Of all the things that Google announced yesterday at the Google I/O developers conference, the one I find most exciting is their new Android Open Accessory standards and the Accessory Development Kit (ADK) that goes with it. The best nerdy part of this nerdy story is that the ADK is centered around the Arduino open…

How does Facebook build their massive server infrastructure? You don’t care? You might after you hear why, see how and download the 3D models they use to make the servers that store all your private information. This is Facebook’s bread and butter. They’ve opened up how they build their data centers and how they’ve developed…

I’m sorry, but instant death by sudden penetration of a recoiling swarm of caterpillar robots is not my idea of a enjoyable science experiment. Even if cake was involved. Nevertheless, an ambitious group of researchers at Tuft University are fascinated at the possibility of using Biomemtrics to capture the “balistic rolling” action of the Crambidea…

You may be familiar with the new crowd-funding product design craze. It’s ridiculous. The number of projects achieving funding is amazing. We’ve featured some on here and know of others who are preparing to launch their ideas into the crowd cashing cosmos. Recently, two interesting projects popped up which show how a small team is…

Ok, now this is more like it. I’ll try to tell you without choking on the beauty of this, but since my larynx is already convulsing, you may have to proceed on your own. I know, you’ve probably had your fill of web-based 3D modeling applications. What’s that? There aren’t any? You mean, they’re weren’t…

I’m making a list of programs I’ll pay for on a monthly basis. Programs downloaded from or accessed via the web, used only when I need them. Just like boxes of cereal, which I also have a list of. Adobe products are first on my list. Well, actually last at the moment, right below services…

This is just too good not to pass along. Office Depot, the store I often go to just to take a nap in the chair displays then get asked to leave by a stockboy with a box knife, is offering a Seagate 3TB External Hard drive for just $150. This is 50 to 75 dollars…

It’s all about the information… kind of. It’s more about not succumbing to twisting apart LCD screens and keyboards because you can’t find the information. Inforbix is here to address just that – finding data… anywhere. As I’ve said previously, the difficult part is often the finding. Now, for the first time, you’ll be able…

Who woulda thought!? Hard drives getting smaller? and thinner? Absolutely unheard of. Things (we) usually get fatter and uglier over time, not thinner and sleeker. Leave it to Seagate to shake up the universal trend and leave us inspired with a cool, compact design of technology. You saw it at CES. Now, Seagate has announced…

Do you remember days spent carving a stick down by the river and you’d swear it could do everything? I do. That stick could kill the undead, make sweet gravy biscuits out of thin air or be used to vault over a ravine of feral hogs. Yes, it could do it all. Much like a…

You know those days when you look left, then right, then left again, then tear a massive flashlight from your chest, shining it in your eyes with a scream that makes invisible spheres appear? That may be the precursor to the augmented reality tech your about to turn you crispy fried eyes upon. It combines…

You may have just shaken the dust of an old set of gloves, slipped into a memory of days gone by. Days spent hitting your brother after hogging all the Nintendo playing action with your new Power Glove. “IT’S MY TURN!” No, not until I beat this dragon… WITH MY FIST!! That’s right. You were…

Quickly now. Stick your hands against the screen. Now, lift them off slightly and move your head to either side. Did you see that? A physical 3-dimensional object rising from the aether around your digits? No, no you didn’t, because it hasn’t happened yet… but it could. Three technologies have surfaced showing how we may…

There are only a few things that get me excited: mild shocks, alligator punching and web-based 3D. I wish I could say the following combined all three, but two outta three ain’t too shabby. Benjamin Nortier from London, UK has done the unthinkable. He’s taken it upon himself to develop a free, parametric 3D modeling…

Like you, there’s one thing I’ve always wanted… massive freaking shoulders. That, and a chest cavity deep enough for dips. The first may not be so far off. Leave it to Ethan Rublee and a group of researchers at Temple University’s Computer Fusion Laboratory to become captivated by the possibilities around the hands-free manipulation of…

Well, there’s been plenty of on-the-go excitement coming out of the Mobile World Congress (MWC) this week… who am I kidding. It’s mostly been tablet this and tablet that. They stand to be the ultimate tech toy this year and the variations of mobile computing companies are showing off are proof you’ll have plenty of…

You’ve tried to warn your children, your pets, your boss’ thumb that pops up over the cubicle wall and whispers movie quotes to you in a raspy voice. Screaming doesn’t help. Nevertheless, it’s happening. 3D weaving is here (has been) and Lexus is finally showing off the technology which started an Amish uprising surfaced almost…

