Sharing And Learning In A Makerspace

The two primary purposes to become a participant in a makerspace are (A) to meet (and do stuff with) cool, interesting and motivated people and (B) to build stuff. However, there are two additional, but related, reasons for becoming an active part of your local makerspace, such as the DHMN makerspace on Morrison Street in downtown Appleton, Wisconsin, USA:

1. To share the skills, knowledge and resources you have.
2. To learn new skills, knowledge and resources from others.

For many people new to a makerspace, their inclination may be more toward 'learning' rather than sharing knowledge about a topic. Perhaps they want to learn how to use a 3D printer, how to build a model rocket or how to build an interesting computer system using the Raspberry Pi. Because the makerspace is a collection of friendly people who like to make all sorts of different things, it is a good group to join if you want to learn new things, or increase your skill level in topics where you already know a little bit.

Makerspaces have been described as community workshops or as workshops with a YMCA-like membership structure. This means a makerspace is a good place to be part of if you want to learn how to make something that's new to you.

For a few people, especially those skilled practitioners of various arts and sciences, the primary part of their motivation to get involved with a makerspace is to 'share' their knowledge, skills and resources. They may have gotten to the skill level where they feel a need to give back to the community, they may want to help build a larger community-of-practice around the particular art or science in which they are skilled, or they may just enjoy teaching others and sharing the gifts they have.

Imagine what the world, or even just the Fox Valley, would be like if everyone freely shared the gifts they have!

Everyone has gifts and knowledge about one topic or another, and most people have skills, knowledge and resources involving many topics. If the DHMN makerspace has 100 members and they each share the gifts they have in their top three topics, we will have an amazing fount of knowledge and learning to share with the rest of the Fox Valley, as well as with others who want to connect virtually or to meet during their travels or DHMN members' travels.

Become part of the learning and sharing -- Join the DHMN today. Go now to the DHMN Membership webpage and become a full member for 24/7 access to the new DHMN makerspace on Morrison Street in the Willems Marketing building.

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DHMN Makerspace Dimensions & Plans

Whilst dreaming about activities and improvements that might be held and made at the new DHMN makerspace (Distributed Hacker/Maker Network) at 120 N. Morrison Street in Appleton, Wisconsin, USA, it is helpful to have a floorplan and dimensions of the rooms in the makerspace.

I spent some time today measuring the space and thinking about a couple ways we might want to start using and improving the space. This is all preliminary 'wish list' type stuff, and every DHMN member will have their own wish list which will, naturally, be different from every other DHMN member's list.

If anyone is interested in a copy of the floorplan with the dimensions I've recorded thus far, email me a request for said document, and it shall soon be flying through cyberspace to your inbox. And let me know if there are other dimensions you'd like to have me check.

After the initial repairs and improvements are made to the space (including the back wall repairs, the electrician work and the Internet access installation), the following items are likely a few of the top priority items to discuss, agree upon and take action regarding:

1. Tables for people to sit at and work at (ideal might be 6' or 8' long x 30" wide sturdy plastic tables with folding legs), with enough tables to seat 30 or more people.
2. Chairs so people can sit at the above tables (comfortable, possibly some of the chairs to be stackable so more space can be made available at times, good height for the tables we get).
3. Storage place for members tools, supplies, and projects.
4. Storage place for general use supplies and tools, e.g. nails, screws, tape, drills, extension cords, power strips, fun and social supplies.
5. Coffee maker, pizza oven, refrigerator.

There are another 50 things on my list, but the makerspace would be full if all the things were done, and there would be no room for us makers in the space. And one or two of the 50 items just Might Not be on everyone else's lists.

The reeeeally exciting day will be when the DHMN has 100+ members, and the Morrison Street makerspace is informally known as DHMN Makerspace Lite (Paul W's term!) where relatively quiet and clean maker activities happen, whilst the noisy, dirty and large-scale activities take place in a nearby industrial-setting DHMN makerspace!

To help the 100+ "Full Members" become a reality, please consider joining today as a paying member of the DHMN. To sign up, just go to the DHMN Membership webpage NOW and use your credit card or PayPal info to start your $50/mo full membership, which gives you 24/7 access to the wonderful new DHMN makerspace!

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DHMN Has A Makerspace!

Three cheers for Willems Marketing!!!

Thanks to their enthusiasm for a makerspace and flexibility in working with the currently-small roster of DHMN members who've said they'll pay to have access to a makerspace, the Distributed Hacker/Maker Network now has its first dedicated facility at 120 N. Morrison Street in beautiful downtown Appleton, Wisconsin, USA.

The space is in the basement of the Willems Marketing building, with Willems being located on the second floor of the building and the first floor soon to be the site of The Avenue HQ coworking facility. (If you're interested in getting in on the ground floor, both literally and figuratively, of a cool coworking space, go to The Avenue HQ website and contact them through that means, or drop me an email, bwaldron [att] gmail {dott} com, and I'll connect you with the guys developing the coworking space.)

The DHMN makerspace on Morrison Street is only half a block off the east end of College Avenue in downtown Appleton. This means it's very close (short walking distance) to restaurants, coffee shops, the YMCA, Lawrence University, the Appleton Library, the bus station and lots of other cool and useful companies and organizations.

The makerspace is small and won't be able to accommodate large noisy tools like table saws, but it's a start. We'll be able to use more tools than we could in the Harmony Cafe conference room (the DHMN Morrison Makerspace is only a block away from Harmony...), and we have exclusive 24/7 access to the space. So we can leave tools, supplies and projects there and don't need to lug them back and forth from home every time we want to work on something.

Mike P shot a nice video of the space recently if you want to do the virtual tour thing.

The space is not yet ready for occupancy due to a few minor repairs and upgrades. On April 11, Jason K is meeting with Mike V and Time Warner to work out the details of the 35 Mbps x 5 Mbps internet access that Willems Marketing is providing for the makerspace. An electrician rewired the 120 V outlets in the main workspace today. The workspace outlets had all been on a single 20 amp circuit, and he rewired it so the outlets will be on three separate 20 amp circuits. Much better for all the laptops, Linux boxes and small tools we'll be using when there's an enthusiastic crowd of makers convened in the space, having fun while they're "Making Art, Creating Tech, Inspiring Community." The covering on the back wall of the main workspace is being redone next week to repair water damaged materials (happened last year during heavy rains, I think; we might consider setting up some type of moisture sensor to monitor for future water infiltration). Once the back wall work is done, we can meet in the space if we want, but there won't be Internet access until some time in mid-April. Jason K, I'm sure, will let us know when the room will have connectivity once Time Warner tells him their timing.

Lots of ideas and needs to bring up about the space, discuss and get group decisions on. There will inevitably be growing pains and lots of conflicting plans and visions for the future of the space, so we need to listen to each other's suggestions respectfully, think about both short term and long term use of the space and take our time with any votes or decisions about permanent or semi-permanent actions or policies regarding the new DHMN makerspace. "Have fun" and "be excellent to each other" are two of the primary policies of the group!

Exciting Times for the DHMN!

p.s. -- If you haven't joined the DHMN as a paying member yet, please consider doing so. Just go to the DHMN website Membership page and sign up through PayPal now...

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NEW NET Weekly List for 26 Mar 2013

Below is the final list of technology news and issues for the Tuesday, 26 March 2013, NEW NET (NorthEast Wisconsin Network for Entrepreneurism and Technology) 7:00 - 9:00 PM weekly gathering at Sergio's Restaurant, 2639 South Oneida Street, Appleton, Wisconsin, USA.

