MAKE: Blog: The Desktop Factory - Fab@Home

 

 

Roboticist Hod Lipson wants you to stop shopping and use his portable 3-D printer to make your own stuff. As a child, Hod Lipson lost Lego pieces constantly. Now the 39-year-old director of Cornell University’s Computational Synthesis Lab can build replacement parts on the spot. Completed last year, Lipson’s fabrication machine, called a “fabber,” can print thousands of three-dimensional objects, everything from toy parts to artificial muscles, using dozens of materials, including PlayDoh, peanut butter and silicone, by following simple directions sent to it by a PC. About the size of a microwave, the fabber costs $2,300 to assemble—roughly one tenth the cost of commercial 3-D printers. Lipson and his graduate student Evan Malone recently launched a Web site called Fab@Home (fabathome.org) to teach people how to build their own fabbers and encourage them to share their blueprints online.

Source: MAKE: Blog: The Desktop Factory - Fab@Home

The Sear's Craftsman Compucarve

I think it's spelled Sears without the apostrophe... anyway this machine sounds incredible.  Think a printer that uses wood instead of ink.  So the cartridges are a bit more expensive, and it may get quite loud, but how about having a picture of your son or daughter's favourite cartoon character on a wooden toy box you built for them? 

I wonder if this thing will do tattoos?

Review of the Craftsman Compucarve

The computerized Craftsman Compucarve is one of the most powerful and innovative Craftsman tool products I have seen in an extremely long time. The Craftsman Compucarve is on the very cutting edge of new and innovative technology. This powerful computerized Sear's machine is not just an ordinary router, but the Compucarve is a powerful computerized creative machine for the Craftsman tool person who has everything. The innovative and powerful technology of the  Compucarve is so amazing! You will be totally amazed by the possibilities of the new and innovative product.

With the computerized Craftsman Compucarve and the powerful innovative technology built right in to this product, you can design your very own templates from powerful software provided for your computer by Sears. Another added feature of the new and innovative computerized Craftsman Compucarve is the ability to take a picture of anything, download into the software on your computer, and carve an exact duplicate of the photo into a piece of wood. 

The sky is truly the limit with new powerful Craftsman Compucarve! You could take a picture of old Victorian Woodwork and make a duplicate copy for your own home. The powerful innovative and computerized technology built into this new woodworking product is amazing! I believe the Craftsman Compucarve will change the face of woodworking forever.

Source: The Sear's Craftsman Compucarve

Adam Sandler Makes a Surprise Visit on Price Is Right

Bob Barker shows the classic scene in the movie "Happy Gilmore" and Adam Sandler makes a surprise visit on the show.

Source: Adam Sandler Makes a Surprise Visit on Price Is Right

Microsoft Surface - Behind the Scenes with VIDEO - Touchscreen, Multi Touch Coffee Table - Ballmer - Jeff Han - PlayTable - Popular Mechanics

 

The technical info on Microsoft Coffee Table.  A multi-touch touchscreen interface.  A dual-core computer.  A projection display. 

This would be fun for kids of all ages.

Link to Microsoft Surface - Behind the Scenes with VIDEO - Touchscreen, Multi Touch Coffee Table - Ballmer - Jeff Han - PlayTable - Popular Mechanics

Microsoft Surface - Keep your hands clean

 Microsoft Surface provides a 30" touchscreen in a table-top arcade-style format that is also bluetooth-aware.

Drop $10k and you can get your own.

Link to Microsoft Surface

I guess it's all about the software and the bluetooth-aware stuff, but couldn't you "roll your own" with a cheap Dell & this $700 32" touchscreen?

http://www.nextag.com/Elo-Touchsystems-ELO-32-79496386/prices-html

Panoramic views of streets in major cities - Google Maps

 

This is just nuts... dragging the yellow guy around blue streets brings up a 360 degree view of the area.  What's next - go inside buildings?  Walk around the area? 

Link to 94111 - Google Maps

Scoble and a VC confirm I need my tinfoil hat on...

 

There was a conspiracy theory going on that the CIA runs Facebook for their own covert operations on US citizens.  Actually, it's probably more like corporations will soon run Facebook with their marketing dollars.

Why is Facebook so valueable? Well, I had lunch with a venture capitalist today and he explained to me just how much information and how much time the average Facebook user is putting into the system. It’s going to let Facebook deliver very targeted advertising, he told me. Much more than many more popular sites. Look at Digg, for instance, Can you figure anything out about the users of Digg? No. So, how will you send targeted advertising to them?

