Bre Pettis of MakerBot stopped by our little show today and spent some time on the stage with John Biggs and other notables in the manufacturing space. But afterwards Pettis, co-founder and CEO of MakerBot, joined me on the TCTV couch to geek out a bit over the fantastic MakerBot Replicator. The company also has two MakerBot Replicators printing out random doodads and toys in our first ever Hardware Alley.

As Bre explained, the original MakerBot buyers were geeks and hackers but now it’s moms and dads (like me). With the MakerBot, kids and parents can create and manufacture toys together. The Replicator can make nearly anything. It is essentially a desktop toy factory — or, for anyone else, a prototype printer allowing for rapid manufacturing.

In short MakerBot is changing the world.

Earlier this morning, our own John Biggs was joined on stage by a handful of New York-based makers who have made a name for themselves by building physical things (or in one case, building something that builds other things). Biggs kicked off the panel with a simple question: — can we bring manufacturing back?

Bre Pettis, CEO of Makerbot Industries, has two shifts of workers putting together all of his Makerbots in Brooklyn, and had a bit of advice for hardware creators looking to shift production to China. He recommended that until makers need to produce runs of 50,000-100,000 units, they’re much better off keeping the production process in the United States. It helps to keep makers intimate with their tech, not to mention makes it easier for them to handle any unexpected issues faster.

The process of launching a product was tackled too — interestingly enough, Amol Sarva of Peek fame revealed that if he had to take his email gadget to market now instead of a few years ago, he would’ve gone a completely different route. Instead of going big and pushing to get his devices on store shelves around the country, he instead would have gone with the grassroots approach — making a few devices and trying to build buzz around them.

Another recurring theme of the panel was the notion that makers should embrace niches.

“There may not be mass market ideas, and that’s OK,” said Peter Semmelhack of Bug Labs. He noted that people can put hardware and devices together that aren’t meant to reach millions and millions of people (they could even use a Makerbot if the production run size was modest enough), and these small markets were still worth going after.

Plus, you can never really tell just how niche some niches are. Duncan Frazier of Bit Banger Labs knows that all too well — he and his team developed a sleep mask that aims to help its users lucid dream, and put together a Kickstarter campaign for it. They expected they would have to make a few hundred units at most, but the niche was much bigger than they thought. By the time their campaign was over, they had exceeded their $35,000 funding request by orders of magnitude.

The discussion then turned to the question of whether or not we could build something akin to a sprawling Foxconn campus in somewhere like Iowa.

“Here in the U.S., as a culture, we’re not really focused on [manufacturing],” Pettis noted. “Our children are the only priority lower than manufacturing.”

There was little question that using Chinese facilities for manufacturing has its advantages — namely sheer output — but some were curious as to how long that would remain the case. Pettis pointed out that wages in China have doubled over the last year, a trend that (if continued) may eventually lead to a shift away from relying on China.

The panel ended on a slightly more inspirational note, with each of makers chiming in with advice for young upstarts who want to start making things. On this, everyone seemed to agree — the best approach is to just go out there and start going it. Ayah Bdeir, CEO of littleBits, specifically pointed out that a young person who had $50 and an Internet connection had no shortage of places to turn for inspiration — Instructables and Hack A Day, for instance.

“You learn by making,” she said. Pettis recommended that wannabe makers should just “jump in” to the process, and if they eventually decide to go the Kickstarter route, Frazier emphasized the importance of a solid video because that’s the only place the product exists as far as the users are concerned.

A Wiimote turned on its side makes for a perfectly serviceable controller when plowing through retro games from the Wii Shop Channel, and the Classic Controller isn’t bad either, but I wouldn’t call either of them an ideal solution.

On the other hand, ThinkGeek’s new Super Famicom controller for the Wii manages to come pretty damned close, especially if you’re a gamer who spends your time steeped in the past.

Thankfully, unlike the controller this thing was modeled on, there’s no need to plug it directly into the Wii. Instead, the $20 add-on plugs into the bottom of a Wiimote so it’s simple enough lean back in a beanbag across the room and blow through some Actraiser.

