Instructables
Self-portrait
The seeds of Instructables germinated at the MIT Media Lab as the future founders of Squid Labs built places to share their projects, connect with others, and make an impact on the world. One of these early places was a blog Zeroprestige, which was an open source hardware experiment for kitesurfing. Here they documented their hand-sewn kites, plywood boards, and other general mayhem that happens when PhDs and high winds collide.
As a result of freely sharing our work, we met a ton of great people, received great opportunities, and were smacked in the face with the need for a web-based documentation system.
Instructables became that documentation system in 2005, as an in-house project of Squid Labs. When they weren't solving interesting problems like solar panels for driveways, efficiently harnessing human power, or strain sensing ropes, you could find them sharing Instructables from the workshop. From cooking to 3d printing, to making just about anything fly, Instructables became the recipient of countless hours of tinkering, soldering, stitching, frying, and fun, making just about anything.
Instructables was officially spun out of Squid Labs in the summer of 2006, and has gone on to grow from a modest hundreds of projects to over one hundred thousand. The community that now calls the site home, is an amazing mix of wonder from around the world. Every day we continue to be amazed by the imagination, curiosity, and simple awesomeness of everyone who shares their creations with us on Instructables. (http://www.instructables.com/about/)
Description
Instructables is an online community where a great variety of creations (from cooking recipes to flying objects and 3D printing) can be shared by anyone with step-by-step instructions explaining how they were made, in a simple, educational manner.
Instructable started as a home lab from Squid Labs founders Eric Wilhem and Saul Griffith in 2005. It was publicly launched in 2006, growing into a document of hundreds of thousands shared creations. The site is currently managed by Autodesk Inc.
Instructables provides a space where creativity can be shared at an informal, non commercial level, functioning as a showcase of fresh, D.I.Y. ideas anyone can try.
The creation process can be shared through photos, videos or text, following the website’s documentation guidelines, thus, encouraging users to upload a project others will share.
The website hosts a variety of projects in different categories (cooking, games, woodworking, technology and homesteading), where you can find anything from carpentry, to building lamps, arduino based projects, image design tutorials, toy building, crafting musical instruments, or camping and beach tools.
The website also lists contests visitors can enroll into. Winners are voted in by users, awarded with sponsored prizes. Users can communicate on message boards and common interest groups with topics such as projects for children, the environment, pets, photography, etc.
Links
URL: http://www.instructables.com/
Wayback machine: https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.instructables.com/
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instructables
