HaD Community,
We’ve heard the feedback, death threats and *sigh*s regarding the more accessible “top X” posts we’ve published recently. we’re going to pause on these while we internally discuss the mission and goals of Hackaday.
For background, I came up with the name Hackaday while brainstorming a site for hacks with [Phillip Torrone], who was then working on a hack every two or three weeks for a new blog called Engadget which [Peter Rojas] and I had founded. When we sold Weblogs Inc, the parent company of Engadget, Hackaday and 100 other blogs to AOL I pulled Hackaday out of the deal at the last-minute.
Why? Well, let’s just say that this dark overlord realized the dark overlords at the bigger Death Star (known as Time Warner) would not take kindly to having their set-top boxes and DVD players hacked. The head of legal department at said Death Star almost exploded when she read Hackaday.
Hackaday then existed in a shell company before I bought it from my former partners at weblogs inc. I did this, as opposed to selling it or shutting it down, because I know Hackaday is a unique place for a unique group of folks to share what they are working on.
My thinking has been “as long as I don’t lose too much money on this I’m fine with HaD just chugging along.” I’m happy to say that while I’ve lost a little money it’s not a lot (well, not happy, but not devastated. :-)
All that being said, I’d like to see Hackaday grow and expand its mission beyond “one hardware hack a day.” That’s why I asked the Hackaday crew to set up answers.hackaday.com and try out a Q&A forum for folks… which you guys seem to have embraced and used. It’s seems to be getting some traffic and is providing some utility.
What I’d like to see is for “classic hackaday” to expand into a place where a wider audience can learn and be inspired to hack *anything*.
So, if a casual internet users wants to rip their DVR apart and try upgrading the hard drive we should be the place they can learn how to do that. If they have a problem, they can ask a question here too.
If someone wants to jailbreak their iPhone or rip their iPad apart and embed it in the dashboard of their car they should be able to do that here.
… or if they want to learn some life hacks related to their Gmail account, we have a long article with the top 25 lifehacks for that.
So, my proposal to the community is to:
- a) Keep doing exactly what we’ve done an RSS feed called “classic”
- b) Expand the mission statement to something along the lines of “hack everything” (or maybe “hack anything” sounds more ambitious/fun?). Perhaps best said is: “hack everything, and inspire and help others to do that same.”
Thoughts? Feedback?
-Jason Calacanis
i can totally understand the need / will to “expand” and evolve … and without these casual hacks (jailbreak iphone) or “top x” post you would get a bigger audience … true
the idea of a site that has all thouse things i have my very own sites for combined into one (considering rooting android, iphone “hacking”, iFixIt, modding a wii)
would truly be awesome
i can see something like iFixIt has done for taking iDevices apart for the general “gadget” hacking for the new HaD
i would like to see a “noob” and a “pro” corner/site individually … but calling noobs, noobs never works out well … so why dont you call the classic: “Hack a Day Pro” we here all feel a little flattered and with the new site / extra contend you can attract some more ppl … an as i said i wouldnt mind to see all thous need little howtos/instruction/”normal ppls hacks” on one glorious site
thanks for explaining and carry on ! :)
lad1337
ps i dont mean you have to make a new site or subdomain like pro.hackaday.com(although that does sound awesome :/) i am not sure whether to show both types of contend as default or the noob stuff as default and you have to activate the pro stuff
saved via account / cookie … or do the subdomain thing
pps i was just afraid you stop the normal contend when those “top x” appeared
Long time reader and I miss the simplicity of the one hack a day in black and white. I would love to see that site again, or have access to it that way. That way when I don’t want HAD to eat half of my day I can control myself and go there.
That being said, I enjoy the new material and having a lot more diverse stuff on here. I do agree with the general feeling of everyone else though.
-Make sure the quality of the articles continue to be high.
-Have the audience in mind, this site is primarily read by intermediate to advanced users
-occasionally, maybe once a week, if you want to do something aimed at beginners; mark it as such in the title, I for one would love to see maybe an occasional link to another site for beginners on whatever. i.e. a beginner’s guide to arduino’s post would involve some basic things about the arduino and links to a couple other high quality websites aimed at beginners.