It probably goes without saying that not everyone will appreciate this thing’s sheer lack of ergonomics, but remember — the original Super Famicom/Nintendo controller was crafted back in the early 90s, and still manages to put its boxy predecessor to shame. Nevertheless, you had best look elsewhere if you’re looking to play some more recent games, as using a D-Pad to control movement in three dimensions rarely ends well.

My only regret? That ThinkGeek doesn’t have a version emblazoned with the purple and lavender hues of the Super Nintendo. Now that Nintendo fanatics have another bit of hardware to add to their collections, maybe ThinkGeek will finally get around to building that NES-esque Bluetooth mobile gaming controller they promised us earlier this year.

Kickstarter is a great place to launch a product. Remember the Pebble smart watch, which saw over $1 million in funding in its first 28 hours on the site, and surpassing $3 million well over a month before their stated goal?

Disrupt, which just so happens to be underway as I type these very words, is also an excellent place to launch your product. We’ve seen countless companies rise to almost instantaneous success after stepping off of our stage, like Soluto, Mint.com, Redbeacon, and GroupMe.

So it should be no surprise that Incident’s now-famous gTar, which was launched both on the Disrupt Battlefield stage and on Kickstarter, has made upwards of $120,000 on Kickstarter since launching on our stage yesterday. Idon Beck, Josh Stansfield, and Franco Cedano had only tallied $10,000 before their impressive Disrupt debut.

Of course, Disrupt can’t take all the credit. TechCrunch’s sister site Engadget went hands-on with the gTar around 3:30pm yesterday, which could have only pushed more traffic to their company’s Kickstarter page. I actually went hands-on myself and, as a huge Guitar Hero fan, I can safely say that the gTar takes amateur wanna-be guitar-playing to an entirely new level.

I felt like I could actually, eventually of course, learn to play guitar for real, and that I wouldn’t want to slam my head into a table trying. Progress.

The estimated retail price for the gTar will be $450, but investors who back the product on Kickstarter will be able to get their own gTar for a discounted $350.

There hasn’t been a whole lot of news coming out of the Google Zeitgeist event taking place in a posh hotel on the outskirts of London this week, but Google’s making some other news in England: its CEO Larry Page has been spotted wearing Google Glasses.

The pictures of Page wearing the super-funky augmented reality eyewear are possibly the first — although his Google co-founder Sergey Brin has also been seen wearing them in the wild. Today’s pictures come courtesy of a Google employee, who posted them — where else? — on Google +.

“My life is now complete – met Larry Page today! Thank you for visiting EMEA,” the employee wrote alongside his pictures.

Google Glass has been one of the most talked-about new projects at Google for a long time. It’s one of the company’s first big forays into cutting-edge hardware. Other products it’s been reported to be working on are integrating more Google TV functions into set-top boxes and a home-entertainment system.

With the company closing the acquisition of Motorola today, we are likely to get more visibility on what Google’s plans will be for developing more hardware. That, of course, is a strength at Motorola. Hardware is also something that Page himself highlighted recently in his CEO’s letter.

Sonos has just gone really deep (get it?) with their new Sonos Sub, a wireless subwoofer that connects to any Sonos system and adds just a bit more oomph to the musical proceedings. The sub costs $699 and offers (according to the press release) “thick layers of bottomless sound that let you hear and feel the weight of every chord, kick, splash and roll.”

The woofer connects with the AMP, ZonePlayer 120, ZonePlayer 100, the PLAY:5, and PLAY:3. It doesn’t work with the CONNECT/ZP90/ZP80.

The Sub will launch on June 19.

via Sonos Blog

Sprint’s launch plans for the HTC EVO 4G LTE were ruined last week when shipments of their shiny new Android handset were held up by United States Customs, but we’re hearing that they may been hitting doorsteps and store shelves sooner than expected.

According to Sprint, the devices are now currently sitting safely in Sprint’s warehouses and are expected to start trickling out into the world “on or around May 24.” And rest easy, you faithful pre-orderers — the world from on high is that you’ll still be getting your devices first.

