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Engadget Expand is all about you. And us. But really, you.
Engadget Expand is our annual event that's all about you -- our fans. It's not your typical tech conference that's priced for people fortunate to have an expense account. We make the event completely FREE thanks to our generous sponsors, giving you the chance to experience the future -- right now. And while you're at it, you get to meet your favorite Engadget editors. When you join us at the Javits Center North in New York City next week on November 7-8, you'll be set loose on our show floor. You can check out some of our exhibitors and get your hands on gadgets that people can't buy yet (or in some cases, build your own in our workshops), head to our Expand stage and hear from some smart and inspiring people and so much more.
Five questions for the woman who's 3D printing edible fruit
In the last few years 3D printing has gone from a niche within a niche, to one of the most headline-grabbing fields in tech. Consumers haven't exactly embraced the technology, but it is beginning to trickle down into the homes of more hobbyists and entrepreneurs. The DIY community has fallen in love with its versatility and even NASA has embraced it as a way to do ad hoc repairs on the International Space Station. But really, that's just scratching the surface of what 3D printers are capable of. Vaiva Kalnikaitė and her company Dovetailed used fruit juice to print edible fruits, and surgeons have used 3D-printed parts to repair injuries. There are even people out there printing human organs and homes. We're going to be sitting down with Kalnikaitė and Anna Kaziunas France, digital fabrication editor at Maker Media, at Engadget Expand on November 8th. But in case you need a little tease to get you in the mood, we've got a short Q&A with Kalnikaitė after the break.
What's up with Engadget Expand?
We're just two weeks away from our free Engadget Expand event, taking place at New York City's Javits Center on November 7th and 8th and there's still so much to tell you about. If you can't join us in person, don't worry -- we'll keep you updated throughout the weekend with dispatches from the show floor and our livestream here on Engadget.
Engadget and JetBlue will beam you to Expand!
We're sending one lucky Engadget reader (and a guest of choice) to Engadget Expand in New York City on November 7-8, thanks to our friends at JetBlue Airways and our sponsors. What's more, if you're one of the 10 runners-up, Suitable Technologies will give you a block of time to mosey around the Expand floor remotely with its BeamPro device.
Here's what you need to know about Engadget Expand, so far
We've talked a lot about Engadget Expand so far (you know, that free event we're holding at the Javits Center in NYC on November 7th and 8th). It's time we got you caught up on who's speaking (and when), who's exhibiting on the show floor, what's up with Insert Coin and finally, the winner of our 'In The City' sweepstakes. Let's get started.
More to expect at our free Engadget Expand event in NYC!
If you're keeping score, we've announced a bunch of great speakers heading to this year's Engadget Expand (such as RJD2 and the head of DARPA, Arati Prabhakar). Of course there's plenty more where that came from and we're excited to announce what else you'll see at the Javits Center on November 7-8 in New York City!
Enter our 'In The City' sweepstakes and we'll fly you to NYC for Expand!
So there's this free Engadget Expand shindig happening November 7-8 at the Javits Center in New York City that you've probably heard about. We've announced a bunch of exciting speakers, including RJD2 and Arati Prabhakar (who heads up DARPA), and plenty more will be added soon. You're super pumped and can't wait to experience the future of technology, but don't live anywhere near NYC. What's someone like yourself to do?
DARPA head joins the list of speakers at Engadget Expand!
Fall's nearly here and so is the next Engadget Expand event. On November 7th and 8th, we'll once again take over New York City's Javits Center North to let you experience the future of technology and hear from the leading minds in the industry.
Open source can help the developing world, but it's not without challenges
Many see open source technology as an ideological tool -- a way to promote freedom in a world of closed, proprietary systems. For Canonical's Jono Bacon, Mozilla's Stormy Peters and Wikimedia's Tomasz Finc, it's more about improving humanity. Speaking at Expand, they argued that open code connects the developing world and delivers meaningful local content. However, the trio is also aware of the potential pitfalls, such as fragmentation. They know that a successful open platform isn't born overnight.
