I picked up a copy of the brand new Make magazine (O’Reilly Media) today at the Microsoft Authors summit. O’Reilly has a booth at the conference center, as do most of the other technical publishers, and they were handing out copies of the premier issue.
I love this magazine. It reminds me of other magazines I’ve enjoyed that filled my head with ideas. I’m thinking about the early issues of Wired magazine or the Popular Mechanics magazine from thirty years ago. It highlights the creative things that our friends and neighbors are doing with their spare time and promotes the do it yourself (DIY) mindset. Each issue is full of DIY projects and shows you how to build them.
Remember the fun you had building your first computer or soldering together some parts for your own radio? Heathkit? Dreaming about building your own ultra-light plane or soap-box car? Did you ever drool over the latest parts catalog and envision new projects. If so, do yourself a favor and check out this magazine.
From the title page. ‘ Dozens of Hacks and How-Tos for your gear’. ’181 pages of D.I.Y technology’.
Articles
- Building an Apple 2 from scratch
- Soldering tutorial
- Building a mechanical ‘Pong’ game
- Car camouflage
- Desktop rail gun
- Hacking toy dogs to sniff out toxic waste
- Build a pattern generating LED device
- Revamping forgotten technology
- Open source hybrid car
- Back yard projects
- Mono-rail
- Steam Train
- Beer Keg Coolers
- Kite Aerial Photography
- The $14 Video Cam stabilizer
- Create your own magnetic stripe card reader
- Ten GMail hacks
Makezine.com is the affiliated website and it has expanded versions of many of the stories there. I actually perused the website before seeing a hard copy of the magazine.
Buy it
The website is nice. I encouraged you to buy a copy of the magazine however. You need to hold it in your hands and read it. Sprawl out on the couch or in a lawn chair and savor it. It’s beautiful, the page formats are easy to read and not too ‘fancy’. The page columns are wide enough to read comfortably which is a refreshing change from other magazines available at the newsstand. The artwork enhances the story instead of being cute and there are plenty of photos documenting the steps to successfully finish your project. Even the physical size is just right. It more like a journal than a magazine. And another plus – the table of contents is in the front of the magazine, not buried behind 24 pages of advertising. It’s a magazine done right. You’ll see.