Source: Scobleizer

Just read a comment thread and you will figure out stuff about Digg users.

Like allthewhile, who probably drives a Hummer and eats hamburgers and steak for breakfast.

Omg now the CIA knows I like the counting crows and voted republican. HOLY CRAP!

Not sure why you would want to target your product to the girl I went to school with in 2nd grade anyway...

Microsoft and Facebook Announce Partnership

 

Microsoft and Facebook have announced a partnership deal. This comes right after Facebook opened up its API to third party developers. The Facebook platform is already available in the new mashup tool Popfly that Microsoft announced a week back. Microsoft has also released some walkthrough videos and a Developer Toolkit for Facebook on its site. Dan Fernandez and Sean Alexander have a rundown on what has been announced so far.

Source: Microsoft and Facebook Announce Partnership

Hurry up and approve my Popfly request Microsoft!

Here's some of the features that Facebook will integrate with... can you say Poke Me to Play Halo?

• Popfly Facebook Block: Available immediately,
  we’ve added the Facebook block which prodices access to Facebook data
  including the User Profile, Friends, Photos, Photo Albums, and Events.
• Leverage Existing Blocks:
  You can build Facebook applications using Popfly blocks like Flickr,
  Digg, Soapbox, Twitter, Windows Live, Xbox Live, and Virtual Earth.
• Silverlight Support:
  Another big win here is Facebook has native support for Easily build
  next generation applications using Silverlight. With 24 million users
  and 40 billion page views a month, this is a huge, huge win for getting
  native Silverlight support on Facebook
• Visual Studio Support: The Facebook Developer Toolkit enables developers to build applications for Windows, Web, or Microsoft Office.
• Distribution of the Facebook Developer Toolkit.
  The FDT was developed by Microsoft to wrap the Facebook API into a
  managed component. Through this component, developers now will be able
  to drag ‘n drop a Facebook component onto the component tray in Visual
  C# Express , Visual Basic Express and Visual Web Developer (for both
  Whidbey and Orcas). Users will be provided all the source code, sample
  applications including a WPF app and detail documentation.

• Co-branded Landing Page
  on the Facebook developer website. At this site, visitors will be able
  to see Microsoft Visual Studio Express and Microsoft Popfly links.
  Additionally, a series of new pages were developed called Showcase on the Visual Studio Express site.

Now this sounds like fun.  Somebody get a back end database working with this stuff...

Actually, the tinfoil-hat-wearing neophyte voice in me is saying DELETE YOUR FACEBOOK PROFILE NOW!  This could open up a can of whup-ass on you when it comes to marketers and spammers parsing friend lists for leads and marking up graffiti walls.   The top app installed this week was iLike - how about iDentityTheft next?

Hopefully the good results will outweigh the bad.

This should be a big driver for Silverlight adoption AND Facebook adoption - not to mention MS lets you host the application for free with 4GB of space.

Picture all of the web space providers cringing at the thought... well, probably not yet.

MySpace v. Facebook: “It’s Not A Decision. It’s an IQ Test”

How about 400,000 registered customers on your second day of business.  Holy crap! What would you do? Since Facebook's largest customer base is from my home region of Toronto, it makes for an interesting way to get local eyeballs.

Facebook’s timing is perfect. They just released an API that gives third party developers deep access to Facebook functionality and it’s 20 million users. Not only can these third party startups get a widget placed on people’s Facebook profiles, but they can also get viral distribution through users’ news feeds and access core Facebook features. Using the tools that Facebook made available, developers could build new versions of some of Facebook’s own applications, like Facebook Photos. Users can then remove those default applications and add the new ones. Like Microsoft with Windows, Facebook is now competing with application developers on its own platform.

This isn’t all just talk, either. The most popular third party application, iLike, has nearly 400,000 users just a couple of days after launching and 10x what they had just last Friday. That means nearly 5% of Facebook’s users have now included it on their profile.

Source: MySpace v. Facebook: “It’s Not A Decision. It’s an IQ Test”

Another viral application is Silverlight.  Microsoft recently launched 4GB worth of free disk space for Silverlight apps that are zipped up.  I just setup my Silverlight Blog and started trying out Microsoft Expression and Microsoft Blend again, after a bit of a break.  I'm no graphic designer, but since you can use .net in the background I'm going to have to brush up on my Photoshop skills again.

Let's see if I can make both of these pieces play together.

Wavesmash's blog and French TV

To be honest, I never really got into my Live Spaces blog over at Microsoft.  Yes, it has a better interface for editing posts.  It has _cool social networking_ features.  I can put up widgets and wadgets showing stuff like my sister's art work and feeds I read.

