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Wednesday, April 30, 2014

drag2share: An Illinois High School Is 3D Printing A New Hand For A Girl Born Without Fingers â And It Will Only Cost $5

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/kylie-wicker-boylan-high-school-3d-printed-hand-2014-4

Nine-year-old Kylie Wicker of Rockford, Illinois was born without fingers on her left hand, but enterprising students taking the Engineering Graphics class at Boylan Catholic are using a 3D printer to manufacture a prosthetic hand for her, reports MyFoxPhilly.

Kylie's father, Jeromy Wicker, knew that the school had a 3D printer — a Makerbot Replicator, specifically — and reached out to the school upon learning that 3D printing technology could be used to make prosthetics useful to people like his daughter.

These prosthetics can cost as much as $50,000, a grievous figure compared to the projections of Bud May, teacher of the Engineering Graphics class: "The total cost of this will be barely $5. Maybe a dollar's worth of plastic and a couple of bucks for the fasteners."

Here are a couple of pictures of what the hand looks like:

Screen Shot 2014 04 30 at 9.41.36 AM

Screen Shot 2014 04 30 at 9.41.57 AM 1

When it's ready for her on Friday, Kylie's new hand will enable her to do a number of things that were previously impossible or difficult.

"I can finally ride my bike," she told FOX.

For some reason, the B-roll of this news story is embeddable. Check it out below for a few comments from Kylie, her parents, and the teacher leading the class designing her arm.

Philadelphia News, Weather and Sports from WTXF FOX 29

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drag2share: Ads Are Coming To Tinder This Year

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/tinder-ads-2014-4

The mobile dating app Tinder will likely see advertising sometime this year.

Re/Code reports that IAC, which owns a majority stake in the startup, said during an earnings call today that it would begin testing monetization methods soon.

Greg Blatt, chairman of IAC's Match dating division, said the app provides "real opportunities for native advertising."

Already, these capabilities have been tested by Fox and the USA Network, which set up fake profiles for characters from "The Mindy Project" and "Suits," respectively. No money changed hands for either of the brand integrations.

Mindy Kaling on tinder

The app has also considered selling subscriptions, as well as a "freemium" model that would give away basic services for free but require users to pay for additional features, such as the ability to go back and undo a swipe for a given user.

SEE ALSO: This Is How Tinder Plans To Make Money

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Article: Massive Firefox update hits refresh on browsing

Mozilla on Tuesday released the first major interface refresh for Firefox since relaunching the browser in 2011, making more than 1,300 changes to the browser in an effort to win users away from Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Google's Chrome, and Apple's Safari browsers. The massive overhaul come...

http://www.cnet.com/news/massive-firefox-update-hits-refresh-on-browsing/

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Article: Consumer Physics’ $150 smartphone spectrometer can tell the number of calories in your food

Would you like to be able to look up the calorie content of the specific apple you're eating? You could take it to a lab and run it through a spectrometer, but accurate spectrometers are huge, expensive machines that are often only owned by institutions and require training to use. A new startup,...

http://gigaom.com/2014/04/29/consumer-physics-150-smartphone-spectrometer-can-tell-the-number-of-calories-in-your-food/

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Article: Lix, A More Precise 3D-Printing Pen, Passes Its Kickstarter Goal In 2-Hours

The 3Doodler 3D-printing pen, as my TC colleague John Biggs recently pointed out, is a fun toy but a silly tool. It's big and its output is frustratingly wonky. But then it was created by a pair of veteran toy makers so focusing on the fun was clearly the primary intention. Now a U.K. startup is ...

http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/30/lix-a-more-precise-3d-printing-pen-passes-its-kickstarter-goal-in-2-hours/?ncid=rss

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drag2share: You can now use Chromecast to share your Google Drive Presentation

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/04/29/google-chromecast-drive-presentations/

Google's inexpensive dongle can do a lot of things. Whether it be streaming music or a variety of video programming, the Chromecast is capable of handling it all -- and don't forget live TV is coming soon, too. But while having these entertainment options is nice, sometimes you have to be, you know, productive. Thankfully, it looks like you can start using the $35 dongle to send some of your work to a separate screen near you.

