• #7 Tech Toy - Get a Pulse

     

    Tech Toy #7  - Pulse - Digital Pen

    This is an interesting digital recording pen, that records not only what you write, but also the audio is recorded and synchronized with what you are writing. You may have seen some demos of this technology at the BE Conference (without the audio).

    The ability to capture your writing in a digital fashion has value beyond redline…

  • #6 Tech Toy - ZINK

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Tech Toy #6 - ZINK

    ZINK is actually a technology that I first saw about a year ago. The ZINK word is a mash-up of Zero + Ink, which describes what the technology does - it prints with no ink. It is a white…

  • #5: Tech Toys - RC Beer

     

    Tech Toy #5  - RC Beer

    Ok, so there's not a lot of tech in this toy, but it is fun.

    A remote control moves this 4 wheeled beast around to guests upto 40 feet away. You can pack it with 22 lbs of ice and 12 cans or bottles to keep your beer cold and your friends happy.

    You can buy this off the Hammacher Schlemmer website for $69.95  

    When…

  • #4: Tech Toys - Girl Tech Stylin' Studio

     

    Tech Toy #4 - Girl Tech Stylin' Studio 

    This is one of the hot selling items for girls this year. This USB device connects to your PC and a builtin camera and an attached stylus allow the capture of faces and then the on-screen digital makeup, dressup and whatever other distortations girls can do to a face. The final image can be emailed or printed. This is selling out quickly, so…

  • #3: Tech Toys - Chumby

     

    Tech Toy #3 - Chumby

    It's hard to describe this tech toy. It is a touch-screen, internet-clock-radio, news scanner, podcasting, music player, social-buddy, photo viewing, simple games, wifi connected, sensor based gadget.

    You buy this device from the Chumby web site for about $179. When you get it, you open the oddly packaged device, plug it in, turn it on, and follow…

  • #2: Tech Toys - Peek

     

    Tech Toy #2 for the 12 days of Tech Toys - PEEK

    Peek is the blackberry-like device for the rest of us. This is NOT a phone, it is a wireless email and IM device. No it won't connect to your Exchange Server. It will connect to hotmail, gmail, Yahoo, AOL and others.

    The cost for the device is $99, but it often goes on sales at the web site and I've seen it as low as …

  • The Holiday Mega List of Lists

    I thought I'd post a list of top holiday lists to help you get started. There's a few top gifts listed in the Toys for Techies presentation, and I'll be posting the Tech Toy of the day for the next 12 days so check back daily.

    Here is my List of Lists for 2008.

    If your not sure about a toy or gadget, you might want to check the ratings on Buzzillions. This is like Amazon's ratings but better.

    Do you…

  • #1: The 12 days of Tech Toys

     

    Tech Toy #1 - You in 3D. 

    Welcome to the 12 days of tech toys. As part of a tradition now, I presented my webcast for FIATECH on Toys for Techies on December 2. The links to the toys and the presentation are on the website link above. But there's more...

     

    Now for the next 12 days, which will bring us up to December 24, I will post a daily…

  • Pico Projectors - Everywhere

    Last month I saw one of the first devices in this category of gadgets, I call Pico Projectors. These devices are small projectors (about the size of a boxy cell phone) that you can carry in your pocket and connect to display from - your PC, an iPod, or even a SD memory card.

    I talked about these on my annual FIATECH "Toys for Techies 2009" - and immediately started to get questions…

  • Prototype This!

    I just got back from the Z-Corp User Group Meeting conference. I will post some interesting pictures of different models, and also elaborate on my presentation - How to Make 3D Models interactive.

    One of the most interesting things is the upcoming TV series "Prototype This!"  on the Discovery Channel. It is supposed to be on Oct 15,  10PM EST. The series will take people thru the process of building inventions…

  • Cats, Printing and Secret Codes

    Next week I'll be presenting a session on interactive 3D technology at the Z-Corp user meeting. My session is on making 3D models "interactive"

     You may remember my previous blog post on this and the demo at the BE conference. But a few key things have happened that I now KNOW you will be experiencing this in the next year as a consumer, maybe even in business.

    Let me start with some history here…

  • Lincoln Logs - Construction for the Future

    Lincoln logs were a favorite toy for a lot of us guys. No instructions needed - you just stacked and built a simple house. Sometimes, the structure even had a door.

    Today, I saw the story about an RFID tag vendor (UPM Raflatac) that brought back those fond memories of Lincoln logs. They announced that a log house manufacturer - Honkarakenne - is now attaching tags to individual logs during the manufacturing process…

  • The Circle of Life

    Damn that Amy. Our Energy Czar is really making me think. It not only hurts, but I find myself surfing the web and digging deeper into this Sustainability, Green, Energy stuff and spending more time than I anticipated. But it was worth it.