Unfortunately Blogger came first, and when you're first it's pretty easy to get to the top.  When you're second, you're already at the bottom.

I have a couple other blog sites out there that will eventually get mashed into www.wavesmash.com mostly for my own tracking purposes, and I will probably install some custom blogging software, however until then this is where the posts stay.

One problem with having multiple blogs is that people are posting on my Spaces blog and I'm not seeing the comments.  Like this one about ORB TV.

Ted Shelton

BUT -- we just announced today that it is available WORLDWIDE -- not US only... and introduced our first foreign language edition, French, at http://mon.orb.com You can stream video, audio, and photos using Orb anywhere in the world. The only thing we have to add on a country by country basis is TV listings and that is coming... best, Ted Shelton (Orb)

April 06 12:21 AM
(http://tedshelton.blogspot.com)

Source: Wavesmash's blog

I like marketers who comment personally on my blog with the features that my posting saw as a deficiency.  It's really neat that they take the time to do this and try and correct me when I'm wrong or my posting is no longer accurate, even though chances are nobody but the marketer and I saw the posting anyway.  Now that is targeted advertising!

But what's with the comment on French, c'ist vous plait?  Just because English & French are the official languages of Canada, do you think I watch French TV, or can even remember how to properly spell c'est vous plait? (Google comes up with Cyst Vous Plait, which sounds like some sort of disease)

Mon dieu!

Of course, one of my French-Canadian friends felt the same way when I asked him what part of Quebec he was from.  He would launch a tirade at me on how there are over 50,000 French-Canadians in Toronto, many of them who were actually born there.  I am still not sure if he was actually born in Toronto, or right about the number, though it was fun hearing him go off every time I asked him.

According to Expat-Today.com...

More than 100,000 French people are installed in Canada. Each year about 3500 French people choose to go and live there, and more particularly in the province of Quebec.

I am sure that we installed many more people from the US, South America and Asia than France last year. 

One thing I noticed with Orb was the download experience - why do you need to get an executible for the particular country you are in?  How come you can't just pick the country?  This better not be another English/French thing.  What if I travel between countries... which one do I get?  Plus, when I download my English-Canadian executable, the first message after I login is Let's get your TV listings - Please type your ZIP code.  Zut alors!  We are in Canada, eh?  Canadian's have a thing called the Postal system, which uses special "Postal Codes" to track where to ship packages, and how to set your TV guide.

Oh well, I can still translate US to Canada and figure out what the heck they are looking for and give the marketers my cable provider information and a fake postal code near me.

The other thing I noticed was that it asked me to share my documents - I thought I was streaming live TV for free here?

Oh... I am streaming live (and recorded) TV for free.... and music, and webcams, and my documents, and photos, and some other stuff, but I still need to subscribe to a cable or satellite provider if I really want live TV, or use my good ol' rabbit ears.

- Image from www.icanhascheezburger.com

I guess I could use JumpTV instead if I learned another language besides English.  Or I could search www.Digg.com for television and

order the results by # of diggs. 

Apologies for my English-Canadian tirade, it was only meant to be humorous and not slagging Ted's comments, French-Canadians, Orb or its technology.

Check out www.Orb.com as it is still really incredible and getting better all the time, though why can't I right-click on the Orb taskbar icon?  I can right-click on every other icon.  I'm confused!

Ted's blog has some really interesting posts about marketers interacting with the blogging community. 

Awaiting Ted's response on my Blogger blog... and thanks for the Canadian TV program guide :) 

Buying a house in Toronto? Watch for grow-ops...

 A Google maps smoke-up mashup.

Marijuana grow operations

A map of grow operations discovered in Toronto in 2006 (year-to-date, as of December).

Source: Toronto Star Google Maps

You can feel the cottony softness...

why run out and buy an expensive dress that you'll only wear once (fingers crossed), when you can just TP yourself instead? Sit and think on it...

Source: Toilet Paper Wedding Gowns | gigglesugar - Funny Videos & Humor.

Toilet Paper Bouquet...$1.25

Toilet Paper Wedding dress....$8.00

Wedding photos of your dog shredding your TP dress... priceless.

LolCat Builder » Home

Things just got interesting...LOL!

 

These image macros have spread like wildfire.  Since January 11, 2007, icanhascheezburger has been posting these hilarious pictures, (called image macros because of the overlay lettering) terming them lolcats.

Now you can build your own.