-this has been said for awhile but the tag system on this site needs reworked to make it more easily browseable. Maybe allow registered users or repeat commentators to tag articles that can then be used?
First I would like to thank you guys for giving me\us a great place satisfy my\our ‘geek’ needs. : )
But like pall.e said, maybe it would be a great idear to have a special ‘beginners’ section. That way hacking could become more accessible for everyone. Oh and furthermore I still love to see a special PIC Microchip section! : )
we love it at is.
thanks for very day!!!!
Long time listener, long time commenter.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything on here that has OFFENDED me, but yeah, unless an app or program IS a hack or somehow relates to hacking in some real way It’s probably better left either off the table or in some kind of “section” or something.
Just a signal-to-noise thing for the frequency you resonate at.
-but please do continue to do so!
I just have ONE suggestion:
http://classic.hackaday.com/ apart from the “classic” RSS, add a regular website URL which will only contain “classic” hacks.
I am glad you did not sell out to Time-Warner–it would have destroyed this site
You want to make more money? Sell more kits. You sold how many bus pirates? a bazillion? shirts, stickers, etc are probably pretty popular. Keep that sort of stuff going!
Kit-a-week isn’t a particularly catchy name, but damn if I wouldn’t buy 2-3 kits of bus pirate-like utility a month, in the $20 range. so many of the projects listed here are open source, and your authors know the parts suppliers, etc.
Probably 90% of project authors would be cool with limited commercialization if you gave them a few kits free. Say a run of 500 project kits per week, give 5 to the author. Make $2-3 per kit, fund HaD, get tons of readers. Once a quarter, sell off bags of assorted leftover kits for $10.
As for site content, yea, I’m disappointed when I get to work (I work nights) and the HaD front page is full of drivel, which happens about once a week.
I think nobody would really care what you posted so long as
a) there was one, solid, meaty, fairly technical post a day.
b) filtering was available. it’s trivial to do something like rss.hackaday.com/include_tags/hardcore/ee/fire/exclude_tags/duct%20tape%20wallets/apple%20fanboi/exclude_authors/someone%20i%20hate/
seriously. trivial. maybe 20 lines of ruby/sinatra, and it’d run almost as fast as a raw SQL query.
front page is a little trickier, but a cookie with preferences is easy enough to set.
oh, and if the people in charge of kitizing projects were adding value (generating eagle/gerber files from schematics, adding features, whatever) you would be adding further value.
oh, and sorry to triple post but two more things occurred to me:
1) a meta tag, for posts about people hacking hackaday kits :)
2) I’ve had no formal EE training, but let’s face it, a basic knowledge of microcontrollers, passive circuit elements, and electricity is all that’s really required for most hacks to be basically comprehensible. And this knowledge is easy enough to acquire. The answers.hackaday.com section is full of pretty dumb questions, and the answers are usually not much better. The good questions usually go unanswered. It looks more like an instructables wishlist than anything actually useful. Forums, moderated by forum nazis, are probably a better idea. “has anyone ever hacked (insert random device here)” is not useful. Most people don’t have that specific device, even if they have one in that general category. However, if someone posts “here’s how to load linux onto digital photo frame X and enable usb host mode”, people will know that device to be hackable, and seek to acquire that specific device, or one with the same chipset.
Go for it! I’m excited for more posts
Now if we only had some HACKS instead of a few real hacks smattered between fakes (if you don’t have full details, then you are faking it) and newbies discovering things that everyone else has known about for decades or even centuries…
Hack a day needs to be renamed to “learn a day” if it’s going to continue the low end dive to the bottom that all the good electronics magazines did in the 80’s… go from highbrow full of real information to a 4 issue series on the history and detail of the resistor written at a 3rd grade level.
Hack a day used to be great and a good place to find where to do some real hardware hacks. Now it’s a newbie show-and-tell with most postings having little to no content.
