Danny Kleinman does not fit the stereotype for a hacker. He’s clean, social, and even has a girlfriend. Yet, according to The Herald, the electronics in his living room are all hacked.
Aiming his smartphone at a lamp, he controls the light with the volume controls. Up, on. Down, off. He tells his TV “Discovery Channel,” and there’s the Discovery Channel. He even programmed the lights in his bedroom to wake him up.
“Isn’t this cool?” he says, clearly giddy.
Kleinman is a maker, a word derived from Make Magazine, the glossy bible of everyday hackers using social networks, do-it-yourself-then-show-it-off websites, cheap parts from China, and blissfully simple microprocessors to modify or invent new electronic products for their houses, cars, offices and backyards.
Recent studies show consumers now spend more money inventing stuff than consumer product firms spend on research and development. It’s more than $3.75billion a year in Britain, and current U.S. studies show similiar patterns. Makers are even morphing into entrepreneurs, with some of the best projects, including Kleinman’s, raising money for commercial development of self-funding websites such as Kickstarter, where anyone with a credit card can chip in to back cool ideas.
“Policymakers and economists always assumed that consumers just consumed and that they don’t innovate,” said Eric von Hippel, who studies technological innovation and makers at MIT’s business school. “What’s clearly happening now is that all of a sudden it’s easier for us to make exactly what we want.”
If you’re reading these words through bifocals or progressive lenses, your life could change in June.
That’s when a company called PixelOptics in Roanoke, Va., plans to release emPower, a line of electronic eyeglasses that let wearers toggle between two prescriptions, with settings for close-up and distance vision.
The new emPower glasses are expected to retail for between $1,000 and $1,250 per pair. The will be available starting in June.
After powering up for six to eight hours in a charging cradle, the glasses can run for more than three days. Their lenses, manufactured in Japan by Panasonic, feature a thin layer of liquid crystal sandwiched between two layers of plastic. When an electrical charge hits the liquid crystal, the molecules realign, altering the prescription.
Kathryn Bechthold never felt quite like she had the balance thing worked out. On the first day she was set to do her first media appearance as the publisher of Mompreneur magazine, her baby daughter got sick. She had to find a last minute babysitter willing to care for her. That moment left her with a lot of mom guilt. She sold the magazine and started Alchemy Communications, which is yet another source of mom guilt on occasion. According to The Windsor Star, she is still doing amazing.
I think I’m better at it than ever before. But that being said, I totally think that on a day-to-day basis I have to look at every decision against my priorities.”
The popular notion of mompreneurship as an idyllic lifestyle choice for mothers seeking work-life balance is just one myth Bechthold debunks in her new book, The Entrepreneurial Mom’s Guide to Running Your Own Business (Self-Counsel Press, $23.95).
She also lays out some stark truths, among them: your company is not your baby, so don’t get attached to it; and, if you’re not making money, you should cut and run.
“There’s so many women out there who have built their careers and built their networks, and then they have children,” says Bechtold.
“It’s really hard to be involved as the primary caregiver to your kids and have a full-time career … so it’s a really good alternative to start your own business.”
You’d think I’m a golfer with all of the golf related stories recently. This one came out of the University of Maine:
Golfers on the high seas can breathe a little easier — and so can the marine life around them — thanks to researchers at the University of Maine. In conjunction with The Lobster Institute, UMaine Biological and Chemical Engineering Professor David Neivandt and undergraduate student Alex Caddell of Winterport, Maine, have developed a biodegradable golf ball made from lobster shells. The ball is intended for use on cruise ships.
Carin Poeschel Orr, who earned a master's in marine bio-resources at UMaine, suggested the idea to Bob Bayer of The Lobster Institute. Bayer turned to Neivandt, who is known on campus as an innovative problem-solver.
Though biodegradable golf balls already exist, this is the first to be made with crushed lobster shells with a biodegradable binder and coating, creating value from waste material.
"We're using a byproduct of the lobster canning industry which is currently miserably underutilized — it ends up in a landfill," Neivandt says. "We're employing it in a value-added consumer product which hopefully has some cachet in the market."
The Alternative Golf Association today launched the $10,000 Longest Golf Ball Challenge to inspire inventors and engineers to add fun for players of its new game, testing under the name Project Flogton ("not golf," backward).
AGA founder Bob Zider, himself an inventor of Flexon eyeglass frames and golf clubs, conceptualized and funded the challenge to unleash equipment developers from the United States Golf Association's conformance constraints. The prize-winning ball will be used for long shots only, and it does not have to have dimples or otherwise look like a traditional golf ball. It must, however, test out for 25 percent more distance for players of swing speeds of 80 to 100 mph than current USGA-approved golf balls do, and meet the criteria listed in the Official Rules.
The criteria include that the ball must roll on impact, have no more force on humans or windows than conforming balls and be marketable at no more than $1 at retail. One dozen of the balls must be submitted to the AGA by the contest deadline of June 1, 2011.
You’ll remember him as key member of the New England Patriots. Former linebacker Matt Chatham has gone from flattening running backs to flattening crepes.
The three-time Super Bowl champ just won a prestigious business MBA business plan award from Babson College, which will help launch SkyCrepers.
Chatham’s business is an innovative new fast-serve crepe franchise model that bridges the gap between the street cart and the foo-foo café.
SkyCrepers features a mix of innovative new crepe products built from their trade-secret protected Cinnilla crepe batter, including patented Cinnilla Crepe Fries, portable Cinnilla Towers, and the venerable Cinnilla Classic.
It seems there is a vending machine for everything now-a-days. There’s a machine that’ll make you a pizza in minutes, the vending machine that’ll let you break ceramics, and even one that will dispense live crabs. With the rise of medical marijuana, it should come as no surprise that a vending machine for smoking accessories is also making an appearance.
With a polite ‘thank you’ from a vending machine after purchase, the brainchild of inventor David Levine comes to life.
“This machine will serve the need of providing accessories to patients,” explained Levine.
It’s called the Cann Can. It stands for cannabis container. But it’s not designed to sell marijuana.
“I wanted to make this a more convenient thing for accessories,” said Levine.
Levine tells me it will sell legal items like lighters, pipes and rolling papers; things to help in the consumption of marijuana.
“I don’t want people to have to worry about going to 15 different places to assemble a smoking kit. I want them to have it right here,” said Levine.
And so far, he told me, the response has been great.
The machine can be put inside 125 dispensaries approved in Arizona.
He’s also had interest from other states with similar medical marijuana laws.
“If you look at it from a bigger perspective, we are just at the beginning of the mainstreaming of marijuana for consumption,” said Levine.
Debi DeShon used to train dogs to sniff for drugs and other contraband, but as the economy slowed she looked for a new niche. She found on in mussels:
At her new business she’s using some of the same techniques she used to “Mussel Dogs” is DeShon’s new detective venture, and She’s training dogs to find invasive species of mussels – the quagga and zebra mussels.
According to DeShon and park officials at the Woodward Reservoir in Oakdale, the Quagga and Zebra mussels can multiply out of control and dramatically change the ecosystem. They are often transported from lake to lake by boaters. The mussels are only about the size of a finger nail, and their larvae can be microscopic, making them tough to find. Quagga and Zebra mussels can also live for up to 30 days out of the water. The mussels have been found in lakes in surrounding states and in southern California.
“What our dogs do is sniff a boat before entering into the waterway to make sure the boat doesn’t have these mussels on them,” said DeShon, who demonstrated her brown labrador Popeye’s ability at the Woodward Reservoir.
