Don't mind that old fart ConFonz — this weekend's Maker Faire was a two-day rockfest of hackers and crackers sprawled across the San Mateo Fairgrounds. This was a fair with sponsorships from Lego and Digg, this was a festival with an official scooter. MAKE Magazine pulled its best and brightest — MAKE blogger Phil Torrone, editor and BoingBoing blogger Mark Frauenfelder — into a campus of hangars and lawns, where the crafty boys and girls smashed, launched, and hacked the hell out of everything in sight. I showed up to write, and Laughing Squid's Scott Beale showed up to shoot.

MAKE Magazine ed-in-chief Mark Frauenfelder goes to 11.

At one booth, a transhumanist-turned-spime showed off his implanted RFID chip ("I never lose myself any more!") and taught visitors how to put the chips into hardware — or themselves. At another, a geometrical sculptor showed off 3D-printed art. If Bruce Sterling showed up, he'd have cried tears of joy.

Steve Wozniak had a grand old time at the Faire. All afternoon, the Apple co-founder played four-man Segway polo in full regalia (helmets? why?). Players also included Victor Miller, the writer of Friday the 13th now working on "All My Children." One hacker told me, "When I saw these guys, I just muttered 'Well that's lame' — by reflex. I didn't even mean to." She used a few more pejoratives, but let's be nice to Woz — he looks so cute in uniform.

After the jump, Woz gets dumped, Microsoft fails to impress, and hippies turn off TVs.

Vlogger Irina Slutsky (say it: "slute-ski") interviewed the Woz for Geek Entertainment TV (video coming soon); bystanders aren't sure if Irina knew who he was, or if she thought she was just talking to some Segway-riding nut. Given her previous work at the Red Herring, I'm betting she knew — she's just brilliantly irreverent.

Finally, Woz let children dump water on him for the benefit of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (probably to fight some big company like Apple). If you watch Eddie Codel's video here, wait for the end, where Woz savors the last drops of his dunking.

Mark spots CNET journalist Daniel Terdiman and sets phaser to "kill."

"Are you ready to synth? Ah said, Aaaaare you ready to synth? Let's rock, San Mateo!"

I ran into Mitch Altman, inventor of the TV-B-Gone. His shirt was tie-dye; so was his hair. We headed to the Microsoft hall to check out their prototype mini-tablets.

Microsoft's booths looked too CES-ish. Mitch handed his TV-B-Gone (I have one, they're great, you should get one) to a friend, who started aiming it at Microsoft's widescreen displays. We giggled like kids — Mitch is patient for a guy who must do this a thousand times a week. I played with the tablets — they're pretty cool, but at the Maker Faire you just want to break these things open and play with the pieces.

The rest of Microsoft's building was fantastically dull — maybe MAKE needed a napping spot for attendees strung out on sensory overload. A kid shouted about the guy at the MSN Spaces photo booth: "That man looks scary!"

Below, kids play with a twist-and-tilt tabletop map viewer. It's topped with Formica, so you could stick your coffee on it while you work — until you tipped the whole table over, anyway.

Flickr's Heather Champ is unaware of doom from behind.

The Yahoo booth was equally non-Maker-Faire-y — the whole booth's a metaphor, with cardboard cut-out saws and hammers. And rumor is, they had the nerve to hire a booth babe.

Nearby, Flickr had a booth representing its digital photo sharing with...physical photos. Some attendees are confused. "They had a computer, and a printer. That's it." But the wall of photo prints sure looked gorgeous.

It's amazing what you can make with a Bic lighter and what used to be your child's favorite toy.

"Electric drilling is how I solve all my problems."

Phil Torrone and the Roombas (which would make a great band name), moments before they turn on their abusive owner and rip him to shreds.

Phil Torrone, writer of the MAKE blog, makes up quiz questions onstage for a giveaway. "What's the seventh digit, after the decimal, in pi?" Audience members shout answers — am I the only one who memorized it to 40 places? — and Phil goes online to check. "The wireless is down! I can't Google it!"

"Pi must be somewhere on that," shouts a hacker. "It's a computer!"

When Because We Can designer Jillian Northrup takes you to the moon, she's playing 50s cocktail lounge music the whole way there.

Tim O'Reilly (whose O'Reilly Media publishes MAKE) doesn't mind; this dunking booth is actually his home shower.

Of course, packing hundreds of badass hackers into a commercial fairground brings a little friction. One attendee, Twid, says he loved "the EFF with their holier-than-fucking-thou 'people who use DRM are idiots' stance, when to get into the Faire you had to have your backpack searched for outside food. 'WE STAND FOR YOUR RIGHTS. UNLESS YOU WANT A HOMEMADE CHEESEBURGER.'"

Final video: Phil Torrone gets distracted by a rocket launch.

Photos: Maker Faire Photos [Laughing Squid]
Other press: Maker Faire a geek's dream [Daniel Terdiman on CNET]
Maker Faire 2006 coverage! [MAKE blog]
Maker Faire videos (including a robotic giraffe) [Social Customer Manifesto]

The San Francisco Bay Area is the worst possible place to hold the Maker Faire. O'Reilly's newest conference showcases people who build cool stuff and hack their toys, but when you get right down to it, there's only a small percentage of people in the area that actually do this stuff. Perhaps that's why the ConFonz saw so many familiar faces bouncing around the San Mateo Fairgrounds. The same goatees, nasal piercings and tattoos were all over the place, mixed in with some new ones from out of town.

