Last week, we attended a special Maker Faire here in NYC. There have been rumors of trying to get an East coast Maker Faire going and perhaps Internet Week was a good time to give it a test run. The event, held at Saatchi & Saatchi, was full of fascinating gizmos and the friendly people who make them. Phil Torrone from the Makezine blog was on hand, of course. Create Digital Music had a strong contingency there, and we saw our friend Peter Kirn from Handmade Music Night. There was also a great turn-out of projects from NYU's ITP (Interactive Telecommunications Program), an awesome graduate school program where students from all backgrounds collaborate in hands-on, creative engineering work — projects often have a cultural commentary twist.

Here's a Make podcast from the event:

We also saw Becky Stern from Craftzine, who was demoing her LED-embroidery mash-ups, to very blinky and delicate effects. Conductive thread opens up a whole range of possibilities. Here's her podcast video on Electric Embroidery:


What other inventions did we get to play with? There was ice cream being made with liquid nitrogen!


A Repstrap robot that would draw what you input into a laptop!

LED hula-hoops!

Potted plants called Botanicalls that sent you a twitter or called you up if they need water!

And so much more.
 
Also buzzing around the blogosphere: geekery from Etsy was popping up in my Google Alerts. You can vote on IndigoDaydreams' Handpainted Bluetooth Earpieces: "Totally Geeky or Totally Geek Chic."  I vote Geek Chic — why not customize the mundane electronics in our lives?

Gizmodo points out some of bettydeath's accessories for the Duck Hunt gamer enthusiasts. She's got some other items in her shop, like this NES Power glove cuff.

ShinyShiny wrote about 16BIT's shop and some of the geeky items offered up there.  Who is a fan of Looooong Cats?

Got some solid geekery goods to share? Post in the links below!