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'Make' Premier Issue
But enough with the links. On the front page the magazine features 181 pages for DIY technology, promising stories on aerial photography, backyard monorails, XM radio hacks, iPod tricks, DIY magnetic card reader and blogging made simple. Make is roughly half the size of a normal full-page magazine (like PC Mag or InfoWorld) and generally feels like a paperback book more than a magazine. The paper is also not the glossy print you'd see in normal magazines, it says on page 8 that they used New Leaf Paper, made 100% from post-consumer waste. Make generally uses normal-type font, which should be readable by anyone, except for some pages where they switch to really large fonts.
The magazine is broken down into several logical categories. It starts with editors' welcome letters and short features of some DIY projects people have done on their own (this guy's backyard monorail stands out). The Maker pages in this premiere issue contain an interview with Neil Gershenfeld from MIT, an article on heirloom technology, possibility of building an open-source car and an expose of Bay Area Dorkbot group.
The Projects category (starting at p. 49) is where the real fun starts. The projects take up majority of the pages, and it makes sense - looks like the authors put their best into providing excruciating details, pieces of advice and general information, so that anyone can follow their work. The projects are well-illustrated, some contain necessary diagrams and cartoon-like explanations of what needs to be done to assemble the proper devices, the step-by-step pages contain both pictures and text. Each project is sub-divided into several parts - Set up (list of everything needed before you start), Make it (the actual step-by-step instructions and discussion of the projects), Use it (reasons for tinkering with the project in the first place). The setup list is also provided on Make Web site, like here's the list of components for magnetic stripe reader.
The projects for the issue include adding a disposable camera to the kite for aerial photography, a $14 video camera stabilizer, 5-in-1 network cable (the combination of RJ45 and DB9 inputs) and the magnetic stripe reader.
The major projects are followed by the projects consuming less time and efforts. This is mainly for people who would rather spend more money at the spot, buy some cool accessory to complement their electronic device, and do minimal engineering on their own, as far as I understand. The categories include Home Entertainment, Mobile, Cars, Online, Computers and some additional projects that did not fit anywhere above. The table of contents contains the complete list of projects.
It looks like the magazine that is needed in the market. At some point playing with technology became synonymous with running to the nearest mall and getting the latest electronic gadget, and even RadioShack nowadays mostly looks like a flashy storefront for selling cell service plans and new PDAs. Make is the magazine for people who like to look under the hood, who like to work on do-it-yourself projects and who feel great accomplishment when a project is over, even though its practical usability might be questioned. Of course, the amount of projects in the magazine is a bit overwhelming, but my guess is they figure you'll find some extremely interesting and some are just not interesting at all.
Since I grew up in the Soviet Union, Make magazine reminds me of Young Technician (when technician meant someone involved with technology), a Russian must-subscribe boy magazine that would pull the latest science and technology news together, and also dedicate large portion of its pages to readers' projects. Of course, nowadays, in the age of Hack A Day, Lifehacker and numerous HOW-TOs such magazine might not exactly have the exclusive coverage of the DIY projects. Google might turn out more results, but for some of the projects it also looks like the authors were either pioneers or authorities in their field since googling for DIY aerial photography provides just Make article and a bunch of links to it.
Make is a quarterly publication, so $35 subscription fee covers only 4 issues per year. A bit expensive, but if you plan to enrich yourself and spend free time more productively, I think Make has lots of content to entice the reader and keep him busy for 3 months. First impression might not mean a whole lot, but Make was one of few magazines that I enjoyed reading from page 1 to page 192.
Wow.
In the day of paper thin magizines (anyone read 'Time' lately?), that's pretty hefty. Even if it is 1/2 size.
What I didn't see was any mention of how much advertising there was (or will be).
The lead time for publishing a paper magazine is atrocious when compared to webtime. Many web sites for regular print magazines will only run the articles after the print has gone out. What's the deal going to be with Make, do we know? By the time it shows up in my mailbox will I already have read the articles?
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
is a 1968 Popular Mechanics DIY encyclopedia. Me mum bought it for me when I were a wee lad. I got lucky on mums. When I started taking everything in the house apart to see how it worked; and if I could put it together again, better, she not only encouraged me, but went so far as convert the living room of our home into a workshop (American urban colonial neighborhood. No garage. I can, literally, shake hands with my neighbor without either one of us leaving our bedrooms).
.only coming out quarterly.
She didn't even blink when she came home one day to find I had built a formula car in the dining room because there wasn't room for it in the living room workshop. We all just lived in the kitchen for awhile, which is where we spent most of our family time anyway.
More recently she's actually the one who clued me in to the whole dorkbot thingy (I'm a fairly solitary tinkerer, although testing new vehicles does seem to draw something of a crowd at times).
So what the hell happened to PM anyway?
Sounds like I'll have to at least check out Make, but I fear I'll be disappointed in it. .
KFG
Nothing really too complicated in there, and it looks like you can build most of the stuff they present with just a few hours of work. The DIY stuff is pretty darn simple, actually.
When I was lookin' through my issue last night I kind of skimmed by the stuff they showed OS X doing - but when I went back and read it this morning, it actually looked like some cool stuff.
I do hope that in the future they have some actual electronics projects in there of some sort. I am sure they will. This time around it looked to be mainly taking what is already out there and showing different ways of putting said gizmo to use, or fixing it.
Overall though, I have to give Make a big thumbs up. It looks nice, is fun to read, and is gonna be really useful.
BTW, as I was typing this, I kept trying to come up with what Make reminds me of. I think I got it.... a paper version of The Screen Savers when the show did not suck.