TREND GUARDIAN: The Most Inspiring and Innovative Videos

Tactus Technologies: Microfluidic Driven Morphing Touchscreens

2013-05-20T08:49:00.001-07:00

Why settle for flat? The next generation of user interfaces is here: a combination of current interfaces and haptics using microfluidics. Tactus Technology has created a new keyboard made of a special fluid-filled layer baked on the surface of any device to provide users a physical keyboard and disappear when not needed.

Based on microfluidics, when an application is opened, a special fluid fills and triggers the buttons, allowing users to push, type or rest their fingers as they would with any physical keyboard. It can be integrated into today's touchscreen-based devices by simply replacing the front layer of the display, known as "cover glass". The dynamic Tactile Layer is the same thickness as the layer it replaces and requires no change to the underlying display or touch sensor. The company has partnered with touch panel experts at Synaptics to create its first device (a 7-inch Android-powered tablet), that it plans to market to manufacturers and carriers at the end of June.
We also recommend watching: "Point of Care: HIV Testing In Developing Nations" and "PaperTab: Tablets Thin and Flexible as Paper".

Tactus Technology is a venture-backed company headquartered in Fremont, California. Tactus was founded in 2008 to develop the next generation of touch interface.

Tactus Technologies: Microfluidic Driven Morphing Touchscreens

NeoLucida: $30 Optical Tool to Draw Like Old Masters

2013-05-18T09:50:00.000-07:00

Do you think that spectacular art is reserved only for the creative geniuses? This might be partly true, but technology can always be your best friend, allowing you to become like the masters. When Golan Levin, an interaction designer and a tech performance artist, and Pablo Garcia, an art professor at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago, encountered the 19th-century camera lucida, they set out to create a modern version.

A camera lucida is a simple artifact. Composed of a small prism and an adjusting pole for stabilization, the mirror reflects the image of the subject onto the paper, allowing the user to impose their hand and the image together and thus trace a more accurate drawing. However, lucidas are only available as collectibles, costing more than $300. Priced at $30, the NeoLucida is affordable for college students and amateur artists. It is funded Kickstarter, raising about $400,000, far beyond its goal of $15,000, and since launching the product, they have run short of the initial 2,500 units available to the public. This is a great artifact that could accelerate all sorts of creative endeavors, from animators, filmmakers, to diagram-mappers.
We also recommend watching: "Pen Project: The Pen that Might Save the World" and "Adobe Project Mighty: Reinventing the Pen".

Pablo Garcia is Assistant Professor of Contemporary Practices at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Golan Levin is Associate Professor of Computation Arts at Carnegie Mellon University, where he also directs the Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry.

NeoLucida: $30 Optical Tool to Draw Like Old Masters

Melon: A Headband To Measure Your Mental Focus

2013-05-16T11:41:00.001-07:00

How do you know when you are in focus? Your day will be much more productive if you do. Melon is a stylish EEG headband with an elegant app; a quantified-self product for our brain.

The Kickstarter headband registers brain activity using an EEG sensor, filters the data using algorithms, and sends them to an app that visualizes the user’s focus as a fluid, flowing line.

The app tracks the user's real-time focus, letting users know how to regulate their activity. After each session, more in-depth data is provided to give user insight and feedback. Tips are given at moments when concentration wanes (suggestions such as taking deep breaths or going for a walk), and registers how those suggestions affect mental balance. This concept shows how today's quantified-self products have a challenge to overcome: quantification is useless if you don't guide users to tune their behaviors into actual improvement.
We also recommend watching: "Muse: The Headband that Reads Your Brain Waves" and "The Human Brain Project: Building the Brain from the Ground Up".

Melon was founded by Arye Barnehama and Laura Michelle Berman, former cognitive science students at Pomona in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but recently relocated to Los Angeles.

Melon: A Headband To Measure Your Mental Focus

Eidos: Students Design Augmented Perception Device

2013-05-16T10:32:00.001-07:00

Google Glass gives you phone capabilities in your eye, but can it augment your perceptions? A team of students at the Royal College of Art in London created Eidos, which seeks to alter human perception.

