Electronic Windchimes, Physical Minecraft and 8 Other Slick MaKey MaKey Projects

Banana piano. Play-Doh game controller. Pencil and paper keyboard. We first saw the incredible projects that the versatile and easy-to-use MaKey MaKey board made possible at Bay Area Maker Faire in 2012, where creators Jay Silver and Eric Rosenbaum of MIT delighted the crowd and took home an editor’s pick. Shortly after that, it blasted to Kickstarter success with more than $500,000 in funding.

Since then, the diminutive, Arduino-compatible board has been released to the world and has quickly become one of our favorite products. It’s the perfect tool to inspire kids and adults alike, and has been used for an incredible array of creations. Here are ten of the our favorites, from incredible music instruments to a target range to a banana-controlled drone.

You can get MaKey MaKey in the Maker Shed — it makes a fantastic holiday present.

Nerf Blaster Auto-Scoring Shooting Range

Various dangling targets connect to complete a circuit and add points to your score. Uses a simple macro in Microsoft Excel to add and display the point total.

Super Cyber Deals in the Shed TODAY!

Didn’t check everyone off your list with the Black Friday rush?  Check out theMaker Shed’s superb Cyber Monday deals, valid today only!

Lounge in the comfort of your home or office and get 25% off our hottest items, including our own super popular Raspberry Pi Starter Kit!

Looking for something fun for the kids?  Our SpinBot, BrushBot andMarshmallow Shooter Kits are all 25% off!   To get these items and many more, browse our Cyber Monday products and use the coupon code MONDAY at checkout while supplies last.

Finally, keep our Facebook page and Twitter account on your radar today- there may be some additional holiday treats still to come!

It probably looks higher from up there

It probably looks higher from up there

When we find ourselves on the edge of a precipice, looking down at the depths of the chasm below, it's easy to think that this time we went too far, that our plan is far too risky, that our product is way too bizarre, that our behavior is just too weird...

The funny thing about perspective is that most bystanders don't see you standing on a precipice at all. They see someone doing something a little edgy, but by no means nuts.

Just about all commercial behavior is banal. Even in movies that deal with businesspeople, the characters don't dream nearly big enough about one's ability to change the culture or the enterprise.

You're far more likely to go not-far-enough than you are to go too far.

Internal monologue amplifies personal drama. To the outsider, neither exists. That's why our ledge-walking rarely attracts a crowd. What's in your head is real, no doubt about it, but that doesn't mean the rest of us can see the resistance you are battling (or care about it).

Speaking in public: two errors that lead to fear

Speaking in public: two errors that lead to fear

1. You believe that you are being actively judged

2. You believe that the subject of the talk is you

When you stand up to give a speech, there's a temptation to believe that the audience is actually interested in you.

This just isn't true. (Or if it is, it doesn't benefit you to think that it is).

You are not being judged, the value of what you are bringing to the audience is being judged. The topic of the talk isn't you, the topic of the talk is the audience, and specifically, how they can use your experience and knowledge to achieve their objectives.

When a professional singer sings a song of heartbreak, his heart is not breaking in that moment. His performance is for you, not for him. (The infinite self-reference loop here is that the professional singer finds what he needs when you find what you need.)

The members of the audience are interested in themselves. The audience wants to know what they can use, what they can learn, or at the very least, how they can be entertained.

If you dive into your (irrelevant to the listener) personal hurdles, if you try to justify what you've done, if you find yourself aswirl in a whirlpool of the resistance, all you're providing is a little schadenfreude as a form of entertainment.

On the other hand, if you realize that you have a chance to be generous in this moment, to teach and to lead, you can leave the self-doubt behind and speak a truth that the audience needs to hear. When you bring that to people who need it, your fear pales in comparison.

Media you choose to do is always about the audience. That's why you're doing it. The faster we get over ourselves, the sooner we can do a good job for those tuning in.

Putin: Kiev protests have nothing to do with Ukraine-EU relations, prepared ahead of elections

Participants in a rally for EU integration by the Presidential Administration building on Kiev's Bankovaya Street on December 1, 2013. (RIA Novosti / Andrey Stenin)

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that riots in Kiev have no direct relation to Ukraine and the EU deal, but rather it's an attempt by the opposition to undermine the country's legitimate government.

“As far as the events in Ukraine are concerned, to me they don’t look like a revolution, but rather like 'pogrom'. However strange this might seem, in my view it has little to do with Ukrainian-EU relations,”Putin said. 