The ‘net

1.        The Rare Disease Search Engine That Outperforms Google  http://www.technologyreview.com/view/512606/the-rare-disease-search-engine-that-outperforms-google/  “…Rare diseases are inherently hard to diagnose. According to the European Organisation for Rare Disease, 25 per cent of diagnoses are delayed by between 5 and 30 years…The problem, of course, is that  common-or-garden search engines are not optimised for this process. Google, for example, considers pages important if they are linked to by other important pages, the basis of its famous PageRank algorithm. However, rare diseases by definition are unlikely to have a high profile on the web. What’s more, searches are likely to be plagued with returns from all sorts of irrelevant sources…Radu Dragusin at the Technical University of Denmark and a few pals…have set up a bespoke search engine dedicated to the diagnosis of rare diseases called FindZebra, a name based on the common medical slang for a rare disease. After comparing the results from this engine against the same searches on Google, they show that it is significantly better at returning relevant results. The magic sauce in FindZebra is the index it uses to hunt for results. These guys have created this index by crawling a specially selected set of curated  databases on rare diseases. These include the Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man database, the Genetic and Rare Diseases Information Center and Orphanet. They then use the open source information retrieval tool Indri  to search this index via a website with a conventional search engine interface. The result is FindZebra…”

2.       Disaster-Proof Your Data with Online Backup  http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2288745,00.asp  “…While it's not a bad idea to simply back your precious files up to an external hard drive, an online backup service offers the advantage of securely store your files at off-site server locations, so that your data stays intact and available even if your local disks are stolen or your premises are struck by damage. And with more and more emphasis on "cloud computing," it only makes sense that backup should take advantage of this hot trend in technology. Below we take a close look at ten of the most popular and innovative cloud backup services to help you choose the one that's right for your needs and budget…”

3.       If You Want To Be Awesome At Emails, Add Yesware To Your Gmail  http://www.forbes.com/sites/alextaub/2013/01/17/if-you-want-to-be-awesome-at-emails-add-yesware-to-your-gmail-today/  “One of the biggest problems in business development, partnerships, and sales is managing your pipeline. A close second is managing, tracking, and keep up to date with your email inbox. I’ve tried many tools to help both issues but each has had its shortcomings…a friend tipped me off to a company called Yesware. With his endorsement I immediately headed over and added it to my business and personal Gmail accounts. My inbox was transformed into a hyper-aware entity. As my day commenced I started to realize that I was getting smarter by the minute. That really important email I sent in the morning to a team member was still sitting in their inbox, unopened. I decided to head over to their desk to talk about the important matter I had emailed them about. Efficient, smart, and useful. I’ve only been a user for a week, but I’ve already upgraded to a paid account…”  http://www.yesware.com/plans-and-pricing 

4.       A new Google Docs alternative: open source OX Documents  http://www.pcworld.com/article/2031457/ready-for-a-new-google-docs-alternative-meet-open-source-ox-documents.html   “As the free trial period for Microsoft Office 2013 draws to a close, it's a pretty safe bet that more users than ever are thinking long and hard about whether or not to buy or subscribe…soon there will be yet another contender to consider…OX Documents will be a productivity suite that's both open source  and browser-based, thus combining a bit of each of those leading alternatives. OX Documents will eventually be a cloud-based office productivity suite, and it's due to be fully complete and full-featured later this year. For now, though, Open-Xchange is focusing first on OX Text, its in-browser word processing component. OX Text offers direct editing capabilities for both Microsoft Word .docx files and OpenOffice or LibreOffice .odt files, but there's also viewing support for all major file formats…Multiple users can also view and edit the same document in real time using OX Text, allowing for structured collaboration…”  http://gigaom.com/2013/03/20/meet-ox-text-a-collaborative-non-destructive-alternative-to-google-docs/ 

5.        Pheed: The Social Network That's Winning Over Teens from Facebook and Twitter  http://news.yahoo.com/pheed-social-network-thats-winning-over-teens-facebook-092032083--abc-news-tech.html  “As Facebook slowly rolls out its updated News Feed design, featuring content-sorted feeds dedicated to photos and music, a popular social networking alternative has emerged. Pheed, a small start-up out of Los Angeles, is not only capitalizing on dedicated photo and audio streams, but it also offers feeds for text, video and live broadcasts, not to mention an in-your-face homepage … tattooed hands interlaced behind a young man's head boldly announce this is not your grandma's social network. In February, Pheed became the No. 1 free social networking app in Apple's App Store, ruling the charts ahead of competitors like Twitter and Facebook for more than a week. The audience driving Pheed's spike in downloads? Young adults in their late teens, a demographic often said to be losing interest in Facebook. Eighty-four percent of Pheed's users are ranking in at between the ages of 15 and 24…”

Security, Privacy & Digital Controls

6.       Ex-Googlers Train Machine Army to Sift Out Crooks  http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/03/siftscience/  “Here’s a tidbit for the online retailers out there: If a shopper on your website is using Firefox with Windows XP, the odds of him being a fraudster go up sixfold. That’s a trend mined by the machine learning geeks at Sift Science, a San Francisco startup that’s taking some of the same techniques that Google uses to cut down on abuse on its ad network and making them available to smaller websites…Machine learning lets you adapt to the different fraud patterns you see on different websites.” Fraud is a big problem for internet merchants, who often bear the financial cost of fraudulent credit card charges. The problem is that many fraud detection services rely on a small number of tried-and-true rules to spot scammers. The criminals quickly figure them out, and it’s often tricky to stay on top of new techniques…Sift Science uses Amazon’s cloud to spin up giant compute farms that, er, sift though mountains of data and pull out the emerging fraud trends that other people might miss. Here’s another example: if a web surfer that happens to have spent $4 or less online in the past week, the odds of them being a fraudster go up 78-fold. Any website can sign up for Sift’s service in a few minutes, and start getting a small number of fraud scores — 5,000 per month — for free…”

7.        Cyberattack simultaneously crashes computer networks at South Korean banks and TV broadcasters  http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/03/20/south-korean-banks-and-media-report-computer-network-crash/  “A cyberattack caused computer networks at major South Korean banks and top TV broadcasters to crash simultaneously Wednesday, paralyzing bank machines across the country and prompting speculation of North Korean involvement. Screens went blank at 2 p.m. (0500 GMT), the state-run Korea Information Security Agency said, and more than seven hours later some systems were still down…some experts suspected a cyberattack orchestrated by Pyongyang. The rivals have exchanged threats amid joint U.S.-South Korean military drills and in the wake of U.N. sanctions meant to punish North Korea over its nuclear test last month. The network paralysis took place just days after North Korea accused South Korea and the U.S. of staging a cyberattack that shut down its websites for two days last week…”

8.       Viruses, Trojans, and worms, oh my: The basics on malware  http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/02/viruses-trojans-and-worms-oh-my-the-basics-on-malware/  “Some say we're living in a "post-PC" world, but malware on PCs is still a major problem for home computer users and businesses. The examples are everywhere: In November, we reported that malware was used to steal information about one of Japan's newest rockets and upload it to computers controlled by hackers. Critical systems at two US power plants were recently found infected with malware spread by USB drives. Malware known as "Dexter" stole credit card data from point-of-sale terminals at businesses. And espionage-motivated computer threats are getting more sophisticated and versatile all the time. In this second installment in the Ars Guide to Online Security, we'll cover the basics for those who may not be familiar with the different types of malware that can affect computers. Malware comes in a variety of types, including viruses, worms, and Trojans…”  http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/01/keep-it-secret-keep-it-safe-a-beginners-guide-to-web-safety/

9.       How I became a password cracker  http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/03/how-i-became-a-password-cracker/  “At the beginning of a sunny Monday morning earlier this month, I had never cracked a password. By the end of the day, I had cracked 8,000. Even though I knew password cracking was easy, I didn't know it was ridiculously easy—well, ridiculously easy once I overcame the urge to bash my laptop with a sledgehammer and finally figured out what I was doing. My journey into the Dark-ish Side began during a chat with our security editor, Dan Goodin, who remarked in an offhand fashion that cracking passwords was approaching entry-level "script kiddie stuff." This got me thinking, because—though I understand password cracking conceptually—I can't hack my way out of the proverbial paper bag. I'm the very definition of a "script kiddie," someone who needs the simplified and automated tools created by others to mount attacks that he couldn't manage if left to his own devices…Could I, using only free tools and the resources of the Internet, successfully…Find a password cracker…Successfully crack at least one password…In less than a day of work? I could. And I walked away from the experiment with a visceral sense of password fragility. Watching your own password fall in less than a second is the sort of online security lesson everyone should learn at least once—and it provides a free education in how to build a better password…”

Mobile Computing & Communicating

10.     Your Next Smartphone Screen May Be Made of Sapphire  http://www.technologyreview.com/news/512411/your-next-smartphone-screen-may-be-made-of-sapphire/  “Manufactured sapphire—a material that’s used as transparent armor on military vehicles—could become cheap enough to replace the glass display covers on mobile phones. That could mean smartphone screens that don’t crack when you drop them and can’t be scratched with keys, or even by a concrete sidewalk. Sapphire, a crystalline form of aluminum oxide, probably won’t ever be as cheap as Gorilla Glass, the durable material from Corning that’s used to make screens on iPhones and other smartphones. A Gorilla Glass display costs less than $3, while a sapphire display would cost about $30. But that could fall below $20 in a couple of years thanks to increased competition and improving technology…And since sapphire performs better than glass, that price could make it cheap enough to compete…”  http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/09/ff-corning-gorilla-glass/all/