Eidos let users tune into specific perceptions and scale their magnitude to the exclusion of other stimuli. Bouckley and his co-designers--Millie Clive-Smith, Mi Eun Kim, and Yuta Sugawara, had 12 weeks of intense work: from development and engineering phases, user testing rounds, numerous design iterations, to manufacturing.

They currently have two designs for sight and hearing. The visor wraps around the eyes and temples and contains a camera that feeds live footage to an external processor. Applying special effects to visuals in real-time, it can show patterns or movements from action objects.
For hearing, a mask covers the user’s ears and mouth, embedded with a multidirectional microphone to record sounds. The audio passes through a processor, which filter the background noise, allowing the user to isolate sounds directionally.
We also recommend watching: "Google Glass: Rapid Prototyping in One Day, with Chopsticks" and "Oculus: The Next Era of Virtual Reality Gaming".

The Royal College of Art is a public research university specialising in art and design located in London, United Kingdom. It is a wholly postgraduate institution offering Master of Arts (M.A.),Master of Philosophy (M.Phil.) and Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.). It was founded in 1837 and has had university status since 1967.

Eidos: Students Design Augmented Perception Device

Adobe Project Mighty: Reinventing the Pen

2013-05-15T11:45:00.001-07:00

What happened to the Adobe Creative Suite? While the company decided to move it to the cloud, it had a new strategy under its sleeve: hardware. Project Mighty, an aluminum pen that can replace your finger on the iPad screen.

Designed by Ammunition (and engineered by Mindtribe), the pen is connected to the cloud, constantly accessing to the digital web and information. You can use Project Mighty to draw an image on your iPad screen, and continue drawing on your iPhone screen without interruptions, constantly syncing with your projects in the cloud. The pen has a pressure-sensitive tip, a button to reveal onscreen menus and a glowing tip to convey modal information (to designate if you’re drawing with any particular settings). It comes with a ruler called Napoleon; with 6 shapes appearing on the surface, a plastic back slides easily on a glass touch screen, and a few capacitive points convey its position to software. Increasingly we are seeing the combination of software and hardware as a killer product. Smart move, Adobe.
We also recommend watching: "3Doodler: 3D Printing Pen for Sculptures in Midair" and "zSpace: 3-D Holographic Display for CAD Modeling".

Adobe Systems Incorporated is an American multinational computer software company headquartered in San Jose, California, United States. The company has historically focused upon the creation of multimedia and creativity software products, with a more-recent foray towards rich Internet application software development.

Adobe Project Mighty: Reinventing the Pen

Romo: An iPhone with Personality to Teach Kids Programming

2013-05-15T08:51:00.003-07:00

Your phone is about to be your best buddy and teacher. Las Vegas-based startup Romotive, created Romo, a robot that uses an iPhone as his brain to teach kids programming.

Romo was designed to provide an easy to program interface that uses if-then dependencies to teach kids how to program.
At $149, (smartphone not included), they hope Romo will become a child's first personal robot. The long term vision is that this simple programing model will inspire a new, younger generation of engineers and programmers to solve the world’s most pressing technical problems.
We also recommend watching: "Valve: Learn Science While Playing Video Games" and "Yale Social Robotics Lab: Designing Robot Friends".

Romotive is a venture bake startup building robot kits based in Las Vegas, Nevada. They are backed by Sequoia Capital, Stanford University, Techstars, Tony Hsieh of Zappos, and others.

Romo: An iPhone with Personality to Teach Kids Programming

Anar Foundation: A Message Only for Children

2013-05-14T13:20:00.006-07:00

What happens when the innocent and helpless get abused? Technology is here to help. The ANAR Foundation has created a clever ad campaign that uses lentricular printing to allow only kids to look at a given message, giving them a chance to call for help if they are abused.

Using lenticular printing, a technology also used in lenticular lenses for 3D displays, they produced printed images on street signs creating an illusion of depth, giving the ad the ability to display different images and messages if viewed from different angles.

