Did you know you can create a 10,000 RPM motor with a battery, a drywall screw, a strand of wire and a magnet? In this video we see this scientific concept of homopolar motors at work.
via The Awesomer
The Simplest Motor
Client: I want the site in multicolor Comic Sans, on a blue background, with plenty of funny…
Client: I want the site in multicolor Comic Sans, on a blue background, with plenty of funny animated gifs and sound effects.
Me: I can do that, but I think that it would turn out horrible.
Client: Just kidding, I was making sure that you’d stop me if I ever suggested something like that. I’m emailing the brief now…
via Clients From Hell
Client: I want the site in multicolor Comic Sans, on a blue background, with plenty of funny…
WP Job Manager: Free WordPress Plugin Lets You Build Your Own Job Board
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Job boards have grown in popularity over the last few years. Due to the fact that more and more people work project-based rather than in lifetime occupations, searching for new jobs has become a frequent task to many of us. Especially in these cases, official job boards often fall short. Specialized boards are much better suited. So, if you maintain a service, say an online magazine, aiming at a certain industry, say designers and developers, you might have thought about integrating job board functionality already. We know, we at the Smashing family did. If you don’t have the same power to invest, a free job board plugin by the name of WP Job Manager might just be what you’re looking for.
via noupe
WP Job Manager: Free WordPress Plugin Lets You Build Your Own Job Board
‘Maker Dad’: Dads + Daughters Building Together
Make: magazine founding editor-in-chief, Mark Frauenfelder, has a new book out, and we’re pleased to offer it in our Maker Shed. Maker Dad: Lunch Box Guitars, Antigravity Jars, and 22 Other Incredibly Cool Father-Daughter Projects came out of Mark’s desire to engage his girls, now ages 10 and 16, in […]
Koala Band Is An App That Motivates My Kids To Play Piano, And That’s Music To My Ears
Luis Sampedro Diaz, an engineer hailing from Spain but now resident in Silicon Valley, cut his professional teeth at Volkswagen, where he wrote code for “things that didn’t exist yet” in cars and picked up seven patents along the way. He left that job a few years ago — borrowing a well-worn phrase of the tech world — to look for something difficult to do. So he turned his attention to children’s apps. Pluto Media, the startup he founded, is launching its latest and most ambitious project yet today as part of the TC Disrupt Battlefield: Koala Band, an iPad app that’s based on a virtual world where kids aged 6-8 years old can go to learn more about music through games. Sampedro Diaz says that this is just stage one: the same platform will be used to introduce a variety of other educational apps down the line. Designing apps for kids can be deceptively hard to do. When content is geared at a younger audience, there is this implication that the consumer will be less discerning, easier to please. But that isn’t the whole story. On a general level, there is the fact that there are a million apps vying for kids’ attention. More specifically, for those who are aspiring to create something beyond a bit of fun, do the apps manage to achieve what they set out to do? Sampedro Diaz and his team at Pluto are set out to tackle the latter of these challenges. “When we looked at the social worlds that have been build for kids already, the biggest are things like Club Penguin and Moshi Monsters, not aimed at education — just mindless, if entertaining, games,” he tells me. “We wanted to fix that problem by making every single one of our games educational.” He says that they wanted to build their apps on a basic premise: that if the app encourages a user to lean forward and create, that will inherently children learn better than an app that does not. He cites an unexpected influence here. “Minecraft has been used to teach so many things,” he says. “And that is because you use it to build.” In Koala Band, kids earn “notes” by playing music games with others, and those notes can then be used to customise songs. Social features also come into play: users take on a koala identity and can only
via TechCrunch
Koala Band Is An App That Motivates My Kids To Play Piano, And That’s Music To My Ears
EDC History: Higo no Kami
Knife trends come and go, but some knives stand the test of time and remain popular from generation to generation. As evident by knives like the Swiss Army Knife or the Douk-Douk, sometimes less is more; durability and an iconic design can ensure a knife’s legacy. One such knife is the Higo no Kami, a[…..]
via AllOutdoor.com
EDC History: Higo no Kami
Animation explains why it’s so important to protect net neutrality
After Years, Michigan’s Attempts To Build A Startup Ecosystem Bear Fruit
Five years ago, Michigan had seven early-stage companies raise money from venture capital investors in the first quarter. This year that number climbed to 31.
The story behind this growth was more than a decade in the making, as state and local leaders crafted a policy to make early-stage investments more robust and lay the foundation for a startup ecosystem that is finally coming to fruition. Read More
via TechCrunch
After Years, Michigan’s Attempts To Build A Startup Ecosystem Bear Fruit
Guy makes real life version of Jon Snow’s sword from Game of Thrones
Though it’s not forged from Valyrian steel, master swordsmith Tony Swatton made a pretty perfect real life version of Jon Snow’s Longclaw sword from Game of Thrones. The sword’s pommel has a nice ivory replica of Ghost, the hilt is exquisitely knotted and the blade is as ginormous and intimidating as it should be.
via Gizmodo
Guy makes real life version of Jon Snow’s sword from Game of Thrones