Grace Hopper on Letterman
Content Sharing Services
I have been thinking a lot lately about content sharing services…
I have a picture I want to post with a short quip…
I pop out my iPhone, because it’s an awesome way to get engagement fast.
I open up Path 2.0, upload pic and add text. I click the “Share via Facebook” and “Share via Twitter” to ensure it broadcasts to my favorite content sharing services.
Now that’s all fine and dandy, it works for almost any content sharing app. Twitter and Facebook are large platforms with millions of integrations.
The problem is the picture. I get content sharing fatigue, because I also want Instagram, Flickr, and
Maybe, it’s up to Flickr and Instagram to open up for integration. Clearly it works for Path -> Twitter + Facebook … but why not the others? Instagram is huge, Flickr is huge.
The point: I think that there’s a careful balance between walled gardens and open APIs that allow for engagement with your service. For example, I can post to Facebook from Path, but Path obviously wants to keep users engaged with itself, instead of going to Facebook. And Path doesn’t want to be just an interface… or maybe it does?
I would wager that there will be a solution to this soon. Maybe in the form of a content aggregation spec… so that you can place content wherever and your services just show it like it’s part of the platform. We see this in one direction with Facebook… we see this in 1.5* directions with Twitter… we’ll see this become even larger eventually. Otherwise we’ll get “Content Sharing Fatigue”…
* Twitter hosts most content inline within it’s apps (web and mobile) and let’s it’s content out via clients, but doesn’t allow posting to other services within itself.
On the importance of Math and Science for programmers… the next phase of our industry… I’ve been wanting to work with science and math for a long time, it’s just not paying the bills as much as advertising, cat pictures, or sharing files privately online.
We’re building a #MakerBot so we can 3D print a model air show inspired by everyone’s ideas. If you’ve got something #aviation related that you’d like us to print, post it to the Air Show tab on our FB page – Facebook.com/GE, or leave a comment here! #GE #avgeek #3Dprinting (Taken with instagram)
Source: generalelectric
Welcome to the Future
I present to you… the Makerbot Industries Thing-o-matic #3988
A revolution… It’s a 3D printer… Yes, you heard me right… I am printing in 3 dimensions…
There are some expensive 3D printers in the industrial market (like this one) but the Thing-o-matic is an open source desktop printer, deriving from the RepRap project.
But what does it mean? It means that using recyclable plastics (BPA free), I can model and print things. And by things, I mean most anything that can fit within a 100mm cube.
Like, let’s say, a Darth Vader bust:
Or a blue and green dragon:
Or a lego man, replacement parts for a cabinet, a personalized one-of-a-kind piece of jewelry… it’s practically limitless! The best part is, once you’ve prototyped your part, you can send the files off to Shapeways where they can print it in high resolution with metal, plastic, or whatever material you can think of!
It’s crazy! It’s fast! It’s the future!
TurtleBot and Entrepreneurial Ideas
While at drop.io, I acquired an iRobot Create and a netbook to put together a simple telepresence robot. Here’s the original post (with bad links, just for reference). It was a fun experiment and I actually published the code out on github (here). You could use any OSC, hardware or software controller, or a regular telnet prompt to control movement.
At any rate, when drop.io was acquired, I was searching for the next thing to do. With the advice of some of my techy friends, they said I should try to build up and sell an “SDK” and kit for building a small telepresence robot, consisting of an iRobot Create and a netbook. At the time I thought it would be interesting, but would require capital up front to purchase inventory and I didn’t think it would eventually make much profit. But it would be fun.
Sometimes life gets in the way and you make up your own excuses on why you shouldn’t do things. It’s silly, but it’s a part of being human. As an entrepreneur, you have to ignore those excuses and push forward fast. Iterate, push, and go for the glory.
In this case, I caved to my pressures and silly excuses and decided to pursue other interests…
Fast foward to today and I saw a press release how an amazing company, Willow Garage, is going to sell kits for small robot platforms. And guess what, it has an iRobot Create and a netbook. With an addition of a Kinect device, you have TurtleBot, an incredibly powerful and affordable robotics system.
I missed the boat.
That’s part of being an entrepreneur. You have to quickly pick up on your good ideas and move forward. Of course I could still pursue the same route, but I actually was going to bundle ROS and a Kinect anyway, which is exactly the TurtleBot.
Good luck to those guys, as it’s a great idea and I’m glad that someone else was thinking in the same direction at the same time, which is also a part of being an entrepreneur; validation.
UPDATE
Found another company doing the same thing: bilibot
Cool stuff!
So apparently Google thinks that view140.com is a content farm.
We were getting really good traffic numbers… and google really liked us, putting us in the real time section of search… and then BAM… nothing…
:: sigh ::
I'm a Ruby developer that loves to play with science, math, and gadgets. Previously, I was part of a startup called drop.io, acquired by Facebook. I live in Fort Worth, TX with my wife, 2 dogs, and baby boy. I'm a foodie, a gamer, and a self proclaimed scientist.
