Monthly Archives: December 2013

Let Me Upgrade You

Quick! What’s the most irritating thing you experience on a daily basis?

If you answered “putting the USB cord in upside down and having to turn it over in order to attach my expensive tiny piece of technology to my larger expensive piece of technology,” congratulations, you have very few problems. However, the good people who make your expensive technological miracles are about to solve your annoyance, so you can get back to your monocle and top hat wearing.

Monocle-man_545

The new connector is called the Type-C and is scheduled for finalization during 2014. It is purported to be the size of a micro-USB plug and will support a variety of new features, including scalable power charging and data rates nearing 10 Gbit/s, as well as always being right-side-up.

Says Brad Saunders, USB 3.0 Promoter Group Chairman: “While USB technology is well established as the favored choice for connecting and powering devices, we recognize the need to develop a new connector to meet evolving design trends in terms of size and usability.” This unfortunately means it will not mate with existing USB ports and cables, but  “The new Type-C connector will fit well with the market’s direction and affords an opportunity to lay a foundation for future versions of USB.”

lightning_usb_cable1

As of now, pictures of the new cable have not been released, but may be similar to Apple’s Lightening Connector, which is reversible.

What Sparks Our Fire: Innovation solving interface issues with the technology we use on a daily basis, leaving us more time to wax our mustaches and go to the opera.

Is this a problem you believe needs to be solved at the expense of older USB models?

You May Never Leave Your House Again

Do you want to know if anyone is sick around you? Sickweather is an app that aggregates social media posts, Apple iOS geofencing, and notification technologies to inform you of any reports of sickness in your area. This is a tool for use in public places, such as transportation hubs, schools, and workplaces. If you enter an area where multiple people have complained of a medical issue, the app will notify you.

Screen-Shot-2013-11-27-at-11.41.48-AM

The app searches social networks for public posts about actual sickness, and compiles them based on location and the 23 different symptoms and complaints that the app recognizes. This allows the user to avoid these areas and take preventative measures to keep from getting sick themselves. This app can also help trace the spread of a sickness across a large area.

Screen-Shot-2013-11-27-at-11.41.56-AM

“We have no agenda as to what people should do once they get notifications, but if our alerts at least prompt someone to wash their hands a little more often, I think that will have a profound impact on the spread of illness,” app creator Graham Dodge says.

What Sparks Our Fire: Maintaining the health of our communities and slowing the spread of disease through the use of Social Media.

Would you want to know when someone is sick around you?

Don’t Go into the Reactor Without a Sweater

ku-xlarge

Cold fusion is something akin to Star Trek in terms of how achievable it is. Theoretically, the technology could create energy at an unlimited rate for minuscule costs, win an incredibly low rate of waste production. However, even with decades of research and millions of dollars in grant money, no one has successfully created a cold fusion generator. However, an Italian researcher claims to have done precisely that.

Andrea Rossi claims to have developed a cold fusion reactor he calls an E-Cat, or Energy Catalyzer, which you can own for the low, low price of $1.5 million! He claims  this Catalyzer can produce energy at approximately $1 per MW, which is about 1% of the energy costs of coal. The process involves creating low-energy nuclear reactions while infusing hydrogen into nickel to create copper and a great amount of heat. So, easy stuff.

It’s worth noting that Rossi, a scientific researcher, has not published any papers or research for peer review, and intends to begin selling these generators next year at the above-stated price. Therefore, it’s important to remember that pipe dreams are so often built on something that is almost too good to be true. But if you’re in the market, Canopy has a bridge we’d like to sell you.

What Sparks Our Fire: Cold fusion is the technology of the future, but only if it actually works.

Do you trust  this generator works, or do you remain skeptical?

Improving Facebook

facebook_2_1

I know, I know. They said it couldn’t be done. Mark Zuckerberg hit upon a vein of genius when he created Facebook, and the pure, unadulterated social network has remained, golden and unchanged, for years.

Or at least that’s what the people currently posting on the website seem to want. It seems  with every interface change millions of irate users take to their statuses to crow how they “hate the Timeline” or that “the chats were so much better without knowing whether or not the person you’re chatting with is on a desktop or a mobile device.” And yet, somehow, they keep using the website. But now Facebook has added a feature that allows you to save posts for later, and it may well be that this change is something Facebook purists won’t mind.

159539865

Zuckerberg considers his website to be a “social newspaper”, where you often will come across posted articles that are not always recent, but almost always are interesting. If, in your scrolling, you come across an interesting post from a friend, but you don’t have the time to read it just then, you can click a button that saves the link, picture, or other story to a list for later. This allows you to peruse it at your leisure, and makes the website even more like a newspaper.

The feature is still rolling out to all users, and hopefully won’t result in more status-fury.

What Sparks Our Fire: Facebook saw potential for improvement, to initiative to address a need, and created a solution. That’s an important part of a successful company.

What do you think needs improvement on Facebook?

What Is the Fourth Dimension?

IMG_0727_1

Some people say it’s the Twilight Zone. Others say it’s a realm beyond the pale of human understanding. The military says it can print it.

3D printing has garnered a great deal of attention in the past year, from incredible applications of technology to the frankly overwrought fear of 3D printed guns. The military in particular has seen possibilities for this tech, and is researching placing these printers on Navy ships for the purposes of printing spare parts and ammunition. The issue holding them back is the “conundrum of assembly”. You can print all the parts in the world, but you still need to put them together.

Now, consider the possibility of printing a series of parts, and then simply watching as they assemble themselves. That’s what researchers consider 4D printing, and it’s a brave new world of creative possibilities that we won’t experience until we’re old and gray. Full applications of this tech are decades down the road, but the implications of this tech are very interesting. According to the recipients of a $855,000 grant from the Army, any amount of tech can be created, such as active camouflage textiles, shelters that set themselves up when they get wet, and many more.

What Sparks Our Fire: Seeing the future possibilities of technology in their nascent stage right here.

What would you like to see 4D printed in the future?