As spotted by Android Police, Google has quietly added an option within Drive that lets you push your Presentation to Chromecast. We looked into it ourselves and can confirm that said feature is indeed there, via the "Present on another device" menu. Technically, you could already do something similar by simply casting the entire browser, but this gives you an alternative that's actually optimized for Presentations. And don't be surprised by the fact there hasn't been a formal announcement, since Google's been known to do things unexpectedly from time to time. Either way, you can give it a try now -- just be sure to have the Cast extension installed, as you'll need that in order for this to work.

Filed under: Internet, Google

Source: Android Police

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drag2share: Google Glass won't steal your phone calls anymore

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/04/29/google-glass-update-/

Google Glass with an earbud

Google isn't done upgrading Glass this month just because the KitKat update is out the door. It's rolling out another release this week that should be huge for frequent callers and photographers. You'll no longer miss a phone call just because Glass took control of the audio; the eyewear is now smart enough to route sound to your handset when you're using it to hold a conversation. It'll also be possible to back up photos and videos when away from WiFi, and you can clear those shots from your timeline with one swipe when you're done. There should be more voice commands to accommodate third-party apps, as well. It's not clear exactly when the update hits, but it should give the surge of new Glass owners one more thing to look forward to.

Filed under: Wearables, Google

Via: Jenny Murphy (Google+)

Source: Google Glass (Google+), Google Developers

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drag2share: GoPro's Android app now connects to your action cam automatically

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/04/29/gopro-android-app-update/

GoPro's smartphone apps have been a useful addition to its popular action cams for quite some time, and now the Android version sees a nice update. First, and most importantly, the app now automatically connects to your camera's WiFi signal on launch, nixing a visit to the settings menu as your first stop. Sharing is easier as well, as those captured stills and videos can now be beamed to Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and other social repositories directly from your mobile device. There's also an updated UI for those wielding version 4.0 or later of Google's mobile OS and the ability to have the app set the curated Photo of the Day as your wallpaper. Haven't been alerted to version 2.4 yet? Well, jump down to the source link to nab the download now.

Filed under: Cameras, Software

Via: Android Police

Source: GoPro (Google Play)

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drag2share: Judges have more discretion to punish patent trolls, but they probably won't

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/04/29/judges-now-have-more-discretion-to-punish-patent-trolls-but-th/

the supreme court building in...

The US Supreme Court just gave judges a little more leverage to punish patent trolls: it defined the word "exceptional." A provision of federal patent law hinged on the definition of the word, stating that the court could charge a lawsuit's losing party with the winner's attorney fees in "exceptional cases." It sounds straightforward: if a lawsuit is obviously frivolous, the patent troll pays its victim's costs. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court said, precedent from a previous case left the rule with "an inflexible framework onto statutory text that is inherently flexible." In other words, it was too difficult to define exactly how exceptional a case was, making it nearly impossible to implement punitive fee-shifting.

To resolve the issue, the Supreme Court went back to the dictionary, declaring that the Patent Act provision's use of "exceptional" should be interpreted by Webster's definition: uncommon, rare or not ordinary. "An exceptional case," Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, "is simply one that stands out from the others." This simplified definition will allow district judges to implement the kind of loser-pays fee-shifting found in patent reform bills like the Innovation Act. That said, most judges tend to rule on the conservative side: unless a troll's foul-play is abundantly clear, there is a good chance they'll still go unpunished.

[Image credit: Shutterstock / trekandshoot]

Filed under: Misc

Via: SCOTUS Blog, Verge

Source: Supreme Court (1), (2)

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Tuesday, April 29, 2014

drag2share: Acerâs new Chromebook first to use an Intel Core i3 chip

Source: http://gigaom.com/2014/04/29/acers-new-chromebook-first-to-use-an-intel-core-i3-chip/

Acer announced a new Chromebook in its C720 line on Tuesday at a New York City press event and unlike its other models, this one gets a chip boost. Instead of the fairly common Intel Celeron processor found in other Chromebooks from Acer, Dell and HP, Acer is putting an Intel Core i3 processor inside the laptop. Slashgear notes that the new 11.6-inch Chromebook is due out this summer with larger models possibly following. Using the Core i3 should improve performance while not severely impacting battery life.

