I, for one, welcome our new robot flying overlords.
Very interesting announcement today from Jason Chen, tech blogger of Lifehacker and formerly of Gizmodo. He’s getting out of the tech blogging business and launching an ebook startup, StoryBundle. From the StoryBundle site:
You know those indie video game bundles where you pay what you want for a batch of quality titles? We’re like that, but for ebooks.
We give you a handful of ebooks (about five or so) for a low price that you choose, all DRM-free, delivered to your ereader.
We only choose quality independent authors so you can be sure what you’re buying is good. Plus, you decide how much these books are worth. Great reads delivered cheaply without killing a single tree? That’s something everybody can feel good about.
Very, very interesting. I have a huge number of questions, mainly: how can he possibly hope to compete against Amazon in this space? I suppose the idea is that DRM free and name-your-price luring readers, but I’m not sure why that will lure authors. I can’t imagine that it’s a better deal for authors in terms of either reach or profit. But it’s a really interesting experiment, and we all know that we need more models for this stuff. I’ve got a request for an interview out to Jason…I’m very curious as to how this model might work with libraries.
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Project Shellter
Another crazy-cool thing you can do with a 3D printer. 🙂
“MakerBot Industries and TeamTeamUSA join forces for Project Shellter, the quest to create a 3D printable hermit crab shell to address shell shortages in the wild!”
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ScratchML
Now here’s a metadata standard I can get behind:
ScratchML.
We’re creating a format for describing turntablism, as well as tools for recording, analyzing, sharing, and even recreating scratch performances with giant robot arms. We want to do for turntablism what Graffiti Markup Language has done for tagging.
We believe that the next step in copying will be made from digital form into physical form. It will be physical objects. Or as we decided to call them: Physibles. Data objects that are able (and feasible) to become physical. We believe that things like three dimensional printers, scanners and such are just the first step. We believe that in the nearby future you will print your spare sparts for your vehicles. You will download your sneakers within 20 years.
via The Pirate Bay – The galaxy's most resilient bittorrent site.
At CES 2012, I had a chance to talk with Bre Pettis, CEO of Makerbot Industries, about how libraries and 3D printing can be a really, really great match. Take a look at the video…I’ll be writing a LOT more about 3D printing in the near future, or you can go back and see some of the stuff I’ve already written.
Here’s a product that intrigued me, but I can’t really nail down why. It’s not immediately apparent what sort of problem this solves. But it was interesting enough that I’d love to see if anyone out there sees a use for libraries. I’m going to see how it works for writing practice with my daughter, so there could be an instructional use for toddlers…
Here’s a look at color eInk, the next generation of the technology currently found in just about every eReader on the market. This particular screen (the eInk Triton display) is good for just over 4000 colors, and certainly isn’t the fastest page-turn we’ve seen…but the display is very, very pretty. Great contrast, sharp lines, and the color really adds a lot to the feel of the thing. Check it out:
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InFocus Mondopad from CES 2012
Some more video from CES 2012, this time a new presentation/smartboard from InFocus with some interesting features, the best of which didn’t make the video. I was told after I stopped filming that the software that drives it can use the Windows web tools/IIS to make the display publicly available to the web…so with just an IP address, you could share everything that was happening on the board to the world. That’s pretty cool!
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Eliza is 4
Here it is, the 4-year-old post. What is Eliza like these days? Some things haven’t changed a bit. Others have changed a lot.
Likes: dressing up, singing, dancing (loves her ballet class), coloring/”making art”, playing princess, listening to books, making up stories, watching all kinds of movies, going to the movies and eating popcorn, the beach, Disney World, vacations of any kind, hotels, swimming, cooking.
Dislikes: blueberries, beef in any form, itchy clothes, putting anything in her hair (which makes this picture really rare), getting up early
Milestones/development: Can write her name! And recognize and write many other letters. Can put on her own clothes, shoes, and socks. Takes showers instead of baths. Can draw representational things now, like stick people, faces, several shapes, flowers. Can brush her own teeth. Does chores every night.
Favorite things: Phineas and Ferb, Disney stuff (especially Disney World), princes and princesses, Wow Wow Wubzy, stuffed animals (especially kitties), candy.