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3D systems buys sugar printing firm for future breakthroughs in tooth decay
3D Systems has been on a bit of a shopping spree lately, snatching up companies left and right for its portfolio of print offerings. This latest deal is a bit sweeter than most, however. The company has picked up Sugar Lab, an LA-based startup that prints edible 3D objects in sugar. This isn't quite the breakthrough in 3D-printed food we've been waiting for, but it certainly suggests that the company is taking a much more serious look at the space, as CEO Avi Reichental suggested during our interview at Expand back in March. We reached out to the exec for comment on this latest acquisition, and he told us: "We are all foodies at heart, and for as long as we could remember, food provided a great canvass for our creativity. Adding third dimension to food creation is one of the most exciting initiatives I am involved with." At the very least, it takes us a step closer to the Star Trek cake we've wanted since we were 10.
Sugar Labs' 'Sugar on a Stick' OS available for any and all
The last time we heard from Sugar Labs, its "Sugar on a Stick" project (a tidied-up build of Sugar OS which can be run live from a CD or USB drive) was just entering beta. Apparently all the company needed to take that version to a release-ready state was a month (give or take). A full, free version of Sugar is now available in a 383MB ISO file for anyone to take advantage of -- though the company is obviously setting its sights firmly in the direction of the education market as usual. The OS -- previously designed for the OLPC XO, but now targeted to any PC or Mac schools have lying around -- is based on the newly released Fedora 11, and is in a "Strawberry" release meant for real world classroom testing. The feedback the company receives on this edition will apparently be incorporated into a future version destined for your hands and eyes at the end of the year. In the meantime, you can take SoaS for a spin... ASAP. [Via Ars Technica]
Sugar Labs debuts "Sugar on a Stick" beta, for LiveUSB-derived diabetes
After offering Sugar for the past while as an interface to run on top of your Linux distro of choice, Sugar Labs is prepping "Sugar on a Stick," a Fedora 11-based LiveUSB distro that boots most any PC from a 1GB+ USB stick and lets a user carry their Sugar environment, files and settings wherever they roam. While the beta is currently up for download, there seem to be plenty of kinks to work out, but as the team expands and refines hardware support, we could see this potentially being more of a boon for education than the XO-1 itself; turning any PC into a Sugar PC, not just the dramatically green ones. It's also nice to see how speedy Sugar can be free from the bonds of AMD Geode -- even Atom provides quite a bit of relative pep. Check out a quick (and slightly hyperactive) hands-on video from OLPC News after the break.
Bender goes bipolar: OLPC's Sugar UI tweaked for Intel's Classmate PC
We know he's just thinking about the children but damn, if Walter Bender's latest move doesn't smack of retribution for Negroponte's XP-lust. Having successfully spun himself out from under NickNeg's OLPC, Bender's UI now owned by his non-profit Sugar Labs might just end up on Intel's Classmate PC. Right, the same competing platform the OLPC camp had lambasted, repeatedly, for its "shameless" and "half-hearted" behavior in the educational marketplace. Nevertheless, Bender is quoted in an interview saying, "A community volunteer is working with Intel on Sugar for the Classmate PC. Sugar Labs helped to expedite the relationship." We assume Bender's loftier goals act as a lithium-salve to what must be a palpable internal turmoil.P.S. That's our mockup, Intel declined to comment on the usage of Sugar.
Displaced by XP, Sugar Labs goes it alone
While OLPC tries to wise up to the real demands of the market and build a cheap laptop that people actually want -- which means Windows XP for most -- Walter Bender, OLPC's former president of software and content for the project is taking his open source Linux-based Sugar OS and has started up a new non-profit to aid its development. Bender still has the vision of an open source learning OS, and plans to give Sugar full support for other low-cost platforms like the Eee PC. Ooh, burn.
