Kickstarter is popular, successful, and is basically a name brand in DIY project funding. But the market is big, and the alternatives meaningful. Here's the shortlist you should know.
1 // MakerBot's Thing-O-Matic is
a user-friendly descendant of the rapid-prototyping machines utilized by industrial designers for years. Such machines can produce
three-dimensional "rough drafts"
of products prior to their mass-manufacture. The Thing-O-Matic
is smaller (and cheaper) than
industrial-grade machines. It
stands 16 inches high and has an area of 1 square foot.
He last turned heads by funding budding entrepreneurs who quit college to start businesses. Now Thiel's Breakout Labs is doing the same for scientists, granting $50,000 to $350,000 to entrepreneurial-minded free radicals.
Homemade rocket launchers? Backpack-mounted drones? Improvised tanks? Inside the weird and wonderful world of weapons from the Libyan revolutionary war.
As Stephen Hawking once said: "Unless mankind redesigns itself by changing our DNA through altering our genetic makeup, computer-generated robots will take over our world." So what developments in robotics happened this week?
"I'll definitely go to the Burton exhibit," says Boing Boing's Mark Frauenfelder. He'll also be at Maker Faire, a DIY celebration. "Our food demos run the gamut" from tofu to seedballs to fermentation, says organizer Kim Dow.
