Analytics screenshot provided by CEO Jack Herrick). It also released a major redesign today which makes the crowdsourced site downright pretty. (Wikipedia should take note). While sites such as eHow (which Herrick founded and sold to Demand Media) and About.com are still roughly four times as big, getting to 20 million monthly uniques with only 6 employees and no VC money is nothing to sniff at. → Read More
The aptly named Stupid Inventions brings us a fun little diversion: the self-playing harmonica. Using nothing more than an inkjet printer, a vacvuum cleaner, and a harmonica, you can create a modern day Nickelodeon! Except, of course, it’s a harmonica, and not a piano. But still! Click on through to watch a video of this musical marvel in action. → Read More
I mailed a birthday card out yesterday to a family member who’s birthday was, in fact, last week. I’m such a bad relation. I had the decency to include a check and a witty comment, but I know it’s going to be too little, too late. If only I could go back in time to yesterday, knowing what I know today. See, I just found out about cake in a jar! Boy howdy, would the lateness of my gift be forgiven and forgotten when they opened up that box to find a delicious, moist cake in a jar waiting for them! → Read More
What do you do with a coat hanger, some rubber bands, an Altoids tin, and ten minutes of free time? Why, you make a miniature catapult, of course. You can easily sneak this into just about any office meeting. Happy Friday! → Read More
Got some old CD’s? Some spare steel wire, some tape and a couple of finishing nails? Then you too can build a simple postal scale. What better way to recycle some bits of things that would normally end up in a landfill? → Read More
In an attempt to expand our readership, today we are running a story for the beekeepers out there. Yes, you can now depend on us to provide you information on cutting edge tech for all kinds of different people.
Today, it’s beekeepers. → Read More
http://www.metacafe.com/fplayer/830090/ups_hack_hide.swf If you’ve got an old UPS laying around, and are both technically adept and extremely paranoid, have I got a project for you! This Instructables instructable is probably the most complicated way to go about this; there’s a lot of soldering and voltage metering going on when you really could simply, well, glue a small flash drive into place where the USB/RJ45 port usually is. But if you want to go the whole hog, it involves rewiring the USB interface from a little USB enclosure to make the 2.5″ HDD go naked inside the gutted UPS. → Read More
I’ve contemplated ditching my business cards for some time, but every convention I attend and every PR flack requires me to donate one dead tree to them. A friend recently told me he had ditched business cards altogether a while back and immediately directs people to connect with him on linkedin, which is a great idea. But, I really want a kickass looking business card that won’t get lost in the shuffle. I think I found what I’ve been looking for over at Instructables. The video only gives the final product and if you’re steady with a soldering iron then read on, good buddy. → Read More
Instructional video site 5min has released a new beta version of their SmartPlayer, introducing support for text, video, and images that can be merged into a single embeddable flash widget. The site considers the player to be revolutionary, and believes that it will help set 5min apart from their numerous competitors in the instructional video space. The original SmartPlayer gave users the ability to manipulate instructional videos on the fly, allowing for frame-by-frame progress, slow motion, and zooming. The new version improves on these features by introducing ‘add-ons’, which are essentially pages of text and images with no limits on length. By including all of this data, the 5min videos have become self-contained guides that can be embedded on any website. I think that the updated player has a lot of potential. Chefs will be able to include their recipes alongside detailed videos demonstrating how to prepare a dish. And musicians will be able to include sheet music or tablature alongside their lessons – a godsend for instructors. But despite the improvements made since the first Smartplayer, 5min still has a ways to go. For one, it seems that there is no way to resize the video and attachment windows, which is a pain when there is a lot of text. There is also no way to get the ‘add-on’ field to auto-scroll, which would be key for musicians attempting to play a score along to a video. Other competitors in this crowded space include Howcast, Expert Village, and Instructables. You can check out a sample video below (you might want to make it full screen). http://www.5min.com/Embeded/2459390/How to Play Piano: Blues Scales → Read More
The annual Web 2.0 Summit kicked off today at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. The conference Summit, which has been sold out for months, is noticeably larger than last year and hundreds of people are milling about, seeing and being seen. The highlight of last year’s conference for me was LaunchPad, where thirteen young startups showed their stuff to the audience. See our coverage from last year here and here. Many of those companies are doing very well. Only one, Pubsub, has entered the TechCrunch DeadPool. LaunchPad this year was perhaps even more competitive than last year. Over 200 companies applied to present at the conference. Only thirteen were accepted, and each had five minutes to demo their product to the crowd. We have a summary of what each announced below. → Read More
San Francisco, CA