11.      T-Mobile gets rid of contracts for cellphones  http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/03/25/3305649/t-mobile-gets-rid-of-contracts.html  “T-Mobile USA, the struggling No. 4 cellphone company, is ditching plans centered on familiar two-year contracts in favor of selling phones on installment plans. T-Mobile is the first major U.S. carrier to break from the contract model. The company changed its website over the weekend to begin selling the new plans. It plans to lay out the rationale for the change on Tuesday at an event in New York, which could also reveal when T-Mobile will start selling the iPhone. T-Mobile has been losing subscribers from its contract-based plans for more than two years, chiefly to bigger competitors Verizon Wireless and AT&T. T-Mobile has done better with contract-less, prepaid plans, but those aren't as profitable for the company…”

12.     WifiSlam: How indoor location could find its way into Apple services  “The fate of an acquired startup is never certain, and that’s especially true at secretive Apple. This question hangs over its latest acquisition, a small Silicon Valley indoor location company called WifiSlam. Apple may have simply wanted its Stanford-educated founders, or — more likely — it wants to integrate WifiSlam’s technology into its mobile products and develop the technology further. Here’s what WifiSlam says its service does: Allow your smartphone to pinpoint its location (and the location of your friends) in real-time to 2.5m accuracy using only ambient WiFi signals that are already present in buildings. We are building the next generation of location-based mobile apps that, for the first time, engage with users at the scale that personal interaction actually takes place…WifiSlam uses a combination of Wi-Fi hotspots, as well as a mobile device’s compass, GPS and gyroscope to navigate indoors. (It’s not entirely unique — other companies, like Wifarer — are working on similar indoor positioning technology.)…While it’s not very likely to pop up in the next version of iOS, here are a couple of ideas to give an example of how Apple some day could integrate WifiSlam’s capabilities to augment or improve Apple services as they stand today…”

Apps

13.     Tablets Will Beat Smartphones In App Revenues By 2018  http://www.android.gs/tablets-will-beat-smartphones-in-app-revenues-2018/  “We all have at least a smartphone or a tablet, or in some case both of them, which we use in our everyday life…as expected, the smartphone market is much bigger than the tablet market, as tablets are quite new in this field…how do you make the same smartphone fit to two different persons who are living in different parts of the world and who’s passions are not the same. Well, the answer is trough apps. Applications are those programs which makes your stock smartphone to best fit your needs…In 5 years more exactly, tablets are going to generate more revenue than smartphones, which means that tablets are also going to be sold much better…tablet app market generated $8.8 billion revenue in 2013, making it over a third of total app revenue, while smartphones apps generated $16.4 billion, around 75%. To sum up, in the first 2 and half months of the year, apps generated $25.2 billion, 35% from tablets and 75% from smartphones…And the power up is within the low-cost tablets which are now a threat to smartphones, as they can be accessible to anybody and will generate more profit from apps.  It is estimated that in 2018 the tablet market will generate more than 50% of total revenue from apps, and combined, smartphones and tablets will reach over $92 billion…”

14.     Ten Middle and High School Mobile App Design Teams Win National Competition  http://thejournal.com/articles/2013/03/20/ten-middle-and-high-school-mobile-app-design-teams-win-national-competition.aspx  “Ten teams of middle and high school students have won a national mobile app design competition and will now work to refine their creations with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab. Winning teams and the MIT Media Lab will develop the apps to make them available for download from the Google Play Store. The students will learn how to use the MIT App Inventor tool and the basics of coding…The Verizon Innovative App Challenge was created by the Verizon Foundation in partnership with the Technology Student Association to encourage middle school and high school students, working with a faculty advisor, to use their science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) knowledge, their ingenuity, and their creativity to come up with an original mobile app concept that incorporates STEM and addresses a need or problem in their school or community…”

15.     How to track lost Laptops and Smartphones with Prey  http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to/laptop/3437205/how-track-lost-laptops-smartphones-with-prey/  “Few situations are quite as terrifying as having to leave your laptop at a café table for a quick visit to the restroom – and with good reason. Theft is a nasty, but ubiquitous risk. Luckily, by installing Prey, you can track, control and find lost devices if should ever come to that. Here's how…Prey is an open source security tool that can not only locate your laptop and smartphone remotely via GPS, but is also able to subtly control key functions and give you the option of locking them down completely. In short, if the tool has been installed on a device that has gone missing, you can head to Prey's website and report it as stolen. Once the thief connects to the internet, Prey will regularly send you e-mails with data such as the approximate location of your device, a screenshot of the current desktop activity and several webcam or smartphone photos, if possible. Alternatively, you can also activate Prey with an SMS (containing “GO PREY” by default) if you are using it on a Smartphone and wish to get immediate results…”

16.     Sherpa, The Latest Personal Assistant App, Focuses On Location  http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2013/03/25/sherpa-the-latest-personal-assistant-app-focuses-on-location/  “Personal assistant apps are the latest flavor of utopian vision from tech startups. The promise of these services is to sift through people’s deluge of emails, documents and calendar events to extract actionable insights, and provide that information exactly when they need it…Sherpa gathers users’ location data, such as commuting routes over time. Then the app can check traffic and notify users if there is bad traffic on their routes and suggest alternatives. The app can also remind you when it’s time to leave for your next meeting, based on the distance to the location and the traffic. When users go to the airport, Sherpa will gather all relevant information, such as airline tickets, hotel and rental car, for quick access. It also tells you if a rain storm is coming…Where Sherpa gets really interesting is its use of location without requiring any user input. Because Sherpa focuses on location, it can identify locations and actions, even when addresses are not entered into a calendar. For example, if you have a piano lesson every week at a certain location (and you have marked it in your calendar) Sherpa knows the general location of that lesson. Then it can remind you to leave for your piano lesson without you having ever entered the address in your calendar or in Sherpa…”  http://www.technologyreview.com/news/512781/predictive-smartphone-assistant-gives-you-a-heads-up/

17.     5 Free Smartphone Apps That Will Earn You Money  http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/my-money/2013/03/12/5-free-smartphone-apps-that-will-earn-you-money  “Smartphone applications have the power to make our lives easier and often more enjoyable. Many also facilitate you earning money directly through your smartphone. Here are five free apps that can lend a hand to your bank account: iBotta. Using iBotta…Receipt Hog…Saving Star…iPinion…GigWalk…These five apps will take some time to set up and get familiar with. However, once you get past the introductory stage, they have the potential to put a little extra cash in your wallet each month…”

18.     Apps Outpacing Browsers On Smartphones 7:2  http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/196317/apps-outpacing-browsers-on-smartphones-72.html  “U.S. consumers now spend 1 in every 10 discretionary dollars online -- about $190 billion overall in 2012, but it turns out that those dollars go more through apps than search engines and browsers…Mobile browsing isn't dead, but it happens more on tablets, compared with smartphones. App engagement is 7 times higher for consumers compared with browsing on iPhones, but only 2 times more for iPad owners. Marketers must begin thinking about innovative ways to increase search functions in apps. Consumers have demonstrated a clear preference for engaging with content on smartphones via apps, accounting for 4 out of 5 mobile minutes, rather than mobile browsers…”

SkyNet

19.     Is “Keep” a Google version of Evernote?  http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/03/google-keep/  “…Google Keep — a long-overdue app for creating lists and reminders…is essentially Google’s answer to Evernote and the Post-It…Keep is Google’s first mobile app focused on solving either of these problems…Keep is integrated with Google Drive…You can type out a reminder or list using the Keep Android app, which landed in Google Play on Wednesday…or on the web at drive.google.com/keep. Aside from tapping out a note, you can also store photos in the app, and you can record voice notes, which Keep then transcribes into text, so you can read or listen to them later. If you snap a photo in the app, you can then edit it using all of Android’s built-in camera features (cropping, color balancing, photo filters and borders). Using Android’s sharing features, you share a photo by e-mail, text messaging, Picasa, Google+, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Path, Dropbox and even Amazon’s Send to Kindle feature…there’s also a search function, so you can find the Keeps you kept, and you can color code what you’ve got in a variety of hues. The app sorts everything in a style that is reminiscent of Pinterest or Pocket. It looks great and it’s super easy to use. Want to move a reminder to the top of your mosaic? Just drag and drop, and tap to get in and edit. You can also archive or delete any reminder once you’re done with it. It’s all pretty painless and feels like something Google should have offered up years ago. Keep is only compatible with phones and tablets running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich or newer, and as of now, there are no Keep apps for iOS, Windows Phone or any other mobile operating systems…”  http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-57575465-285/get-started-with-google-keep/