But when you get right down to it, the most fundamental part of any Make schematic is people actually showing up. And, to be fair, attendance was quite good overall. But the cool kids just couldn't be bothered. Those San Francisco types that refuse to leave their houses, much less their city, couldn't even be bothered. Perhaps it was the lack of sex appeal. Perhaps it was the Foo Camp haters. Perhaps it was the shitty food.

But whatever the reason, Maker Faire 1.0 was a semi-exclusive event open only to those who actually had the gumption to get out of the fucking house on a weekend. And in the world's most stoner-slacker ridden area, that means quite a large number of people were excluded.

One highlight was watching Jake Applebaum wander out at 6 on Saturday. The ConFonz was absolutely astonished that the master of social engineering couldn't procure an invite to the after party.

Photo: Thimbletron [Laughing Squid on Flickr]

• Are you going to eat all that? No? GoDaddy will take it, thanks. [Monkey Bites]
• Bridge-selling for dummies, round one— [Newswire Today]
• And round two. [Inc.]
• Yahoo to go: Soon you can use Yahoo Instant Messenger anywhere — and message your three buddies who refuse to use AIM. [TechCrunch]
• The Onion on iTunes: How is this even fiction? [Onion]
• The Onion on MySpace: Too. Fucking. Funny. [Onion]
• Local event lister Laughing Squid is giving away tickets to this weekend's DYI tech event, the Maker Faire. [Laughing Squid]

Ah, yes, you're here for the April Fool's gags.

¬ Gizmodo Gizombo shepherds you through the night of the living dead.
¬ MAKE rebrands as BUY.
¬ WEBringr is a joke, right? RIGHT?
¬ Google WTF search: It'd be funnier if Bruce Sterling didn't already believe in it. See, Bruce, this is why we can't have nice jokes.
¬ China buys Google; searches now done by hand in Beijing sweatshops.
¬ Google buys the French National Library. Confused Parisian Muslims revolt.
¬ Simply Hired has an opening for Guy Kawasaki.

And after the jump, Meetro buys Friendster. Ha! How impossible and humorous! Everyone knows Friendster's free to tow.

Press Release: Meetro Acquires Friendster

San Francisco, Calif. - April 1, 2006 - Meetro, the world leader in Instant Messaging software announced today it has entered into an agreement to acquire Friendster, one of many social software sites for keeping in touch with friends and hooking up with new people.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

"We're excited to be acquiring Friendster because we can leverage their web 2.0 technology," said Paul Bragiel, CEO of Meetro. "This acquisition gives Meetro another brand name in its warchest, similar to Infogrames purchasing Atari a few years back."

Friendster will provide Meetro users the ability to see who's looked at their profile to encourage a greater number of 'random hookups' without the need for alcohol. Leveraging Meetro's location-based technology will allow users to see other members in 'real-life' and avoid a common photo profile pitfall known as "the angles."

Bragiel finally remarks, "If you're still reading this and believe this, then you aren't good at spotting April Fool's jokes."

For more information, please visit http://www.meetro.com

About Meetro
Meetro is a location-aware Instant Messenger turning traditional IM on it's side. It's photo and profile driven around your location, designed to facilitate real-time meetings with people locally. Meetro bridges the gap between traditional instant messengers and the next-generation local meeting place. Meetro works with AIM, Yahoo, MSN, and ICQ protocols.

About Friendster
Friendster is the leading social site for keeping in touch with friends, and meeting new people. Friendster is a privately-held company based in San Francisco, California, backed by the venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

Everyone's famous on the Internet! And the webstars really shine in Scott Beale's Wednesday photos from O'Reilly ETech 2006. In this edition, Ted Rheingold of Dogster, 3/4 of the Boing Boing crew, and an episode of escalating violence.

Ed Batista, attention pimp.

Dogster's Ted Rheingold and ex-Technoratian Niall Kennedy give the white man's gang sign.

Simply Hired's Dave McClure, moments before shrieking "Your sun! It burns me!" and running back to his Gevil lair.

After the jump, it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye.

"Dear team: kicking into high-gear networking mode. Send more striped shirts."

Mark, Xeni, and Cory of Boing Boing rest between glamorous international spy missions.

Geek-hobo proliferation reminds O'Reilly what they left out: "Oh damn! We always forget the CHAIRS!"

"Hmmm, I just might have a 'project' I could fit this pipe into, IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN."

Ted didn't actually use his laptop — just sat there all day posing. It's tough being pretty.

"Sure, you could use these gadgets for their intended purposes, but where's the fun in that?"

Tech writer Annalee Newitz blasts away at MAKE Magazine's marshmallow shooter.

And she stood there for an hour, waiting for something to happen.

This would've been the perfect moment for Ted's "I play trumpet in a ska band" hat.

The marshmallow projectile beaned a bellhop and neatly severed the Internet connection. Only the latter got noticed.

MAKE Magazine pits Roombas in an armed fight to the death.

"House meeting, everyone. Okay, have we learned our lesson about shooting and fighting today? Now I want you all to make Annalee a nice 'Get Well' card."

ETech 2006 Photos [Laughing Squid]
Earlier: Geeking out: ETech 2006, Tuesday [Valleywag]
And: Geeking out: ETech 2006 [Valleywag]