Monday, August 27, 2012

Video: Advice to the Self-Employed: Don't Innovate, Replicate [Entrepreneur]



Video Description: "Career coach Marty Nemko offers a word of advice to the unwillingly self-employed entrepreneur: don't innovate, replicate. "Guinea pigs often die," he warns. Instead, Nemko suggests identifying already-successful business plans and following their lead."

Video: How to Build the A-Team for Your Start-Up [Entrepreneur]



Video Description: "Building the right team for your business, an A-Team, is one of the most important, yet difficult elements of a start-up. Our panel discusses some of the unique challenges associated with building an A-Team such as:
What is the most important position to fill?
What personality traits should entrepreneurs looks for?
Where do you find the members of your team?"

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Video: Africa - Into The Wild

iPad Based Telepresence Robot (or Robotic iPad on a Stick)

Double Robotics (doublerobotics.com) has created a product called "Double" that turns an iPad into a telepresence robot for about $2500 (or $1900 if you pre-ordered).
Note: iPad is not included in that price.
It basically looks like an iPad riding around a minimalist version of a Segway scooter that allows someone to remotely interact with people in different environments, such as offices, schools, and more.

I am not sure if this device can be controlled by anything other then another iPad. The device looks cool in concept, but I am not sure how practical in real life it would be. For example, what happens if it hits something that knocks the robot down, how much force would it take to break the iPad?

Video: LEAKED Apple iPhone 5 Promo (Parody)


Saturday, August 18, 2012

TEDxWarwick - David MacKay - How the Laws of Physics Constrain Our Susta...



Video Description: "Department of Climate Change Chief Scientific Advisor, Professor David MacKay FRS, is responsible for ensuring the best science and engineering advice underpins DECC's policy and decision-making.

In addition to his role at DECC, David is Professor of Natural Philosophy in the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge. He studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge and then obtained his PhD in Computation and Neural Systems at the California Institute of Technology. He returned to Cambridge as a Royal Society research fellow at Darwin College. He is internationally known for his research in machine learning, information theory, and communication systems, including the invention of Dasher -- a software interface that enables efficient communication in any language with any muscle. He has taught Physics in Cambridge since 1995 and he is a Fellow of the Royal Society.

David is the author of the critically acclaimed book, Sustainable Energy — Without the Hot Air, which is intended to help people understand the numbers around sustainable energy."

TEDxPeachtree - Ami Klin - Autism: Disruptions in Early Human Social Ada...


Video Description: "World renowned autism authority Dr. Ami Klin takes a deeper look at autism beyond its widely acknowledged genetic origins. He explores how autism results when the evolutionary conserved and developmentally early emerging mechanisms of social adaptation, such as the mutually reinforcing choreography between infant and caregiver, are disrupted."

Daphne Koller: What we're learning from online education



Video Description: "Daphne Koller is enticing top universities to put their most intriguing courses online for free -- not just as a service, but as a way to research how people learn. Each keystroke, comprehension quiz, peer-to-peer forum discussion and self-graded assignment builds an unprecedented pool of data on how knowledge is processed and, most importantly, absorbed."

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Video: Printing a House With a 3D Printer (TEDxOjai - Behrokh Khoshnevis - Contour Crafting: Automated Construction)



Video Description: "Behrokh Khoshnevis is a professor of Industrial & Systems Engineering and is the Director of Manufacturing Engineering Graduate Program at the University of Southern California (USC). He is active in CAD/CAM, robotics and mechatronics related related research projects that include the development of novel Solid Free Form, or Rapid Prototyping, processes (Contour Crafting and SIS), automated construction of civil structures, development of CAD/CAM systems for biomedical applications (e.g., restorative dentistry, rehabilitation engineering, haptics devices for medical applications), autonomous mobile and modular robots for assembly applications in space, and invention of technologies in the field of oil and gas. His research in simulation has aimed at creating intelligent simulation tools that can automatically perform many simulation functions that are conventionally performed by human analysts. His textbook, "Discrete Systems Simulation", and his simulation software EZSIM benefit from some aspects of his research in simulation. He routinely conducts lectures and seminars on invention and technology development."

Thursday, August 09, 2012

Article: New Burst of Energy Could Bring Cold Fusion to Front Burner

One area of research I am watching out of curiosity is how there is more and more interest by the main stream media in LENR (Low Energy Nuclear Reaction), also known as Cold Fusion.  Large organizations like NASA and others are coming forward carefully talking about research they have been performing.  They're all admitting that they're seeing something, but also being clear that they're not exactly sure what they're seeing.

Here is an excerpt from an article from U.S.News & World Report entitled "New Burst of Energy Could Bring Cold Fusion to Front Burner": It's been more than 20 years since esteemed researchers Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann electrified the world with news that they'd observed low-energy nuclear reactions, or LENR, at the atomic level that generated excess heat, holding out the promise of "cold fusion" that did not require the blast furnace of nuclear fission as part of the energy-creating process. (Read the rest of the article)


Then there are also companies like National Instruments (N.I.) is among a few companies actively participating in the research of "Anomalous Heat Effects" (aka  LENR or Cold Fusion) technology.  The video below contains some basic background information about LENR, but also contains sales and marketing buzz from N.I.





More information:

Saturday, August 04, 2012

TEDxMidAtlantic 2011 - Avi Rubin - All Your Devices Can Be Hacked



Video Description: "Avi Rubin is Professor of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University and Technical Director of the JHU Information Security Institute. Avi's primary research area is Computer Security, and his latest research focuses on security for electronic medical records. Avi is credited for bringing to light vulnerabilities in electronic voting machines. In 2006 he published a book on his experiences since this event."

Todd Humphreys: How to fool a GPS | Video on TED.com


Video Description: "Todd Humphreys forecasts the near-future of geolocation when millimeter-accurate GPS "dots" will enable you to find pin-point locations, index-search your physical possessions ... or to track people without their knowledge. And the response to the sinister side of this technology may have unintended consequences of its own."

Wednesday, August 01, 2012

More Quick and Simple Life Hacks - Part 2



Video description: "More Awesome & Easy tips and tricks you may have never thought of. In this video we cover the following topics:
1. Using Alternate Batteries
2. Combat Stinky Shoes
3. Find out how much propane you have
4. Cut through plastic packages quick!
5. Pack like a Pro
6. Youtube Multi-task
7. DIY Air Freshener
8. Revive a pen
9. Open a Jar
10. Fill a bucket, easily"

Ramesh Raskar: Imaging at a trillion frames per second



Video Description: "Ramesh Raskar presents femto-photography, a new type of imaging so fast it visualizes the world one trillion frames per second, so detailed it shows light itself in motion. This technology may someday be used to build cameras that can look "around" corners or see inside the body without X-rays."

Hanson RoboKind - A Human-Faced Robot, Costs: $11,500



In 2007 David Hanson first unveiled the Zeno humanoid robot toy, he hoped to sell it for around $300. The first production versions has a starting price tag at $11,500.