Relive Engadget Expand NY 2013 in pictures
Many thousands of New Yorkers joined us over the weekend for the city's very first Engadget Expand. There's no question that our premier Manhattan show was a raging success, and if you didn't make it out, we have the pictures to prove it. During the two-day event we heard from LeVar Burton, Spike Lee, Reggie Watts, Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky, Cheezburger's Ben Huh, MIT's Joi Ito, and dozens of other brilliant speakers and industry leaders. We handed out $25,000 to Insert Coin winners DIWire Bender and GrowCubes, and sponsors like Lenovo, Sony and Chevrolet kept attendees entertained at the Javits Center with tons of new blockbuster gadgets (and even a few cars). We enlisted photographers Jenna Bascom and Craig Barritt to capture all of the Expand NY magic -- dig through dozens of killer pics in the galleries just below.
Mad Catz' STRIKE M gaming keyboard fits in your pocket, cramps your fingers
Diminutive Bluetooth keyboards? Yeah, we've seen those before, but we've never really been able to fault them for their size. These tiny peripherals are meant for light work at best, but the Mad Catz STRIKE M wears a facade that outpaces its utility. From its skewed angles, to its collection of quick keys, under its backlit keycaps and behind the highlighted WASD keys -- the STRIKE M wears the colors of a serious gaming keyboard. It isn't one. Excusing its appearance, the STRIKE M is actually a decent little HTPC keyboard. It has a suite of media keys, an embedded scrollwheel and even an thumb mousepad -- but the actual keyboard layout is just too small to match its design language. Laying hands on the keyboard's home row required us to mash our fingertips tightly together, offering a cramped, uncomfortable typing experience. These tiny keys leave no room for error, and require precision to a degree that makes the red-accented WASD seem ridiculous. Showing off the keyboard at Expand NY, Mad Catz' representative actually agreed, saying it's more of a media keyboard than a gaming one. Still, he showed us the one advantage its size offers: the device fits comfortably in a jacket pocket. It's something, at least.
Geeking out young: gadgets and coding need to be core in US schools
Remember readin', 'riting and 'rithmatic? According to our Rethinking Education panelists, the three R's need to be joined by a "C" -- for computer science -- or the US risks getting run over by more progressive nations. That was the opinion of Rodrigo Arboleda from the One Laptop Per Child organization, who spoke at Engadget Expand along with Jeff Branson from SparkFun and Pat Yongpradit from Code.org. Pat kicked off the discussion by playing his organization's YouTube video featuring the likes of Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, which has been seen by some 10 million viewers. While motivational, it emphasized that only one in 10 American schools teach students how to code, a deficit that all three speakers found scandalous. Arboleda chalked it up to an educational system that still processes students like a factory that doesn't take an individual student's ability to learn into account. He added that more progressive countries like South Korea, Taiwan and Finland might soon be pumping out more computer scientists and engineers thanks to a strong emphasis on coding.
Changes to copyright laws could be very good or very bad; it depends on who's involved
When it comes to data we upload to the web and digital content in all its forms, it's hard to tell who owns it. At Expand NY's panel today, Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF) Julie Samuels, Techdirt's Mike Masnick and American University Washington College of Law professor, Michael Carroll discussed that very issue in the context of the user data lockdown from Megaupload, legal concepts of digital ownership and privacy and how increasingly irrelevant copyright laws could change in the future.
Choosing reality: why sci-fi author David Gerrold doesn't want a flying car
"I think we built the right future," declares David Gerrold on Expand NY's stage. "If it's a choice between the flying car or the internet, tablets and smartphones, I'll take what we've got." It's almost a shocking statement, considering the choice: Gerrold had a hand in writing episodes of The Twilight Zone, Sliders, Babylon 5, and three different Star Trek series -- not to mention dozens of original novels envisioning a future of his own. As an architect of fictional futures, his statement is almost puzzling, but as he elaborates, his true feelings become clear: He doesn't need to choose science fiction when we can build science fact.
Forget devices; the future of technology is seeded in biology
A lot of you, dear readers, may remember a time when mobile phones didn't exist, let alone smartphones with touchscreens, apps and pro-grade cameras. Some may even recall a childhood completely devoid of TV, when the phrase "playing in a sandbox" meant literally that. Not content with books that glow in the dark, among other electronic conveniences, we're now strapping computers to our heads and a second smartphone screen to our wrists. io9's Annalee Newitz and Joichi Ito, director of the MIT Media Lab, took to our Expand stage to talk about what technology of the future might look like, and both agreed we'll see much less built from circuits, and much more from (somewhat) natural ingredients.