20.    Sorry Google; you can Keep it to yourself  http://gigaom.com/2013/03/20/sorry-google-you-can-keep-it-to-yourself/  “Google today launched Keep, an app that allows you to save things, clip stuff from the web, hoard notes and what not and put them all onto your Google Drive. Yup, you guessed it — it is an imitation to Evernote and many other such applications. It is a good thing that Google has decided to compete with the likes of Evernote — it validates their market. It might actually be good, or even better than Evernote. But I still won’t use Keep. You know why? Google Reader. I spent about seven years of my online life on that service. I sent feedback, used it to annotate information and they killed it like a butcher slaughters a chicken. No conversation — dead. The service that drives more traffic than Google+ was sacrificed because it didn’t meet some vague corporate goals; users — many of them life long — be damned. Looking from that perspective, it is hard to trust Google to keep an app alive. What if I spend months using the app, and then Google decides it doesn’t meet some arbitrary objective? Evernote has my data and frankly, I’m glad to pay them to keep it because they are who they are…Evernote is focused on making the service better. And it keeps that focus every year…”

21.     Google Summer of Code applications due Mar 29  http://google-opensource.blogspot.de/2013/03/mentoring-organization-applications-now.html  “Interested in finding bright, enthusiastic new contributors to your open source project? Apply to be a mentoring organization in the Google Summer of Code program! We are excited to announce the organization application period is now open…Google Summer of Code is a program designed to pair university students from around the world with mentors at open source projects in such varied fields as academic research, language translations, content management systems, games, and operating systems. Since 2005, over 6,000 students from 90 countries have completed the Google Summer of Code program with the support of over 350 mentoring organizations. Students gain exposure to real-world software development while earning a stipend for their work and an opportunity to explore areas related to their academic pursuits, thus “flipping bits, not burgers” during their school break. In return, mentoring organizations have the opportunity to identify and attract new developers to their projects as these students often continue their work with the organizations after Google Summer of Code concludes…The deadline for applying to be a mentoring organization for Google Summer of Code is Friday, March 29th…”

22.    Open Letter to Google: Google Alerts Broken  http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/21/google-alerts-broken-useless-and-slowed-to-a-trickle/  “The Internet is a massive, tangled, churning web of content, and for a long time , Google Alerts was a key navigational tool that kept users on top of things that were relevant specifically to them. However over recent months, a series of reports have surfaced that indicate Google Alerts is no longer working as it should. People on online forums, publications, and blogs say their Google Alerts have dwindled to the point of uselessness. Trade publication The Financial Brand reported that its Google Alerts have slowed to a “trickle,” with the volume decreasing by at least 80% and dropping from 20-35 emails per day with 4- 12 results down to 4-8 emails per day with 1-3 results each. Furthermore, “the results are crummier than ever.”…“The Financial Brand has frequently encouraged bank and credit union marketing executives around the world to use Google Alerts. This advice is now fully retracted. Google Alerts was once a very important and efficient tool to monitor mentions of your brand on the web. It is now so unreliable that it has been rendered effectively useless…”

23.    YouTube reaches 1 billion unique monthly users  http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/03/21/youtube-reaches-1-billion-unique-monthly-users-almost-15-of-planet-earth/  “Google has announced that YouTube is now at 1 billion monthly users. Assuming Wolfram Alpha’s estimate of 6.79 billion people on Earth, that means roughly 14.7% of the world watches something on YouTube every month…Google says that the video site reaches almost one out of every two people on the Internet. Its monthly viewership would make it the planet’s third-largest country, behind China and India. These feats are all the more interesting considering that Google was criticized for over-paying for the site when it bought YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006. It’s fair to say that the acquisition has proven to be a shrewd one, with YouTube far and away the Web’s most popular video site…”

24.    Chrome OS and Android will not merge  http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57575527-93/schmidt-chrome-android-to-stay-separate-but-may-overlap/  “Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt said Android and Chrome will stay separate…Schmidt said that despite changes to the mobile operating system's leadership, Android and Chrome will not be combined, according to Reuters, which was in attendance. Schmidt did say, however, that there might be more overlap between the operating systems…Android is the world's most popular mobile operating system. Chrome OS is Google's cloud-based answer to more traditional operating systems, like Windows and OS X. Talk of the possibility of Chrome and Android coming together arose last week when Sundar Pichai, Google's senior vice president of engineering in charge of Chrome succeeded Andy Rubin as head of the search giant's mobile operating system. Pichai will also remain in charge of Chrome…”   http://ostatic.com/blog/why-google-wont-merge-chrome-os-and-android 

25.    West Virginia lawmakers seek to ban Google Glass on the road  http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57575954-71/dont-glass-and-drive-lawmakers-seek-to-ban-google-glass-on-the-road/  “…I received a curious message last night from Gary G. Howell, a Republican in the West Virginia Legislature. It read: "Your article on Google Glass prompted this bill." The only bills I'd ever previously inspired were $20 ones accompanied by the words: "Here's money for a taxi. Get out of here." So I wondered what sort of bill this could be. It transpires that West Virginia has decided to think proactively about Google Glass. This bill seeks to make it illegal to drive while "using a wearable computer with head mounted display."…”

26.    Google using ‘white spaces’ spectrum to deliver Wi-Fi to South African schools  http://news.yahoo.com/google-using-white-spaces-spectrum-deliver-wi-fi-024446644.html  “We’ve already seen the potential to deploy so-called “Super Wi-Fi” networks over white spaces spectrum in the United States and now Google (GOOG) is working to use the same technology to deliver Internet connectivity to ten schools in South Africa. The Verge reports that “launching the test network is Google’s most direct effort yet to demonstrate the potential of white spaces… as a means of delivering faster internet connectivity to the developing world and other rural areas.” For those unfamiliar with spectrum jargon, “white spaces” are bands of unused television spectrum that let signals travel farther and penetrate more deeply into buildings than the standard 2.4GHz and 5GHz Wi-Fi spectrum bands…”

General Technology

27.    Best New Device to Find Your Keys  http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/upgrade-your-life/best-device-keys-161008580.html  “Imagine a device that could find your keys with the push of a button or track down your wallet in seconds when you’re frantically searching for it. Those devices have arrived, but they are not all equal. We test the competing technologies that want to help you find your lost keys and wallet. For a few years, there have been home finders that let you attach a tag to your keys or the remote and then use a base station to trigger a beeping in the tag. Your ears lead you to the missing device. But these only work when you have the base station near. They use watch-type batteries that last between 3 and 12 months depending on how often you use the finders…Brookstone…Click N’ Dig…BlueTooth Key Finders…Cobra Tag…The BIKN…THE WINNER: The Wallet TrackR…”

28.    Gadget Gets Under the Hood to Bring Analytics to Driving  http://www.technologyreview.com/news/512211/gadget-gets-under-the-hood-to-bring-analytics-to-driving/  “You probably have a rough idea of how much you spend on gas each week, but chances are you don’t calculate the cost of each trip down to the penny…Miljkovic is a cofounder of Automatic, an automotive tech startup that offers a small gadget that connects to your car’s onboard computer and wirelessly transmits the data it collects to your smartphone. This can reveal how efficiently you’re driving, how much individual trips are costing you, and tips for solving potential engine troubles. It can also determine where you parked your car and, if its built-in accelerometer senses you’ve been in an accident, call 911 for help. The device combines two burgeoning trends—the “Internet of things,” where traditionally offline gadgets are connected to the Internet to amplify their usefulness (see “50 Disruptive Companies 2013: Nest’s Smarter Home”), and the mining of data that’s collected by our devices for meaning (see “Every Step You Take, Tracked Automatically”). By putting these two together, the company thinks it can get users to conserve gas and spend less—and make a profit itself while doing so…”

