GUYS I WAS AT THE LEAFS GAME WHEN THIS HAPPENED I WAS CRYING
Tor Books: cutting DRM hasn’t hurt business
TOR is easily one of the smartest companies out there (and they have some great advisers)
Tor Books says cutting DRM out of its e-books hasn
A look at the sci-fi publisher a year after it announced it would do away with DRM.
BaconCoin…
The Future…
Corrected.
Geek Girl Project interviews F. J. DeSanto about Cyborg 009
Geek Girl Project sits down with F.J. DeSanto in an interview talking about all things Cyborg 009. Gain some insight into this exciting new collaboration between Archaia and Ishimori!
An excerpt from their interview is below:
“Authors F.J. DeSanto (The Spirit, Insurgent) and Bradley Cramp (…
THIS.
John Hodgman’s Secret Society
I am afraid to find out what 11 visits will get me.
Window Socket
Window Socket – Kyuho Song & Boa Oh
So this is an absolutley brilliant idea! Just attach the plug on to a window and it will harness solar energy. A small converter will convert it into electricity which can be freely used as a plug when you are in the car, on a plane or outside.
Love this design and I really think it has a great potential.
I’d love it if they squared off the top so I could put my phone on the unit instead of hanging
then again, who cares what I think – this is pretty awesome
Thalmic Labs MYO (very cool)
Behind the Scenes at Thalmic Labs – Creator of the Wearable Gesture Control Device “Myo”
The Myo is one of the most anticipated gesture control wearable devices expected to be released to early adopters later this year (my order is already in!).
Based in my hometown of Waterloo, Canada – this video gives a great behind the scenes look at the team, the Thalmic Labs office and some great shots of Myo in action and also provides some more information on the product and their development process which hasn’t been previously released before.
Myo uses the electrical activity from your muscles as your move your hand to detect what you are doing with your fingers as well as the motion of your hand. These gestures control connected devices via bluetooth.
The Myo stretchable cuff has been designed to be one-size fits all (they even considered making sure that arm hair doesn’t get in the way).
The team has confirmed that their developer program in the next few months giving out exclusive access to early versions of the software of the devices.
Thalmic Labs believes that the Myo device could revolutionalize the way we interact with technology – and I agree.
(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)
Steve Brill on the state of healthcare in the US
What is it that makes US citizens believe we have “the best healthcare in the world” when all factual indicators make it clear that we don’t?
Remember, roughly 100,000 Americans die each year due to preventable medical errors. Over 1,000,000 patients are injured in hospitals.
Yet, ask almost any American about the quality of our healthcare system, and you’ll get a similar response: best in the world.
Why? What is it that keeps us believing this fiction in the face of overwhelming evidence?
I think a major factor is America’s post World War II “supremacy complex.”
In the decades following the war, America’s consumer society exploded. America became the world leader in practically every material category. In town after town, hospitals were built, doctors trained, health insurance provided.
And the broader rallying cry became: U-S-A, U-S-A!
But things have changed.
The realities of the 21st century have not yet sunk in for most Americans: America is struggling.
We remain a model of individual rights and freedoms. Yet so much of the nation’s infrastructure suffers from neglect. Our healthcare system is one of those areas.
The fact that roughly 2,000 Americans a week—almost 300 per day…the equivalent of a loaded 747 crashing every single day!—die due to medical mistakes should frighten and anger every citizen.
Instead, we continue to live under the illusion that our healthcare system is the best in the world.
We need to wake up and help everyone recognize and tackle the healthcare crisis we’re facing.
It’s not Obamacare that should frighten us. It’s healthcare business as usual that should.
Tom Peters has written about this extensively. Love the reference to the “Superiority Complex” btw.
(Source: http://vimeo.com/)
Greenhouse: creative coding toolkit for spatial interfaces
Oblong Industries: Introducing Greenhouse
From the guy (precisely his company), who designed the computer interfaces in the film Minority Report, comes Greenhouse, a creative coding toolkit for spatial interfaces.
The Greenhouse SDK incorporates key elements of the g-speak core platform—for building spatially-aware computing environments—and distills them into an API designed to be approachable, powerful, and concise.
Greenhouse is the only SDK available that enables creative coders and engineers to rapidly prototype spatial interfaces: multi-screen, multi-user, multi-device interfaces with gestural and spatial interaction. Graphics and geometry systems enable pixels to fluidly move and to be accurately rendered across any screen, plus networking and multi-application frameworks, which allow multiple users, applications, and machines to seamlessly interact.
// I can’t wait for my leap motion controller to ship in mid-May.
[read more] [Greenhouse] [via @oblong_news]
(Source: http://vimeo.com/)