Speaking in Yerevan during his official visit to Armenia, Putin argued that the protests in Ukraine had been prepared by the opposition in advance to undermine the legitimate government of the country. However, it is “apparent” that the opposition had meant them to take place during the Ukrainian presidential campaign in March 2015, the Russian President said.

“What is happening now is a little false start due to certain circumstances… This all has been prepared for the presidential election. And that these were preparations, in my opinion, is an apparent fact for all objective observers,” Putin stressed.

He has said that now the Ukrainian opposition is either not in control of the protests, or it may serve as a cover-up for extremist activities. 

The footage from Kiev clearly shows “how well-organized and trained militant groups operate,” the Russian President said. 

Nobody seems to be concerned with the actual details of the Ukrainian-EU agreement, Putin said. 

“They say that the Ukrainian people are being deprived of their dream. But if you look at the contents of the deal – then you’ll see that the dream may be good, but many may not live to see it,” he argued. 

Putin then explained that the deal offered to Ukraine by the EU has “very harsh conditions".

The Russian government presumes that the situation in Ukraine will be back to normal, and that the Ukrainian government and the Ukrainian people will determine their future on their own.

“I want to stress that, regardless of the choice of the Ukrainian people, we will respect it,” Putin said. 

‘Kiev riots show signs of coup’ – Ukrainian PM

The Ukrainian authorities see “signs of a coup” in the attempts to block the government agencies by the protesters, but are exercising restraint, Prime Minister Nikolay Azarov said during a meeting with ambassadors from EU states and the US in Kiev.

Azarov said that some political forces have “an illusion” that they can topple the government, adding that the opposition is developing a plan, which involves taking the Ukrainian parliament building by force. 

“Things have changed. On the one hand, we aren’t exonerating the law enforcement agencies, but on the other hand, politicians who are joining the action now are dramatically radicalizing the situation. The mass character of the action became uncontrollable or rather controlled by certain political forces,” the Ukrainian Prime Minister was cited as saying by RIA Novosti.

He then assured the diplomats that the government guarantees that force won’t be used against peaceful demonstrators in the capital, and that the necessary orders to the police not to use such force have been given. The Ukrainian authorities are expecting that the opposition will also abstain from provocation, he added.

Azarov told the diplomats that Ukraine has proposed some changes to the association agreement with the EU.

“We’d like to discuss the provisions, which bother us. We’d like our initiative to be treated attentively and maybe we’ll be able to achieve compromise,” the Ukrainian Prime Minister stressed.

He explained that some of the Ukrainian industrialists have appealed to the government with request for the changes, as the deal would otherwise “make the Ukrainian market too open”.

As the Ukrainian officials assured the EU that they had not given up on the bilateral deal, President Viktor Yanukovich on Monday stressed that he “was, is, and will be a supporter of European democratic values and standards.” 

Silk Road’s rival offline, another black drug mart mulls shutdown

Sheep Marketplace, one of the leading anonymous websites, after Silk Road’s closure, allegedly selling drugs, has gone offline claiming it was robbed of $6 million worth of bitcoins. Another dark net, Black Market Reloaded, announced it may also quit.

The Sheep Marketplace website – which allowed people to anonymously buy narcotics and other illegal items - went offline over the weekend, blaming the theft for the closure. The dark net claimed that it was robbed of 6 million dollars’ worth of bitcoins after one of its random sellers managed to find a bug in the security system.

The website’s administration left a short message for users, which reads: 

“We are sorry to say, but we were robbed on Saturday 11/21/2013 by vendor EBOOK101. This vendor found a bug in the system and stole 5400 BTC – your money, our provisions, all was stolen.”

After the FBI closed Silk Road in October - a black market bazaar where illegal goods, including drugs, and other illicit services were bought and sold – the void left was soon filled by a similar website. The Sheep Marketplace quickly grew into a replacement of the popular bazaar. The dark mart managed to keep many users even after Silk Road 2.0 – an exact copy of the closed website – resurrected in November.

However, now users allege that Sheep Market place was just a “scam”. The owners of the site used the theft to justify the closure without returning the bitcoins stored in the market by users, despite assuring that they would redistribute the virtual crypto currency to users’ “emergency addresses”, wrote Forbes.

