resistors

Thinking of giving flowers and candy this Valentine's Day? Nice gesture, but chances are your girl would prefer something a little shinier. Something with buttons perhaps, and a flash drive. Fortunately, PopSci is here to make shopping a breeze.

She likes jewelry? How about a necklace decked out with resistors? (It's pretty, we promise.) A sucker for sweets? Get her chocolates shaped like Miis. Got a cuddler on your hands? Buy a blanket covered in binary code. Remember, creativity goes a long way, but a little Internet goes further.

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Among the friends we've been making over in the PopSci booth at Maker Faire include the guys from Octoparts—an aggregate search engine for electronic components. If you've ever tried to buy resistors, capacitors, or any other component on the Web, you know how obscure and confusing some of these ordering sites can be—if you don't know your part number, you're often out of luck. With Octoparts, just type in what you're looking for and find the best price. In the works is an online app to save and share your parts list for your project. Now that Radio Shack has  almost entirely moved out of the components trade in their stores, Octoparts is a new tinkerer's dream. —John Mahoney

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