In case you’re new to this little shipping snafu, shipments of Sprint’s new EVO (along with those of their AT&T-based cousin, the One X) were prevented form entering the country thanks to an exclusion order handed down by the International Trade Commission. The entire convoluted story started last year, but here’s the tl;dr:

Back in July, HTC was found by ITC judge Carl Charneski to have infringed on one of Apple’s patents — specifically, it involved recognizing a particular structure within a set of data and binding it to a particular action. Sounds pretty dry, I know, but if your phone lets you directly a call a phone number by touching it in an email, you’ve seen the patent in action.

At the time, HTC stated that they were working on fixing the offending UI flourish, and part of the holdup for customers was apparently because the phones were being spot-checked for compliance.

With Sprint’s EVO shipments said to be on the move once more, now the question becomes whether or not shipments of AT&T’s One X are as well. I’ve reached out to AT&T for confirmation one way or the other, and I’ll be updating the post as I hear more.

Incident took the stage this afternoon at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC and debuted the gTar. It’s safe to say that they are already a major contender for the Disrupt Cup.

The startup wowed the crowd with their iPhone-powered teaching guitar. The judges loved it. The crowd loved it. And most importantly, fans turned to the startup’s Kickstarter campaign where funding took off like a rocket. Prior to hitting the stage, the gTar had raised just a touch above $10,000. Now, almost exactly two hours after their Disrupt debut, their Kickstarter funding (a.k.a. pre-orders) is north of $42,000 and rising fast.

The gTar seems to hit home with most people who see the demo. It promises to take away the massive learning curve associated with playing guitar. With a progressive learning mode, the gTar essentially reinvents guitar lessons. Besides that, experienced players can rock out to the gTar’s synthesized instruments or simply play around with its LED fretboard.

There is a real chance that a hardware startup will win Disrupt NYC this year and that’s very exciting.

Imagine for a moment that you are sitting in your front yard in a lawn chair, sipping lemonade while attempting to read the latest news on your WiFi-only iPad. You’re just out of range of your WiFi signal. Your neighbor’s signal is super strong, but that selfish hooligan didn’t leave it wide open for you to leach onto. Wouldn’t you love to be able to use a portion of his spectrum anyway while away from your own?

Well, you still can’t, however…

A consortium of cable companies (Comcast Corp., Time Warner Cable Inc., Cablevision Systems Corp., Bright House Networks LLC and Cox Communications Inc) have agreed to enable the sharing of subscriber WiFi hotspots at a grand scale, creating a large region of available signal, in select markets in the U.S.

According to the Wall Street Journal, a single hotspot name and sign on scenario will be used to make it easier for consumers to log in and use available spectrum to surf. It will be a perk for paying broadband account holders in the consortium, but certain providers like Time Warner will let you pay as you go if you like.

[via WSJ]

UPDATE:

Unfortunately, I mis-represented the original article as being for consumer hotspots. This is for subscriber hotspots. Big ups to Josh Ferris for pointing out the error in my ways.

The gTar by Incident is disruption defined. It takes the guitar, an instrument with a steep learning curve, and adds a bit of digital wizardry in the form of an embedded iPhone to make learning dramatically easier. The company brags that their modern take on the guitar allows for three levels of difficulty, rather than the traditional single really difficult one. But thanks to the iPhone and a clever app, this $450 electronic guitar essentially teaches users the ins and outs of the instrument.

The startup recently turned to Kickstarter to raise $100,000. However today they gave the crowd at Disrupt a musical treat — a demonstration at Startup Alley. And the device seemed to work as advertised.

After docking an iPhone in the guitar’s body and loading the app, the neck comes alive with a series of interactive LEDs along the fretboard. In Easy Mode, these lights illuminate in sequence with the teaching app, showing the user which string to play. Medium takes it up a level by forcing the player to use the frets and the strings. However, the gTar’s Smart Play function only plays the correct string.