Hey, there’s nothing like an industry brief on technology that pushes your agenda. amirite? Yeah for agendas! and YEAH for CPU’s and the power they have to push the limits of rendering. Huzzah!! Hugs for multi-core and hugs for photon-dicin’ render divas showing us what kind of power the CPU has to do it. Among…

I often gouge my eyes out at the sight of cool technology-adapting design. I’ve been through several sets. This put me through one more. It’s the LunaTik iPod adapting watch design by Scott Wilson of Minimal out of Chicago. Jeff Hayden of Keyshot was kind enough to provide a demonstration of the aweseomness of having…

3D model viewing is about to get way more interesting. Just a little over a month ago, we featured a group of developers out of Finland aimed at shaking up the web-based CAD collaboration scene, CADfaster. They’re not disappointing at all. Today, they release the news of their mobile applications for iPad and iPhone that…

Oh, hot bowls of shape slappin’ fun. There’s nothing like the 4th release of a free 3D modeling product to make the speculation run wild. It’s like pouring napalm on a brain made of fire, and after drinking plenty of coffee that taste like it’s been made with gasoline, I’m convinced that’s highly possible. 3DVIA…

In the future, your entire photo collection will be on your mobile device. That is, if it’s not already. But that’s only the beginning. First, you’ll make people giddy with delight as you show them photos of yourself in comical situations, then they will gasp in abject horror as you hold them down, turn off…

I think you’d agree. There’s just not enough visual clutter surrounding us as we go about our daily lives. It would be so much better if we were surrounded by an orb of interface efficiency. Fortunately, there are people thinking the very same thing, but not only thinking it… creating it and putting together 3D…

Imagine sliding your hand… across a bed of scorpions. Then stop doing that, relax your neck tendons and imagine sliding your hand across the smooth transition of a touch interface that flows from vertical to horizontal. Ahhhhhhh. It’s like buttery rays of light coating your fingertips. Really, take a look. The Media Computing Group, researching…

This is what it comes down to… After getting kicked out of a parakeet aviary while attempting to unbox an HP EliteBook 8740w in the midst of thousands of birds, there’s only one thing left to do… unbox it on top of a bear. This past weekend I received a VERY loaded HP EliteBook 8740w…

After you shut down a dangerous cave system to allow a hibernating bat population to thrive, there’s only one thing left to do… scan it with lasers. That’s exactly what 3D Technologies R&D has done to the entire Piusa Cavern in south-eastern Estonia. As a matter of fact, they scanned it, modeled it in modo,…

I know, you may be 5 layers of neon-green acrylic away from overdosing on your custom design addiction. Too bad, it’s about to get 1,000x worse. Ponoko and CloudFab have teamed up to combine the goodness of 2D laser-cut design and the multi-dimensionality of 3D printing to bring you… Personal Factory 4. This is probably…

It almost never fails. You find a nice secluded beach, a tree deep in the forest, or a pile of shredded newspaper to call your own, when suddenly, giant color blobs of 3D start appearing around you. It would be ok, except for one thing… the person creating the color blobs is YOU. You’re doing…

You know when you stick your hand in a jar of jelly, you’re in for a sticky mess… but you do it anyway. Maybe you do it to entertain the kids, but really, there’s nothing quite like manipulating bits of gelatinous grape paste into odd and inventive shapes. Interactive Fabrications is bringing you the same…

Well now, if you think those intricate clay micro-structures you’ve squeezed out through your teeth are amazing, you’re going to love this. Up till now it’s been nearly impossible to create complex 3-dimensional carbon nano-shapes, partly from the limitation in the process of creating them and partly from the hexagonal structure of the fullerene molecules…

There are a few things I don’t enjoy watching repeatedly – boiling cabbage, videos of cats, and anything with Ben Affleck. The one thing I can watch repeatedly are the 3D façade projections being done by NuFormer, a digital media company out of the Netherlands. They have pretty much perfected the art of mapping 2D…

Wouldn’t you know it? CNBC reports that the iPad is the “most quickly adopted non-phone electronic product” EVER in the history of all history.

