Make:

Raves for MAKE

Here's some of our favorite feedback about MAKE, Maker Faire and Makezine.com. Read more raves for Maker Faire here!

"Make magazine, one of the bibles of the do-it-yourself movement"

-Julia Moskin, The New York Times October 29, 2008

" MAKE is amazing. Getting the issues are the happiest four days of the year for me"

-Stephen Miller

"In here are more than articles bound together, more than the vision of its creators even: it's a possibility engine. A passel of new ways of thinking, and thus, new ways of looking at the world. This is, without a doubt, my favorite magazine ever, and my only beef with them is that I don't have enough free time to try everything I'd like to.

-Adam Savage, MythBusters

Dear Makezine,

I read your 12th magazine, well actually skimmed it, and noticed some very interesting projects to make. The solar xylophone takes great work to finish and great work to find the parts, but it pays off with the sound of music. The Boing Box is also a unique instrument (which probably takes less effort than the xylophone). It looks like an improvised guitar with less strings and I see it uses a cigar box. I kept skimming, and saw your puzzle section, the one with the Poison Wine and Black or White. The Poison Wine puzzle kept me thinking. Do you just guess which one it is? Eventually, I looked up the answer and saw it had a more complicated answer than I thought. Actually, I am writing because I am trying to achieve a merit badge for boy scouts. I belong to Troop 660 in Cypress, California. My current rank is First Class. Summer Camp is coming and after it ends, I hope to be a Star Scout. Thank you for reading this letter. It is being sent through my mom?s email address.

Sincerely,

Matthew Masui

"I think that Tim O?Reilly and the crew at Make Magazine/Maker Faire/Makezine are leading the way with a great energy and a spirit of adventure. They?ve made open source/DIY hardware seem as cool and subversive as the punk movement of the early 80s. Soldering irons are the new electric guitars!"

- Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of Wired Magazine June 11, 2008

"This is a magazine for people who, in real life, are like Matthew Broderick from 'War Games.' Everything children would like to be able to do with technology, you do."

- Stephen Colbert, The Colbert Report March 6, 2007

"There's a magazine I like, Make magazine??it's all about how to build little robots out of Altoid tins, and how to make sea monkeys into giant blood-sucking rats. It's pretty cool and it's a lot of fun"

- Jimmy Kimmel

"Make magazine, it's a favorite with hands on techies everywhere."

- G4 Attack of the Show

"For tinkeres this is heaven."

- The Seattle Times

"[Make] has managed to become a magnet that pulls a once-disparate community of hackers and tinkerers."

- Folio

"There are two kinds of geeks. Software geeks, with their endless lines of code, password hacks and algorithms. And hardware geeks, with their soldering irons, circuit boards and Rube Goldberg creations. Linus Torvalds is a god to the former, MacGyver a hero to the latter. The magazine Make resides firmly in the second camp."

- New York Post, December 9, 2007

"Make, a magazine for alpha geeks with soldering guns and a penchant for building their own gizmos? The magazine has tapped into an underground movement driven by hardware hackers who wanted to reclaim the mass-produced world of consumer electronics and make devices that are uniquely their own."

- The Los Angeles Times, December 2, 2007

"As I'm sure many of my friends, family, coworkers and casual acquaintances will attest, I may be one of the most critical people living today. That said, there is nothing I would change about Make Magazine. Your subscription management, email policies, magazine content, everything about my experience with Make is as I would have designed, or better. Thank you. I only wish your staff could assume responsibility for all the other goods and services I need. I would vote for Make Magazine for President."

-Gabriel Kanes

It's amateur hour in America. It's not just the bloggers and the much-hyped "citizen reporters," or the stay-at-home-dad podcasters and the prolific freelance book critics of Amazon.com. It's the Mike Leighs of MySpace and YouTube, the homespun digital photographers who sell their work to photo agencies for next to nothing, T-shirt designers who are still in high school, ballpoint-pen doodlers who've become contemporary artists, and graphic design geniuses who spend their days entering online Photoshop contests. At the website of the DIY tech magazine Make, enthusiasts post photos and videos of their MacGyver-esque inventions, such as a homemade rocket and a coffee table made from surplus jet parts and bombs. Once, Americans did projects like this alone in their garages and rec rooms and kept the results to themselves. Now they go online to brag every time their homemade tesla coil manages to give off a spark.

...today's amateur is paradoxically not amateurish at all but actually highly skilled.