Thanks to sensors rather than traditional pickups, the guitar will only play the appropriate string. But, as the user improves, the guitar does away with some of the nanny features, allowing the user to have, for better or worse, full access to the guitar’s musical capabilities. The Free Play mode allows for even more options, letting the player turn the guitar into a wide-range of instruments thanks to its iPhone core.

The gTar seems to have all the right goods to disrupt a space as old as string instruments. This could be the high of Disrupt NYC talking, but it feels as if this could be, or perhaps lead to, the guitars for the Guitar Hero generation.

Disrupt Q&A

q: From a user perspective, will gTar players be competent at playing the guitar or is this a way for people to fulfill a guitar fantasy? Or is this an actual learning tool so they can pick up a guitar and jam solo?

a: On one hand, yes this teaches people the fundamentals on how to play the guitar. These are real strings. They take the same amount of pressure.

On the other hand — and I get this all the time — does this actually teach people to play the guitar? That usually comes from people who don’t know how to play. But yes, this teaches people how to play the guitar.

q: How do you handle pace and rhythm?

a: The app does move with the tempo of the song accurately. We were playing with some display techniques to show people. We are going with an MVP solution. The capabilities of the technology is a lot larger than we can demo.

q: From a song library perspective, can you create a song from my iPhone or is it limited to your library?

a: Our content platform is developed on a platform we built and we deliver songs directly from our crowd — kind of seamlessly so that the user doesn’t really see it. The platform doesn’t take the songs from iTunes; that’s definitely not a trivial problem. We have first parties to help get songs onto the platform. It takes about 30 minutes per song.

q: Is there a speaker built-in?

a: So you can either use the iPhone’s speaker and thanks to a cavity in the body under the pickup, it amplifies the sound a bit. we are going to be providing a headphone adapter. But you can pop it into a Marshall amp.

q: Can you say how much it costs wholesale?

a: We’re going to be releasing through Kickstarter. We’re going to release at $450. The way we’ve structured our cost of goods, we’re working with a manufacturing partner in China, who are a really great group of people. Out of the last six months, I’ve been there three. We’ve spent the last 3 months with them. We are building it clean and lean.

What Kickstarter really helps us do is to ascertain how many people want to buy it. And for a hardware business that’s very important for us to know.

On Friday May 18th, Apple filed a motion for a U.S. preliminary injunction against Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1. This follows a ruling by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Northern District of California), siding with Apple on the question of whether Samsung is in violation of an iPad-related design patent (U.S. Patent No. D504,889). According to Foss Patents, the source of this story, the request could be valid and is likely to be upheld.

Samsung has until May 25th at high noon to respond. (OK not really…about the high noon thing).

What does it mean though? Will the Galaxy Tab 10.1 disappear from U.S. shores if Apple emerges victoriously with their injunction?

Not necessarily.

First of all, let’s remember the sheer scale of Samsung. They have the legal and financial fortitude to at least see this thing all the way through.

Secondly, a valid ruling doesn’t spell the end of the line, but more likely a technical redesign. However this could definitely affect revenues because of necessary manufacturing changes but it doesn’t mean a Coup De Grace on the line.

Foss paints the picture as more of an embarrassment for Samsung.

[via Foss Patents]

Comcast announced Monday that it will make its newest set-top box available in Boston over the coming weeks, with a rollout planned across the entire country later this year. It’s also introducing a mobile app to control the set-top box from the iPhone or iPad.

The new set-top box comes after several years of development. Comcast has been working hard to develop a new set-top box that would take all of the smarts out of the box and put it in the network, essentially allowing the cable provider to launch new services and update the new features without having to totally rewrite applications or push out new firmware.

With the X1, all the processing is done in the network. That will give Comcast the flexibility to quickly test and create new apps for customers, without having to worry about how outdated its set-top boxes are. It will also provide more personalized features, such as allowing customers to see which shows their Facebook friends are watching.

The new X1 iOS app will improve navigation on the set-top box, allowing subscribers to use the virtual keyboard to search through all the live and on-demand channels more efficiently than using a traditional remote control. Users can also filter by genre and interact with other social media apps.