Add a requirement. if the hack is to hit the pages, the source-code and details MUST me there. If not, mark them as a poser and do not waste your time with them.
Yes: if you dont post info and code then you are a POSER.
I see some real die hards in the comments. Being a person who has to hack some stuff as part of my job, I find this site a great resource for things I’d like to try.
I think that spreading out into the world of questions and a knowledgebase is a great way to enhance and spread the concept of hacking to many people who thought it beyond them.
As for those who are complaining about “continue the low end dive to the bottom that all the good electronics magazines did in the 80′s” as the previous poster mentions….
1. the magazines that got you started in the 80’s aren’t in print anymore
2. We all got our start SOMEWHERE, why not on a site that promotes the idea that you can invent, even if it’s something that’s covered, not everyone is you, or me, we all have different experience levels.
So BRAVO team HackADay. Good work so far, and good luck with the new concept.
Very nicely done damage control over the Mahalo-owns-your-hacks-and-videos incident.
But erm.. it still owns your hacks and videos right? Or was the EULA for people submitting hacks changed? And if Mahalo own the hack once submitted does that not mean that jason and his Mahalo also inherit (legal) responsibility? Did he think about that?
I love the site, always have, read it everyday I can. Might not be improving Arduinos and jacking them into my head, or putting vet RFIDs in my hand, but I’m also not living in my parents basement.
Ignore the “whine-ys” and trolls, do as thou wilt.
Hey Jason,
This plan sounds good. If there is a bunch of articles that are not of interest it is easy to scroll by it. Becoming profitable is important since it would be ashame to see this site get shut down.
moar!
that is all.
I love the fact that you didn’t sell out. Good on you, and great for us!
That being said, please DO NOT make Hack a Day (one of my favourite daily internet sites) into TechRepublic. Their IT Dojo e-mail spam videos gives me a cold shudder down the spine…!
And they incidentally take care of the “top 10 whatever” posts that are haphazard, lack in detail and not really hacking anything. If people want that superficial nonsense, let them seek it elsewhere. Keep up the relatively high standards.
And GOOD WORK!
Keep the hackin’going please !
Big fan!
Hi Jason,
My name is Peter, I have been reading this site daily for almost 6 years now.
I am what most of your readers would call a “noob” when it comes to electronics.
Since visiting this first finding this site years ago I have taught myself to solder, bought myself an arduino and learnt to program it, Etched my first PCB and now I’m starting work on a CNC mill.
All these things I have been able to achieve I learnt to do on this site without prior training or instruction, I am the sort of person you are trying to attract to this site and I started here on the old format and stuck with it until I learnt.
I have read most of the posts here good and bad and I sort of feel divided between the two.
On one hand hacking is what I come here to learn about and if I want to know about software apps I go to lifehacker.
On the other hand I think that these new posts could be handy…. if…. they showed me a way of using apps and operating systems in way I had never thought of.
While I agree that to attract more readers you may have to change the format slightly how about keeping the original idea of sharing knowledge but cater for people like me as well, who really want to learn what this “hacking” thing is all about and help them start hacks of their own.
At the end of the day even though you have a site with a cult following and you value your current readers it is still your site and it can take any direction you feel it must.
– Peter
without reading all the replies…
I have been a follower of HaD for years… and I have no knowledge of electronics at all! I just like to see what amazing things people come up with in their bedrooms and sheds, wishing that one day I had the knowledge to actually know what an arduino can do and was!
I also believe that a site has to evolve and due to what this site stands for they should be relative to its core, ie, hacks. A wish list, badly written at that, of what to have in a mobile system that doesn’t exist yet is not a hack…where as the guides on creating an android development is a very good step in the right direction.
It is also great to see a little feedback from the owner and a small insight into his thinking of what HaD stands for to him.
In short, lay off the pointless topics and keep it true to the original idea… even if I have no idea what any of it means!
My two cents: I’m not that much of a hacker or fixer, more of a low-tech MacGyver of sorts, so personally, I’d like to see more of the “Hack Anything” version.