Their poster contains a secret message for people with different heights. They designed the image for the average height of a 10 years old kid, and planted a message only visible at that height. So even if a kid is accompanied by a potential aggressor, he can seek help by watching this ad. This is another example of how technology can be used for advertising and the common good.
We also recommend watching: "Pathways to Housing: Using Innovation to Help the Homeless" and "Art and Copy Trailer: Creativity Can Solve Anything".

ANAR Foundation is a Spanish organization which helps kids in risk. They have a hot line for minors at risk can get aid and consultation (116 111).

Anar Foundation: A Message Only for Children

Pavegen: Generating Electricity with Marathons

2013-05-14T12:10:00.001-07:00

If you feel that Marathons are a great way to achieve personal fitness challenges, here is another incentive: do it to generate and donate electricity. At a marathon in Paris, Pavegen installed 176 rubber panels at the finish line, converting runners’ steps into energy.

Its product is an electricity generating tile made from recycled car tires: 1 Pavegen step generates up to 8 watts per second. Sponsored by Schneider Electric, they held a contest on Facebook, and promised that they will donate to Habitat for Humanity if marathoners generated over 7 kilowatt-hours of energy. With more than 50,000 runners, they generated about 2/3 of the goal: 4.7 kilowatt-hours- enough to power a Nissan Leaf to drive 15 miles, according to the company. This model is probably not sustainable for a profitable product, but it serves to show the public about the potential of this technology.
We also recommend watching: "Club4Climate: A Sustainable Dance Floor" and "Solar Roadways: Replace Asphalt Roads with Solar Panels".

Pavegen Systems is a technology company that has developed paving slabs to convert energy from people's footsteps into electrical power. The slabs are installed at the London 2012 Olympic Games at West Ham tube station which cost about $200 currently.

Pavegen: Generating Electricity with Marathons

Baker Stove: Simple Stove for Safer Cooking

2013-05-14T10:57:00.003-07:00

Something as simple as cooking can be life hazardous. Top Third Ventures is building the Baker stove and raising funding through Indiegogo; which produces 3 times the thermal output, reducing the fuel required for the same amount of cooking by two-thirds.

Up to 2.8 billion people still prepare food on open pits, or ancient stoves, burning coal, wood, dung, or biomass. Aside from the inefficiency in energy lost as heat, they run into hazards of indoor carbon dioxide intoxication, and dangers such as sexual assault associated with women having to fetch for wood at night.

The stove was designed in Sweden with a simple design achieving maximum efficiency with cheap metals and ventilation, based on 30-year technology. The real innovation comes in its unique business model when the 2 founders, Lucas Belenky and Björn Hammar, decided to use the international carbon market. The financing comes when they apply to Clean Development Mechanism, a carbon offset program run by the United Nations. Each ton of CO2 the stoves take out of the atmosphere (they save about 2.5 tons a year) translates to a value on the international carbon market: currently at ~$7 a ton, or more. Depending on this rate, the stove will cost between $25 and $29.

Their company, Top Third Ventures, show potential customers prototypes by motorbikes, and lets them know that they will get one if they show up at their store for education on how to use the product. They will then capture data on every customer using a mobile app. After Kenya, they plan to expand to Tanzania, Uganda and Ethiopia.
We also recommend watching: "Off.Grid:Electric: Powering 10 Million In 10 Years" and "GravityLight: The $5 LED Lamp Powered By Sand And Gravity"

Top Third Ventures is a company in Nairobi, Kenya that specializes in the design, production, and sale of efficient stoves. They prioritize in helping low-income households in developing countries, with the aim of improving their customers' quality of life while decreasing their greenhouse gas emissions.

Baker Stove: Simple Stove for Safer Cooking

IBM: The World's Smallest Movie, Made with Atoms

2013-04-30T23:40:00.000-07:00

What is the smallest movie ever made? Literally, a movie made of atoms. Scientists at the IBM Research’s Almaden Research Center in Northern California, used a scanning tunneling microscope as their animation tool to build a movie, with pixels as individual atoms.

The Almaden researchers used a subminiature magnet to flip bits on and off to create frames of animation. For about 10 18-hour workdays, the team of 4 people created the cartoon, with storytelling assistance from an animation company called 1st Ave. Machine. Using the microscope to position individual atoms, they had a total of about 10,000 atoms’ worth of resolution to work with, taking them up to 242 frames of action. This was a great project to excite kids about science and technology.
We also recommend watching: "The 'Perfect' Single Atom Transistor" and "IBM Creates Nano-sized 3D Map of Earth in Less Than 3 Minutes".

