In the most recent episode of my Foundation video series, I sat down with the founder of StyleSeat, Melody McCloskey. Melody shares how her frustration with finding a stylist inspired her to build the platform. She also talks through the challenges of reaching an audience who isn’t in front of a computer all day and how the web helps them grow their business and improve their client… → Read More
This year, Shereef Bishay came up with an ambitious engineering and educational challenge: Try to take 20 aspiring developers, at various levels of ability, teach them Ruby on Rails, and have them job-ready in 10 weeks. The result: Dev Bootcamp, a 10-week engineering gauntlet specifically that subjects those willing to some 400+ hours of intense technical training. The cost, with a $1K discount… → Read More
After having been a tech executive for many years, I needed to take a break, and I wanted to give back to society. Duke University engineering dean Kristina Johnson gave me a great spiel about how the school’s Masters of Engineering Management program churns out great engineers, and how engineers solve the world’s problems. She said that I could make a big impact by teaching engineering… → Read More
This here is a Japanese engineering project called Skeletonics. This passive exoskeleton doesn’t have any servomechanisms like traditional active exoskeletons. Instead, the engineers went with a series of levers, springs, and pulleys to amplify the movements of their operator. → Read More
Living in Silicon Valley, one gets used to meeting people who are optimistic and who talk about changing the world. But as I lamented in this piece about the Valley’s obsession with Facebook and Twitter apps, most of its entrepreneurs either think too small or are focused on the wrong things. So, even though I am enthusiastic about its ability to take risks and innovate, I’ve been skeptical… → Read More
Ask a child if there is a shortage of ice cream in the world, and no doubt, the response will be an emphatic yes—there certainly is. And ask a tech CEO if there is a shortage of engineers, and you will get the exact same answer.
That’s the story I used to tell, based on my research on engineering graduation rates and outsourcing trends. In 2005, my team shattered the myths about India and… → Read More
Sailplanes are fun and all, but they are gliders at heart and for the most part, you have to tow a glider up into the sky before you can fly it. Obviously this is problematic since you have to hire a pilot with a plane to drag you up into the air, limiting the locations you can launch from. Well, if these creative sailplane pilots have their way, that problem will be a thing of the past. → Read More
A Coast Guard camera pointed at the Hudson River completes the story of the miracle landing from start to finish. Within seconds of the splashdown, passengers are evacuating and a quick minute later, the first boat steams full speed towards the downed aircraft. There isn’t any sound but the 10 minute video chronicles the entire event. The must see video after the break. → Read More
From Flickr
Now this is a feel-good story. All 135 people aboard US Airways flight 1549 are safe and sound after a soft water landing and escape into the frigid Hudson River on rafts.
I’m not a very good flier and I read this story by Steven Johnson about the relative safety of air travel. The money shot:
[MIT Professor Arnold] Barnett calculates that it’s more likely for a young child to be… → Read More
Now here’s an odd discovery I made today: Nanologica has created see-through solar cells that you can place on a building surface. The technology is pretty freaky. What you have is a “polarized” surface that lets in light allows some light to pass through. Some light, however, is captured and reflected back at a different wavelength so it can’t leave the glass until it hits… → Read More
The superrich and political élite will be able to fly from London to New York in three hours once 2015 rolls around. A new supersonic jet, the Aerion, is in development that will be able fly at mach 1.6—that’s 1,217 mph. And it’s not like this is a mock-up or anything. The company has already received 50 $237,000 deposits for the first models. The supersonic jet is being… → Read More
The official car of Long Island The Great Indoors? Developers out on Long Island, the fashion capital of the world, plan to build a $2 billion resort, whose crown jewel will be a 35-story ski mountain. The resort, at Riverhead, which is 75 miles east of New York City (about an 18-hour drive on the LIE), isn’t expected to be open until 2013. Naturally, environmentalists oppose the deal… → Read More
I don’t pretend to understand the subtleties of flash memory manufacturing. But I think what’s happened here is that Hynix has contrived a way to put three bits instead of two into each cell, increasing the data density of a chip by 50% – or reducing the size by 30%. Before now they could only do this on 16GB NAND modules, but now they’re doing it for 32GB ones. High fives… → Read More
Here are some shows where you can really see some gear crunch. They’re part of the History Channel’s Modern Marvels series, which cover (as you may expect) the major works, megastructures, and, in this set, the spectacular failures of modern engineering. You won’t be seeing the Apple Newton on there or Microsoft Bob, but you will see bridges and buildings collapsing, huge ships… → Read More
It looks like something out of the Matrix or the Dune movie – imagine this electric needle plunging into your flesh and injecting you with the Snow Crash virus. Or something. In any case, it’s more just a case of ingenuity as this guy needed a very sharp little probe to test some voltages out of a few very tiny pins. So he rigged up a medical-grade steel-tipped needle for insulin… → Read More
Some French students have figured out a way to use the Nintendo DS to control a small robot. The above video shows someone controlling the robot by using the touchscreen, by tilting the DS and by using Pictochat. Longtime readers will know that I think robots, in all their forms, are silly, but this I like. Today these kids are screwing around with robots and handheld video game systems, tomorrow… → Read More
Some MIT engineering students were given an assignment to prototype something based on the concept of “reduce, reuse, recycle.” Seven 18-student teams teams were formed and came up with some pretty cool stuff. One team made a solar powered bin that detects and separates recyclables dropped into it. Another found a way to separate the oil from used oil filters before dumping them, using… → Read More
Bored UCSC Engineering Students + 6400 Post-It Notes = A delightful Donkey Kong scene on a window. End of transmission. UCSC Engineering Building Attacked By Giant Gorilla [UCSC.edu] → Read More
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