Thank you in advance,
The ThunderBird
You’re faced with a tough call – make HAD profitable so that it can continue, but dilute it in the process? Hard to say.
My personal opinion is that some of the new articles just don’t belong here. Articles such as the “features we’d like to see in Android 3” are really something I’d expect to see on Engadget or AndroidGuys. This is academic except that I don’t read either of those sites very often, while I do read HAD every day. By all means expand the site to include things like the Android dev tutorial – that’s something designed to teach people to hack, and thus it fits, to me. Just please leave out the top-ten-lists and product reviews. I want to read Hack a Day, not “Hack a Day and Details Magazine’s love child”.
I followed this site because it was really one of a kind. I care less about the “hackness” of an article than I do about reading up on various projects. I build things of all sorts for fun, electronics and otherwise, and the projects are what have kept me coming back. Give me a separate rss feed or a way to filter out all of this review garbage and I’ll be a happy camper. Otherwise, I’ll have to try and find some other project blog to follow.
I like the new direction but if an RSS feed posts too often, I stop following it. What about maintaining a ‘classic’ feed that continues the historic content and a firehose stream for all content. Also, not all content needs to be accessible via RSS.
“What I’d like to see is for “classic hackaday” to expand into a place where a wider audience can learn and be inspired to hack *anything*.”
I have to agree with you /for the most part/… I too would like to see this as a hack any and every thing site… but there is already another site like that called “Lifehacker” I visit that site with equal regularity.
What I would ask, is how would you differentiate this site from sites like lifehacker, hackedgadgets, makezine, and others like them?
Hey,
I love this site, I try to visit it daily to see what interesting hack(s) have been posted. I would hate to see the “feel” of the site change. It’s simple, has a nice UI, and the only thing I would really like to see implimented are some forums.
That being said, you mention that you make a loss from this site. I would be willing to donate some money if there were that option. Just putting that out there.
-Ben
Please don’t dumb down the site. Please don’t make it more accessable. Please don’t sacrifice quality for quantity.
I didn’t know anything about hackaday until Mike posted one of my projects. I started reading hackaday pretty much every day at that point. Finally, a place that has interesting stuff all in one place so I can stop wading through the crap from google search results or instructables. I come here specifically because I DONT have to wade through stuff I don’t like.
That said, I have no interest in twitter. Never even been there, and I have never been to facebook or myspace either. I don’t want to “scroll past” stuff like that like so many suggest.
Don’t make the site more accessable or easier to understand. If you don’t understand what you’re reading, then you should go learn about it and come back. If you are too lazy to go learn about it, then you are not a hacker and you should find a website more fitting to your interests. Hopefully this site can stay true to this.
One of the things I quickly noticed about hackaday is that it moves too fast. Stuff only lasts one day on the front page. Here is the problem with that: it’s the comments that really make the article meaningful. A good comment thread is how people learn. Discussing somebody’s project is the best part for me, but stuff doesn’t stick around long enough for that. I learned that from my own website, people’s input is the best part. Most of the comments I see here are knee-jerk opinions. I don’t mind the arduino poking and the “not a hack” stuff, but the “you’re too stupid to understand my opinion/experience” stuff is lame and detracting. That won’t improve if the content speed increases.
I like this place because it challenges you to learn something. Please keep it this way and not about tips or how to use something. There are other sites dedicated to that. This one is dedicated to hackers.
Wow, a lot of comments… If anyone is still reading then here is my take on things :)
Comments are the lifeblood of websites like HaD. I would recommend looking at a better system than just the blog comments though. Maybe you could use slashcode (as used on Slashdot). Something with more structure that helps late but good comments get noticed.
There do seem to be a lot of haters on HaD at the moment. To be fair there have been a few lame stories over the years but a lot of people just seem to want to berate others. Listen guys, if you are so superior then do your own hacks and get them published here. Otherwise STFU.
I don’t mind the “simple” hacks. It takes about 0.5 seconds to skip over them to the next article, and it’s not like there are hundreds posted per day.