"Just wanted to drop you a line saying I really love the magazine... I'm partial to Craft, but my roommate was gorging himself all weekend with Make. He is now trying to make a robot. This could either be great, or a complete failure/destroy part of our apartment. Either way, I'll blame it on Make."

-Lauren Shopp

"The best @&*% magazine out there right now! I honestly feel these guys are closer to the forefront of technology than any other magazine. And because it's a DIYer's zine it does a better job of helping you understand the cool stuff they cover; it's one thing to get it, but doing it brings it to the next level. They also publish an awesome line of books."

-GeekDad Blog, Wired, October 20, 2007

"i cannot remember how i found you folks, but i subscribed to the daily & can no longer sleep at night waiting for the damned thing to arrive. have sent links to all the prominent nieces, nephews, and second cousins. wish my son would hurry up & learn how to read so he could sift thru the articles himself. thanks for all you're doing. i wish you success."

- Rodney Bender

"That childhood dream of being the cool scientist/inventor who builds homemade guitars and separates DNA can finally be realized with one great new magazine. Make: Technology on your time features clear instructions on everytnig from honestly separating DNA to building a grown-up version of the pinhole camera that uses regular film."

-Jerry Portwood, New York Press, February 21, 2007

"This Web auxiliary to the printed Make magazine captures the ethos of the tech-oriented do-it-yourselfer movement. Amid the crazy projects like how to make a lamp from scanner parts or a desk from 35,000 Lego bricks, there are handy tips like how to implant a $2 RFID chip under your skin -- O.K., the whole site is pretty geeky."

-Damon Darlin, The New York Times, February 3, 2007

A good example is Bre Pettis, Make magazine's video podcaster. Once, the 34-year-old Pettis worked as a teacher and went home to build curious contraptions in isolation. Now he's paid to teach others, via digital video, how to make steam-powered bicycles and take high-speed photographs of falling water droplets. "Amateurism is about reclaiming hardware, about mastering your surroundings," he says. Pettis may have reclaimed, mastered, and unleashed his inner mad scientist, but like many a pro-am, he's also making a living doing it.

- Alissa Quart, in For Love or Money, Mother Jones, January/February 2007

...But my favorite is a piece titled "Beepkiller: Parental Revenge." It details three steps for getting rid of the horrible beeps that come from young children's toys. Solutions include disconnecting the speaker entirely, adding an on/off switch and, if you are so inclined, adding a volume switch.

"People used to tinker and play with things a lot before the computer came around," Dougherty said. "But then the computer became the thing we really spent time with."

In two years, in an industry where the success rate for new magazines is nearly zero, Make has amassed 42,000 subscribers. It has a paid circulation of 85,000 and is available at major bookstores such as Barnes & Noble and Borders.

There's even a Maker Faire (www.makerfaire.com), where enthusiasts gather to show off and discuss each other's projects. Last year's event in San Francisco drew a whopping 20,000 attendees.

Thanks in part to Make, lots of folks are tinkering again.

- Alex Goldfayn, Chicago Tribune, February 5, 2007, Make something: Magazine bucks trend by building devoted audience

"All you DIYers out there might want to add this blog to your favorite list".

-EPL, PC Magazine, November 7, 2006

Move over MacGyver ? MAKE magazine and its companion Web site www.makezine.com are in town and there just isn't room enough for the both of you. Innovative, offbeat and surprising, it features fresh projects ranging from the more mainstream ? how to brew cheap wine, making a $30 aluminum computer desk ? to the exotic ? turning a toy into a kegerator bar gun, making an iPod amp out of an old computer speaker and a CD-R case. Some of the projects are silly and harebrained featuring items you'd probably never construct but that you'll likely to have a good time reading about. Others are tasks you wouldn't have thought of and will be more likely to attempt. The Web site gives a good taste of what the magazine is like with blogs, projects, a store and information on the magazine itself. Wake up your inner nerd and check this tech-tastic gem out ? nerdy you is sure to be grateful.

- Alexis Larsen, Dayton Daily News, July 28, 2006.

FAST FORWARD: a site to behold
The first magazine devoted entirely to DIY technology projects, MAKE magazine unites, inspires and informs a growing community of resourceful people who undertake amazing projects in their backyards, basements and garages. Learn how to make robots, Tesla coils and Lego pinball machines or how to recycle candy tins and refrigerators into pinhole cameras and workbenches. It's like Martha Stewart for supergeeks. Make your way over to www.makezine.com and check it out.

