It’s rare to see a company that is so established yet so cutting edge as Shapeways. The company, founded in 2007 as a spin-off of Royal Philips Electronics, began as a one-off 3D printing service that offered basic plastic items for sale online. Over the years, however, the company has branched off into some amazing materials – steel, ceramic, and even sandstone – and they’ve already been able to… → Read More
In all the discussions I’ve had with hardware makers about their products, one thing is becoming clear: in the end, the cheap part is never cheap. Take a look at this post about a Kickstarter project for example. A maker, Michael Ciuffo, had recently funded a very cool QR code clock that used a simple array of LEDs to display the time in QR code. → Read More
Making custom fabric has long been the domain of the big guys. Trying anything new, whether it was having a swatch of cool fabric made or printing a custom logo on some slip covers, has required minimum investments of a few thousand dollars and lots of waiting. Spoonflower solved that. Founded by entrepreneurs Gart Davis and Stephen Fraser, this Durham, NC company began shipping fabric out of an… → Read More
Hidden amidst the winding pathways of Llewelyn Park, New Jersey, America’s oldest gated community, steampunk designer Will Rockwell is building a future that never was. He began his career as a TV producer but he always loved to tinker with metals, leather, and wood – the three components of good steampunk. After building a set of Rocketeer-style USB keys, friends turned him on to Etsy. He opened… → Read More
Online retailer Grand St. hopes to solve all that, by providing a marketplace to makers, helping to throw a spotlight on interesting gadgets that might otherwise fly under the radar. And to do that, the company has raised a seed round of funding worth $1.3 million. → Read More
Since we started Makers I’ve made it a priority to try to visit Adafruit Industries, the amazing Manhattan-based electronics shop run by Limor Fried. Fried started her company out of her dorm room at MIT, building cool electronics kits for her friends. She slowly expanded into other hobbyist realms including Arduino add-ons, how-to books, and cases. Now her store is bustling with 1,302 items for… → Read More
A buddy of mine who lives in Shenzhen said that the best tech business to be in – the one that offers the most profit for the least amount of work – is soft goods, meaning cases, bags, and other paraphernalia. Don’t tell that to the guys at Element Case. Their amazing metal and wood iPhone cases take hours to build, months to design, and they look simply amazing. → Read More
What do you do when you already have the coolest job in the world? You start a business where you can have another amazing job on evenings and weekends.
Daric Schlesselman is an editor for the Daily Show in Manhattan who lives in deepest Red Hook, a small, cool community on the edge of Brooklyn. There he rents a former paint factory where he’s set up the Van Brung Stillhouse and storage… → Read More
When I first saw Bossa Nova Robotics Mobi I was amazed. It was a robot that stood on a single, large ball and could roll through tight spaces and between people. It seemed like a ludicrously cool circus trick. The folks at BNR were kind enough to give us a quick tour of their facility in Pittsburgh, Penn. where they’re commercializing the product and hope to bring it to market next year. The… → Read More
While I don’t often hold stock in random pronouncements by magazines, I’m shocked and thrilled that Entrepreneur Magazine named Limor Fried, founder of Adafruit Industries, as their 2012 Entrepreneur of the Year. Limor runs a $4.5 million company with 25 employees and she produces some of the coolest electronic gadgets around. → Read More
It’s been a weird year for hardware: the biggest, most news-worthy launches haven’t come out of Cupertino or Tokyo but out of small Kickstarter campaigns that have, in the end, raised millions of dollars. Makers, in other words, are finally getting their due. → Read More
It’s rare to see the creation of a product from idea to implementation but Blink Steady, a unique, multi-sensor bike light, allowed us to do just that. Created by Benjamin Cohen, Stuart Heys, and Mark Sibenac, the Blink Steady launched in April on Kickstarter and shipped last month. → Read More
When we first wandered up to the suburban home that house Centeye Inc., we were a bit confused. Could this be the place where a mad roboticist was building tiny robots with insect eyes and brains that could interact with their environment? We rang the doorbell and weren’t disappointed. → Read More
It’s not often you get to interview a nuclear engineer and a physician who run a tiny vaporizer factory out of an oversized garage outside of San Francisco so today is your lucky day. Two weeks ago we spent some time with the guys from Themovape, a homegrown, self-funded hardware company that just happens to produce some of the coolest and most effective vaporizers I’ve seen.
For the… → Read More
Gil Weinberg is a Ph.D with a background in jazz. More importantly, however, he’s an expert in the field of artificial intelligence, especially in how it intersects with concepts of creativity and musicianship. His projects, Shimi and Shimon, two music-playing robots that regularly amaze audiences around the world, explore what it means to “play” music. He asks whether music is an innate human… → Read More
It’s been months in the making, but here it is: the first episode of TechCrunch Makers, featuring Bre Pettis of Makerbot. We visited Bre’s downtown Brooklyn factory where he and the rest of team design, build, and ship hundreds of Makerbots a week. → Read More
We’re about to launch a new video series called Makers here at TechCrunch and we’d love to hear from any and all hardware based startups. I want to hear about robots, toys, and railguns. I want to hear about new distilling methods, winemakers, and electric vehicles. I want to hear about anything that whirrs, chops, grates, goes, or crashes into a fireball.
Over the next few months Jordan… → Read More
Many of you like your digital photo frames. I’m of the opinion that they’re going to hit mass-market prices and really take off in the near future. Until then, you must settle for small footprints and medium prices. But there’s always the option to make your own, and RedPost is here to help you out. The new photoframe kits include everything you need guts-wise for a photoframe. → Read More
Austin, TX
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
Boston, MA
Disrupt Europe: Berlin Hackathon
Berlin, Germany