Just look at that Quadro 2000 circuit board shimmer in the perfectly directed studio lighting. It’s almost enough to take your mind off the $50k you just spent upgrading all the company’s computers to the, now antiquated, Quadro FX 1800. So what, I say! What’s $50k when it comes to a full 1GB of memory,…

You just know when you see massive chunks of metal and wires attached to a scrap piece of plywood, there’s got to be a story behind it… either that, or you’ve taken a wrong turn down a hillbilly back road where you’ll quickly discover everything is attached to a scrap piece of plywood. You may…

I’m shaking my head right now. Tears are welling up in my eyes as my PC scrapes it’s fingers across the blackboard of the boot sequence. Grueling, especailly on a computer in major need of being kicked through a hard surface. Jorge Rui, a SolidWorks user and Mechanical Engineer, is NOT experiencing the same feeling.…

With all the touchscreen craziness we’ve seen over the past few years, there are about 500 direction future screen technology could go. Personally, I won’t be satisfied until they’re formable, edible and can be wrapped around my face like a make-shift Halloween mask. Some people have other ideas, and the perfect organization to compile them…

If you enjoy an evening of pouring soup out of a bucket, into six buckets and then back into one bucket, you’ll like this mix of combo tech coolness. Both ATI and MSI are making thick and chunky waves with some much anticipated news which, albeit at a price, gives you more options on your…

Nothing but good can come out of a project that includes a bunch of researchers in a small room and finger probes. Especially when they start toying with the visible aether and our ability to touch it. That’s exactly what a group from the Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) has done. They’ve…

It just makes sense. Robots attack humans. Robots ingest humans. Robot digest humans. Robots excrete oily human remains. Chewin’ and pooin’ is what Ecobot III is all about. However, it doesn’t actually chew. It’s equipped with “digestive tract” in which Microbial Fuel Cells (MFC) containing biomass hungry bacteria converts the material to hydrogen. Once the…

Actually, who cares about product development at this point. You’ll be the DJ, up in the front of your office as people tear off their blazers and patent leather loafers. DJ Pablo Martin has launched a new MIDI multitouch controller called Emulator. The multitouch screen you’ll see is called Token and developed by Yöyen Munchausen…

My mouth… is full of soup. It’s also gapping wide open. So, soup is falling all over my desk as I watch the future controlled by our appendages. Appendages that haven’t been detached by our robot friends, but are being used to manipulate where we want them to display information… or interact with our environment.…

Don’t you dare touch my 3D parts! Oh. you just want to virtually touch them with haptic feedback… nope, that’s still a little out of my comfort zone. Not so for the researchers at UC San Diego. While they’re not researching researchable research, they’re building cool tech to make it easier. In a recent adventure,…

I DARE you. Try to make a million holes in a sheet metal part with whatever 3D design tool you’re using. Go ahead… I’ll wait… anything happen right before your arteries surface to your skin and workstation starts smoking? Most likely, it can’t be done. I’ve never seen it done… till now. I received a…

This is a guest post by Joris Peels who has enjoyed being the community manager at Shapeways over the past two years. He’s from the Netherlands and makes some mean stoofperen. YOu can find him on Twitter @pilz CAD and 3D modeling tools have come a long way in letting more people turn their ideas…

Your measly, little common pens are about to become insanely jealous. You may have warned them that smartpens were a comin’ but being the arrogant pens that they are, they simply taunted you with ink leaks and repeated trips to the stock cabinet. Now, they’ll take notice. The Livescribe Echo Smartpen is showing it’s face…

The biggest problem with 3D, creating it, viewing it, and eating it, is the 2D screen. You ruin plenty of screens trying to reach through to crush the model with your hand. Soon, you may not have to do that. Instead you’ll just use a collapsible pen-like gadget to jab that geometry into submission. Jinha…

You know how it goes. You buy one, two, eighty quadrotor flying robots at Christmas for your kids. Ya know, because the little gripping mechanism on their belly is just so cute. All of a sudden, the kiddos are being carried off to the mother quadrotor for experimentation. If you saw the copterbot pulling baby…

Sound the alarm, tear through the foam-padded backing of your cubicle wall and peel the callouses from your hands power mouse users. You have mouse. WarMouse. Finally available for mass consumption, the WarMouse Meta sports 18 programmable buttons, an analog joystick, a 5600-CPI laser sensor and 512k of memory. The price… $80. Oh and guess…

At the beginning of the year I predicted a move of 3D apps toward the cloud. Anyone could have guessed that though. SolidWorks showed-off the cross-platform possibilities and Autodesk put AutoCAD on the cloud. But, working with 3D geometry via the web hasn’t been seen… till this past week. Deelip Menezes broke the news Tuesday…

Very, very slick of the robot sympathizers over the past few decades. Distract the humans with fear of robot attacks, while they slowly integrate them into the working class and family life. Yep, you’ll be surprised when you come home and your baby has been replaced by a multi-appendage, potato-peeling chubbling that ‘sleeps’ through the…