Anyway, here’s how cool I think this thing is: I haven’t been a cable subscriber for at least a year and a half, but I might just have to sign up again, just to try out the X1. So bring this thing to San Francisco, Comcast, and I’ll pay for cable TV again.

This week we recorded live from the show floor at Disrupt NYC. We sat through 24 hours straight of hot-rod hacking at the Hackathon and now we’re preparing for the main show and, most important, the brand new Hardware Alley where we’ll have loads of great hardware start-ups for you guys to check out.

In this episode we talk about Disrupt, the new EVO 4G LTE, and the rumors of the four-inch iPhone. We also talk about the “thumb touches anywhere on the screen” iPhone chestnut, how good the battery life is on some Android phones, the late night Nerf wars at the hackathon, and my horrible sausage fingers.

Tune in today and look for another episode next week from the show floor.

Teaching kids – especially little girls – about electronics is a hard job. First, there’s the electricity. Then there’s the sense that soldering, wiring, and lining up LEDs is considerably less fun than watching Tangled. This project, called Roominate, aims to change the way girls think about electricity.

The kit consists of a set of tiny furniture with built-in wires and switches. You can wire up your dollhouse however you like, adding lamps and switches. $49 gets you one regular room and $95 gets you a “duplex.”

They’ve hit $13,000 of a $26,000 target and if it helps little girls think more clearly about science and electronics, I’m totally backing it. The project ends on June 16 so there’s still plenty of time to slowly replace the Barbie Dream House with a decidedly more DIY dollhouse.

Project Page

SpaceX and Elon Musk will not be held from the history books. Last night the company announced that engineers were currently replacing a faulty valve on engine #5, and if successful pending a data review today, the company would attempt a second launch on Tuesday, May 22nd. This comes as SpaceX’s maiden voyage to the International Space Station was cut a half second short by an automated safety function built into the rocket.

SpaceX is attempting to become the first privately owned entity to reach and dock a capsule with the ISS, therefore increasing its chance to win what will likely be a lucrative contract to ferry cargo and humans between Earth and Space. So far these duties have been carried out by the U.S., Russia and Japan. However, as governments are cutting space budget programs they are looking to hand over these relatively nominal duties to the private sector and redirect funds to long-range space exploration and science programs.

Come next Tuesday, SpaceX will attempt to make history again

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My set ritual before going to bed each night is as follows — turn out the lights, plug in my iPhone, take off my glasses and attempt vainly to nod off. Step two in that process can be a bit of a crapshoot in the dark, but the folks at Scrap Pile Labs have recently kicked off a new Kickstarter campaign for a product called the CordLite that just may come in handy.

As the name sort of implies, the CordLite is a dock connector cable for iDevices that, well, lights up thanks to a pair of forward-facing LEDs. It’s a very simple concept, but the thoughtful execution is what make this project worth keeping an eye on.

Perhaps the niftiest thing about the CordLite is how you actually fire up those lights — the dock connector’s aluminum body is entirely touch-sensitive, so the lights engage whenever someone goes to plug in the cable. Meanwhile, a pair of indicator lights run along the top of the dock connector so there’s never any confusion as to which side is up.

Pledging $25 locks you in for one of the first CordLites to roll off of the assembly line, so you’d best shell out the dough if you’re interested — after the Kickstarter campaign ends, the price will jump up to $35. Not a bad deal for night owls, especially considering that Apple’s own dock connector cable is nearly $20 without a single frill to go with it.

Though the CordLite is Apple-only for now, Android users shouldn’t feel too left out. The team also has a light-up micro-USB cable in the works, though I suspect we won’t be seeing those out in the wild for a little while yet.

“Entering terminal count autosequence. 60 seconds to engine fire. #DragonLaunch,” tweeted Elon Musk as his space company was less than a minute away from it’s historic flight. But the launch didn’t happen. Nothing happened as longtime NASA commentator George Diller counted down the seconds, “3..2..1……We’ve had a cutoff. Liftoff did not occur.” Musk tweeted 11 minutes later at 5:06am EDT, “Launch aborted: slightly high combustion chamber pressure on engine 5. Will adjust limits for countdown in a few days.”