One thing I would say it please try to keep it to actual hacks. I remember there was a story a while back about someone who had made an LED matrix clock. In actual fact he screwed it up by only having a ~16Hz refresh rate but the point is that such things are not really hacks. They are well documented, well understood. On the other hand the LED matrix clock I have made is a hack because instead of using the traditional transistor based switching system I used LM317s. That’s a novel use of LM317s and an interesting variation on the standard LED matrix.
Go for it!! It’s a great idea!!
Hey, I love the site!! Visit it every day.
Regardless of which you choose, please keep going.
how about we all ask ourselves this question.
how can we help our favorite site H.A.D. grow?
how can we contribute to keep our favorite site not stray and keep it running to everyones benefit?
i like Hackaday the way it is, and if you are interested in feedback, I understand that you are (like most if not all of us) just wanting to improve the net, and i’d say improve it by not being one of those web’masters’ who fix something that isn’t broken. i am always fascinated and inspired by the h4x, so thanks for doing what you do. peace
I come here for Hardware hacking and I love/lust this site. I love the plain layout, the strait to the point articles and the simple comment system.
Software reviews are fine if it’s for Software thats related to hardware/software hacking. Expanding for the sake of expanding is what ruined Tomshardware. I used to go there every day to read hardware reviews, hacks, specs, etc. Then they decided they wanted an expanded readership, so they started reviewing games, random web news, and other random crap.Now I only ever go there to look at benchmarking charts, because the site lost the purpose of why I was reading it in the first place. Point being, don’t turn into Tomshardware.
A top 5 Twitter has no place on this site, unless it’s a top 5 Twitter apps that can integrate with your doorbell, security system, etc. If I want to read about general Android dev, I go to XDA,SDX, Phandroid,etc.
If you want do do reviews or bring in beginners do more articles about how to use the software/tools that everyone uses to do the hacks.
I wanted to say that while this is the first time I’ve contributed in any way, I’ve been enjoying this site for a long time now. I’d also like to say that while I admire you’re skill, I don’t have that level of technical ability or knowledge. If you want to post some lighter weight stuff, Go For IT! I might find something I can do for myself rather than just looking with curiosity at the things others are capable of.
I’m predisposed to free speech, but I think comments here should be moderated. I’m tired of seeing “that’s not a hack” and I’m tired of the running joke about how arduinos suck. If the staff of Hackaday deems a link or project worth publishing, guess what… it’s a hack– at least by this site’s definition, and that’s all that counts.
Back when the Simpsons used to be funny, there was an episode where the fat comic-book guy raises his hand at an Itchy and Scratchy event and makes a critical comment to the effect that, when Itchy blows up Scratchy with a bomb and blows his flesh off, and then plays a tune on his ribcage, he hits one of the ribs twice, but it produces two different notes. The fat guy is incredulous and demands to know why that is the case.
That, my friends, is weapons-grade dork-onium, and that is exactly what some of the “that’s-not-a-hack” posters sound like to me.
If half the critics of this site actually produced projects that met their own criterion for what constitutes a hack, you’d never see another blinking LED or arduino on this site again. Of course that would require them to actually walk as opposed to talk.
Homer, by the way, told the comic book guy to get a life. Come to think of it, let’s get Homer to moderate.
I come to hackaday for inspiration on my projects. Many people get upset over some super simple hack, but these might still inspire someone else to take the project they see on here to the next level. Many projects on here might seem simple, but these people are taking the time to learn and do the simple things. We all need to start out somewhere, right?
That being said, I love the hacks listed here. I think when you take any normal item, mass produced or otherwise, and modify it or change it into something else, or add to it, etc, constitutes a hack.
In that sense building circuits isn’t quite a hack unless this circuit you build is to otherwise take the purpose of something else, or make something entirely new or creative. I agree a blinking light on it’s own might not be a hack, but what if you made this blinking light out of bubblegum, some tin foil, and a couple of rocks? What if the blinking light was used as a signal and interacted with something else?
just try not to be a dupe of lifehacker, i really like the more tech bent of this site.
