Zach Klein's Blog

Woo! beaverbrook: The barn goes up!

Thu, 17 May 2012 21:08:40 -0400

Woo!

beaverbrook:

The barn goes up!

(via On the Street….Lafayette St., New York « The...

Wed, 16 May 2012 00:45:25 -0400

(via On the Street….Lafayette St., New York « The Sartorialist)

"The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it."

Fri, 11 May 2012 18:20:53 -0400

“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”

- Thoreau

diy: Please donate your old iPhone to DIY. Check your kitchen...

Thu, 10 May 2012 13:32:00 -0400

diy:

Please donate your old iPhone to DIY.

Check your kitchen junk drawer, the backseat of your car, and the top shelf of your closet. If you upgrade your iPhone often, you probably have an old model sitting around. We would be grateful if you helped us out with a program to distribute old phones to kids. We’re collecting them, installing the DIY app, and giving them to kids less likely to have any devices at home.

Our first partner is SparkTruck. It’s a program founded by six Stanford students who raised money on Kickstarter to rent a big truck, fill it with maker supplies, and drive it around for a few months this summer setting up temporary workshops everywhere they visit. We hope to give them boxes of phones to hand out to kids so that they can create their first online portfolio using DIY and have a device at home.

If you’d like to help. Please send your phone in a padded envelope via regular mail:

DIY Co
P.O. Box 14665
San Francisco, CA
94114-0665

We’re not a non-profit organization so the donation is not tax-deductible, and we aren’t able to send you a receipt of any kind.

If you’d like a refund for the postage you pay, please answer this brief form and we’ll pay you back as soon as we receive your package.

Thank you for considering this!

- Zach

P.S. Illustration made by Mike Bertino and Isaiah Saxon.

svpply: Svpply now for the iPad The new app makes it easy to...

Tue, 08 May 2012 14:00:39 -0400

svpply:

Svpply now for the iPad

The new app makes it easy to explore page after page of beautiful products and stores, hand selected by you guys, our community. If you get lost in the experience, (which we hope you do), a tap of the History button reveals a unique browsing history, fanned out like the pages of a catalog, making it easy to jump back.

It’s a universal app so if you already have the Svpply app on your iPhone, all you need to do is run the latest update on your iPad.

Get the Svpply iPad App here

Of the thousands of projects shared by kids in DIY’s first...

Mon, 07 May 2012 14:18:57 -0400

Of the thousands of projects shared by kids in DIY’s first week, this one is in my top five.

diy: Our Maker-in-chief is named Shawn and this is his desk at...

Sat, 05 May 2012 18:11:00 -0400

diy:

Our Maker-in-chief is named Shawn and this is his desk at the DIY HQ.

Up top are replications of kid projects.

I’m infected with two tick-born diseases. My twice daily...

Wed, 02 May 2012 23:52:55 -0400

I’m infected with two tick-born diseases. My twice daily routine.

A German magazine called The Weekender (“Das Magazin für...

Wed, 02 May 2012 07:44:00 -0400

A German magazine called The Weekender (“Das Magazin für Einblicke und Ausflüge”) illustrated the summer cabin at Beaver Brook for their cover. They embellished with a rabbit and some flower pots. The rabbit might actually be a good creature to have around, I’ll look into it.

More here.

I’m passionate about what we’re...

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 13:09:00 -0400

I’m passionate about what we’re building.

diy:

Introducing DIY

We started building DIY a few months ago and now we’re sharing the first thing we made. This is a company that we hope to spend decades crafting, but it’s important for us to build it out in the open, bit by bit, to encourage our community of kids and parents to share feedback with us continuously. From Zach’s experience making Vimeo, we understand that this sort of culture fosters collaboration and admiration between a company and its community, and ultimately leads to something that is loved.

Our ambition is for DIY to be first app and community in every kid’s life. It’s what we wish we had when we were young, and what we’ll give to our kids. Today we’re releasing a tool to let kids collect everything they make as they grow up.

We’ve all seen how kids can be like little MacGyvers. They’re able to take anything apart, recycle what you’ve thrown away – or if they’re Caine, build their own cardboard arcade. This is play, but it’s also creativity and it’s a valuable skill. Our idea is to encourage it by giving kids a place online to show it off, so family, friends and grandparents can see it and easily respond. Recognition makes a kid feel great, and motivates them to keep going. We want them to keep making, and by doing so learn new skills, use technology constructively, begin a lifelong adventure of curiosity, and hopefully spend time offline, too.

We’re looking to you parents as partners to make it all work. It used to be that you hang your kids’ work on the fridge to let them know you’re proud. Now the Web is becoming a part of their life at home and school — and there’s a new opportunity to connect you to their creations and cheer them on.

