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Bre Pettis of MakerBot stopped by our little show today and spent some time on the stage with John Biggs and other notables in the manufacturing space. But afterwards Pettis, co-founder and CEO of MakerBot, joined me on the TCTV couch to geek out a bit over the fantastic MakerBot Replicator. The company also has two MakerBot Replicators printing out random doodads and toys in our first ever Hardware Alley.
New York Hardware Buffs Weigh In On China, Embracing Niches, And How To Start Making ThingsWed, 23 May 2012 15:58:13 +0000
Earlier this morning, our own John Biggs was joined on stage by a handful of New York-based makers who have made a name for themselves by building physical things (or in one case, building something that builds other things). Biggs kicked off the panel with a simple question: — can we bring manufacturing back?
Bre Pettis, CEO of Makerbot Industries, has two shifts of workers putting together all of his Makerbots in Brooklyn, and had a bit of advice for hardware creators looking to shift production to China. He recommended that until makers need to produce runs of 50,000-100,000 units, they’re much better off keeping the production process in the United States. It helps to keep makers intimate with their tech, not to mention makes it easier for them to handle any unexpected issues faster. Re-live 1993 With ThinkGeek’s New Super Famicom-Inspired Wii ControllerTue, 22 May 2012 15:17:38 +0000
A Wiimote turned on its side makes for a perfectly serviceable controller when plowing through retro games from the Wii Shop Channel, and the Classic Controller isn't bad either, but I wouldn't call either of them an ideal solution.
On the other hand, ThinkGeek's new Super Famicom controller for the Wii manages to come pretty damned close, especially if you're a gamer who spends your time steeped in the past. Incident’s gTar Tops $120,000 On Kickstarter (That’s $110K In Less Than 24 Hours)Tue, 22 May 2012 13:32:42 +0000
Kickstarter is a great place to launch a product. Remember the Pebble smart watch, which saw over $1 million in funding in its first 28 hours on the site, and surpassing $3 million well over a month before their stated goal?
Disrupt, which just so happens to be underway as I type these very words, is also an excellent place to launch your product. We've seen countless companies rise to almost instantaneous success after stepping off of our stage, like Soluto, Mint.com, Redbeacon, and GroupMe.
So it should be no surprise that Incident's now-famous gTar, which was launched both on the Disrupt Battlefield stage and on Kickstarter, has made upwards of $120,000 on Kickstarter since launching on our stage yesterday.
There hasn't been a whole lot of news coming out of the Google Zeitgeist event taking place in a posh hotel on the outskirts of London this week, but Google's making some other news in England: its CEO Larry Page has been spotted wearing Google Glasses.
The pictures of Page wearing the super-funky augmented reality eyewear are possibly the first -- although his Google co-founder Sergey Brin has also been seen wearing them in the wild. Today's pictures come courtesy of a Google employee, who posted them -- where else? -- on Google+.
Sonos has just gotten really deep (get it?) with their new Sonos Sub, a wireless subwoofer that connects to any Sonos system and adds just a bit more oomph to the musical proceedings. The sub costs $699 and offers (according to the press release) "thick layers of bottomless sound that let you hear and feel the weight of every chord, kick, splash and roll." Sprint’s EVO 4G LTE Has Cleared U.S. Customs, Pre-Orders To Be Filled As Early As May 24Mon, 21 May 2012 22:19:05 +0000
Sprint's launch plans for the HTC EVO 4G LTE were ruined last week when shipments of their shiny new Android handset were held up by United States Customs, but we're hearing that they may been hitting doorsteps and store shelves sooner than expected.
According to Sprint, the devices are now currently sitting safely in Sprint's warehouses and are expected to start trickling out into the world "on or around May 24." The Power Of Disrupt: gTar Raises $30,000 On Kickstarter In Two HoursMon, 21 May 2012 21:20:48 +0000
Incident took the stage this afternoon at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC and debuted the gTar. It's safe to say that they are already a major contender for the Disrupt Cup.
The startup wowed the crowd with their iPhone-powered teaching guitar. The judges loved it. The crowd loved. And most importantly, fans turned to the startup's Kickstarter campaign where funding took off like a rocket. Prior to hitting the stage, the gTar had raised just a touch above $10,000. Now, almost exactly two hours after their Disrupt debut, their Kickstarter funding (a.k.a. pre-orders) is north of $42,000 and rising fast. Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cablevision, And Others Will Share Wi-Fi Hot SpotsMon, 21 May 2012 20:19:51 +0000
Imagine for a moment that you are sitting in your front yard in a lawn chair, sipping lemonade while attempting to read the latest news on your WiFi-only iPad. You're just out of range of your WiFi signal. Your neighbor's signal is super strong, but that selfish hooligan didn't leave it wide open for you to leach onto. Wouldn't you love to be able to use a portion of his spectrum anyway while away from your own?
Well, you still can't, however... Incident Launches The gTar at Disrupt, An iPhone-Powered Electronic Teaching GuitarMon, 21 May 2012 19:25:35 +0000
The gTar by Incident is disruption defined. It takes the guitar, an instrument with a steep learning curve, and adds a bit of digital wizardry in the form of an embedded iPhone to make learning dramatically easier. The company brags that their modern take on the guitar allows for three levels of difficulty, rather than the traditional single really difficult one. But thanks to the iPhone and a clever app, this $450 electronic guitar essentially teaches users the ins and outs of the instrument.