I hope HAD can stay forever
I am a student in electronic and find here an easy bridge between normal peeps and the vast world of electronics, helping us not only to use our gadgets but to understand better how it works and how we can take advantage of it’s capabilities, pushing us to invent and get this creative side out of us and put our print via the net on this site.
Yes, some might just be blinking LED’s; but everyone started somewhere.
Having a community that we can rely on to get help and advice to hack… That’s “Phreaking” awesome.
Hack on!
I don’t understand all the unneeded anger. None of us pay for hackaday, none of us pay the writers, and none of us really participate in the discussions anymore(outside of flaming and rage). I think hackaday should be able to post anything about anything technologically related, but I do believe a better organizational system needs to be set up. If all you want are hacks then go to that section. More then once have I seen ‘nonhack’ posts that actually had interesting material, and I’ve learned things. This site is made by people like me, who have the same interests, I trust them to throw some things they like every so often my way because maybe I’ll like it to. I think more people need to ignore what they don’t want and enjoy when something good comes their way.
@Pookey
NO WAY. People should free to express them selves by freedom of speech as long as that doesn’t include spam or threats.
How would HaD know that some of the readers don’t appreciate articles that not hacks if the people hadn’t posted “not a hack”?
Get real.
@amishx64
I’m looking at my copy of the Constitution, and don’t see anything here that guarantees your right to post whatever you want on the website paid for by somebody else.
In other words, I get it that you think HAD posters should be able to say what they want. If that’s your position, fine, but “freedom of speech” has nothing to do with this.
The issue here is the intrinsic value of HAD and the signal-to-noise ratio. A bad SNR diminishes the value of HAD.
I am of the opinion that allowing a moderator to delete stupid “that’s-not-a-hack-that-color-sucks-that-background-music-sucks-I-could-do-it-better-type comments would materially improve the SNR, and thus the value of HAD.
I’ve only been into this for the last 2 years, and really consider myself still new to it. I’m also probably not a hacker, as in, I don’t do hacks, I usually build stuff. But I still enjoy some of the articles here, when they’re informative/creative, as in, either they were thoroughly written up, and well explained, or, while the hack itself may not be technically impressive, the creativity of the idea is. If it was my dream site, being new, I would love to see how-to articles, like how to use certain uC IDE’s, or how to use Wireshark, SniffUSB, to reverse engineer what a certain device is doing. How to articles on tools of the trade would be nice. But as far as watering it down, into a mainstream friendly publication, I think that would just dilute any reason to come here, as there are plenty of those sites around. I mean really, I could take a rock, put some googly eyes on it, a tuft of hair, call it, the OpenPetRock Project, and technically it would be a hack, cause rocks weren’t meant to be pets. But we all know, that kind of hack, isn’t why we come here. I think HaD is at its best, when its informative to the topic of technology hacks, and that goes for the comments to, while its fun to read some flames once in awhile, the comments with good technical information are always best. I get tired of hearing critiques about the site itself.
I’ve been a more or less daily visitor here for about a year or so.
My wish would be to keep the crazy, impressive, creative and inspirational hacks on the front page and just don’t bother with the rest.
Add some interviews with the people who done the hacks and some more info, not just a link to another website or youtube video. If it is worth having on the front page it should be worth reading more about it.
Then a forum where ideas can be exchanged and discussed and a wiki to store how-to’s and information that is worth saving.
The blog/word press structure (or lack of structure) is not really suitable for information storage but fine for front page stuff – like a news blog.
In a democracy threatened by those who would use law as a punishment and a tool to warp the needs of justices, silence is not protection, and hiding is not security. Only honest action and the sincere and diligent questioning of authority can preserve freedom and the republic.
A. Lincoln
I too came from the case mod community and would like to see more of that on HaD. Screw software hacks, keep it to hardware!!
Software hacks, hardware hacks, beer hacks, hacks at the beach.
It’s all the same too me, if i see a hack I don’t like I just skip over it and go on to the next one, no big deal.