- St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 21, 2006.

"It's good clean geek fun for hardware hackers, or "makers," as the magazine respectfully calls them, and fits nicely inside a growing DIY movement that includes online phenomena like blogging, photo-sharing and podcasting."

-Brad Stone, Newsweek, April 26, 2006.

"The new Make magazine exposed a growing underground community of inventors, hackers and geeks who thrive on tearing things apart and rebuilding them--or making there own stuff from scratch."

-Tim Simmers, San Mateo County Times, April 19, 2006

"The growing [DIY] movement is chronicled by O'Reilly Media's Make magazine, a year-old publication that has become the bibled of the do-it-yourself technology set."

-Steve Hart, The Press Decmocrat, April 16, 2006

"We've already seen the popularity of house porn (shelter magazine, and "Extreme Home Makeover"), car porn (auto magazines and "Pimp My Ride") and food porn ("Iron Chef"). Now we've got geek DIY porn."

-Steven Levy, Newsweek, January 30, 2006.

If someone on your list likes gadgets but is also handy (and has a lot of free time) you might want to send a gift subscription to Make magazine, which is published quarterly for $35 a year.

Make is Popular Mechanics redone for the age of blogs, Linux and laptops. The articles are mostly how-to pieces for decidedly cool undertakings, like taking a cabinet-style turntable from the 1940s, the sort that was a piece of living-room furniture, and turning it into an MP3 encoder for LP albums. Make has considerable coffee-table appeal, meaning you don't have to actually build anything to enjoy leafing through it. Some of the projects are vaguely tongue-in-cheek anyway, like building an electric guitar out of a cigar box.

- Lee Gomes, "Gifts That Don't Start With i", published in the Wall Street Journal Technology section, December 19, 2005.

"If I read one more article or hear one more speech about how this country is losing its edge because not enough people are getting into science and technology, I'll become officially depressed. In that light, it's especially satisfiying to know that, if the pages of Make are any indication, the spirit of experimentation and geekiness-for-its-own-sake are thriving in the basements and backyards of America."

-David Pogue, The New York Times, July 28, 2005

"Make magazine is Martha Stewart Living for people who build their own computers."

-Peter Carlson, Washington Post, July 14, 2005

"A new technology magazine, Make, is taking the D.I.Y. attitude, smoothing the edges and serving up a quiet riot against the passivity of consumer technology?"

-Eric Gwinn, Chicago Tribune, March 29, 2005

Does your library attract patrons who are interested in learning how to achieve laptop functionality from a PDA, produce professional podcasts, or build working solar-powered vehicles? Well, MAKE, a new magazine that returns to the do-it-yourself theme abandoned by Popular Mechanics and other publications, is certain to grab their attention. Treating its readers as intelligent producers-rather than mere consumers-of technology, MAKE's approach is refreshing, entertaining, and eminently educational.

- Clayton Couch, Library Journal Review Tearsheets

If you're the type who views the warnings not to pry open your computer as more a challenge than admonition, MAKE is for you.

- Rolling Stone

Thank goodness, then, for MAKE and its web log makezine.com, so technologically astute and yet so solidly grounded in a tactile, breakable, fixable world....You'll proceed strictly at your own risk, but if the first two issues of MAKE are any guide, the trip will be a blast.

- Lawrence Downes, The New York Times

One of the most innovative magazines I've seen in a long time.

- Steve Riggio, CEO Barnes & Noble

"My favorite sites"

- Bill Husted, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

It's the kind of magazine that would impress MacGyver

- Marcus Chan, San Francisco Chronicle

...O'Reilly Media recently launched what has already become the bible of this new movement, a magazine called MAKE.

- Daniel Roth, FORTUNE

Make is an unabashed love letter to the variety of human innovation even when--maybe especially when--it's taken to the extremes of what outsiders consider folly.

- Stephen Manes,

...MAKE is usable for both the subculture it ostensibly covers and the general audience whose attentions Wired '93 didn't quite capture. It's not yuppie bullshit. And it's a good thing, because we've had enough of that.

- Elizabeth Spiers, mediabistro.com

What a gas! Imagine if you crossed Scientific American's old Amateur Scientist column with Nuts and Volts and a splash of Wired ... Make: is what you'd get.

