Make: Technology on Your Time #18

If you like to tweak, disassemble, re-create, and invent cool new uses for technology, you'll love MAKE, our new quarterly publication for the inquisitive do-it-yourselfer.

Every issue is packed with projects to help you make the most of all the technology in your life. Everything from home entertainment systems, to laptops, to a host of PDAs is fair game. If there's a way to hack it, tweak it, bend it, or remix it, you will find out about it in MAKE.

This isn't another gadget magazine. MAKE focuses on cool things you can do to make technology work the way you want it to. The publication is inspired by our bestselling Hacks series books but with a twist. MAKE is a mook (rhymes with book). We've combined the excitement, unexpectedness, and visual appeal of a magazine with the permanence and in-depth instructiveness of a how-to book.

Whether you're a geek or hacker who delights in creating new uses for technology, or a Saturday afternoon tinkerer who loves to get his hands dirty, you'll keep every issue of MAKE on your bookshelf for years to come. Our premier issue, available in February 2005, includes 220 pages packed with tips and tricks, including:

• how to create a $14 stabilizer for your video camera with readily available household items
• how to use an ordinary kite to take extraordinary professional quality aerial digital photos
• how to get rid of that tangle of wires by creating your own 5-in-1 network cable
• how to decipher the magnetic stripe on your credit card to find out what your credit card company really knows about you and lots more!

Every quarter, MAKE will contain a unique set of innovative ideas and creations for a variety of new technologies, including mobile devices, in-car computers, web services, digital media, wireless and home networking, and computer hardware. Visit MAKE's web site: make.oreilly.com.

Volume 18 of MAKE Magazine features projects on how to make food and energy, using the untapped resources around the house, yard, and community. This DIY Energy issue shows readers how to measure their energy use and maximize their efficiency, with projects such as making a topographical map of their property, starting an energy garden, making an embedded irrigation system, using chickens to reduce household inputs, and more. MAKE continues to be a leader in the tech DIY movement due to its uncanny instinct to engage the curiosity, vitality, and passion of the growing community of Makers — DIY enthusiasts, hobbyist engineers/designers, and others who like to tweak, disassemble, recreate, and invent cool new uses for technology in amazing projects they undertake in their backyards, basements, and garages.