29.    How to Create Thermal Images for Millions of Homes  http://www.technologyreview.com/view/512611/how-to-create-thermal-images-for-millions-of-homes/  “One of the well-worn tools of home energy auditors is thermal imaging cameras that show where buildings are poorly insulated. But how do you bring these pictures to thousands or even millions of homes? Two Boston-area startups think they have the answer. Sagewell and Essses have effectively brought the idea of Google Street View, where a camera-equipped car drives through neighborhoods, to thermal imaging. Both companies have developed business models to provide consumers thermal images of their homes and to make money on referrals. An infrared image displays warmer and cooler areas of an object. Energy auditors use them to spot where drafts or lack of insulation indicate a significant amount of heat is being lost to the outdoors. On their own, they won’t tell a homeowner exactly how to make a home more energy efficient, but they can quickly help locate problem areas…”

30.    The gel that stops bleeding instantly  http://www.humansinvent.com/#!/11409/the-gel-that-stops-bleeding-instantly/  “All-purpose healing gels familiar to fans of futuristic video games and movies could be about to make the transition from sci-fi fantasy to real-world medical tool thanks to a New York University student…Veti-Gel, the name chosen by NYU student Joe Landolina uses plant polymers to rapidly solidify when applied to open wounds, and by a bizarre coincidence was initially being developed under the name Medi-Gel, the name of a fictional healing gel from the Mass Effect video game series with almost identical properties…“In all of our tests we found we were able to immediately stop bleeding,” says Landolina. “Your skin has this thing called the extracellular matrix,” he explains. “It’s kind of a mesh of molecules and sugars and protein that holds your cells in place.” Landolina synthesises his own extracellular matrix (ECM) using plant polymers, which can form a liquid when broken up into pieces. He says, “So it goes into the wound and the pieces of the synthetic ECM in the gel will recognise the pieces of the real ECM in the wound and they’ll link together. It will re-assemble into something that looks like, feels like and acts like skin…”

31.     8 Great Large-Format Printers  http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2362754,00.asp  “…anyone who wants to print photos bigger than letter size will need a wide-format photo printer. Fortunately, there are excellent office and photo printers that let you print at tabloid (11 by 17 inches) and—in some cases—super-tabloid (13 by 19) size…Large-format office printers and MFPs usually max out at tabloid-size paper. Large-format MFPs tend to have rich feature sets. The Brother MFC-J6710DW comes with two paper trays, so you can always keep tabloid-size paper loaded. It also scans, as well as prints, at tabloid size. Whether you're an office manager, a graphic artist, a photo enthusiast, or a casual photographer wanting to get the most out of your megapixels, there's a wide-format printer out there that will meet your printing needs…Brother MFC-J6710DW…Canon Pixma iX7000 Inkjet Business Printer…Canon Pixma Pro9500 Mark II…Epson Stylus Pro 3880…Epson Stylus Photo R2000…Epson Stylus Photo R3000…HP Officejet 7500A Wide Format e-All-in-One…Xerox Phaser 7500/DN…”

32.    Did They Really Wash Their Hands? This Wristband Knows  http://www.technologyreview.com/news/512471/are-your-doctors-hands-clean-this-wristband-knows/  “A startup called IntelligentM wants to make hospitals healthier by encouraging workers to clean their hands properly. Its solution is a bracelet that vibrates when the wearer has scrubbed sufficiently, giving employees a way to check their habits and letting employers know who is and isn’t doing things right. Some 100,000 people a year in the United States alone die because of infections that arise from hospital visits, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and a lot of these infections occur because doctors, nurses, and technicians don’t wash well enough. The problem has garnered more attention lately, in part because Medicare and other payers have stopped reimbursing hospitals for expenses related to treating hospital-acquired infections…”

33.    The 49ers’ plan to build the greatest stadium Wi-Fi network of all time  http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/03/the-49ers-plan-to-build-the-greatest-stadium-wi-fi-network-of-all-time/  When the San Francisco 49ers' new stadium opens for the 2014 NFL season, it is quite likely to have the best publicly accessible Wi-Fi network a sports facility in this country has ever known…68,500 fans will inevitably walk into the stadium for each game. And every single one of them will be able to connect to the wireless network, simultaneously, without any limits on uploads or downloads. Smartphones and tablets will run into the limits of their own hardware long before they hit the limits of the 49ers' wireless network. Until now, stadium executives have said it's pretty much impossible to build a network that lets every single fan connect at once. They've blamed this on limits in the amount of spectrum available to Wi-Fi, despite their big budgets and the extremely sophisticated networking equipment that largesse allows them to purchase. Even if you build the network perfectly, it would choke if every fan tried to get on at once—at least according to conventional wisdom. But the people building the 49ers' wireless network do not have conventional sports technology backgrounds. Senior IT Director Dan Williams and team CTO Kunal Malik hail from Facebook, where they spent five years building one of the world's largest and most efficient networks for the website…"We see the stadium as a large data center," Williams told me…”

34.    New Invisibility Cloak Demonstrates Better Cloaking Efficiency  http://scitechdaily.com/a-new-kind-of-invisibility-cloak-demonstrates-better-cloaking-efficiency/  “Using a new kind of cloak that uses a very thin multilayer dielectric coating made of natural material, not metamaterial, researchers at Michigan Technological University demonstrated better cloaking efficiency than a similarly sized metamaterial cloak designed by using the transformation optics relations…last month, Elena Semouchkina, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Michigan Tech, and her graduate student, Xiaohui Wang, reported successful experimental demonstration of the use of non-conductive ceramic metamaterials to cloak cylindrical objects from microwave-length electromagnetic waves…scarcely was the ink dry on their report in the IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters, a journal published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, when they developed a different cloaking approach and published it in the American Institute of Physics journal, Applied Physics Letters. This time, they used ordinary dielectric materials such as ceramics having differing dielectric permittivity—a measure of the response of a substance to an electrical field— instead of metamaterials, which are artificial materials with properties not found in nature. They found that they were able to cloak larger cylindrical objects and cloak them more effectively than they had using metamaterials…”

35.    With new Sparc systems, Oracle begins shift to single chip architecture  http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9237908/With_new_Sparc_systems_Oracle_begins_shift_to_single_chip_architecture  “Oracle has announced a batch of servers based on new Sparc processors and in the process has begun an expected shift toward converging its two families of Unix servers onto a single chip architecture. Oracle sells two lines of Unix servers, the T-series, based on the Sparc processors it designs in-house, and the higher-end M-series, which have traditionally been built by Fujitsu and resold by Oracle, and which run on Fujitsu's Sparc64 chips…along with a clutch of new T-series boxes, Oracle announced the first M-series server designed by Oracle and based on one of its own Sparc processors, rather than Fujitsu's Sparc64 chip. "This is all Oracle IP…”

Leisure & Entertainment

36.    Lights, Cameras, and NBA Tech Revolution  http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9068903/the-toronto-raptors-sportvu-cameras-nba-analytical-revolution  “New technology and statistics will change the way we understand basketball, even if they also create friction between coaches and front-office personnel trying to integrate new concepts into on-court play. The most important innovation in the NBA in recent years is a camera-tracking system, known as SportVU, that records every movement on the floor and spits it back at its front-office keepers as a byzantine series of geometric coordinates. Fifteen NBA teams have purchased the cameras, which cost about $100,000 per year, from STATS LLC…The future of the NBA…looks simple, but the process of getting there took a bunch of people, including three Toronto front-office employees, more than a half-decade of work. In simple terms: The Raptors' analytics team wrote insanely complex code that turned all those X-Y coordinates from every second of every recorded game into playable video files. The code can recognize everything — when a pick-and-roll occurred, where it occurred, whether the pick actually hit a defender, and the position of all 10 players on the floor as the play unfolded. The team also factored in the individual skill set of every NBA player, so the program understands that Chris Paul is much more dangerous from midrange than Rajon Rondo, and that Roy Hibbert is taller than Al Horford.2 That last bit — the ability to recognize individual player skills — is crucial for the juiciest bit of what the Raptors have accomplished: those clear circles that sort of follow the Toronto players around and have the same jersey numbers. Those are ghost players, and they are doing what Toronto's coaching staff and analytics team believe the players should have done on this play — and on every other Toronto play the cameras have recorded…”

