The WristQue may look like one of those cloth bracelets worn by old soul Sophomores who spent a semester in Prague and came back with dredlocks and an absinthe fetish, but it’s not. It’s actually a personal climate control system. Let me explain.
The bracelet identifies you to the building and allows it to follow you from room to room. Is the meeting room too cold? Press a button and it starts to warm up. It will also prepare rooms for your arrival, reading your patterns of movement over time. If it sounds creepy, it is. → Read More
A Boston startup that makes energy auditing software for the commercial buildings industry, Retroficiency, raised $800,000 in a seed round led by energy management services firm World Energy Solutions (NASDAQ: XWES), and joined by a number of angel investors including Jean Hammond and Jill Preotle (both early investors in ZipCar) the companies announced today.
Facility managers, auditors or engineers who need to improve the energy efficiency of an aging building input whatever basic information they know about that building into Retroficiency’s system. The software uses the available details, and a comprehensive set of data about tens of thousands of other buildings with similar traits, then uses predictive analytics to generate an energy model for that building… → Read More
As TechCrunch readers know by now, I speak my mind and don’t shy away from controversy. I am even more provocative when I talk to students. My goal is to make them think outside the box. I encourage students not only to challenge authority, but also to challenge me. I tell them that with my research on globalization, entrepreneurship, and U.S. competitiveness, I am learning as I go; no one has all the answers; I could be wrong. In some talks, I present the available data; in others I just discuss what I have learned.
Over the last ten days, I have lectured at four universities: Columbia, Emory, MIT, and UC-Berkeley. The discussions were all lively, and I received very positive feedback from students.
But my talk at MIT, last Monday, seems to have set off a firestorm. → Read More
I’m hanging out at the MIT Media Lab today and watching some of the great presentations by some of the Lab’s current members and alumni. For example, Ramesh Raskar is currently showing off his system of Femtosecond Transient Imaging, essentially a type of camera that can take pictures around corners using high speed lasers. The project has been designed to “see” around corners using high speed laser scanning. Yeah, I don’t get it either. → Read More
MIT researchers tested the first prototype of the Seaswarm, a pack of robots that use nanotechnology to suck up oil from the surface of the ocean and for immediate processing.
When completed, the robots will be able to travel along oil-spilled waters, collecting oil more cheaply and efficiently than oil skimmers. The robots are large: 16 feet in length and seven feet in width. They push a conveyor belt wrapped by an oil-absorbing nanowire mesh that repels water while slurping up to twenty times its weight in oil. → Read More
MIT students have developed the “Copenhagen Wheel”, a device intended to be attached to any standard bicycle to turn it into an electric. The Wheel contains a motor, batteries, and gear system all inside a single hub, and is intended to help cyclists with hilly terrain and over long distances. Interestingly, there are also sensors that will link with cycling-related mobile apps. Of course, the hub isn’t available for purchase at this time – but it did just win the James Dyson Award, so odds are that the Copenhagen Wheel might just end up being available at retail in the near future.
Check out the video inside. → Read More
It’s interesting to see pictures of areas of your city or town from the past, and it can be even more interesting to try to reproduce those pictures. Typically, it’s very difficult to get everything to line up exactly right, but researchers at MIT are developing software to automate the process. → Read More
Polaroid is one of those things that’s always been with us, and if some have their way, always will. I remember taking pictures at camp using the family OneStep, and I still have a shot of myself at my first job. → Read More
Remember the DARPA red balloon challenge back in December? DARPA launched ten red balloons across the country and offered $40,000 to the first group of people who could identify the exact locations of all ten. All sorts of teams with different strategies participated, with the winning team coming from MIT.
Well, it turns out that TechCrunch helped find three of those balloons, more than any other source. The way the MIT team, headed by Riley Crane from the MIT Media Lab, got people across the country to tell them where the balloons were was through simple economic incentives. Anyone who found a balloon got $2,000, and anyone who recruited a person who found a balloon got $1,000. The latter was us. We created a team which ended up signing up three of the winners. → Read More
Have you ever wanted to reach out and strangle someone during a conference call? Well now you can. MIT’s crazy MeBot is a tiny robot that sits on your desk and moves around, allowing remote communication partners to roam around your office when you’re talking to them. → Read More
Your next Ford might have flowers, pastel colors, or calming scents coming from the interior. All of this will be aimed at reducing stress, and allow the driver to better connect with their vehicle. → Read More
This might be the display you are looking for. The MIT media lab just announced the creation of a new display technology that will read your hand gestures in order to manipulate images on the screen. While it’s not *technically* the Force, it’s still pretty cool. → Read More
One of the best things about being an academic is being able to mold young minds and guide them to success. When one of my students, Andrew Leblanc told me he was entering the Duke Startup Challenge Elevator Pitch Competition, I told him to come and see me and do a practice run. After all, I had judged several of these contests at Duke and other universities. I thought I knew what worked.
After the eleventh iteration, Andrew got it right. He wasn’t trying to pack his presentation with unnecessary details. He had slowed down his pitch, added a personal touch and was now exuding confidence. Andrew even researched the background of the judges and tailored his message to their interests. So after two hours of intense preparation, I had little doubt that Andrew would win.
Andrew lost. I was surprised. But what I told him afterward is that it really doesn’t matter. Contrary to what the organizers of these competitions will tell you, university business plan contests don’t produce winning companies. Yes, a number of companies have emerged from business plan bake-offs that have been moderate or small successes. But not a single home-run has emerged from this now-omnipresent practice. → Read More
Go here and put your name in the box. Just do it. It’s awesome.
The project, called Personas, comes from the MIT Media Lab built by Aaron Zinman. Basically, it takes your name and searches the web for some context around it. It then takes the words and sites it finds to build a profile of your presence on the web. Or in MIT-speak using words like “corpus”: → Read More
Baseball is a national sports in Japan and so it was just a matter of time for this baseball- and robot-crazy country to invent (industrial) robots that are able to play baseball. The 2-robot team can’t run around and doesn’t look human, but both machines are able to throw and bat the ball in quite an impressive way. → Read More
http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f8/1243511167 Students at MIT are building an electric car capable of being recharged in about ten minutes. Granted, the kind of power that’s necessary to do that would be enough “to blow the fuses on 20 residential homes at once,” according to project team member and MIT student Radu Gogoana. → Read More
EurekaFest is a yearly event held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that showcases the prototype inventions of high school students from around the country. The inventions consist of various gadgets and devices aimed at helping solve real-world problems. → Read More
That “sixth sense” device is a heck of a let more interesting actually seeing it in action. It’s also a heck of a lot more interesting the way Wired describes it, as opposed to Reuters’ “Um, it does stuff! Far out!” → Read More
Those eggheads at MIT are at it again, this time creating a “sixth sense” gadget. It’s basically a combined scanner and 3D projector (with a touchscreen-like surface). Say, for example, you’re at the store looking at different boxes of cereal. You scan the box of Lucky Charms with the gadget, which then scans the internet for, I don’t know, nutritional information and a history of the product. Handy. → Read More