You can’t please everybody all the time.
It just can’t be done.
So expanding HaD repertoire I think is a good idea.
Change is inevitable, those that don’t change usually don’t last.
BTW, I really don’t mind the ads.
Servers cost money, you gotta pay for them some how, right?
Whew !
Like to see the responses here on this issue.
Seems like a consensus is building, on having a hardcore page, and a wideangle/shotgun version.
Do the RSS on the hardcore topic only, and just do a separate hardcore page for the EE geeks,that has a full day-full page view.
Would like to see a “learning tree”, at the bottom of the articles, with a links grouping set up like 3 different comment streams.
“build” would be code,parts lists, fab techniques specifically related to the project at hand, and could include links to offsite articles and fabs that had DIRECT relevance to the project, even if not incorporated into this specific project. That could involve differing versions/fabs/controllers.
“learn” could be basic tech components of the project, and links to AACircuts pages,propellerhead forum answers, and links to build how-to’s on Instructables, to save you bandwidth charges here. I have no problems with listing links to the basic learning techniques, and think you shouldn’t have to foot the bill for it. This could be user driven, again, just like a comment stream. Just set it up for a 50 character descriptive limit, and a link. This could show in part of the same comment screen, just use a separate column on the page,maybe that tacky, floating box.
Third should be a “build the wiki” tag – to start building a hack specific wiki. Users could describe/link/brag/update. This would be a custom built one specific to the site, and could crosslink within itself as in a normal wiki.
Anything that doesn’t get much attention can be deleted after 3 years. Mmm, maybe the wiki tag could have an auto update tag showing next to it for the last time it was updated.
I don’t like the case mod builds idea at this site, unless it includes robotics, beer, or the basic enclosure ideas in the “build” tree. All those sections should be collapsible tree format, after the leading design paragraphs anyway, so hardcores can just expand sections for code, components, etc. (and a view all tag!)
The wideangle page could contain just about any other type of hack, but so many other pages are doing case mods,hydro,duct tape,(insert). if you feel a need,and think your readers would appreciate do a two paragraph editorial, and a link, and leave it at that.
I actually do like the editorial style that gives a bigger overview than the builder may have. don’t mind seeing their writeup as the main story, but they can be a little elitist, or just too narrowly focused. Keep up the editorial/overview/overlord so we can get big picture ourselves, then decide whether we should dive in.
I first found the site on a lock hacking quest, and have since gone on to learning basic electronics, repairing home appliances, and buying an Ayoue solder/de/air station. This is good.
Wouldn’t mind seeing “buy this” links for hard to find components,tools, and boards.
Would even suggest that you allow folks that submit lots of builds,hacks, and wiki info be allowed to do low key/text based adds on the sidelines.
I appreciate the heads up on the D-sub to USB port conversion plug. That is excellent, need to know info for us amatuers, that are re-tasking our outdated enclosures and components.
Suggest “hack it all” for the wideangle page, and just keep “hack everything c/lean” for the hardcore page.
I think adding the question/answer is a good step forward. Allowing the community to generate valuable content that is useful to the community itself will ultimately be useful to the site.
Secondly, I think you should try as hard as you can to keep the focus on hardware rather than software. The hardware focus is what makes this special (at least in my perspective).
Thirdly, I would try to encourage participation in the “green” category, especially when it comes to efficiency and the promotion of thriving ecology. A new era is upon us in which we must take efficiency and environmental matters into our own hands and reconstruct for a more resource-wise, disciplined, and hopefully fecund future. Ways to generate needed power (not just ‘desired’ power), ways to generate food, ways to recycle old stuff and use them as building materials… windmills, aquaponic systems, composting systems.
It’s nice that we can take our iphones apart and implant them into our dashboards, but I think we have a responsibility to think up ways to create more efficient and environmentally responsible and relatively comfortable and enjoyable new communities that are built on a foundation of ingenious reuse, and a deep understanding of how our biology and ecosystems work.
Let’s not just hack our phones, but let’s hack our culture. It needs help.
go for it!