There’s a lot of technology news every day — too much. Our mission here is to highlight only the announcements that have long-term implications, promise or portent.
We won't cover instantly-obsolete news like an updated piece of software or the new gadget that barely improves on the previous one...
Instead we’ll only spotlight the innovations that will still be important a year from now — and even further into the future.
This weeks headlines:
1. “Print” a base on the Moon
2. 3D-printed guns made practical with new bullet design
3. President Obama backs Net Neutrality
4. Internet service sent via Satellite
5. Robot scallops to swim in your blood
6. Amazon’s Echo listens to you
7. Spark adds WiFi to any device for $19
8. Samsung: 16 simultaneous sensors capture a gigapixel of 3D
9. Sharp captures color in darkness
10. Lytro licenses its Light Field
Top Topic
“3D Printing’ is perhaps the first widely-accepted moniker that’s inherently inaccurate: printing has always meant putting ink on paper, but when the basic mechanism for an inkjet printer was adapted to spray out more durable materials, layer atop layer to make a solid item, a new form of manufacturing was named after an old method for marking paper.
Nonetheless, 3D printing promises to drastically change our society, reducing costs of goods, and allowing for entirely new ‘products — like a moon base!
In our regular installments we won’t have multiple items on one topic, but a lot happened in 3D manufacturing this week:
1. “Print” a base on the Moon
The European Space Agency is working on robot rover that could construct a habitat — after they launch it to the moon. It will even use moon dust as the base material.
• I’m almost 50, and I’d resigned myself to never living that childhood dream of going to the moon — But between ready-to-inhabit bases like this and improved travel such as the designs from Space X, it might happen yet!
2. 3D-printed guns made practical with new bullet design
The first designs for 3D-printed handguns were shocking — but at least they couldn’t repeatedly fire standard ammunition.
(The plastic used in 3D printing can’t withstand the gunpowder explosion that drives a standard bullet.)
So much for that limitation: someone thought it would be a swell idea to arm ’em with "improved" ammo: a new steel shell design encases the boom better, so the gun can fire repeated rounds.
So much for that limitation: someone thought it would be a swell idea to arm ’em with "improved" ammo: a new steel shell design encases the boom better, so the gun can fire repeated rounds.
3. President Obama backs Net Neutrality
“An open Internet is essential to the American economy, and increasingly to our very way of life,” says US President Barack Obama. “By lowering the cost of launching a new idea, igniting new political movements, and bringing communities closer together, it has been one of the most significant democratizing influences the world has ever known.”
Thankfully, the President is now backing “Net neutrality” and states the obvious — that doing so is an inherently conservative position… that is, not changing what has been working so well. “Net neutrality has been built into the fabric of the Internet since its creation,” Obama says, “but it is also a principle that we cannot take for granted. We cannot allow Internet service providers (ISPs) to restrict the best access or to pick winners and losers in the online marketplace for services and ideas.”
4. Internet service sent via Satellite
Elon Musk’s Next Mission is to provide Internet service via satellite, the Wall Street Journal reports: “SpaceX, Tesla founder explores venture to make lighter, cheaper satellites.”
The billionaire entrepreneur is considering building a factory to make satellites that could be launched by his rocket startup, the Journal adds here. The plan potentially calls for launching 700 satellites, each weighing less than 250 pounds.
5. Robot scallops to swim in your blood
There’s long been talk about robotic micro devices that might someday move about inside your body, repairing damage and delivering medications. But what mechanism might they use for mobility?
They’ll swim like a scallop, according to a proposal published here in the journal Nature. If you’re less academically oriented, Engadget has a short piece on it here — or you can simply watch the video.
6. Amazon’s Echo listens to you
It looks like a big ol’ tube, but the Echo is actually an audio-controlled system that uses seven microphones with “beam-forming technology” and enhanced noise cancellation to “hear you ask a question even while it's playing music,” Amazon says.
The $199 gadget always on and listening, the company threatens says — “just ask for information, music, news, weather, and more. Echo begins working as soon as it hears you say the wake word” which is “Alexa” for some reason.
And watch out: Amazon adds that its Echo is “always getting smarter” as its “brain is in the cloud… so it continually learns and adds more functionality over time. The more you use Echo, the more it adapts to your speech patterns, vocabulary, and personal preferences.”
Maybe they’ll add an analyst AI, providing therapy services as well… Since marketing depends on learning more about a potential customer’s desires, that’d be one insidiousImeaninsightful way to do it. “I’m listening…”
7. Spark adds WiFi to any device for $19
How much cost will connectivity now add to a device? Not much: Developer Spark bills its Photon as a $19 kit for building your own WiFi enabled products.
The “postage stamp-sized hackable module” is even FCC-certified “so that it can be used safely around the world.”
8. Samsung: 16 simultaneous sensors capture a gigapixel of 3D
At a developer conference, Samsung debuted a virtual reality-capturing camera
“Project Beyond” will take 3D footage for use with the
company’s Gear VR headset. The puck-sized gadget has 16 high-definition
cameras, and captures a gigapixel per second. Samsung says it uses “stereoscopic
interleaved capture and 3D-aware stitching technology to capture the scene just
like the human eye, but in a form factor that is extremely compact.”
Samsung adds that the system is not yet a product, but they
are showing “the first operational version of the device, and just a taste of
what the final system we are working on will be capable of.”
CNet
and TechCrunch
have more.
9. Sharp captures color in darkness
Night vision is known for its green-tinged monochromatic capture. Now Sharp says it can record color in total darkness, with it’s latest security camera.
Sharp says it’s “developed the industry's first infrared color night-vision camera capable of capturing color video in pitch-dark environments.” Yep, that’s zero lux, the company claims.
This camera’s infrared color night-vision CCD*3 was developed jointly by Sharp and the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology. It uses near-infrared light for illumination to enable color images to be captured in total darkness (zero lux)—a first for the industry, Sharp says.
10. Lytro licenses its Light Field
The company says its platform will “empower innovative organizations to harness the full potential of the light field in their industries… beyond the domain of photography.”
Lytro cites holography, microscopy, architecture, security “and many more imaging fields” that can “reimagine and customize their products. For instance, customers could optimize a special lens for analyzing soil samples, or customize a thermal sensor to analyze individuals’ heat signatures.”
Among the first licensees named are NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and a startup named General Sensing that is developing night vision.
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This Week's Post sponsored by:
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