We’re laser etching up some iPads soon for a contest, woo!
Epilog Laser, the leading producer of CO2 and fiber laser engraving, cutting and marking systems today announced the company is teaming with Adafruit Industries to sponsor the iPad Contest, presented by Gizmodo.
“Engraving tech-gadgets is unbelievably popular right now”. Beginning March 15, Gizmodo will start accepting design entries for possible laser engraving on the highly-anticipated iPad. Two winners will be selected and each will receive a laser engraved iPad featuring each participant’s respective design. Finalists will be picked by the Gizmodo staff, Adafruit and Epilog. After the top 10 are selected, Gizmodo readers will vote for the two grand-prize winners. Adafruit will donate the engraving services on their Epilog Laser, and Epilog will donate the iPads for the contest.
“Engraving tech-gadgets is unbelievably popular right now,” said Mike Dean, director of sales and marketing for Epilog Laser. “We’re happy to donate the iPads for the competition and are excited to team with Gizmodo and Adafruit. It’s a perfect fit because we can connect with people who really understand what our product can do – the designers, the DIY crowd, the inventors – all of those who genuinely appreciate what lasers are capable of.”
The iPad Contest opens March 15 and runs through midnight PDT April 3. The competition is open to all U.S. residents 18 and older. Complete rules can be found at gizmodo.com and adafruit.com. For more information visit www.epiloglaser.com.
We have a friend who wants to etch “HELP I’M TRAPPED IN AN APPLE FACTORY” in Chinese on their Macbook pro, if anyone could translate this and post an image somewhere we’d appreciate it – Here’s what google says… does this look pretty close?
Pi, Greek letter (), is the symbol for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Pi Day is celebrated by math enthusiasts around the world on March 14th. Pi = 3.1415926535…
With the use of computers, Pi has been calculated to over 1 trillion digits past the decimal. Pi is an irrational number meaning it will continue infinitely without repeating. The symbol for pi was first used in 1706 by William Jones, but was popular after it was adopted by the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler in 1737.
Tonight, Saturday 3/13/2010 – 10pm ET – “Ask an Engineer” – our weekly LIVE video chat! What is “Ask an engineer”? From the electronics enthusiast to the professional community – “Ask an Engineer” has a little bit of everything for everyone. If you’re a beginner, or an seasoned engineer – stop in and see what we’re up to! We have demos of projects and products we’re working on, we answer you engineering and electronics questions and we have a trivia question + give away each week. To see previous chat event videos, please visit the forums.
This week we’ll go through some more of chapters one of the books we stock “Make: Electronics by Charles Platt” We checked out this book before putting it in the shop, its geared towards ultimate-beginners and teaches electronics starting from basic core of analog to some digital to microcontrollers. You’ll learn tools, prototyping soldering techniques, transistors, 555’s, etc. while completing useful projects. A nice and tidy intro! This book is a good accompaniment to learning microcontrollers/Arduino in that it fills the necessary electronics theory and background.
A lot of readers are likely familiar with Adafruit Industries, supplier and maker of many kits found in the Maker Shed. In addition to my role here at MAKE, as senior editor, I also work with Limor (Ladyada), helping her with the open source hardware kit business. I’ll have a few articles about general things we do around here to keep the ship afloat and charting new waters, but I thought I’d start this “Maker Business” article with an overview of how it all works and how we use many many web tools/services. One of the most asked questions I get from makers is “what shopping cart do you use?” The short answer is Zencart, and while I think it doesn’t actually matter what you use when you start out, this is what we’re using at Adafruit. A recent milestone, we just shipped our 50,000th order. We mostly create and sell open source hardware, most of the tools we use are open source — I’ve never seen an article detailing “everything” a business uses online, so here’s one. I think you’ll enjoy it. Let’s take a look…
“Dali Clock is a digital clock. When a digit changes, it “melts” into its new shape. The date is displayed when the mouse is pressed. The window can be made transparent, and can do funky psychedelic color cycling. ”
The first light-emitting diodes went on sale in 1962, and you could have any kind you wanted as long as it was dim and red. Green, yellow and orange came next, but blue LEDs didn’t debut until 1989. So it may surprise you that the first LEDs, discovered in 1907, included blue—and were made of sandpaper.
You’ve got your components, and your datasheet, and you’re read to start hacking. But which way does the chip go? Pin 23 is where? If you’re lucky, the orientation is clearly marked, or perhaps diagrammed in the datasheet. But if it isn’t, or if you’re simply new at this, it’s helpful to know what to look for.
AdaFruit – Purveyors of fine geek supplies, AdaFruit are offering 10% off any kit on Ada Lovelace Day, if you use the code LADYADA. Our hope is that customers will use the 10% off as an incentive to pick up a kit for their daughter, wife, girlfriend, partner, friend, sister, aunt, mom, cousin (you get the point) or just someone out there who might be inspired to consider electronics, engineers, science and technology as possible careers or hobbies.
The United States Computer Emergency Response Team (US-CERT) has warned that the software included in the Energizer DUO USB battery charger contains a backdoor that allows unauthorized remote system access. In an advisory, the US-CERT warned that he installer for the Energizer DUO software places the file UsbCharger.dll in the application’s directory and Arucer.dll in the Windows system32 directory. An attacker is able to remotely control a system, including the ability to list directories, send and receive files, and execute programs. The backdoor operates with the privileges of the logged-on user.
