I came across a great new project management tool in this article over at Fast Company. It’s called Asana, and has some really cool features to provide task management and email functionality for teams collaborating on projects. Or rather, it’s not email based, but allows for conversations on tasks in much the way that people use email for, but with a lot more functionality regarding the task itself. It works well and is a great way to collaborate both with local and remote project teams. Check it out!
Sharks with laser beams
Lots of cool tech ideas first make their appearance in sci-fi movies, but really…sharks with freakin laser beams attached to their heads? Ridiculous idea, but yeah, it’s still cool. Even if it was a bit of a publicity stunt for Wicked Lasers.
Read all about it over at Wired.
Disruptive technologies
Technology doesn’t so much change our lives, as much as our lives change as technology changes. In many countries, it’s an integral part of what we are today. This graphic from frugaldad.com does a nice job of showing some of the areas where new technologies are replacing the old (‘disruptive’ technology). For example, smartphones and tablets are making the traditional desktop PC obsolete.
It’s worth noting though, that while this technological evolution continues, the majority of the world is left out of much of it, though at the same time, the rapid evolution of technology allows others to leapfrog the first-world countries. Cell phones are a good example, where third-world telephone infrastructure is so sparsely deployed and unreliable that more people own cell phones than traditional land lines. Or in India, where solar is favored over coal. People in first-world countries can ride the wave of technological progress, while much of the world ends up on a different path, skipping ahead once technologies have reached certain price/performance points.
The infographic is pretty big, so check it out after the ‘more’ link.
How differentials work
I’ve always loved this video…it explains how automotive differentials work (and why they’re needed). It’s a seldom appreciated, little understood, but extremely critical part that you’ll find in any modern car or truck. Good video for kids too!
Clever cable management solution
This is a pretty clever cable management solution for desks and entertainment centers, called Cablox.
Plummeting cost of rapid prototyping
The cost of rapid prototyping has been plummeting lately with open source products like the RepRap and MakerBot, but now it’s hitting a new low…$500 for an extrusion style rapid prototyping machine from Solidoodle. What you save in money, you sacrifice in layer resolution…this Solidoodle, for example, uses 1.75mm extruded material so the parts have a definite stairstep look to them. Still, it’s awfully impressive and even that limitation can be acceptable for a lot of uses (especially if you sand or fill the parts to smooth out the layers after building). While material selection and build resolution are nowhere near as good as more expensive processes like SLS and SLA, this is a market that just didn’t exist a few years ago, and is quickly growing. For those who don’t want to learn how to make their own 3D files, there are even websites like Thingverse where people can download files ready to print.
Frog sitting on a bench
See, this is what’s so amazing about the information society we’ve built up. This is a video of a frog sitting on a bench in a human-like pose. It’s 43 ridiculous seconds that over three million people have viewed so far. The global reach of technology is astounding…the challenge is how to harness that to make the world a better place (frog videos are not accomplishing that…).
Sidewalk wifi
Deploying any wifi network requires a multitude of wifi base stations…where do you place them? Street lamps? Ceilings? Now there’s another choice…the sidewalk. These 16×16″ tiles can be installed about 66 feet from one another to create a wifi mesh network (which doesn’t seem all that great when you consider the 1kW power consumption). However, they do require power to be hardwired to them…too bad they can’t take advantage of the footsteps above to generate the necessary power.
The product name…well I have a hard time typing this, for they’ve jumped on the ‘i’ bandwagon that I’m so sick of by now. Yeah. This product is ‘iPavement‘. There, I said it. Yes, they’ve even worked in the more modern buzzword, in their iCloudPavement management software (no, two wrongs do not make a right). Poor product names aside, it does provide a nice way to deploy a broad urban wifi network (apart from the high power consumption per device).
(via Gizmag)
Super glass
Glass is one of those things that gets better the less you see it, and researchers at MIT have found a way to make it pretty awesome. By creating a precise surface pattern of nanoscale cones on it, they’ve produced a material that is extremely clear, while also being anti-reflective, anti-glare, and superhydrophobic (water beads up on its surface, so it’s like an anti-fog coating). About the only thing it doesn’t talk about is impact strength, but if you apply this surface treatment to something like Corning’s Gorilla Glass, you have a formula that’s sure to be a hit in any portable electronics application.
Bleak outlook for Earth
Things aren’t looking good for this planet. The well-respected group of scientists known as the Royal Society is concerned about the combination of excessive consumption and population growth, and is suggesting increased birth control and global redistribution of wealth to combat that. Two things that are politically untouchable in this country at least. This is the problem I see…scientists look at the path we’re on and have recommendations for how to fix it, but the political and social reality is not guided by science, it is guided by other influences. Scientists, in general, just don’t seem to get this…they keep talking about what should be done to solve the world’s problems, without recognizing what can be done. We don’t need talk about ideal solutions, we need talk about practical, realistic solutions. Changes that you can possibly expect might be implemented. You can read more about the Royal Society’s position on these issues in Scientific American. And no, I don’t have the answer…I’m just really pessimistic about global governments’ abilities to enact change, and get frustrated when the best answer I hear from scientists is to let global governments solve these problems. It’s not going to happen, we need new ideas.
In separate, but related, news, the executive director of the International Energy Agency is warning governments around the world that, globally, fossil fuel consumption is increasing and we need to shift our focus to renewable energy sources. On our current path, we’re looking at a global temperature increase of 6C by the end of the century, triple the international ‘goal’ of 2C (though I’d argue that the goal should be zero!). We’re just nowhere near where we need to be, and there’s no real drive for change.
Bleak news, but then, it’s not really news…it’s just more of the same. We recognize the problem but instead of taking responsibility for our actions, we’ll pass this off to the next generation and make them deal with it. This is our legacy, but I hold out hope that we can find technological solutions to these social problems before it’s too late.