International Business Machines (IBM) is an American multinational technology and consulting firm headquartered in Armonk, New York. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas ranging from mainframe computers to nanotechnology.

IBM: The World's Smallest Movie, Made with Atoms

Lego: The Story

2013-04-30T23:20:00.000-07:00

Ever wondered how lovely Lego toys were started? 80 years ago, Ole Kirk Kristiansen started a carpentry business in Billund, Denmark that would eventually turn into what will become Lego.

This animated video describes the life of Danish toymaker Ole Kirk Christiansen, who created Lego company in 1932, and his son Godtfred, Lego's second owner, from the perspective of current owner Kjeld, the founder's grandson. Among incredible struggles and perseverance, Kield recounts Lego's transition from high quality wood toys to plastic, the evolution of the signature interlocking brick and rebuilding after two burned-down factories. Watch this video if you want to learn how a great company is formed throughout the years.
We also recommend watching: "Ayah Bdeir: Start Inventing with Electronic Building Blocks" and "GoldieBlox: Inspiring Young Girls Toward Engineering".

Lego is a popular line of construction toys manufactured by The Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. The company's flagship product, Lego, consists of colourful interlocking plastic bricks and an accompanying array of gears, minifigures and various other parts.

Lego: The Story

Fujitsu: Data Transfer between Real and Virtual Worlds

2013-04-30T23:10:00.000-07:00

What if virtual interfaces can blend with real world ones? Fujitsu Laboratories has developed a next generation user interface that accurately detects the user's finger and what it is touching, creating an interactive touchscreen-like system, using objects in the real word.

By selecting with your finger, information can be imported from a document as data. It measures the shape of real-world objects, automatically adjusting the coordinate systems for the camera, projector, and real world. In this way, it can coordinate the display with touching, for flat surfaces and curved surfaces. The system can also be operated by gesture in situations that don't use touch. It can control color and brightness with the ambient light, thus correcting for individual differences in hand color. By identifying fingertips consistently, with little influence from the environment or individual differences, the system is highly accurate.

We also recommend watching: "University of Tokyo: The Paper Computing Technology" and "Touche: Disney's Magic Touch-Sensing Technology".

Fujitsu Limited is a Japanese multinational information technology equipment and services company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is the world's third-largest IT services provider measured by revenues. It makes computing products, but the company and its subsidiaries also offer a diversity of products and services in the areas of personal computing, telecommunications and advanced microelectronics.

Fujitsu: Seamless Data Transfer between the Real and Virtual Worlds

NVIDIA: Position Based Fluids, Water Simulation

2013-04-30T23:00:00.000-07:00

What is the hardest thing you can emulate with computer graphics? Anything with unpredictable physics, such as water particles. Nvidia has unveiled its latest graphics animation enhancement in its technology called Position Based Fluids (PBF), a new realistic fluid simulation tool.

It builds on the previous method know as Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH), simplifying it so that it can be used for real-time animation. The challenge with current methods is that to get sufficient realism requires higher frequency calculations or high particle count, which are both computationally intensive. PBF solves this problem by using an iterative solver, allowing it to reduce computational cost, by allowing for a similar effect but using fewer particles and fewer time slices. It also has an artificial pressure term which improves particle distribution and creates nice surface tension-like effects. The technology has been published on a paper.
We also recommend watching: "Lagoa Multiphysics 1.0: Mind Blowing Physics Engine Demonstration" and "Alya Red: The Supercomputer Simulated Heart".

Nvidia is an American global technology company based in Santa Clara, California. Nvidia manufactures graphics processing units (GPUs), as well as having a significant stake in manufacture of system-on-a-chip units (SOCs) for the mobile computing market.

