Hardware Beyond the Hype
We’ve started our massive menu of holiday gift guides on MAKE. We’ll be running them from now until Christmas, and covering everything from dangerous gifts (things that go woosh, boom, splat) to crafting gear for guys. Guest guiders will include Bill Gurstelle, from Backyard Ballistics, and Diana Eng, from Project Runway/Fashion Geek.
Here’s my introduction to the series and my first guide (on geek toys for grown-up girls and boys).
I love “lazyweb” sites, Q&A sites, and other crowdsourced resources that deal in instant-gratification content. I especially like them when the signal to noise ratio is high; when a lot of really smart, inspired people come together to share their expertise.
As of a few weeks ago, O’Reilly now has its own such site, O’Reilly Answers, a place where O’Reilly authors, editors, conference speakers and goers, readers, i.e. the O’Reilly community, can share knowledge and ideas. Some have asked: how is this any different from StackOverflow? StackOverflow is about programming. O’Reilly Answers is about anything its community of users wants it to be about. The site’s tagline is: “Clever Hacks. Creative Ideas. Innovative Solutions.” If that’s what it turns out to be about, it’ll definitely be a place where you’ll want to hang.