Tag: CES2013

Categories
Personal presentation Technology

My CES2013 Hangout

As a sort of wrap-up for my CES2013 coverage, I decided to advertise and present a live, interactive online webinar driven by Google Hangouts. That happened today, and this is the resultant video presentation. The first 57 minutes and 30 seconds or so is me talking through a slideshow on trends and the effect said trends may have on libraries, while the last half-hour is me taking questions from the chat room, twitter, and from the brave souls who took time out of their day to join me in the Hangout and ask questions.

As I said in my initial plan for attending and covering CES2013, “…for the very first time decided to experiment with crowdfunding something I’m doing and ask for donations. Or, to put it a different way, I’m becoming a busker for the trip.” This trip had no sponsors, and while I haven’t gotten the full stats on how many people watched the Hangout, watched my video reports, read my blog entries, or just laughed at some of my pictures, at this point many dozens-to-hundreds of people have seen my work. Of those, exactly 4 have decided that what I was doing was worth paying for.

This isn’t me complaining about that! This was and is an experiment, and if I don’t let people know the results, then it’s not really an experiment that others can learn from. I promised transparency, so here it is: I received 4 donations from 4 individuals: $10, $20, $20, and one incredibly kind soul for $50, bringing my grand total for donations to $95.30 after Paypal fees. I find this a fascinating response, given that it is routine for educational opportunities exactly of this sort (literally, I have given them) to cost many hundreds of dollars. This was free, available for anyone…and yet. And yet.

Lots to think about! But in the meantime, I’m going to continue to produce content and write and speak and read and think about technology and libraries. If you think what I’ve done here is worth paying for, I’m going to leave the donation option open for a bit longer, just to see if people finding this after the fact decide to chip in. I will, of course, continue to report on the experiment. Thanks to everyone who watched, commented, joined in, or hopefully learned something about the tech of CES2013.

Categories
Technology

Lego Mindstorms EV3 at CES2013

One last video for today, just a short example of the new Lego Mindstorms EV3. They had a really great setup that showed off the sorts of detailed interactions you can set up with these things, and the power of having them talk to your smartphone is really interesting. Again, for any library that uses Lego as an activity for kids/youth groups, this seems like a no-brainer to keep an eye on.

Categories
Technology

ATOMS interactive bricks at CES2013

I had the really wonderful opportunity to meet with Michael Rosenblatt of Atoms Express, just after their successful Kickstarter campaign. This gave me the chance to see the demo units of Atoms in person, test them, and get some idea of the really wonderful interactions that are going to be possible when these are available later in the Spring.

Atoms is Lego compatible, and I believe will be a really, really interesting addition to the building/making activities in libraries, and great way to teach basic engineering and programming logic. It’s also a great example of what happens when sensors and motors get really cheap and modular…for example, using just a couple of these bricks, you could easily build a bluetooth reporting gate-counter. Or a shelf-count measurement device that keeps track of how often books are moved on a particular shelf. The potential is, as they say, endless.

Take a look at the interview, and see if you can see past the “toy” and to the tool.

Categories
Technology

Mark Shuttleworth demos Ubuntu Phone at #2013CES

Awesome demo from the CEO of Canonical himself, Mark Shuttleworth. He not only shows off the flashy bits, but talks about the philosophy underneath why Ubuntu is moving this direction. The fact that Canonical believes that they can get a single code base running from a mobile device all the way up to cloud-server architectures is just…well, impressive would be one way to put it.