37.    Valve lets you pay for the beta with Steam “Early Access” program  http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/03/valve-lets-you-pay-for-the-beta-with-steam-early-access-program/  “…Wish you could play a game while it's still a bug-riddled, in-development mess? Well, Valve has got you covered with its new "Early Access" sales program…Early Access is being sold as a way for players to purchase, um, early access to games they're excited about and actively take part in the development process. For developers, it's a way to raise additional money for a game that's not quite complete yet and get a bevy of eager beta testers to help work out the bugs before a game is finally released…Valve is launching the Early Access program with 12 games, ranging from the alpha for massive shooter Arma III to super-indie efforts like Prison Architect and Kerbal Space Program. Those who buy the Early Access editions of the game will get regular updates from the developer and full access to the final game when it is deemed "released." Valve is looking to slowly expand the program with games from Steam Greenlight and other titles that are already approved for Steam…”

38.    Stocksy aims to bring the soul back into stock photography  http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57576184-93/stocksy-aims-to-bring-the-soul-back-into-stock-photography/  “Bruce Livingstone, founder of the iStockphoto site that grew from a small stock-art community to a multimedia juggernaut, is launching a competitor called Stocksy United today that he hopes will bring the business back to its roots. Stocksy is a startup, but it won't attract venture capital, won't be acquired by a larger rival, and doesn't have an exit strategy. Instead, it's a cooperative run by its own photographers who get paid a relatively high percentage of the royalties generated by each image sale: 50 percent. On top of that, photographers split the profits left over at the end of each year, Livingstone said in an interview. The idea, he said, is to attract top-shelf photographers who are unhappy with expanding photographer competition and shrinking payouts from the major sites. "It's foolish to launch company with the big boys out there, but I think it's the time is right for a soulful company like this to be created…”

39.    Gizmodo’s geek TV show is here  http://news.yahoo.com/from-blog-to-the-bbc--gizmodo%E2%80%99s-geek-tv-show-is-here-214052341.html  “…blogs like Gizmodo have long since proven that there’s a healthy appetite out there for news and reviews of all manner of gadgetry. But it doesn’t immediately follow—or at least, not to me—that such material would also make for good TV. So when I read that Gizmodo was going to give this strategy a go, and that its impressive founding editor, Joel Johnson, would be involved, I had to check it out. The first one-hour episode of “Gizmodo: The Gadget Testers” aired Monday night on BBC America. “You are about to see gadgets, gizmos, devices and appliances,” the opening announced, “tested to the extreme!” How… exciting? Johnson has explained the show’s approach as “Top Gear” for gadgets. And, in fact, the premiere followed a minimarathon of that popular British reality show’s most recent episodes, which involved its gearhead hosts grinding secondhand cars across a variety of absurdly rough terrains in Africa. “Gizmodo: Gadget Testers” did seem to be channeling something of that spirit as it introduced its scheme for testing three minivideo cameras designed for action-sports use…”

Entrepreneurism and Technology 

40.    Wealthfront, The Investing Service That Has Made Me Money  http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/20/wealthfront-the-investing-service-that-has-made-me-money-raises-20m-from-index-greylock-and-socialcapital-partnership/  “Wealthfront is one of my favorite startups out there today — because it has actually made me money. I’m not alone. The automated investments company has been growing its user base by 20 percent every month, because it cuts out traditional mutual funds and investment advisors and charges its users a very low fee for returns that have been beating the Street…My personal story is pretty typical of why the company has been doing so well…I’d seen Wealthfront launch at the end of 2011 and was curious (it was promising to solve my exact problem), but I only got around to trying it last November after it added an online wire transfer option that didn’t require me to spend hours filling out transfer papers at my bank…I went through its onboarding flow by directing its software to follow a conservative investment strategy fitting to my situation. Wealthfront picked mostly exchange-traded funds (ETFs) for U.S., foreign and emerging market stocks, along with bonds, real estate and natural resources. I began making money from it immediately, no doubt benefiting from the particularly positive mood that many markets have been in since late last year…”

41.     65-Year-Old Android Engineer Gives Startup Advice  http://www.fastcolabs.com/3007250/open-company/boxs-65-year-old-android-engineer-gives-your-startup-some-unsentimental-advice#  “David Maynard is a 65-year-old Android engineering manager at Box who still codes every day. ”It's not always easy," he says. "Sometimes I have to leave a company when I get promoted to the stage when I can't code anymore.” The software industry tends to venerate precocity, which makes the genial, white-haired Maynard an interesting counterpoint to the company CEO Aaron Levie, who is 28. Maynard has worked his way through 28 programming languages at some of the Valley's most legendary companies like Lockheed, Xerox-PARC, SRI International, Electronic Arts, Google, and now Box…There are precious few people who have seen and comprehended enough of the rise of computing (and now mobile computing) to have some perspective on the industry's mind-bending velocity. "The tools have just gotten so much better," he says. "When I was working on the game for Electronic Arts, I did the entire development on the Atari 800 and it took me 45 minutes to do one compile off of a floppy disk which held a grand total of 380 kilobytes. Today I have a device in my pocket with can give me access to the world's knowledge," he says. "That is unbelievable--but I think we have lost the idea of the software artist. When the machines were much smaller, I did my game essentially as a one-man team. I did all the art. I did all the programming. I had one other engineer help me with some of the music. I have a friend working with EA today and he is probably working in a team of 120 engineers.” Maynard became part of the founding team at Electronic Arts after writing a game in his spare time in the late 1970s. Xerox-PARC was really the first place that provided personal computers, and like every programmer, Maynard had an Alto--about a $20,000 piece of hardware at the time. He says the engineers used the computers largely to write games. "Maze Wars was the first real 3-D shooter," he says. "As soon as that was released, work stopped. Management was powerless to do anything about it. All the programmers were playing. Then they started hacking the game to cheat…He started to work on his own game for the Atari 800 and Commodore 64 in 1983, and dubbed it Worms?--not to be confused with the 1994 game by the same name. “It took me about six months to write, and then six months to convince Xerox-PARC that they didn't own it," he says…Maynard is also a veteran of a failed startup, in his case, game console company 3DO, which launched in 1993. The idea was to create a high-end game machine and sell software for it, much like the Xbox and the Sony Playstation, which came later. "It was a visionary idea but the business model turned out to not quite work," says Maynard. "We invented the hardware and the development system and then we licensed the hardware to various manufacturers--but the manufacturers sold it at $699 retail, too high for a gaming machine.” Maynard says the current generation of startups should be more patient than he was…”

42.    Rokk3r Labs, a Hybrid Investor-Accelerator  http://news.terra.com/not-your-traditional-incubator-rokk3r-labs-a-hybrid-investor-accelerator,311b936a1b98d310VgnCLD2000000dc6eb0aRCRD.html  “…Here's how Rokk3r Labs' business model works: A developer, designer and business team calculate the cost and time for strategy development, product design, staffing up and technology tweaks, plus market size and price values. If things add up and a management team passes muster, Rokk3r Labs accepts work through sliding scale fees and equity stakes. The company also earns licensing fees from sales linked to work it does for ad agency DDB, as its innovation lab – a wise move for recurring revenue. "They don't take on pipedream products," Diaz Cala says. "They test the market at minimal cost and move on." Like most new ventures, Rokk3r Labs has faced its share of challenges. Although it's starting to change, Miami lacks a startup ecosystem. It was also challenging to find talent and keep a fun-but-fast execution culture as Rokk3r grew from five to 25 employees. And as projects scale up, the company may face funding obstacles in Miami…”

Design / DEMO

43.    Hyper-Realistic CGI Is Killing Photographers, Thrilling Product Designers  http://www.wired.com/design/2013/03/luxion-keyshot/  “Computer-generated images are moving out of theaters and onto store shelves and catalog pages, thanks to software that makes it nearly impossible to distinguish the real from the photorealistic. Encroaching upon what was once the domain of sci-fi filmmakers, product designers have started employing CGI and utilizing a program called KeyShot to give their digital models lighting effects that makes them appear to be actual items photographed in a studio or out in the wild…That ultra-perfect computer image, with dead-on lighting that highlights all its critical features? The sweatsuit with the fabric that clings together where the seams stretch? The uber-clean Jeep deep in the hills on a gravely trail? All done in KeyShot, a program that enhances CAD creations to the point that they become indistinguishable from the real thing…Dave Vogt, an industrial designer who uses KeyShot in his work for Skullcandy, says that the speed that the software creates its output is a huge advantage. “Being able to pull in 3-D and have a juicy render sub 5 minutes is pretty impressive…”

