thoughts to blog

Gadget Debates

The major debate right now is what to buy for a tablet, netbook, and e-reader…

Many people want portable devices but we’re not exactly clear on what features we really want in the device…

Do we want solely an e-reader?

Do we want to browse the web?

or sadly enough…

Do we want to “work” while we’re mobile?

The devices are all catering to those situations with different styles and sizes.

IPad, Nook, Kindle, eePC, the list goes on… Multi-touch, 4G, e-ink, HTML5, Android, epub, Jolicloud, etc. The buzzwords kill you.

My take on it right now is, is that these devices are all “Iteration 0” devices… Apple’s famous approach to device Caesarship is to put something out there and iterate every year. How many iPods and iPhones have you bought? That’s what I thought…

All of the technology out right now, in my opinion, is throw-away. Now, I know that they are all expensive and we really wouldn’t want to throw them away… but we all know the cliche of “it’s out of date yesterday”… With this, it’s even worse because these are pioneering devices… research devices meant to figure out if “this is what you want”…

The Kindle and Nook are betting on e-reading only… the iPad is betting on it’s multi-touch portable PC tabletism… Netbooks think you really want your laptop with you at all times…

It’ll be interesting to see how they’ve iterated in 2 years…

Multi-touch It

I was thinking about this today… while I was working with my normal setup (2 laptops and a large monitor in the middle).

I want my screens to be multi-touch, but not make that my priority.

Maybe my brain has been trained the last few years on my iPhone, but I swear to you today that I saw a dialog box come up with a big red X on it.

I instinctively reached up and pushed the OK button.

I love my mouse and keyboard, but wow did I really want that button to work. It almost frustrated me that I had to move my hand all the way back (after the reaction) to my keyboard/mouse to get rid of the dialog.

At any rate, boring post I know, but just thinking…

3D Printing with Makerbot

The latest gadget that I’ve been lusting over is the MakerBot…

This thing is bad-ass… When there’s all of this exciting stuff happening with large sets of data and crazy device interactions on the internet, there’s a home-grown movement to bring 3D printing and replication to the home front.

Enter the MakerBot. A realtively cheap ($750) DYI open source 3D printer. The Cupcake CNC is the platform in which cheap hardware, combined with hackable electronics and open source software, allow the average hacker to bring a 3D printer system to their home. Typically large scale, industrial 3D printers are $10,000 to $25,000… This is a fantastic start!

There are some limitations. They only extrude certain materials (plastic and frosting) and their build platform can only support 100mm x 100mm x 130mm, which is slightly smaller than a rubix cube. But it’s a start.

Beyond printing in 3D for fun and profit… are more exciting concepts. Distributed manufacturing comes to your home. The MakerBot needed a way to get more parts (which they print from the same machine) ready for another batch of machines. So what did they do? They asked the people who have already bought the machine if they would produce parts with monetary return on each part made.

Now THAT’S impressive. It’ll be exciting

Oh and btw, I have procured funding for a machine to be purchased in October, with a probably ship date in November… I’m not quite sure if I can really produce anything with it, but I have some time to start creating some models and ideas of what to print!