    I'm a numbers man. I like to see the stats, thought process, number crunching behind any claim, but especially when it comes to this sustainability stuff.

    The whole thing…

  • Happy 4th - a Visualization

    I hope you weren't expecting a link to one of those "build-your-own-fireworks" pages. I happened to stumble upon this visualization tool, that not only shows tag clouds of words in a document, but also has an interesting collection of dynamic graphs on climate change, Olympic medals won by country, worldwide nuclear reactors and more.

    This is an IBM/Alpha site and you can sign up and create your own…

  • YOU are the energy czar. Now what?

    I just had the pleasure of meeting our new, other CEO - Chief Environmental Officer - Amy Mussen. What a pleasant person, and so optimistic and passionate about the job ahead of her.

    I began to wonder what I would do if I was the Chief Energy Czar of a company - no maybe even the whole country. What if I could set the policy? Dig in ANWR. Require all new cars in hmmm maybe - 2 years…

  • The End of Summer Camp

    Don't you miss the days of Summer Camp as a kid?

    Will I can't give you back that time in your life, but the memories of summer camp resurfaced in my own mind when I saw that my old friend - David Berlind is now hosting the Energy Camp as an extension of InterOP in NY on September 16. See...

    http://www.energycamp.org/
    to register.

    The idea here is within the IT community itself with the move to virtualization…

  • 3D models - Come alive!

    The Applied Research Group recently acquired a 3D printer from Z-Corp, the model Z510 to be exact. I'll be blogging about our experiences as we learn more with our usage over the next few months. But just after we got the machine up and running, BE was right at our front door step. We wanted and needed to do something with all the cool 3D models we started to print. Printing out cityscapes, Generative Component based…

  • New Orleans - revisted

    I haven't been to New Orleans since Katrina, and the last CTIA conference that was there several years ago.

    I'm heading back to the Big Easy at the end of the month for the FIATECH conference. It promises to be a great lineup of speakers and topics. I'm moderating the Emerging Technology track and have the following sessions lined up:

    • Integration of GIS and GPS to Improve Utility Mapping and Damage Preve…
  • RFID Middleware - the Hard Way

    RFID Middleware is one of those great mysteries of the RFID ecosystem. Middleware itself is a nice catch-all, hocus-pocus phrase that is poorly defined and often misunderstood.

    Middleware is often defined as "software" that sits somewhere between the Operating System and the final application. How did we ever get ourselves into this mess of needing the computer equivalent of a translator to talk between the OS…

  • Sold! ...for $19.6 Billion

    The prime air space auctioned off by the FCC in the 700MHz frequency range is now closed and the winners payed $19.6 Billion. This is actually not one price, but the combined income from bids for over 1000 blocks of air space over different regions. To give you some perspective on the sale price,  this amount is more than the combined total the FCC has raised through auctions over the last 15 year.

    One key bid for…

  • Over and Under Estimates of Building

    CABA's Intelligent & Integrated Buildings Council (IIBC), along with  Frost & Sullivan are working on a new marketing positioning research study called "Convergence of Green and Intelligent Buildings"

    What's interesting is some of the statistics they quote, for example:

     In the U.S., buildings account for -

    • 45% of total energy use
    • 25% of water consumption
    • 70% of electricity co…
  • 4 Sale - Philly Wireless

    I hate to say "I told you so", but the grand scheme of  covering Philly with a WiFi Network seems to be a bad business model.

    Going back in history here - when this was first announced as an idea - John Street and the CIO at the time - Diane Neff both probably overhyped the concept. Philly became the poster child for muni-wifi efforts and everybody was watching. If you really want a good background on…

  • Crisis in Engineering Education - Questions to ponder

    There is a great series of articles in Design News this month on the Crisis in Engineering Education.

    The series of articles starts with the stats from the Princeton Review of the 20 schools with the worst professors, seven are engineering schools. Later it digs deeper and finds that Engineering Education is "Pretty Good" based on ratings from students.

    My old friend, John Dodge (I know him from…

  • Microsoft in Danger?

    If the Microsoft Mobile platform is so great, why did they buy Danger? Danger makes the popular T-Mobile only Sidekick phone. It was an interesting device, but never really made any money.

    Some speculate that it was for the UI and predict a hardware mash-up of Zune and Danger.

    I think it's ironic that Microsoft trapped itself by selling the concept that a mobile phone/pda with a same or similiar look and feel…

  • iPhone goes corporate - let the games begin

    Yesterday, Jobs announced a roadmap and the SDK for the iPhone.  You can watch the video announcement here...

    http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/rtp20e92/event/index.html?internal=fj2l3s9dm

    This event was meant to announce the SDK, but Apple took the time to showcase a roadmap to drive into the corporate/enterprise market. Even now with all the security holes, and lack of push email - the iPhone has captured…