MAKE: Technology on Your Time Vol. 1 (Paperback)

by Mark Frauenfelder (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
If you like to tweak, disassemble, re-create, and invent cool new uses for technology, you'll love MAKE our new quarterly publication for the inquisitive do-it-yourselfer. Every issue is packed with projects to help you make the most of all the technology in your life. Everything from home entertainment systems, to laptops, to a host of PDAs is fair game. If there's a way to hack it, tweak it, bend it, or remix it, you will find out about it in MAKE. This isn't another gadget magazine. MAKE focuses on cool things you can do to make technology work the way you want it to. The publication is inspired by our bestselling Hacks series books but with a twist. MAKE is a mook (rhymes with book). We ve combined the excitement, unexpectedness, and visual appeal of a magazine with the permanence and in-depth instructiveness of a how-to book. Whether you're a geek or hacker who delights in creating new uses for technology, or a Saturday afternoon tinkerer who loves to get his hands dirty, you'll keep every issue of MAKE on your bookshelf for years to come. Our premier issue, available in February 2005, includes 220 pages packed with tips and tricks, including:

• how to create a $14 stabilizer for your video camera with readily available household items
• how to use an ordinary kite to take extraordinary professional quality aerial digital photos
• how to get rid of that tangle of wires by creating your own 5-in-1 network cable
• how to decipher the magnetic stripe on your credit card to find out what your credit card company really knows about you and lots more!

Every quarter, MAKE will contain a unique set of innovative ideas and creations for a variety of new technologies, including mobile devices, in-car computers, web services, digital media, wireless and home networking, and computer hardware. Visit MAKE's web site: make.oreilly.com.

About the Author
Mark Frauenfelder serves as Editor in Chied for MAKE magazine. Mark is a writer and illustrator living in Los Angeles, and the editor of Make. He is the cofounder of the popular Boing Boing weblog, was an editor at Wired from 1993-1998, and was the founding editor-in-chief of Wired Online. His articles about technology and culture have appeared in Wired, The New York Times Magazine, Popular Science, MIT Technology Review, Playboy, Business 2.0 and The Industry Standard. He wrote and illustrated The Mad Professor for Chronicle Books, a book of science experiments for kids published in the Fall of 2002.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Inc. (February 8, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596009224
• ISBN-13: 978-0596009229
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #395,646 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars High Quality, March 15, 2005

By	E. Wuehler (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

While flipping through this "mook" (as it apparently is called), it brought back childhood memories of browsing my Dad's Popular Science (or was it Popular Mechanics?) magazines. I like the smaller, "bookish" form factor as it makes it feel more - well, uhh - like a book. Since this is a magazine, I was curious to see how many ads I was going to have to wade through. I was pleasantly surprised to discover there were hardly any; I hope they keep them to a minimum going forward.

The "how to" articles are very well done, with a great amount of step-by-step information in both visual and written detail. My only problem now is time. Every project looked like so much fun it was disappointing to realize I wouldn't be able to do them all before the next issue would arrive and give me a whole new set of cool projects. =) My personal time management issues aside, Make is high-quality publication, top to bottom.

31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Super! (almost...), February 16, 2005

By	Uncle Marky "autodidacts are us" (Kings Park, NY USA) - See all my reviews

What's not to love? The 9"x7" book format is much better than the typical magazine size, all the articles are interesting, and almost no fluff.

My only dislikes: The body type is really small, and some of the sidebars are set even smaller. Us older geeks really need a slightly larger font. I'm not a big fan of body copy set in sans-serif either, but can live with it.

I subscribed, PLEASE ship this in a poly bag. The Post Office can to cruel things to a magazine.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I've been looking for this!, October 26, 2005

By	Velojym "eclectic whatever" (Diminuitive Boulder, AR) - See all my reviews

I stay on the lookout for the "Boys" guides, you know, those old books dealing with science and technology (a hundred years old, perhaps, but still quite educational). I've looked into a few more modern magazines, such as Popular Mechanics (good for what it is), Wired (mostly a culture thing, I guess), and 2600 (fine, if my goal was to electronically knock over a Target store or something).
This is what I was after: a 'book' series dealing with hacking together hardware, making stuff work, and making stuff work better.
Now my 'to do' list has grown substantially, with a bunch of things I really hadn't thought of doing!