The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was literally a half second away from launching. NASA is still inspecting the engine but early reports, tweeted by both Musk and NASA, state that the chamber pressure on engine 5 was abnormally high, causing the rocket’s on-board computer to abort the launch.

SpaceX was on the cusp of making history and becoming the first privately owned institution to dock a capsule with the International Space Station. Only governments, the US, Russia and Japan, have so far accomplished this task. SpaceX is hoping to take over the transport duties from NASA starting first with cargo but eventually shuttling personnel between terra firma and the ISS.

This isn’t SpaceX’s first space rodeo. The company has been launching its Falcon rockets since 2006 although the first flight of a Falcon 1 failed a few seconds in. The rocket on the launchpad today, a Falcon 9, saw a successful first flight in 2010.

Today’s launch, while cut short, will likely (hopefully) just be a footnote in SpaceX history. The company is set to try again in the coming days. The next launch attempt will come on May 22 but it could be pushed to May 23 according to some reports.

While, arguably, you’re not going to convince many kids to give up their Topps or Pokemon cards for these things, it’s nice to know they exist. They’re 3D Printer trading cards featuring some of the best 3D printers in the world. You got your Makerbot Replicator, your UP! Printer, and your Printrbot Plus. You got stats on there, a little trivia, some pricing information and then you can trade with your friends (“Awwww man, I need that Reprap clone!”)

You can check them all out here or see them in person at Maker Faire in SF this week. Sadly, they’re not actually printing these things but if they did I’d totally buy a pack.

The impetus? They came to creator Shawn Wallace in a dream:

Is The Avengers worth your money? Do the disc-blasting Nerf guns leave a welt? How do you pull a Pebble and rein in $3 million on Kickstarter?

In this week’s TC/Gadgets webcast, we answer all this and more. John and Matt argue over the value in one of this summer’s tent pole movies, The Avengers. John finds it boring, while Matt thinks “it’s fun for everyone.” And while I can’t say I’ll be buying a ticket to The Avengers any time soon, I can say with great certainty that I’ll be at one of the opening day showings of Prometheus.

Who doesn’t love space, right?

The gang also discusses Nerf’s disc-blasting guns, and how they may or may not be used at this weekend’s Disrupt Hackathon. Last year we saw a raucous group of hackers start an all-out war with bungee darts. None of the TC editorial staff was injured (nor were the hackers), but this year we’ll at least have some Nerf Vortex and Vulcan guns slung over our shoulders. You know… Just in case.

In the words of the recent Game Of Thrones trailers, “War is coming.”

Finally, but likely most importantly, Matt, Chris, John and I offer up some tips as to what we cover on Kickstarter. Matt is done with iPad cases, and though I echo the sentiment, I’ll probably be more willing to make exceptions than he. John prefers the “little tweaks” to things we already use and enjoy, like the automatic bike light that knows when you’re moving.

I encourage a strong video, as marketing is a huge driver of any business. But the geeky stuff has its place too — Chris thoroughly enjoyed the electron microscope project that significantly reduced the cost of looking at really, really tiny things.

Say you’re a misanthrope and you’re afraid of humans. What to do? Well, you could cower in the dark when people ring your doorbell or you could laugh derisively at their smug faces in the screen of your iPhone. I’m going for the derisive laughter.

This DIY Arduino project involves a simple circuit, a webcam, and a few API calls to PushingBox to enable a truly enjoyable derisive experience.

The system works by pushing images grabbed by the webcam through PushingBox to an app like Prowl or Pushme.to. When the doorbell is pressed, it sends a serial signal to the Arduino board which in turn notifies the various services. The webcam picture then gets sent over to you so you can decide whether to let whoever is outside in.

It’s probably a little more complex than it needs to be, but if you’re totally into watching the world pass you by it’s a great solution and a fun weekend project.

Project Page