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drag2share: This space-age insulation company youâve never heard of is planning to go public

Source: http://gigaom.com/2014/04/29/this-space-age-insulation-company-youve-never-heard-of-is-planning-to-go-public/

Things you never thought you wanted to know about: insulation. But here’s why at least one next-gen super-efficient insulation company is interesting.

A company called Aspen Aerogels makes a crazy space-age insulation blanket that is being used to insulate extreme environments like deep-sea oil refineries and astronauts in space. It turns out there’s enough demand for its intense energy-saving insulation out there that it’s planning to go public, and could raise up to $86.25 million in an IPO.

Aspen Aerogels uses nanotechnology to make an ultra-thin durable “aerogel,” which is a basically a blanket made out of pockets of air. Ninety-seven percent of the volume of Aspen’s aerogel is air.

The surrounding structure that makes up the blanket is made of silicon dioxide. Aspen makes the blankets by pouring a stream of ethanol filled with silicon dioxide into a mold and then heats it up to super high temperatures to remove the ethanol, leaving just the silica structure and air.

Air doesn’t transmit heat so well, and the blankets are extremely good at blocking heat or cold from escaping to the other side of the blanket. The aerogels are also very hard to light on fire, as you can see in this awesome video below, so they’re great for intensely hot environments like a power plant:

The majority (87 percent) of Aspen Aerogel’s customers are in the energy infrastructure industry, which use the product to insulate power plants and refineries. But about 10 percent of its customers come from outside of energy, like more traditional building construction companies, train car and plane makers, even some apparel companies (like for astronauts). The aerogel blankets are pretty expensive, or maybe regular homes builders would be using these more readily.

Founded in 2001, Aspen Aerogels isn’t yet profitable, and generated revenue of $86.10 million on a net loss of $47.61 million in 2013. But the company is growing rapidly and wants to raise money to add more factory capacity (they have a factory in East Providence, Rhode Island). It anticipates spending some $80 million to $100 million on new factory space.

This isn’t the first time that Aspen Aerogels has tried to go public. Last spring the company decided to withdraw an IPO filing and raise debt financing instead. Are the markets better this year? We’ll see.

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drag2share: AMD wages benchmark war on Intel's tablet chips

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/04/29/amd-mullins-tablet-benchmarks-vs-intel/

For all the success AMD has been having in the console and PC graphics spheres, none of it has really translated into the world of Windows-based tablets and ultraportables. The chip maker insists that's going to change in 2014, however, and it has released a number benchmarks showing that its latest processors have a lead not only over AMD's previous generation, but also over the Intel chips that currently reign supreme in these form factors.

We won't bore you with a gabble of numbers when you can check out charts for yourself in the gallery below, but the main curiosity here is probably the 4.5-watt tablet platform, known as "Mullins." This replaces last year's Temash processor, which had impressive gaming skills but failed to catch on in the market. AMD's in-house scores suggest Mullins offers much better performance per watt, with the new A4 Micro-6400T achieving a 15 percent lead over Intel's Bay Trail T (the Atom Z3370) in PCMark 8 -- a lead that could potentially be significant enough to bring the chip into more slim-line (and passively cooled) Windows 8 machines. What AMD doesn't reveal, however, is whether devices equipped with this A4 chip will have comparable battery life to Bay Trail, so it's all academic until actual, commercial devices come around.

Filed under: Laptops, Tablets, AMD

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drag2share: Firefox gets a big redesign that's all about customization

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/04/29/firefox-29/

Mozilla Firefox 29 web browser

Firefox has had a tough time standing out among browsers -- Chrome gives you Google's ecosystem, while both Internet Explorer and Safari have the luxury of being system defaults. Why would you choose Mozilla's software over the others? As of today, customization may be the answer. The organization has just released the finished version of Firefox 29, a major overhaul that makes personalization easy on the desktop. Its new customization mode lets you put any feature or service in the toolbar or menu bar; if you just have to keep a Pinterest add-on available at all times, you can make it happen. It's quicker to customize your bookmarks, too.