When you get your kid to join DIY early, you’re helping to recognize creativity as an essential part of every kid’s education, and possibly a requirement for their satisfaction as an adult. Sadly, most adults don’t believe they’re creative although we’re all capable of it at any age! We believe that to accept yourself as a creative adult you must start as a kid who is fearless of learning new skills and doing it yourself. Encouraging your kids to be inventive and self-reliant now will better prepare them to participate in a world that keeps changing.

Here’s how it works today:

DIY kids sign up and get their own Portfolio, a public web page to show off what they make.

They upload pictures of their projects using diy.org or our iOS app.

Kids’ projects are online for everyone to see, you can add Stickers to show support.

You also have your own dashboard to follow their activity and to make sure they’re not sharing anything that should be private.

Kids are ready for this. They’re instinctively scientists and explorers. They’re quick to build using anything at their disposal. They transform their amazement of the world into games. They’re often drawn to learning that’s indistinguishable from play (think about bug collecting!). And, most important, they embrace technology.

We’re grateful for your help to make this company, and grow the next — hopefully larger — generation of creative kids.

- Zach Klein, Isaiah Saxon, Andrew Sliwinski, Daren Rabinovitch
(and Dave, Brian, Mike, Courtney, David, Lucas, Shawn, and Sean!)

PS. See our Parents page for more information. Or you can follow @DIY to see important updates.

nickcrocker: I live here. I pinned my house.

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 01:31:00 -0400

nickcrocker:

I live here.

I pinned my house.

Butler’s Lifecycle of TourismTourism as exploitation of a...

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 15:17:24 -0400

Butler’s Lifecycle of Tourism
Tourism as exploitation of a resource.

1. Exploration

Adventurous people seek something different. There may be no tourist services available in the area and local people are usually not involved in tourist money-making activities.

2. Involvement

Locals notice increasing numbers of tourists. They start up accommodations, food services, guides, and transportation.

3. Development

Big companies see the emerging potential of the area as a tourist destination and invest money in the region. They build large hotel complexes and market packages. Visitors swell dramatically and expands the number of job opportunities for people in the local region, in both tourist-related jobs and in construction and services.

4. Consolidation

The local economy is probably dominated by tourism at this stage, and many local people make their money within this industry. However, tourism cannibalizes the workforce for traditional industries such as farming and fishing causes them to decline. Building and resort expansion continues, but older buildings become unappealing and attract lower quality clientele.

5. Stagnation

Competition from other destinations, rowdiness and a degradation of the original natural features of the place stilts tourism, threatening local businesses and services.

The flora in my house’s air shaft.

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 14:34:07 -0400

The flora in my house’s air shaft.

I’m in Dallas to watch my brother play in the National...

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 08:11:00 -0400

I’m in Dallas to watch my brother play in the National Sled Hockey Championship. Noel goaltends for the Fort Wayne Flyers, went 2-0 yesterday.

I feel this way about the woods.

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 19:43:03 -0400

I feel this way about the woods.

Driving lessons on the San Francisco Bay.

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 21:53:01 -0400

Driving lessons on the San Francisco Bay.

Driving lessons in the San Francisco Bay from Justin Shaffer.

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 21:07:00 -0400

Driving lessons in the San Francisco Bay from Justin Shaffer.

Residents Of Indiana Join Together To Form Collective Consciousness

Sat, 24 Mar 2012 00:02:43 -0400

Residents Of Indiana Join Together To Form Collective Consciousness:

“All corn is for Indiana,” Indiana said.

The chills this video gives me!! Can’t wait for...

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 19:03:00 -0400

The chills this video gives me!! Can’t wait for tonight’s game.

"In longing for a simpler, more authentic life in a cabin, we keep reinventing happier pasts, pasts..."

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 22:08:00 -0400

“In longing for a simpler, more authentic life in a cabin, we keep reinventing happier pasts, pasts that never were.”

- The Atlantic, on Cabin Porn.

There’s not much in Finn Arne Jørgensen’s article that jibes with me, certainly not his theory above. It amuses me that a magazine co-founded by Ralph Waldo Emerson publishes nearly 3,000 words analyzing hipsters pining for isolation in 2012.

I love spending time in the woods because I believe it’s literally perfect. You could not design it better. It’s marvelous. And, when I’m in my cabin in those woods, I’m not fetishizing a simpler past, I’m fetishizing a simple present. I’m often thinking, “Holy shit, I spend some of my time working on the Internet, most of my time out here, I’m happy, my friends and family like it too, and this is economically sustainable.”