Bulletin

What you are (hopefully) looking at is the result of millions of dollars of investment and billions of man hours. The all new DIY:happy now with twice the Do-It-Yourself goodness and only 5% of the blue color that the other one had.

Along with a new interface and logo, we are proud to introduce our new user forum. To help get the ball rolling, we are offering prizes for participation. Details will be coming soon, but participation can start now! So help us bring the DIY:happy community together by checking out the forum!

The new site is might have a lot of bugs or other weirdness. If you encounter any such thing, please don't hesitate to let us know.

We have many more features in store, so stay tuned!

Please keep the tires on your SUV properly inflated.

Okay, so we've pared down the logos to the best of the best, and now it's your turn to vote for the new logo, and thus - the winner!

Just vote for the number of the logo you like best.

Voting is over, we will announce a winner soon!

By: Rock Kennedy

^1^

By: Cynthia Poon

^2^

By: Stephen Arsenault

^3^

By: Scott Rogers

^4^

By: Tom Marshall

^5^

By: Matt LaGrandeur

^6^

By: Daniel Garfield

^7^

By: Stephen Arsenault

^8^

Thanks and good luck to everyone who entered! All of the logos look absolutely amazing. I wish that we could have more then one!

Voting ends Thursday night at midnight. Any attempt to game the vote will result in disqualification. Let's keep it fair people!

Okay everyone, the contest, as of 12:00 CST, is closed. Thank you to everyone who submitted a logo. Tomorrow we will post the pictures and everyone can vote on their favorite. We look forward to finding a new logo in the next day or so!

 Thanks again to everyone who participated!

 - DIY:happy.

Alright folks, the moment all you graphic designers, dabblers, photoshophiles, and avatar-makers have been waiting for!

DIY:happy does not have a logo. Some folks think we do (the little TV-looking thing), but we don't. However, we'd like one! We'd even be willing to throw in some incentives, because we're nice and fabulous like that.

Here are the regulations (not rules, for all the Libertarians):

1. The logo has to be a good size. Nothing too small... it has to be made in all kinds of sizes, and we wouldn't want to distort your masterpiece by resizing it, right?

2. It has to be a-okay for us to print it!

3. We'd rather not having anything offensive, mean, rude, terrible, or violence-insighting. 

4. Those things said, anything goes.

 DIY:happy loves you. So, whomever wins the contest will win:

• A $20 GIFT CERTIFICATE, care of the wonderful LadyAda. Good for anything in her online store (linked here), which is a cornucopia of DIY electronics kits, components, and all kinds of fun stuff for hobbyists, electronic engineers, and weekend DIY fans!
• Buttons with the logo YOU designed on them! Good for a resume, especially for designers!
• Every button you sell will have your signature at the bottom, so you don't have to convince anyone. Just point at your sig.
• You'll get three free buttons, as a sample of your work!

The suspense is over, let the games begin!

SUBMIT TO: Kristi@diyhappy.com or TIPS@diyhappy.com!

Projected End Date: September 13th at 11:59 PM (CST).

 UPDATE: 14 SUBMISSIONS AS OF 10:00PM, 08-11-07.

Many of you probably noticed that DIY:happy was down most of Sunday and Monday morning. It seems it's summertime and the script kiddies are out of school and bored. According to our host, they see all sorts of these problems around June of every year.

We took steps to ensure that we can respond quicker next time, and hope to continue smooth operations in the future. Let's just see this as a sign of how big and awesome we are - DIY:happy got targeted by a script kiddie!

P.S. This is unrelated and top secret. DIY:happy is now rewarding regular commenters by removing the nofollow tag from links in their comments after they have reached a certain number of comments. We will try this out, but if it attracts more spam we will shut it off. Shhhh!!! Don't tell anyone and don't abuse it!

It was a hot, sunny weekend in San Mateo this year at the second annual Maker Faire, and I have the sun burned face to prove it. Our project, the computer-intergrated WRX (mentioned before), was located on the grass near the main back entrance to the fairgrounds, and right next to The Crucible's various fire making machines. It was funny to see everyone jump when the crucible shot fire when the DIY:happy crew was used to it after the first few hours.

A Crucible fire-spewing machine.

We were in great company with tons of great projects - car mileage mods, other car computers, and tons of other projects that you couldn't even imagine. In fact, I thought I saw most everything, but recognize very few of the projects featured in pictures floating around the net.

More pictures after the jump.

Here are only some of the many, many projects we saw around the Maker Faire this year.

HUGE tesla coils

A balancing scooter

Okay, this bike (yes, bike) wasn't at the Maker Faire, but we
saw it on the way out in the middle of Nevada.

Every once in a while you'd see these cupcakes go
driving by.

This is my laptop getting laser etched. One of the booths
at the fair was offering free laser etching for people's iPod's,
computers, etc.

Unfortunately you have to get out of the van
to plan your route.

A 3-story victorian mansion on wheels.

This man was very excited about his balloons.

The balloons couldn't actually lift a person,
unfortunately, but it was still fun to watch.

If you need a pen while riding in this car,
don't worry, there's plenty.

A table that lights up based on where
objects sit on it.

A life-sized hamster wheel. This actually
powers a giant nose-picking sculpture.

This is one mean Radio-Flyin' machine!

This Nash is decked out with a car copmuter complete
with video chat and two screens.

More fun with electricity.

For much more Maker Faire fun, check out the "makerfaire" tag on Flickr.

Jake and I will be attending the Maker faire in San Mateo, California this weekend and would love to see you guys there. We had a blast last year and are really looking forward to showing off a bigger project this time around.

This year, we will be showing off our carputer project. We will be posting more information about the project here throughout the week, so watch this space!

See the full feature list for the carputer after the jump.

Complete in-dash 7" touch-screen driven control center includes:

Ability to play any media (mp3s, movies, CDs, DVDs)
On-screen keyboard with media search functions
Custom front-end
Day/Night screen modes
Image viewer/slideshow/media visualizations
Auto-resuming power supply that syncs with the ignition
Sleep mode ensures the interface is available as soon as the car is started
GPS voice navigation
Touch-screen display
High-speed internet connectivity (Cingular HSDPA)
Local Traffic Cams/Reports
Weather Reports
Hands-free bluetooth cellphone control (calls come up on screen)
Wardriving interface
Video Games (Frets on Fire with wireless bluetooth keyboard and more!)
Much more!
Realtime remote vehicle tracking
Realtime remote vehicle control

We will be posting more this week especially about the remote tracking and vehicle control system.

Everyone please give a warm welcome to our brand spankin' new editor Kristi Keorkunian! Kristi is an eccentric pioneer who has a love for all things DIY. In case you haven't noticed, she's already gotten her feet wet with a few good articles and is looking forward to many more. Her mind is a fountain of DIY knowledge, so we think she'll fit right in.

We here at DIY:happy would like to thank Elissa Englund for all her hard work here the last couple months. her work has kept DIY:happy alive. We wish her luck with her new job!

As for the future: DIY:happy will continue. I am going to come back to posting on a regular basis - so you can expect more frequent updates. We want to continue bringing you great projects from all over the Internet. Thanks for all your positive comments - you were instrumental in helping us decide to keep the site going!

Speaking of which, if you would like to write for DIY:happy, we now need someone again. If you read tons of DIY sites, like working for next-to-nothing, and can commit to making a few posts a day, we'd love to have you. You will be compensated ... poorly. But we do it for the love, dig?

If you're interested, drop us a line at tips at Diyhappy.com.

Thanks!

-Sam Garfield