The startup recently turned to Kickstarter to raise $100,000. However today they gave the crowd at Disrupt a musical treat -- a demonstration at Startup Alley. And the device seemed to work as advertised.
On Friday May 18th, Apple filed a motion for a U.S. preliminary injunction against Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1. This follows a ruling by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Northern District of California), siding with Apple on the question of whether Samsung is in violation of an iPad-related design patent (U.S. Patent No. D504,889). According to Foss Patents, the source of this story, the request could be valid and is likely to be upheld.
Samsung has until May 25th at high noon to respond. (OK not really...about the high noon thing).
What does it mean though? Will the Galaxy Tab 10.1 disappear from U.S. shores if Apple emerges victoriously with their injunction?
Comcast announced Monday that it will make its newest set-top box available in Boston over the coming weeks, with a rollout planned across the entire country later this year. It's also introducing a mobile app to control the set-top box from the iPhone or iPad.
The new set-top box comes after several years of development. Comcast has been working hard to develop a new set-top box that would take all of the smarts out of the box and put it in the network, essentially allowing the cable provider to launch new services and update the new features without having to totally rewrite applications or push out new firmware.
This week we recorded live from the show floor at Disrupt NYC. We sat through 24 hours straight of hot-rod hacking at the Hackathon and now we're preparing for the main show and, most important, the brand new Hardware Alley where we'll have loads of great hardware start-ups for you guys to check out.
Teaching kids - especially little girls - about electronics is a hard job. First, there's the electricity. Then there's the sense that soldering, wiring, and lining up LEDs is considerably less fun than watching Tangled. This project, called Roominate, aims to change the way girls think about electricity.
The kit consists of a set of tiny furniture with built-in wires and switches. You can wire up your dollhouse however you like, adding lamps and switches. $49 gets you one regular room and $95 gets you a "duplex."
SpaceX and Elon Musk will not be held from the history books. Last night the company announced that engineers were currently replacing a faulty valve on engine #5, and if successful pending a data review today, the company would attempt a second launch on Tuesday, May 22nd. This comes as SpaceX's maiden voyage to the International Space Station was cut a half second short by an automated safety function built into the rocket.
My set ritual before going to bed each night is as follows -- turn out the lights, plug in my iPhone, take off my glasses and attempt vainly to nod off. Step two in that process can be a bit of a crapshoot in the dark, but the folks at Scrap Pile Labs have recently kicked off a new Kickstarter campaign for a product called the CordLite that just may come in handy.
As the name sort of implies, the CordLite is a dock connector cable for iDevices that, well, lights up thanks to a pair of forward-facing LEDs. It's a very simple concept, but the thoughtful execution is what make this project worth keeping an eye on.
"Entering terminal count autosequence. 60 seconds to engine fire. #DragonLaunch," tweeted Elon Musk as his space company was less than a minute away from it's historic flight. But the launch didn't happen. Nothing happened as longtime NASA commentator George Diller counted down the seconds, "3..2..1......We've had a cutoff. Liftoff did not occur." Musk tweeted 11 minutes later at 5:06am EDT, "Launch aborted: slightly high combustion chamber pressure on engine 5. Will adjust limits for countdown in a few days."
While, arguably, you’re not going to convince many kids to give up their Topps or Pokemon cards for these things, it’s nice to know they exist. They’re 3D Printer trading cards featuring some of the best 3D printers in the world. You got your Makerbot Replicator, your UP! Printer, and your Printrbot Plus. You got stats on there, a little trivia, some pricing information and then you can trade with your friends ("Awwww man, I need that Reprap clone!") You can check them all out here or see them in person at Maker Faire in SF this week. Sadly, they’re not actually printing these things but if they did I’d totally buy a pack. The impetus? They came to creator Shawn Wallace in a dream: I had a dream that I found a box of 3D Printer Trading cards from 2012 at the Seekonk Speedway Flea Market. When I awoke I realized that might be a good way to introduce some of the 3D printer makers who will be exhibiting at the Maker Faire Bay Area next week. I’ll be posting these all week in no particular order; collect them all!
Is The Avengers worth your money? Do the disc-blasting Nerf guns leave a welt? How do you pull a Pebble and rein in $3 million on Kickstarter?
In this week's TC/Gadgets webcast, we answer all this and more.
Say you’re a misanthrope and you’re afraid of humans. What to do? Well, you could cower in the dark when people ring your doorbell or you could laugh derisively at their smug faces in the screen of your iPhone. I’m going for the derisive laughter. This DIY Arduino project involves a simple circuit, a webcam, and a few API calls to PushingBox to enable a truly enjoyable derisive experience. The system works by pushing images grabbed by the webcam through PushingBox to an app like Prowl or Pushme.to. When the doorbell is pressed, it sends a serial signal to the Arduino board which in turn notifies the various services. The webcam picture then gets sent over to you so you can decide whether to let whoever is outside in. It’s probably a little more complex than it needs to be, but if you’re totally into watching the world pass you by it’s a great solution and a fun weekend project. Project Page