NVIDIA: Position Based Fluids, Water Simulation

IBM: 80% Solar Panel Efficiency Using Supercomputers

2013-04-28T12:19:00.001-07:00

Solar energy is the most abundant source of energy known to humanity; that is, if we can harvest it. The highest harnessing efficiency is only 10-40%, with low reliability and high costs of production. Scientists at IBM Research, Zurich used cooling systems used in supercomputers to increase photovoltaic (PV) solar power efficiency from 30 to 80%.

Called the High Concentration Photovoltaic Thermal (HCPVT), the system delivers its energy in two forms: electricity and hot water. It uses a technology called concentrated photovoltaic collectors, with a mirrored parabolic dish to concentrate incoming solar radiation onto photovoltaic cells. The dish uses a tracking system to move with the sun, concentrating collected radiation onto PV sensor chips by a factor of 2,000. During daylight hours, each 1-sq cm PV chip generates between 200 and 250 watts of electrical power, harnessing up to 30% of the incoming solar energy.

Using thermal system adapted from IBM Research's 6-teraflop Aquasar supercomputer that uses water as a coolant, the remaining 70% of heat energy is captured by water, reducing system heat losses by another 20%. This results in a bottom-line efficiency of 80%. The team has developed a prototype with a 4×4-cm PV receiver which generates about 1kW of electrical power. It hopes to scale this up to produce more energy.
We also recommend watching: "Innovalight: Setting Silicon Ink Solar Cell Efficiency Record" and "Solar Panel 'Tree': 13-Year Old Disrupts the Solar Energy Industry".

IBM Research is a research and development organization consisting of 12 laboratories worldwide. It was established with the 1945 opening of the Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory at Columbia University. IBM Research's global network of scientists work to help clients, governments and universities apply scientific breakthroughs to solve real-world business and societal challenges.

IBM: 80% Solar Panel Efficiency Using Supercomputers

Counsyl: Genome is the Next Internet

2013-04-27T22:37:00.002-07:00

What is the next frontier in information? Nothing is more personal than someone's health. A new venture called Counsyl, is doing genetic tests that look at 400 mutations and test for 100 genetic disorders for parents who are planning to have children.

With full-genome sequencing falling faster than Moore’s Law predicted, the company is at the industry's forefront. Priced at $599 total, or $99 with insurance for a full test, their tests cost a fraction of standard ones, which for a single condition can range from $100 to $500. Current full tests costs about $4,000 to $5,000 from companies like Quest Diagnostics.

Counsyl has $65 million in funding which they used to create their own automated tests with robots and laboratories. They currently handle 2.5% of all births in the U.S. (4 million per year). Couples get the testing kits from their doctors, send their blood or saliva sample to Counsyl’s lab and get results back in 2-3 weeks. Results come in color-coded pages showing a couple’s numerical risks for having children with any of more than 100 recessive genetic diseases. This video is long, but it is worth it to know the most current technologies about bioinformatics.
We also recommend watching: "Bioinformatics: The Age of Web Genomics" and "Telome Health: Controlling When You Will Die".

Counsyl is a parental planning genomics company based in South San Francisco, CA. It was started by Srinivasan Srinivasan, a Stanford MBA and bioinformatics alumni, and his brother Balaji, a Ph.D. Stanford alumni in electrical engineering who was teaching and doing research around computational biology.

Counsyl: Genome is the Next Internet

Siva Cycle: Your Own Bike Powered Charger

2013-04-25T16:55:00.001-07:00

Want to power your phone by biking? When Aaron Latzke, a mechanical engineer, went to Belgium, he saw bikes everywhere with lights powered by bulky “bottle generators”, with cyclists finding DIY options for renewable energy. So he created Siva Cycles, and launched on Kickstarter its first product to cater this need: The Atom.

The Atom works simply by attaching to your bike's back wheel, and while you ride, it will deliver power to any USB powered device and to a portable battery pack. Its comes with glass-reinforced plastic; compression-bonded neodymium magnets that yield greater efficiency; and an "active bridge configuration" to keep the right amount of power flowing, regardless of how fast your biking. The Atom is lightweight, being 10 ounces (~283 grams), and at $105, it takes about 2 hours at 15 mph to generate energy to fill the Atom’s battery.
Their target is the consumer market as well as charitable organizations in the developing world. They plan to give one away for every 10 that are sold to an organization involved in donating bicycles and bicycle accessories in Africa.