The redesign minimizes clutter beyond just the new menu bar, with an overall slimmer design that hides tabs you're not using. Syncing between devices is also simpler -- whether you're using the browser on the desktop or an Android device, you now just have to sign in to get your open tabs, bookmarks and login details from other devices you use. There's no certainty that the Firefox makeover will tempt you away from competing web clients, but it may be time for another look if you haven't checked out Mozilla's work in a while.

Filed under: Internet, Software

Source: Mozilla, Google Play

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drag2share: Acer outs Iconia Tab 7 phone-tablet hybrid, upgrades its 7-inch Android slate

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/04/29/acer-iconia-one-7-iconia-tab-7/

Another day, another tablet launch. Just a few months after announcing the 7-inch B1-720 Android tablet at CES, Acer has decided it can do better. The company just announced the Iconia One 7 (aka the B1-730), another 7-incher, this time with a sharper screen (1,280 x 800 resolution, up from 1,024 x 600). Just as important, perhaps, Acer went with a faster Intel Atom Z2560, which should be an improvement over the bargain-basement MediaTek CPU used in the last edition. Not just faster, mind you, but perhaps more energy-efficient, too: Battery life is now rated at a more respectable seven hours, whereas before it could only last five. As for software, Acer says it will ship with Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean), but will be upgradeable to Android 4.4 (KitKat). Look for in the US and Canada in May, starting at $130 with 8GB of storage (there will be a 16GB version too).

Meanwhile, speaking of 7-inch slates, the company announced the Iconia Tab 7, a tablet that doubles as a proper phone -- a concept we've seen before. Like the new Iconia One, it rocks a 1,280 x 800 screen on some models (Europe gets the 1,280 x 800 version, while Mexico gets a lower-specced 1,024 x 600 edition). Under the hood, meanwhile, it runs off a quad-core MediaTek CPU, suggesting it won't be quite as robust as the other tablet announced today. The battery life is supposedly shorter too: six hours, versus seven.

If that weren't evidence enough that this is a budget tablet, get a load of the connectivity options: the tablet tops out at 3G speeds, as opposed to LTE. On the plus side, it ships with Android KitKat and Acer says it coated the screen in a special finish that's supposed to reduce fingerprints (we'll see about that). All told, with specs that skew so far toward the lower end, this is mainly a device for emerging markets. Indeed, Acer says the tablet will be available in Latin America, Asia and parts of Europe, but not the US or Canada. If you happen to live in a qualifying country, though, you'll be able to get it for €149 (around $206) or 1,990 Mexican pesos (about $152). Here, too, there will be both 8GB and 16GB models.

Filed under: Tablets, Acer

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drag2share: HTC's flagship phone is getting audio help from Harman Kardon

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/04/29/htc-one-m8-harman-kardon/

Well, can't say we saw this one coming -- rather than dig into the complexities of an HD Voice rollout, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse confirmed that the carrier, HTC and the folks at Harman/Kardon have created a special Harman Kardon version of the HTC One M8. Why? Apparently because the way most other smartphones play music leaves much to be desired.

No one has waved around one of these things yet, but that's OK. All of the magic happens in software anyway (although it has "champagne" trim and a darker back to let everyone know how much more premium it is). The star of the show is a software feature called Clari-fi -- while it's easy to look at it as the successor to Beats Audio, it sounds a lot more substantial than a glorified audio profile. To hear Harmon Kardon tell it, Clari-fi leans heavily on algorithms that analyze music and aim to restore the complexity of sound lost in the production process. The tweaked M8 can also play 24-bit, 192kHz lossless .FLAC files -- that probably won't mean much unless you're a dyed-in-the-wool audio buff, but it'll sound good enough to make you rethink the CD archive taking up space in the garage.

At this point, it's anyone's guess as to how good the end result actually sounds, but you won't have to wait long to find out. The special edition M8 will hit Sprint stores (with a pair of Harman Kardon headphones in the box) for $229 with a contract on May 9.

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