According to Sheep’s users who have been briskly discussing the topic on Reddit, the black market had been acting strangely for at least a week prior to going offline. First concerns were raised by the administration’s decision to stop allowing vendors to withdraw their bitcoins from the market. Users suspect that the illicit virtual drug mart folded potentially absconding with as much as 44 million dollars. They point to a movement of 39,900 bitcoins visible on Blockhain – a website that tracks bitcoin transactions.

The current largest player in this illegal online business, the Black Market Reloaded (BMR), responded to the developments by announcing that it may also go offline - at least temporarily. The administrator of the site, known as Backopy, said in a forum post the site would not be able to guarantee anonymity to its customers with the influx of new users since Tor – software that hides the identity of the site’s users and owners – is not designed to handle a large user base.

“SR is down, The Black Flag ended up as a scam, Atlantis ended up as a scam and now The Sheep Market follows that dark path. This puts BMR at the edge of the blade. Tor can't support any site to be too big,” Backopy wrote.

The drug market then blocked new registrations, closed access to inactive accounts and announced the site “will remain for a while until the deals and escrow complete, at least most of them, following which it will go to a complete shutdown. Without competition the wisest thing to do is to shut down the market, doing it in a timely and orderly manner,” he said, adding that an alternative would be “to smash the market into tiny bits that could spread the load between nodes and servers, but that would take a while to do”.

According to Forbes, the closure of Sheep and BMR are only the latest events in the “widening crisis” of the dark web drug industry. Earlier, Atlantis market folded citing security reasons.

And that was followed by the arrest of the alleged owner of the infamous Silk Road dark marketplace - Ross Ulbricht - with authorities seizing cocaine and approximately 26,000 bitcoins worth about 4 million dollars. The website was shut down and Ulbricht was accused of engaging in money laundering, drug trafficking conspiracy, computer hacking, and also for placing contracts for six murders.

Obamacare site still needs to fix 200 bugs

The Obama administration declared on Sunday that the troubled HealthCare.gov website is now functioning smoothly for most users, but problems persist even two months after its initial launch.

Since the HealthCare.gov’s disastrous unveiling on October 1, President Barack Obama and his health care team have scrambled to stabilize the $630 million website for a relaunch on December 1. According to the White House, the website can now handle 50,000 simultaneous users, as well as 800,000 daily visitors.

As ABC News noted, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) stated in a new report that unscheduled outages continue to crash the website around five percent of the time, and heavy traffic could still slow operations down significantly. On Saturday, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius suggested that people still visit the site at off-peak hours – mornings, evenings, and the weekend – to avoid traffic-related problems as much as possible.

Notably, HealthCare.gov crashed as CNN reporters tested it on television. Though reporters noted that logging in, choosing your state, and entering your information worked “a lot more smoothly” than before, the site still delivered error messages as it tried to process all the data and failed to progress to the next step. According to the New York Times, there are still problems with much of the website “back end” that calculates personal information and enrollment data – such as exactly what kind of subsidies an individual qualifies for – and files transactions with insurance companies.

 

Still, the White House considers the current state of HealthCare.gov much more stable. In its report, HHS stated the website was down 60 percent of the time in October, whereas it is now online 90 percent of the time.

"HealthCare.Gov on Dec. 1 is night and day from where it was on Oc. 1," said Jeffrey Zients, the former Obama administration official now managing the repair effort, according to the Washington Post."While we still have work to do, we've made significant progress with HealthCare.gov working for the vast majority of consumers."

The administration also said that 90 percent of users can now create an account, though at least one technology expert told Yahoo News the statistic could be misleading, since only those implementing website fixes will know the true numbers.

"It prevents anyone from the outside from contradicting them," said Jonathan Wu, the co-founder of the financial website ValuePenguin.

As the Times noted, the number of items that needed repair on HealthCare.gov ballooned to more than 600, and some administration officials even considered ditching the entire operation and starting over. Ultimately, it was decided the website could be salvaged, and during a conference call Zients told reporters that about 400 items on the list have been fixed.

Although March 31 remains the cut-off date for enrollment into the Affordable Care Act – failure to enroll by that point will result in fines – those looking to have insurance plans kick in on January 1 must be enrolled by December 23. If problems with the website continue to plague users, however, some Congressional Democrats have voiced support for extending the final enrollment deadline past March.

According to a report by Bloomberg news, about 100,000 Americans signed up for health insurance plans through the federal exchange in November, an increase over the 26,794 people who enrolled in October. Originally, administration officials expected around 800,000 enrollments during the first two months the marketplaces