We also recommend watching: "Fenix International: Power for the Developing World" and "The Cardboard Bike: Amazing Engineering Too Cheap to Steal".

Siva Cycle is a bicycle accessories company for modern connected cyclists. Aaron Latzke is Siva Cycle’s design brain, an engineer and a born inventor. Dave Delcourt, Siva Cycle’s other co-founder, has worked his entire career in energy and sustainability.

Siva Cycle: Your Own Bike Powered Charger

Harvard University: Growing and Transplanting a Kidney in Lab

2013-04-24T09:09:00.002-07:00

Imagine a future where no one died waiting for an organ anymore. At the Ott Lab at Harvard University, researchers have regrown an kidney, transplanted it into a mouse and showed that it works.

First, they took a donor rat kidney and used a detergent to wash away its surface functional cells, leaving the extracellular matrix scaffold behind, a protein structure that preserves the kidney’s 3D architecture. Then, they used a vacuum to precisely move kidney and blood vessel cells taken from newborn rats onto the scaffold. The organ was then placed in a bioreactor to allow the cells to form a healthy, functional kidney.

When tested, the kidney performed as a real one, reabsorbing nutrients, sugar and producing urine. However, when they transplanted it into a live rat, it was not able to process substances, but was able to produce urine. Although not perfect, it is a major proof-of-principle. The study was published in Nature Medicine. The researchers will improve results by allowing the kidney more time in the bioreactor to mature, and by optimizing the cell-seeding procedures.
We also recommend watching: "Anthony Atala: Growing New Organs" and "UCSF: An Artificial Kidney Using Nanotechnology".

The Ott Lab is located at Harvard University focused on organ engineering and regeneration. The laboratory is linked to the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, MIT, Harvard Medical School, the New England Organ Bank, and the clinical departments of MGH.

Harvard University: Growing and Transplanting a Kidney in Lab

Google Glass: Rapid Prototyping in One Day, with Chopsticks

2013-04-23T08:29:00.000-07:00

How do you create a sensational consumer product? We will show you how; in one day, with chopsticks. Rapid prototyping is a method used to accelerate the innovation process. Tom Chi explains how this method was used to create one of Google’s newest inventions: Google Glass.

Rapid prototyping is used in industry to create a fast and easy mock up of the real product to see how it feels, works, and get feedback at the early stages of development. The process proves to be more efficient than focusing on perfecting a single concept, because it allows for real time feedback and cuts expensive costs and resources by eliminating mistakes early in the process rather than later into development. Except for, maybe Apple, the industry follows this concept with variations to create great products. We urge you to be patient, a quality necessary to develop great products, and hear this great story.
We also recommend watching: "ProjectGlass: Google's Augmented Reality Glasses" and "David Kelley: How to Design Breakthrough Inventions".

Google Glass is a wearable computer with a head-mounted display (HMD) that is being developed by Google in the Project Glass research and development project, with the mission of producing a mass-market ubiquitous computer. Google Glass displays information in a smartphone-like hands-free format, that can interact with the Internet via natural language voice commands.

Google Glass: Rapid Prototyping in One Day, with Chopsticks

Anybots: Boy 'Lived As a Robot' for Two Months

2013-04-22T08:48:00.002-07:00

What excuse can you now have to miss class? For two months, Grady Hofmann lived remotely through a robot. When he had surgery for a bone marrow transplant, and was recovering in a hospital, his family and friends became creative.

They convinced a Silicon Valley firm called Anybots to loan one of its telepresence robots. The robot, called GradyBot by the family, was this boy's eyes and ears to the outside world for 2 months: it allowed him to have pre-bedtime chat, visit school, and celebrate birthdays. The robot could be said to have helped him have a 'normal' life while his body was recovering.

We also recommend watching: "Anybots: Bringing the Telepresence Robot Revolution" and "Rp-Vita: Autonomous Healthcare Robot Gains FDA Approval".

