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Do you remember HeathKit? The company that sold circuit board and resistor kits you could assemble to make your own electronics?

Building a HeathKit was no great feat of engineering—it came with a fixed list of parts and the schematic—but it helped you understand how electronics work by letting you assemble your own electronic products. And back in the day, a well-built HeathKit radio was every bit as good as the store-bought ones. » Read more

Over at Make: Online last week, Phillip Torrone posted "If You're Going to Kill It, Open Source It!"--his wish list of dead products that he'd like to see given to an open source community for new life. It's a great suggestion--freeing the knowledge that went into a product gives it a little life after death and could give a unprofitable or seemingly useless project a better reason for existence. » Read more