44.    i.Dummy: New breakthrough in mannequin technology  http://phys.org/news/2013-03-idummy-breakthrough-mannequin-technology.html  “At its first glance, the mannequin 'i.Dummy' developed by researchers of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) looks no different from an ordinary dummy but it is no plain stuff - this sophisticated mannequin can change its body shape and size or even elongate at the point of a fingertip on computer. This revolutionary breakthrough, coined 'i.Dummy' for intelligent dummy, is expected to streamline the operations of the apparel and garment industry, which rely strongly on the use of dummies for designing and fitting different sizes of apparel products before mass production takes place…one single 'i.Dummy' will transform itself to fit various sizes and dimension, be it Asian or Western, etc. Customised measurements can also be inputted…Dr Allan Chan and his team members have collected massive anthropometric data and information from the literatures of the American, European, Japanese and Chinese population; together with the data collected from ITC's 3D Body Scanner, plus the clever application of mechatronics on the platform of mannequin development. "This robotic mannequin 'i.Dummy' is unique in the sense that all changes are three-dimensional, varying in width, thickness and length all at once automatically. It can also rotate automatically for viewing in 360 degrees, so that every angle of clothes fitting can be assessed…”

45.    3-D printing is revolutionizing product development  http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/03/20/3d-printing-apple-samsung-jabil-ford-maker-autodesk/1973753/  “When Ford Motor shows off the latest version of its hybrid car at an Atlanta auto show this month, its drive train and other key parts will be products of a new development process that's taken hold across Corporate America and the world. Rather than using custom machine tools to build early prototypes of new parts, Ford is now using 3-D printing technology to design and test its engineers' latest ideas.The new method allows product developers to have a prototype in their hands in as little as a week after they create a new design — compared with a previous wait time of three to four months…Ford's new hybrid transmission was developed on a 3-D printer that costs about $300,000 and which can turn a pile of aluminum powder into a working prototype in a day or two. "For any engineer using (prototype) models to develop, this is the way to do it," says Sears. "Most large companies are now doing things this way…”

DHMN Technology

46.    Using a Raspberry Pi as an information radiator  http://pivotallabs.com/using-a-raspberry-pi-as-an-information-radiator/  “We have found the Raspberry Pi to be a cost-effective replacement for the Mac minis that we use in our office to drive TVs that are information radiators.  We use these radiators to display the build status of our ci (continuous integration) projects.  At ~$60 (Raspberry Pi, USB WiFi, enclosure), it’s 90% cheaper than using a $600 Mac mini…Once the operating system was installed I booted the Pi with an HDMI monitor connected.  You will be presented with a screen as seen here from Adafruit.  This is named, appropriately enough, the Raspi – config screen…”

47.    If You Want 24”x24”x24” Gigabot Large Scale 3D Printer, Act Fast  http://www.core77.com/blog/digital_fabrication/if_you_want_a_gigabot_the_successfully_kickstarted_large_scale_3d_printer_youd_better_act_fast_24592.asp  “…it looks like 3D printing is about to get a lot bigger, literally, for consumers. In January a company called re:3D debuted their Gigabot, a large-scale 3D printer with an enormous 24" x 24" x 24" build area. The larger capacity was designed to print out the things re:3D wanted to make, namely, rainwater collecting devices and composting toilets for the developing world…With prices starting at $2,500 for a kit and up to $4,950 for a flatpack requiring some assembly, buy-in was not cheap; despite that, the interest was real, as they've topped their $40,000 target with $105,000 at press time. While there's nearly 48 days left to pledge, those looking to get in on this had better hurry—there are just a handful of machines available starting at the $3,250 price bracket…”  http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/re3d/gigabot-3d-printing-this-is-huge

48.    Arduino for Absolute Beginners  http://opensourcehardwarejunkies.com/how-to-work-through-this-course/  “This course is designed around extremely quick and simple-to-set-up circuits using an Arduino board…Creating the circuit should take you a whole of 1 to 4 minutes depending on the lesson.   The steps are listed at the beginning of each lesson in the “Step-by-Step Instructions” section. The written description is accompanied by a breadboard rendition of the circuit.  You might find it easier to use the picture to set up the circuit…The circuit won’t do much until you have the brains of the Arduino programmed to execute the sketch (A sketch is simply the instructions written for the micro-controller).  Each program you will use comes pre-installed with the Arduino development software. These pre-installed sketches cover all the basics and many advanced examples of using your Arduino…”

49.    The life of Pi - clever ideas with a tiny computer  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21882845  “…They had all come up with clever ideas to use the Raspberry Pi, the ultra-cheap computer developed in Cambridge, and they were the finalists in a competition held by the technology advisors PA Consulting…There was the London primary school with a plan to recycle old computer components to turn the Raspberry Pi into a communications device for schools in developing countries. Their only problem - they couldn't figure out how to make Skype work on the little device…there was the North Yorkshire community school which had turned the Pi into an RFID (radio-frequency identification) reader to measure lap times in their cross-country races, and the London independent school whose pupils had come up with Teacher's Pet, a way of delivering homework via USB sticks plugged into the tiny computer…A team from a Cheltenham primary school came up with a system to help elderly or disabled people answer the door with a wireless keypad, using the Piface attachment for the Raspberry Pi…two sixth-formers from Westminster School had the most polished and commercially attractive idea of them all, the AirPi. It combined various sensors with some clever programming to turn the Pi into an air quality and weather station…”

Open Source Hardware

50.    Workshop video: building 6 RepRap open source 3D printers  http://www.kdenlive.org/forum/workshop-video-building-6-reprap-open-source-3d-printers  “I filmed this 2-day workshop at Fab Lab Berlin a couple of weeks ago - there's the whole process from basic assembly, through calibration and testing, to finally the printing stage…I switched to free software 7 months ago and having tried out Cinelerra, OpenShot, Novacut and PiTiVi I concluded there's nothing close to Kdenlive's capability…A few features that would be a great improvement for this style of video, where you're trying to get across a lot of information and story in a short priod of time: Accurate motion tracking…Speed ramping…Friendlier titling functionality overall…”

51.     Two New Open 3D Printers that Are Not Based on Deposition Methods  http://3dprintingindustry.com/2013/03/11/two-new-open-3d-printers-that-are-not-based-on-deposition-methods/  “The stereolithography (SL) and DLP processes, which use photosensitive resins and a laser or other light source to cure them, are typically more complicated 3D printing processes, particularly when it comes to handling. Among the raft of entry-level 3D printers that have come on to the market the vast majority have been plastic deposition processes with only a couple of notable exceptions — namely the B9creator and the Form 1, which both employ DLP and SL respectively…in the last week two new developmental 3D printers have emerged that are open source in nature — one using the SL process and the other DLP. The first is Open SL, from a team at Pryntech headed by Justin Hawkins, which is sourcing modest funding on Indiegogo. With only a couple of days left to pledge, the project is just shy of 200% of its $5000 goal. The Open SL project goal, as the name suggests, is to open up the SL process by offering “a build-it-yourself, high resolution SL 3D printer that can be easily sourced and assembled at home.” The aim is to use easily accessible components and software AND keep the costs well under a $1000 and design files of the 3D printer will be openly shared…the print bed is estimated at being in the region of 80mm x 80mm x 100mm with configurable layer thicknesses between 0.001mm to 0.2mm…The other interesting 3D printer development comes from The Rochester Institute of Technology and the really compelling elements here are that it is a student project, led by teacher Rachel Levine, and that the ongoing developmental system is using an ordinary overhead light projector as the light source with which to selectively cure the resin by virtue of black and white images…”

52.    RoboBrrd 3D Printed Pieces – open source hardware  http://robobrrd.com/blog/2013/03/robobrrd-3d-printed-pieces-open-source-hardware/  “…These are all the 3D printing files for creating your own RoboBrrd! You can download the .stl files and get printing right away and also view the dimensional drawings. Check out the webpage! The dream of having RoboBrrd as a widespread toy all around the world is what is really motivating us. OSHW combined with availability of 3D printers, it can be possible! One day, there will be more RoboBrrds in the world than Furbys, and everyone will make it themselves. It seems odd that we go to a store to purchase a toy when we can create one ourselves. So let’s do it, and make a positive impact! Manufacture our own toys, customize them, learn about them, build them into robots, make them better…”

