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Media Personal Podcasts

Circulating Ideas Ep. 19

I was very pleased to be the guest of Steve Thomas on his podcast series Circulating Ideas this past week. There’s a whole host of great episodes of the podcast, and I highly recommend diving into the back catalog. My conversation with Steve ranged from which sci-fi technology I’d most like to have to how and why I built LibraryBox, and many points in between. There are way worse ways to spend an hour. 🙂

Listen in here, or head over to Circulating Ideas itself for a downloadable copy, or subscribe in your favorite podcatcher.

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Brand_New_World Uncategorized

Eliza visits Santa 2012



Santa at the Chattanooga Choo Choo 3, originally uploaded by griffey.

Eliza visiting Santa at the Chattanooga Choo Choo! She’s been visiting this same Santa every year since she was born…he’s awesome, and she loves the setup and the sleigh.

Categories
Drones FutureTech Release_Candidate

The DIY Kid-tracking Drone

via The DIY Kid-tracking Drone – IEEE Spectrum.

On school-day mornings, I walk my grade-school-age son 400 meters down the hill to the bus stop. Last winter, I fantasized about sitting at my computer while a camera-equipped drone followed him overhead.

 

So this year, I set out to build one.

I had said in several presentations that I was betting that 2012 was the year we’d see the first lawsuits for stalking-by-drone. This project is the first steps to that…if you use professional-grade hardware and add in facial recognition, it’s within the boundaries of current technology to build a drone that identifies someone visually, and then just follows them around, filming them.

That said: This is a _freaking cool_ project. 🙂

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3D Printing Release_Candidate

3D printing with paper

via Make magazine

Here’s a really interesting new take on 3D printing that uses standard copy paper as its medium, cutting and shaping as it builds layer by layer. Obvious difficulties and advantages to this process, but one of the most interesting is featured in the second video…with the addition of some ink, you can easily do fully-color output.

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ALA Personal presentation

American Libraries Live

For those that missed it, I was the host of the first episode of American Libraries Live, a new monthly show from American Libraries. I had the best panel ever to work with backing me up, Marshall Breeding, Nina McHale, and Rebecca K. Miller. They could not have been more awesome to work with, and I can’t wait to do more with both the show, and these awesome librarians.

Take a look, and I’d love to hear suggestions for how to make it better in the future!

Categories
Digital Culture Media

The power of in-house technologists

Really great write up of the internals of the tech team for the Obama campaign over at The Atlantic. Librarians and educators should read it as an argument for why it’s important to have technologists on your team directly, and not just rented out.

But the secondary impact of their success or failure would be to prove that campaigns could effectively hire and deploy top-level programming talent. If they failed, it would be evidence that this stuff might be best left to outside political technology consultants, by whom the arena had long been handled. If Reed’s team succeeded, engineers might become as enshrined in the mechanics of campaigns as social-media teams already are.

Categories
3D Printing Release_Candidate

Mixing the Digital with the Real

A sandstone block built from lego, blending real objects with 3d prints on Vimeo on Vimeo

 

Categories
Drones FutureTech Release_Candidate Robots

Romo – The Smartphone Robot

Right now, there’s no wallet-friendly, backpack-sized consumer robot on the market that does these things:

  • Remote 2-way telepresence
  • Computer vision
  • Autonomous navigation
  • Facial recognition

We want to change that, and we need your support.

via Romo – The Smartphone Robot for Everyone by Romotive — Kickstarter.

Categories
3D Printing Release_Candidate

World’s First 3D Printing Photo Booth

But now, what’s being called the world’s first 3D printing photo booth is set to open for a limited time at the exhibition space EYE OF GYRE in Harajuku. From November 24 to January 14, 2013, people with reservations can go and have their portraits taken. Except, instead of a photograph, you’ll receive miniature replicas of yourselves.

via World’s First 3D Printing Photo Booth to Open in Japan | Spoon & Tamago.

Categories
3D Printing Release_Candidate

Join EFF’s Efforts to Keep 3D Printing Open

EFF and the Cyberlaw Clinic at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society are working together to use this new process to challenge patent applications that particularly threaten growing 3D printing technologies. As a first step, we are evaluating 3D printing patent applications currently pending before the Patent Office to identify potential target applications. We need your help! If you know of any applications covering 3D printing technology that you think should be challenged, please let us know by emailing 3Dprinting@eff.org (and also point us to any relevant prior art you might know about).

via Join EFF’s Efforts to Keep 3D Printing Open | Electronic Frontier Foundation.