Every toy soldier painted in a hobbyist's garage now can have an Internet display case and potential home.
But in corporate offices, Linux until recently has been considered a hobbyist's OS, not something to help run company networks.
Remember in 1976 computers were relegated to the hobbyist market and few people believed they computers would be household items.
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It's no hobbyist effort, either, with a Leica designer and a former Polaroid factory both involved in making the Lab a reality.
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Randy Pitchford: I started making games as a hobbyist, as an amateur.
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This revolutionary technology fills the gap between low-end hobbyist machines with limited resolution and high-end printers that cost tens of thousands of dollars.
In May 2010, an unsung numbers hobbyist named Ed Weiland wrote a long-term forecast of Jeremy Lin for the basketball website Hoops Analyst.
Apple was on the brink of approving a serial cable for iOS that they would let Redpark sell into the hobbyist market.
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What was once a hobbyist's dream gadget is now being used to produce faux arteries for lab-grown tissue and Magic Arms.
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Stitt isn't quite in those ranks yet, but he's a good example of how a hobbyist can thrive part-time in the stock photo market.
Now, just four years after making the transition from hobbyist to professional, MacEntee has gone from seeking out mentors to being a highly sought-after mentor himself.
Anyone now has the opportunity to monetize their skills, from the full-time worker looking for additional income to the once hobbyist building their very own business.
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It is easy to dismiss this enthusiasm as the irrelevant obsession of a rich hobbyist or the harmless utopianism of a capitalist who has made his pile.
Let's be clear, though, this is no mere hobbyist recreation.
It may all look like hobbyist fun now, but O'Reilly and Dougherty predict that the "maker culture" will spawn new technologies, ideas for companies and ultimately a new industry.
Detroit is a city of contrasts, but no one has captured the good and bad as vividly as an unidentified hobbyist armed with a cheap helicopter-like flying robot and a YouTube account.
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