Open Source

53.    Documenting Your Work With Liferay  http://ostatic.com/blog/documenting-your-work-with-liferay  “…Liferay is an open source portal that actually makes sense. My coworkers have been pushing me to adopt the new Liferay Wiki for documentation and collaboration. I resisted, of course, because I prefer keeping most everything in plain text files on my desktop. My hands are hardwired at this point to plug in Vim keyboard commands, and using command line search with ZSH and grep always finds me what I’m looking for…The Liferay administrator was actually a bit sneaky about it, enticing me with dropbox like folder syncing between machines that would automatically upload my documentation to the server, where it would be indexed by the Lucine search engine and made available to the rest of the team. After switching over to Linux, it became necessary to start putting the new documentation on the wiki proper, and I’ve not looked back since…The wiki component of the Liferay Portal is a very small part of the entire package. Liferay includes a fully featured CMS, a unified document repository, message boards, forums, blogs, instant messaging, and a host of other features. After using Liferay for a few days, it is easy to see how it could replace many features of desktop office applications…”

54.    The Latest Resources for Mastering Blender for 3D Animation  http://ostatic.com/blog/the-latest-resources-for-mastering-blender-for-3d-animation  “In the graphics and animation software arena, you can find plenty of expensive, proprietary applications, but few are as powerful as the Blender 3D animation application. We regularly compile collections of free and inexpensive resources for mastering Blender here on OStatic, and some good new resources have emerged recently. Here are details on some very valuable tools you can take advantage of to get started with Blender, and some free movies created with it that you can dive into. Blender Master Class  is a new book by Ben Simonds that outlines specific tasks and projects in Blender that can help you move from being a beginner to a master. For example, you'll learn to create the robotic spider seen  on the book's cover, and create your own 3D gargoyle. This particular Blender resource isn't free--it's $49.95--but it will make you a skilled Blender artist…”

55.     Google's Open Source YouTube Channel -- Worth a Look  http://ostatic.com/blog/googles-open-source-youtube-channel-worth-a-look  “…Google…has donated many open source projects and leverages a lot of open source code internally. But did you know that the company has a dedicated video channel for information on open source topics? If you haven't explored it, it's worth visiting, found here. Here is more on what's available there, and other good open source resources from Google. Google's open source channel features videos events like Google Code-in and Google Developer Days, and it also frequently features video updates from open source pundits at the company, such as Chris DiBona. The YouTube landing page links to related channels like its Open Source Student Programs and Developers pages. You can create playlists of favorite videos and get instant notification when new content is posted through a single click…”

Civilian Aerospace

56.    Mojave Gets Busy  http://www.parabolicarc.com/2013/03/20/mojave-gets-busy/  “It was a busy day here with multiple activities at different locations at the Mojave Air and Space Port. WhiteKnightTwo with SpaceShipTwo attached was out on the ramp in front of the Scaled hangar. Engineers were doing pressurization tests using helium before they rolled the ships back into the hanger in the afternoon. SpaceShipTwo has not flown since a Dec. 19 glide test that features an engine for the first time. Officials have said they want to do three glide tests with this configuration before beginning powered flights. SpaceShipTwo appeared to feature the same engine nozzle with a pipe in the middle that was seen three months ago. Masten Space Systems conducted two successful tether flights at their test facility on the north side today. The second one lasted about 1 minute and 10 seconds. It’s not known which vehicle the company was flying, but it’s possible it was the recently unveiled Xaero-B…”

57.     New SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket To Debut In June  http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article-xml/asd_03_20_2013_p02-01-560870.xml  “Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) will launch the first flight of its new Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket in June from the company’s new launch pad at Vandenberg AFB, Calif. The upgraded Falcon 9 launcher will feature more powerful Merlin 1D engines, extended fuel tanks and a wider payload fairing. The June mission will loft a small Canadian solar-weather satellite, Cassiope, to a polar low Earth orbit, a demonstration flight that could pave the way for the company’s first mission to geostationary orbit in early July with the launch of the SES-8 commercial communications satellite for Luxembourg-based fleet operator SES…”

58.    SpaceX Dragon cargo ship splashes down in Pacific  http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-spacex-nasa-dragon-splashdown-20130326,0,152912.story  “Less than 250 miles west of Baja California, SpaceX's Dragon capsule successfully splashed down Tuesday after spending more than three weeks in outer space on a NASA mission…The crew of the space station sent the capsule back in the pre-dawn hours for a trip that lasted about five hours…The Dragon capsule returned with about 2,668 pounds of science samples from human research, biology and biotechnology studies, physical science investigations and education activities for NASA, the space agency said. The cargo will be delivered to NASA. SpaceX’s mission began March 1 with a launch of its Falcon 9 rocket, carrying the Dragon capsule, from Cape Canaveral, Fla. The capsule was packed with more than 1,200 pounds of food, scientific experiments and other cargo for delivery to the six crew members aboard the space station…”

Supercomputing & GPUs

59.    NVIDIA CEO races toward GPU Computing “tipping point” at GTC 2013  http://www.slashgear.com/nvidia-ceo-races-toward-gpu-computing-tipping-point-at-gtc-2013-19274623/  “This week at NVIDIA’s GPU Technology Conference, CEO Jen-Hsun Huang spoke about the ever-growing GPU-utilizing universe, in both the mobile and desktop computer global environments…“This is the Mecca for scientific discovery…Nothing’s more important than the research being done on GPU computers.” Huang ran through massive amounts of GPU-friendly happenings and upcoming events, including bits and pieces like the following…50 Gigapixel Camera being developed at the U of Arizona…GPU-accelerated diamond cutting…CUDA utilization for dating site matching compatibility…Oak Ridge’s Titan Supercomputing using 40 million CUDA processors together for 10 petaflops of power… “If we’re not at the tipping point for GPU Computing, we’re racing at it. There’s a huge spike in GPU-based computers being built for real work – about 20 percent of total Top500 horsepower is GPU…”

60.    Penguin Unveils Ultra-Dense GPU Supercomputing Server Relion 2808GT  http://www.hpcwire.com/hpcwire/2013-03-19/penguin_unveils_ultra-dense_supercomputing_server_relion_2808gt.html  “Penguin Computing, experts in high performance computing (HPC) solutions, today announced the availability of the Relion 2808GT. The Relion 2808GT supports eight GPUs or coprocessors in two rack units and provides a higher compute density than any other server on the market. The system's eight GPUs or coprocessors are supported by a dual socket platform based on Intel's Xeon E5-2600 product family. The Relion 2808GT also features an on board Dual 10GbE BASE-T controller and up to 512GB of ECC memory…Fully configured with eight NVidia K20 GPUs, for example, a single Relion 2808GT can achieve 28TFLOPs of single precision floating point performance…”

Trends & Emerging Tech

61.     Top 12 Technology Trends for 2013  http://www.marketwatch.com/story/top-12-technology-trends-for-2013-highlighted-in-new-technology-outlook-from-sogeti-2013-03-20  “…The SogetiLabs Technology Outlook 2013 has defined 12 top trends showing off what is on the minds of customers, and what is expected to be important for 2013 and beyond…Mobile BYOD…Augmented Reality…Smart TV…Big Data…Cloud Services…Jericho Style Security…Privacy Enhancing Technologies…Quality Assurance Across the Application Lifecycle…Agile Methods…Model Driven Engineering…3D Printing…Internet of Things…”

62.    SXSW 2013: Five tech trends we can't wait to see  http://popwatch.ew.com/2013/03/07/sxsw-2013-preview-interactive/  “Just a brief look at the South By Southwest interactive schedule can boggle even the most experienced festival-goer’s mind. There are panels and conversations and films and workshops and even a daily 7:30 am run (in cowboy costume!) in case you weren’t getting enough exercise dancing your pants off at one of the many parties. But for everyone not going to the festival, which marks 19 years of interactive and film coverage this year, we have started to make sense of some already-emerging trends and news to look out for…3-D printing…Social TV…Twitter’s new integrated video app, Vine…Wearable tech…Indie Games…”

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