"etech" entries
@ETech: Tuesday Morning Keynotes
Saul Griffith started the day with a sober, but ultimately hopeful, talk about energy literacy. The subtitle of the talk was "know what you can do, do what you can," and the core of his talk (we'll point to the slides when we get 'em) was the steps we need to take, individually and collectively, to be able to have…
I Thought You Guys Were Supposed To Be Utopian: The EFF at Etech
(A guest blog by Danny O'Brien, the EFF's cultural ambassador) As one of the Electronic Frontier Foundation's outreach folk, I have to concede that our message is not often about cyber-unicorns and crypto-ponies. We're often warning companies and hackers about what we see as upcoming threats to their rights, and urging them to take action. To give some examples: one…
ETech Insider's Guide
ETech starts tomorrow. If you're going here are some last minute tips about the schedule, events and logistics. Bring your open-source gadgets! We are going to have sessions on OpenMoko (the OS phone), IPRE (an OS, educational robot), and the XO Laptop. Plus we will have an OS Hardware talk from Phil Torrone and Limor Fried. The best way to…
New Release 2.0 on Next-Generation CRM … and a New Installment of Our Facebook Application Platform Report
In this month's Release 2.0, we consider the next generation of customer relationship management (CRM) and the search for an all-in-one-place inbox and address book. We need some sort of universal inbox and address book because it's not just email that we're neck-deep in nowadays. Once you've figured out a way to organize one means of input, there's another one….
RFID Startups Go After Lucrative Niches
CNN Money has a short but interesting article on two companies that have developed high-end systems for niche markets that make use of RFID tags. The first is for a horse-training system: As Heidi Lemack-Beck rides her horse Jazzmine around the arena at Rhythm & Blues Stables in Allentown, N.J., six pairs of electronic eyes watch every move of these…
Botanicalls Twitter DIY
Botanicalls, the project that lets your plants let you know when they need water (Radar post), has expanded beyond their Asterisk-based voice system. Now you can learn how your plants are doing with a DIY kit that lets them Twitter you. The system uses Arduino, the open-source board featured in Making Things Talk. The instructions they've included are very…
DIY Multitouch with the Wiimote
If you will be missing Jeff Hahn's presentation at Etech next week, you can still make your own multitouch display thanks to Johnny Chung Lee and the Wiimote. Johnny has a number of sensor hacks on his blog, and just announced that EA Games has incorporated his Wii head tracking hack into an upcoming release….
Ignite ETech Talks
On the first evening of ETech we are going to have an Ignite immediately following Tim's annual keynote. The five-minute, 20 slide talks will range from personal passions to new APIs to sweet design. The talks will end with a short-story. If you are going to be at ETech you'll be treated to the following talks: Jimmy Guterman -…
Multitouch and Minority Report
I'm amazed at how quickly multitouch has spread into the mainsream. In 2006, Jeff Han demoed multitouch at ETech and we all thought "wow! Minority Report come true!". Just two years later, his company was powering multitouch analysis of Super Tuesday and companies like Microsoft and Apple have consumer multitouch products. PlayMotion and GestureTek have gestural interfaces companies can buy…
Gaming Platforms: Zune, Wii, Nokia, Xbox Live, DS Lite
Yesterday the XNA team announced that anyone — not just large, high-paying game publishers – could produce games for the XBox 360 platform, Windows, and the Zune. Of course you've always been able to produce games for Windows, but this move opens two previously closed platforms: Zune (which didn't have apps before) and the XBox 360. What does this…