Link to LolCat Builder » Home

For some inspiration:

http://icanhascheezburger.com/2007/05/08/a-special-in-depth-analysis-by-david-mcraney-l337-katz0rz/#more-1347

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/02/08/massive_cache_of_kit.html

http://www.zerosummind.com/

http://boingboing.net/2007/05/16/where_lolcats_come_f.html

http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=2823158&thread_type=voteresults&ok=1

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/05/24/lolpresidents_photos.html

The Path to Least Resistance

 When I was young, the walk to the bus stop would inevitably lead through a neighbour's front yard, via  a 1-foot trench in their lawn where everyone else walked.  I think they tried to sod it a few times and gave up.

Rather than letting this happen, they could have done a few things to resolve this.

1. Ask the city to move the bus stop. (hundreds of hours and probably a petition involved.)

2. Brick the trench and create a walkway.

3. Put a sign up to keep off the grass.

4. Build a fence.

5. Chain a guard dog to the front yard.

I will have to see what they ended up doing next time I drive by there.  My guess is the trench is still there or they bricked it over, since that's the path to least resistance for them (no confrontation and little effort)

Here's an article on this theory.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_of_least_resistance

And a story from a blogger I read regularly that got me thinking about this:

That reminds me of a story I heard in business school 40 years ago. A developer of a new campus of buildings purposefully did not do any landscaping or paved walkways for a couple months until well after the residents had moved in. Then he simply paved the areas where the people had walked, and he landscaped appropriately. I have never forgotten that.

When you build something, it’s always for the user. It’s never about the builder.

Source: Bill Cara: Cara’s Daily Commentary, Thurs., May 24, 2007, 8:55 AM

Walking through High Park last night with my dog, I could see this in action.  Pathways from all of the bikers, walkers, dogs, and runners go off in various directions, but you would seldom see new paths, unless a maintenance fence was put up. 

Of course the path to least resistance is also procrastination, so I had better get back to work...

A quaint motel in Toronto for your summer vacation

Centrally located is about all this hotel seems to have going for it.   A fun place to spend your summer vacation.  Oddly enough it is #89 of 96 hotels... that means there's 7 more worse than this one! (no wait, the rest of them aren't rated!)

This place is one of the worst place to stay on earth. I may be exaterating, but it may be true. This place is not even a motel. It's a drug addict and prostitude's home. In every floor there is only...

This Place is Nasty the worst place on the face of the earth I would rather sleep in a big steamy pile of cow dung there is rats all over the place and only three common washrooms which look like theve...

If there was a rating below "one yellow dot", I would have clicked on it. This so-caleld motel is very very deceiving. The sad part is there is a huge billboard overlooking the inside of the Toronto Bus...

Absolutely disgusting. Numbers on the door are written with pen...The lamp inside the room uses a RED BULB. Why? I just simply cannot answer.....and those are just the minor (funny) things!

Source: The Bay Street Motel, Toronto - 17 Motel Reviews - TripAdvisor

Kevin Ham, the $300 million master of Web domains - June 1, 2007

Looking into the future brings us this article... 

Given Ham's reach on the Web -- his sites receive 30 million unique visitors a month -- it's remarkable that so few people know about him. Even in the clubby world of domainers, he's a mystery man. Until now Ham has never talked publicly about his business. You won't find his name on any domain registration, nor will you see it on the patent application for the Cameroon trick.

Source: Kevin Ham, the $300 million master of Web domains - June 1, 2007

Polar Race 2007 Results

 The Polar Race is one of the most extreme races in the world.  One of the people I went to see at (of all things) Donald Trump's real estate seminar, managed to finish it this year.

http://raymondaaron.wordpress.com/

 

2,000 people have climbed Everest.

400 people have been to Outer Space.

160 people have rowed the Atlantic Ocean in a row boat.

But, fewer than 100 people have ever reached a Pole on their own efforts (no dogs, no snowmobiles, no airplanes, etc.).

spreeder.com - online speed reading application

Check out spreeder.com to see how many words per minute you can read. 

Spreeding 1095 words @ 700 wpm

Source: spreeder.com - online speed reading application

wavesmash on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

 

wavesmash

Source: wavesmash on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

DIY: Mod a $5 flashlight into a $95 light - Lifehacker

Kryptonite rules! 

Reader Kip modded a cheap $5 throwaway flashlight into a blinding torch that's brighter than a $95 fancy pants flashlight. Hit the play button to see how

Source: DIY: Mod a $5 flashlight into a $95 light - Lifehacker