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Longform articles, the best of what the Hackaday writing crew has to offer.

Hackaday Staff Update

August 16, 2013 by 43 Comments

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It’s been just over three weeks since Supply Frame bought Hackaday and a lot has been going on. Almost all of it has been behind the scenes as we make our way through the scaffolding that was built up over the years to run the site. I’ll share more on that as things develop. But now I’d like to introduce you to the staff.

We’ve actually had a staff page for about a year but I’m not sure it was ever announced. Check out the Staff roll call to see a picture and bio of each of our team members. [Brian Benchoff] and I make up the editorial team. [Eric Evenchick] joins us once again as a writer. And over the last couple of weeks we hired [Mathieu Stephan] (aka Limpkin), [Josh Marsh], and [Michael Ciuffo] (aka ch00f). The six of us come from a wide range of backgrounds. We have interests and skill sets that complement each other, and as we get used to working as a team this will equate to better features and more original content. Please join me in welcoming the new writers, and long live Hackaday!

 

Goodbye Hackaday Subdomains

August 11, 2013 by 51 Comments

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We’re sure some of you will be sad that the LIFE and HANDMADE Hackaday subdomains are going away. Others will be happy, and many won’t realize they even existed.

We tried a little experiment in diversity this summer, launching the two outliers of our main focus (which is engineering oriented hacks). Each was interesting in their own way, with steady streams of readers and small conversations. But this diverted some of the attention away from what we do best, and that’s why we’re closing them down.

Handmade has already been absorbed. The features which highlighted craftsmanship and artful creations like blowing glass are tangentially interesting. We’ve imported all of the articles and will continue to feature this sort of content from time to time if it fits in with what our readers are normally after.

Life was a little bit outside of what we normally focus on. These sorts of hacks are interesting tidbits to have bouncing around your brain. But you probably won’t see them hitting our front page. Don’t let that discourage you though. If you’ve got a tip or trick to make daily life less mundane you can always let us know on the tips line. At worst we will ignore you. But you might end up seeing it in a Links post, which is our weekly Sunday column that showcases things which weren’t compelling enough for their own post.

Just to be clear for those that are really paying attention. We’re not cramming this content onto the front page with everything else. We’re phasing it out except for those things that go hand in hand with our lust for tech hacks of the highest caliber.

Rant: Why I Love What The Chromecast Stands For

August 9, 2013 by 63 Comments

I’ve had my hands on this Chromecast for almost a week now and I love it. Years ago I hacked my first Xbox after seeing [Kevin Rose] do it on The Screensavers (I did the hardware mod but that’s inconsequential). Why did I do this? So that I could run Xbox Media Center, the predecessor of XBMC. Since then I’ve dreamed of a device which can be hung on the back of the TV with Velcro and run XBMC. We basically got there with the Raspberry Pi, but the Chromecast is the form-factor that I had always envisioned. This lets me watch Netflix, while the RPi runs XBMC. The two are match made in heaven for under a hundred bucks.

That’s why I love the Chromecast device itself, but the bigger picture is that I love what it stands for. Keep reading to see what i mean.

Continue reading “Rant: Why I Love What The Chromecast Stands For” →

Have You Failed Hard Enough To Be On Hackaday?

August 5, 2013 by 46 Comments

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There’s so much more to be discovered when your projects just don’t want to work. Grinding out the bugs, getting past roadblocks, and discovering gotchas is where real hacking know-how comes from. But most people aren’t motivated to document their failures. We want to change that.

We want to roll out a new weekly feature that showcases failure… well documented failure. But we need YOU to give up the goods. Write about your failed experience on your blog, post it to our project forums with [FAIL] in the title, or you can just write everything in an email and send it to us. Which ever way you choose, you’ll need to tip us off that you’d like to make it to the front page (come on, it’s not bragging since it didn’t even work!). If you already know of well documented project fails send in those links too even if they’re not your projects.

Make sure you include at least one descriptive image — snapshots, diagrams, schematics, screencaps, anything that tells the story is fair game. To show you what we’re after here’s a few of our favorite failed projects:

We’d like to point out that all of these projects are interesting ideas that show off missteps along the way. We will not be trashing on your skills as a hacker, but instead celebrating the lessons learned and hearlding the sharing of ideas from otherwise doomed projects.