Anybots Inc. is a robotics company founded in 2001 by Trevor Blackwell. It is located in Mountain View, CA. Blackwell is a computer programmer, engineer and entrepreneur based in Silicon Valley. He is a developer of humanoid robots. He is also the inventor of the Eunicycle, essentially a one-wheeled Segway. Dr. Blackwell is the founder and CEO of Anybots and a partner at Y Combinator.

Anybots: Boy 'Lived As a Robot' for Two Months

Bitcoin: The New Virtual Crypto-Currency

2013-04-20T13:39:00.002-07:00

Although not new, a new virtual currency called Bitcoin has received a lot of attention due to its volatility. In just months, USD/Bitcoin exchange rate jumped from $1 to $30 (+2900%) and plunged back to $2 (-93%). But first, what exactly are Bitcoins? Let's uncover the mystery.

Bitcoin is the first of its kind that is based on a concept called "crypto-currency": a new form of money that uses cryptography to control its creation and transactions, rather than relying on central authorities. It is comprised of digitally created and traded financial units. Users can install Bitcoin mining software or they can buy units with real money. The Bitcoin money supply is set to expand at a consistent rate, constrained by processing power, until the year 2040, when it will reach a pre-determined limit of 21 million Bitcoins. As with all information, there is always the risk of data robbery by hackers that this video portrays its dark history, but its credibility has been getting more solid and mainstream. If you want to see a real time depiction of the Bitcoin currency, click here.
We also recommend watching: "The Crisis Credit: A Complex Crisis to Clarity" and "Misha Glenny: Hire the Hackers!".

Bitcoin (BTC) is a digital currency first described in a 2008 paper by pseudonymous developer Satoshi Nakamoto, who called it an anonymous, peer-to-peer, electronic payments system. Bitcoin creation and transfer is based on an open source encryption protocol and is not managed by any central authority.

Bitcoin: The New Virtual Crypto-Currency

BionicOpter: The Dragonfly-Inspired Drone Piloted From Your Phone

2013-04-20T10:02:00.001-07:00

If you think that Jurassic Park was cool, Festo has recently resurrected a Paleozoic dragonfly; not with cloning, but robotics. Festo's BionicOpter is a robotic dragonfly that can be controlled by a mobile device.

BionicOpter is Festo's most recent creation in a long line of robotic animals, as part of its Bionic Learning Network. With a size of 70 cm (27 in) by 48 cm (19 in), the robot is composed of a battery, 9 servos, and an ARM microcontroller embedded in a flexible polymer structure. The head and tail moves by passing electrical current through nitinol muscles. A computer controls the frequency (15–20 Hz), twisting (90 deg), and amplitude (50 deg) of its four carbon fiber and foil wings. A constant measurement of wing data and body position corrects for vibration for stable flight (more in here.) Its 4 wings can rotate around, from horizontal to vertical, and change angles, enabling it to switch from flying forward to backwards. All of this can be controlled via a smartphone.
We also recommend watching: "TechJect: A Palm-Sized Robotic Dragonfly" and "Markus Fischer: Festo's Smartbird Robot Flies Like a Bird".

Festo is a privately owned German industrial control and automation company based in Esslingen am Neckar, Germany.Festo is an engineering-driven company that sells pneumatic and electric transducers primarily to the automation industry.

BionicOpter: The Dragonfly-Inspired Drone Piloted From Your Phone

Ento: The Art of Eating Insects

2013-04-19T09:15:00.000-07:00

If sushi made fans out of skeptics in just three decades, then why not bugs? If we want to solve the world's lack of food crisis together with global warming, maybe we have to shift our notion of eating...bugs. Insects are high in protein and low in terms of environmental impact, being far more sustainable than beef or pork.

Graduate students in London created a concept called Ento to change the public's perception of bugs as a food source. It began as a graduate project that matured over 2 years, with a series of caterings and pop-up restaurants introducing insect-based dishes to new audiences around the U.K. Their goal is for Ento to grow slowly; starting with clubs, a restaurant, and hitting supermarket shelves in a few years. Using the aesthetics of sushi presentation, Ento tries to fix the perception problem, to allow for the mass consumption of insects to become a first-world reality.
We also recommend watching: "Beyond Eggs: Eco-Friendly, Cheap Eggs Made from Plant Proteins" and "Ocean 2012: Ending Overfishing"

Ento was formed by Julene Aguirre-Bielschowsky, who met her cofounders at the Innovation Design Engineering MA/MSc double masters course at the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London. Aguirre-Bielschowski, is German but is originally from Mexico.