- Mark Gibbs, Gearblog, NetworkWorldFusion

Before handhelds, moveable tunes and programmed playthings, before disposable appliances with no replacement parts, and sealed plastic cases impenetrable to screwdrivers and nail files, there was the simple art of making things. And opening them up, fixing them and improving them, making what we use our own.

Demystifying the mechanics of everyday life and interacting with the objects around us is an idea whose time has come, again. It is demonstrated by the extraordinary success of an old idea in 21st century form. "Make Magazine," a how-to guide for the opposable thumb set, has taken off like a bottle rocket in just a few short months.

- Judith Gorman, New Media: Hands One in the Vermont Guardian, July 1, 2005

From Magazine a little bit dangerous (Registration Required)

This is Popular Mechanics for the modern age with a 1968 James Brown attitude: "I Don't Want Nobody to Give Me Nothing (Open Up the Door, I'll Get It Myself) - hunh!"

Readers of Make are sure to be the very people that those who try to reign in technological innovation will fret over. Every obstacle put in front of them will become a challenge.

But when we eventually run out of oil, have a worldwide computer crash or another global catastrophe, it's the sort of people who will subscribe to Make who will help us all survive. That is, until someone utters the words "uh oh."

While I'd love to imagine myself as one of those hardy few who will design a solar-powered home defibrillator, I know I'm not. But maybe I can follow the cartoon instructions in this magazine to make this nifty air gun that shoots marshmallows.

- Wayne Bledsoe, Knoxville News-Sentinel

We really enjoyed this note about how one of our fans downloads batches of Phillip Torrone's podcasts while traveling:

Hi Phil,

Just thought I'd drop you a note to say I may be one of your more unorthodox listeners but still love the interviews and show, keep it up!

I've been backpacking through Central and South America since August. Overland from Mexico and I am currently in Brazil. Whilst I do have my iPod with me, getting it out and plugging it into random computers in Internet cafes along the way, let alone getting podcasts onto it easily and quickly has not really been an option. However I also have my Palm T3 with me. I've been using an SD card reader, and whenever in a town with a decent internet cafe, grabbing as many casts as I can (with straight mp3 downloads) to listen to with RealPlayer on my Palm in the evenings.

I'm looking forward to getting back home to New Zealand later in the year and getting a copy of the mag to read and things to try I have been hearing about.

Love the show, keep it up.

Gareth Bissland

I just got the comp copy of Make that you sent (I don't know what list I'm on, but thank you!). I got goose bumps. This is a very important magazine. It reminds my what I used to read as a kid: Popular Electronics. That got me going way back then and I'd count the days until each issue came. I learned of the new thing, integrated circuits, from there. I built Heathkits, etc., etc., and got started on my life as an engineer. We know what it did for Gates and Allen. I think this will be just as important. It isn't doing all the projects as much as reading about them and then finally making a move yourself. Many a parent will get the next generation of engineers going by doing some of these with their kid or even reading it with them. Etc., etc. I called Bob Frankston up to make sure he knew about it and he got excited, too. It's the example we'll give about the people we want to empower when we talk about building things so "the user can do it themselves".

There's lots more I'd like to say, but I'm getting ready to go off to Demo and recovering from a laptop disk failure... I just wanted to give you a congratulations and thank you since I smile so much when I thumb through it. May it sell millions of copies!

- Dan Bricklin

so i'm sure you know pt was in town to do some stuff at o'reilly and the eff, and tim handed him one of the proofs of make issue 1, which he promptly handed to me. mark, i got giddy! i got goosebumps! what an excellent publication. everything about it is fantastic. congratulations man, it's beautiful.

- eric L

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Raves for MAKE!

“Now we've got geek DIY (do it yourself) porn. Just as would-be Emerils pore over lushly illustrated cookbooks with recipes involving hard-to-find morels and complicated instructions for roux, Tom Swift wanna-bes are devouring MAKE.”
— Steven Levy, Newsweek

“...O'Reilly Media recently launched what has already become the bible of this new movement, a magazine called MAKE.”
— Daniel Roth, FORTUNE

“If you're the type who views the warnings not to pry open your computer as more a challenge than admonition, MAKE is for you.”
— Rolling Stone

“One of the most innovative magazines I've seen in a long time.”
— Steve Riggio, CEO Barnes & Noble

“The kind of magazine that would impress MacGyver”
— Marcus Chan, San Francisco Chronicle

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