New software dramatically simplifies addition of objects to photos: “”
December 14, 2011
December 1, 2011
Maker-Bot
3d printers just keep getting better and better.
Normally you can see the successive print layers that the extruder head lays down (an artifact of the “top-down” technique that current 3d printers use). Much work has gone into making the layering as accurate and smooth as possible. I think they’ve done a rather nice job of it:
That’s a closeup of a 3d printed shot glass with a human hair in the foreground. Not a bad finish on the “glass”, no?
Just passed the $800 mark on the MakerBot ING account. Christmas marks the halfway point (wow, time flies when you’re saving for tech). Next Christmas is the ETA for Timberline Custom Woodworking (my sole prop WW business) to buy that MakerBot. Fifty dollars at a time and you can buy anything. 
November 23, 2011
November 10, 2011
Early Adopters
“Being an early adopter isn’t just about being first; it’s about being an active participant in technological progress. Those early purchases help jump-start manufacturing. And feedback from early adopters helps engineers get the bugs out before products go mainstream. It’s been that way for radios, TVs, computers and pretty much every other piece of technology. Without early adopters, we’d wait longer—perhaps much longer—for new technologies to arrive.”
October 28, 2011
October 19, 2011
October 13, 2011
The Future of 3D Printing
September 30, 2011
September 7, 2011
World’s Brightest Laser
Just how powerful is it? Let’s put it this way, the website warns users not to point it at aircraft or satellites.
The Long Now
Introduction – 10,000 Year Clock – The Long Now: “”
In contrast to the human-scale of the prototype, the Clock in the mountain will be monumental, almost architectural in scale. It will be roughly 200 feet tall. Located under a remote limestone mountain near Van Horn, Texas, it will require a day’s hike to reach its interior gears. Just reaching the entrance tunnel situated 1500 feet above the high scrub desert will leave some visitors out of breath, nicked by thorns, and wondering what they got themselves into.
To see the Clock you need to start at dawn, like any pilgrimage. Once you arrive at its hidden entrance in an opening in the rock face, you will find a jade door rimmed in stainless steel, and then a second steel door beyond it. These act as a kind of crude airlock, keeping out dust and wild animals. You rotate its round handles to let yourself in, and then seal the doors behind you. It is totally black. You head into the darkness of a tunnel a few hundred feet long. At the end there’s the mildest hint of light on the floor. You look up. There is a tiny dot of light far away, at the top of top of a 500 foot long vertical tunnel about 12 feet in diameter. There is stuff hanging in the shaft….
…Behind the main chamber’s dials the stairs continue up to the outside summit of the mountain. The shaft above Clock continues to the surface, where its opening to the daylight is capped with a cupola of sapphire glass. This is the only part of the clock visible from outside, on the mountain peak. In this outdoor cupola sits the thermal-difference device to power the timekeeping, and also a solar synchronizer. Every sunny noon, a prism directs sunlight down the shaft and slightly heats up this ingenious mechanical device. That synchronizing signal is transmitted by rods further down to the Clock’s innards, where the imperceptible variations in the length of the day as the earth wobbles on its axis will be compensated so that the Clock can keep its noon on true solar noon. In that way the Clock is self-adjusting, and keeps good time over the centuries.
The Clock of the Long Now is currently being built inside a mountain in West Texas. I really, really would like to visit it when it’s done. It’s allowed by the landowner (Jeff Bezos), as long as you get a reservation and can make the daylong hike into the wilderness.
Who’s with me?
August 24, 2011
Ten Million More Reasons
Maker-Bot Maker Industries just received 10 million dollars in Angel investment! This bodes very well for future cool Maker-Bots.
August 15, 2011
Apple Idea
Dear Apple, here’s an idea: how about putting those nifty 3g chips that are in your iPhone and iPads, the ones that let users pay AT&T or Verizon a monthly fee for internet access, into your laptops? It’s hard on us laptop owners out here. Instead of lurking outside of Starbucks or Schlotzky’s restaurants for free wifi, many of us would be happy to pay $25 for a month of internet access (with the 5gb limit). You already let iPad users do this exact same thing. How about throwing laptop users some love?
It would be a great way to get some more ongoing revenue from your mobile users. Heck, a monthly $25 charge when traveling would be WAY cheaper than all the Starbucks that we’ve already bought. And probably better for us than all that caffeine.
Thanks.
July 16, 2011
July 14, 2011
This is Huge
Man gets new trachea via his own stem cells. A few years ago when the finished the human genome project and started figuring out stem cell therapies the media was alight with the news that in not long we would start to see near-miraculous medical advances as a result of these breakthroughs. Then we all sort of forgot about them and just went on with our lives, assuming that the rate of medical advances would probably be about what it was in the past. Well, friends, that’s wrong, and we’re starting to see the first trickles of what is going to be a pretty big wave of medical breakthroughs. After this trachea treatment, they’ll start replacing bladders with a new one grown from your own stem cells. Whoops, they can already do that, too.
The next therapy that just got approved is in using stem cells to reverse or cure blindness. Two patients just got accepted into the first human trial.
We’re not going to recognize the face of medicine in ten years. Then things really take off. The near future is a very interesting place.
July 10, 2011
July 9, 2011
July 8, 2011
July 6, 2011
It’s Starting
IBM Watson to replace salespeople and cold-calling telemarketers? This is in line with Matt’s conjecture that robots will take over most service jobs in the coming years. (What was it Matt, 20 years?)