Ento: The Art of Eating Insects

NEOcam: NASA's Asteroid Capturing Mission

2013-04-17T10:16:00.001-07:00

Asteroids are our next space for exploration and colonization. NASA invested $100 million to plan a space mission by 2021 to identify, capture, and relocate asteroids close to Earth.

Its asteroid tracking sensor (NEOcam) already passed a key test. The strategy involves taking an asteroid about 9 meters wide out of the asteroid belt, then placing it in orbit around the moon, where astronauts can break pieces off to study. Having an asteroid orbit near home, scientists can study it and plan Mars missions--as well as anti-collision systems if an asteroid impact threatens the Earth. Besides the research benefits of discovering new cures, another idea is that asteroid mining might provide us with important minerals that we lack at home.
We also recommend watching: "Planetary Resources: Mining $20 Trillion from Asteroids" and "NASA's Curiosity: The '7 Minutes of Terror'".

NEOCam (the Near-Earth Object Camera) is a proposed space-based infrared telescope designed to survey the Solar system for potentially hazardous asteroids. Proposals for NEOCam were submitted in 2006 and 2010 to the NASA Discovery Program.

NEOcam: NASA's Asteroid Capturing Mission

Google, Palantir & Salesforce: Fighting Human Traffickers at Full Scale

2013-04-16T09:29:00.000-07:00

Knowledge is power and power is responsibility. There is something to be admired when technology giants gather forces to fight crimes against humanity. Google Giving, Google's charitable arm, is giving a 3 million dollar grant to human trafficking organizations to aggregate human trafficking data.

A hotline and accompanying database will be built out using backend software and logistical support from Palantir and Salesforce. The money will be distributed to non-profit organizations like Polaris Project, Liberty Asia, and La Strada International, each focused on different parts of the world. For a time where "there are now more slaves than at any point in human history", it is also a time where technology connects us ever more and empower us to solve this crisis.
We also recommend watching: "PhotoDNA: Tech Giants Join to Combat Human Trafficking" and "Blueseed: The Utopia, Pirate Ship for Startups?".

Google.org is the charitable arm of Internet search engine company Google. The organization has committed over $100 million in investments and grants as of May 2010. To fund the organization, Google granted them 3 million shares during their initial public offering. As of March 2012, Google.org's 3 million shares have an approximate value of $1.84 billion. Google has also pledged to contribute one percent of their annual profits to their charitable organizations.

Google, Palantir, Salesforce: Fighting Human Traffickers

Shodan: The "Dark Google"

2013-04-14T21:33:00.003-07:00

Do you think that Google makes you smarter? Well, hackers have one too. It is called Shodan and it uses the Internet's back channels. The termed "Dark Google" can look for servers, webcams, printers, routers and all the devices insecurely connected to the Internet.

Shodan runs 24/7 and collects information on about 500 million connected devices and services each month. Traffic lights, security cameras, heating systems, garage doors, are all accessible with a search. Cybersecurity researchers have even located command and control systems for nuclear power plants by using Shodan. Many connected systems require no password to access them and can be connect with a web browser. A city's entire traffic control system can be altered with a single command entry. A hydroelectric plant providing energy to an entire country can be accessed and shut down at will. All this sounds scary, but good news is that Shodan is used for good. Primary users are penetration testers, security professionals, academic researchers and law enforcement agencies. Shodan offers limited searches to 10 results without an account, and 50 with a paid one.

We also recommend watching: "Recorded Future: See the Future with a Search" and "Stuxnet: The Computer Virus That Crashed Iran's Nukes".

Shodan is a search engine designed to search for devices and computer systems that connect to the World Wide Web. It was launched in 2009 by computer programmer John Matherly, who, in 2003, conceived the idea of searching devices linked to the Internet.

Shodan: The "Dark Google"