“Widgets are great–there is no denying it. Arranging these small, lightweight utilities on your Mac OS X Dashboard desktop puts lots of useful and fun possibilities at your fingertips and eyeballs. But when a widget you want doesn’t exist, there is only one thing to do: make it.” Here’s our how-to on making a RSS widget for Mac OS X (other PC/Mac widgets coming soon) and here’s a direct download on Apple! Link.
The sixth annual Bloggies are here and we just voted for our favorites (there were a lot, but our pick for weblog of the year is We Make Money Not Art. The MAKE blog launched in 2005; we just passed the 3,000-post mark, covering all things do-it-yourself. We hope to do even more this year, so head on over and vote for us and your favorite blogs if you like what we’ve been cooking. Link.
O’Reilly Media has a full slate of in-booth tech talks at Mac World January 9th to the 13th and plenty of Mac and digital media titles to browse. Plus we have goodies, too! If you buy two or more titles at the booth, you get your choice of a canvas book bag or an O’Reilly T-shirt (while supplies last). And even if you’re not in a buying mood, you can enter a drawing with the opportunity to win a 30GB iPod Fifth Generation (video model). MAKE (part of O’Reilly) will be speaking each day about all the things everyone wants to do with their iPods like convert video, install linux, etc. Ok, not everyone… Link.
Howdy, we’re testing the subscription feature on the MAKEbot and we’d love if some of our readers could help us test it out. Just add the MAKEbot to your buddy list (click here) and type subscribe latest 12) this will give you the latest stories from MAKE every 12 hours. To unsubscribe, just type unsubscribe latest. There shouldn’t be any problems, but post in the comments if there are, thanks!
Peter writes with the results from the call for one second music in celebration of the extra second we get in 2006 – “Composers, piano tuners, producers, sound designers, and stand-up comics (and many Make readers) have responded to CDM’s call for one-second music to honor the leap second added to atomic clocks this year. The results are astounding miniature compositions, which I’ve assembled into a full song for download. Happy New Year!” Link.
Michael writes “The InventionDB iPod contest is ending on Sunday 1/8/06. The contest will award the best project entry with a 30 gigabyte iPod video. Creators of any age and experience level are welcome to enter – all you have to do is create a project entry with three images and three connected resources. Entries are judged primarily on quality of the documentation (concise description, pictures, resources, etc.). InventionDB.com is an online database of projects, resources, creators, communities and vendors. It provides users with free tools to quickly build online project documentation.” Link.
Here’s how to sample 3 volumes of MAKE via our instant message bot, the MAKEbot. Just add the MAKEbot to your buddy list (click here) and type sample) . That will return a link to the digital edition of MAKE magazine. Included samples: Shopper Chopper, Mod Your Rod, The Night Lighter, Spin to Win, Toolbox, Podcasting 101, Mousey the Junkbot, Let’s Rumble, R2-DIY, Made on Earth: Backyard Monorail, The Open Source Hybrid Car, Kite Aerial Photography and Fun iPod Tricks.