Reggie Watts admits he's an impulse tech buyer, but it's those digital interfaces that still need work
When Reggie Watts took to the Expand stage, he was wearing a Pebble. The performer said that he's obsessed with the wearables and picked up multiples of the smartwatch during those early adopter deal days. "If it's something I'm curious about, [something} that provides a service or that I'm interested in," then he makes the purchase. These early adoptions have to survive a very narrow success rate. "About 80 percent of these might not get integrated into my life -- and those go to my friends." How about Pebble? "It's great to not look at my phone to see SMS messages," Watts said, adding that he hated the disconnect that happens when people are talking and those smartphone notifications pull one half of the conversation away. Touching on what Watts outlined during a recent episode of Peripheral Vision, he said that technology was a means of expressing creativity -- and he's been obsessed with most things tech since he was little. "I used to lick batteries a lot. I thought licking a 9-volt battery would give me super powers." From there, it went in a safer and arguably more productive direction, as deconstructed X-Wing toys, Casio keyboards and music began to dovetail, quite neatly, into that obsession. Does technology inform his music? To an extent: "It inspires me to add layers, project them in a complex way." Most of the times, as displayed in his quick set at the end of the session, he's layering over himself, adding and enriching his own vocal and beatbox lines. When it comes to his performances, Watts explained that his equipment has to fit into his bag, and as such he's always looking for ways to shrink that volume down. He's involved himself with littleBits' synth kit collaboration with Korg, -- which seems pretty on target. However, he doesn't expect his equipment to unify into a tablet or smartphone controller any time soon. To begin with, there's a lack of tactile sensation that you can only get from IRL dials and switches. That's not to say he hasn't done a smartphone-only performance in the past -- he has -- but Watts added that now "inputting the information, the interface ... is the problem." "[At the moment] we're still like cavemen."
Lunar elevators and asteroid mining: Kickstarting the next chapter of space exploration
Privately funded space missions might sound like the preserve of the financial elite, but the truth is actually a little more pedestrian. Speaking at Expand New York today, Michael Laine (LiftPort) and Chris Lewicki (Planetary Resources) both extolled the virtues of people power, and the critical role it will play in the future of private space exploration. Head past the break to find out how you might play a part in the next chapter of space research.
DIWire attempts to fill the gaps left by 3D printers (hands-on)
It brought solar-powered smartphone chargers to the streets of NYC, now Pensa, a Brooklyn-based design firm, is taking on desktop prototyping. Its latest invention, DIWire, is a compact CNC wire bender. A machine designed solely to bend wire clearly has its limitations, but DIWire was actually born from the limitations of more versatile technologies. The team traditionally used a 3D printer to build furniture models, but found that the resulting models didn't stand up to testing. With tiny broken chair legs as inspiration, Pensa set out to make an accessible machine that addressed the laborious nature of hand-bending and the impracticality of mass-production wire bending.
LittleBits and Korg team up on Synth Kit modular DIY instrument, we go hands-on
Here's a pro tip: if you want to make this editor smile, hand me something that makes a bunch of noise. There are few things more satisfying than pressing some buttons and turning a few knobs to generate an avalanche of digital sound. And if what makes that noise is something you built yourself, all the better. LittleBits has been encouraging kids (and childish adults) to build their own electronic doodads and projects for some time now. And some of those creations even had the capability to make noise. But, the new Synth Kit released in collaboration with Korg is dedicated to DIY audio cacophony. Inside the gold and black packaging is a pile of snap-together components that will let you build the analog synthesizer of your dreams... so long as your dreams is a simplified MS-20. The box holds a pair of oscillators, envelope and filter units, a keyboard, a four-step sequencer, a random noise generator, a two-channel mixer (and a splitter so you can create two independent audio sources), a delay effect and, of course, a power source and a speaker. It's more or less a deconstructed version of Korg's clasic MS-20. Just like previous Little Bits kits, all the pieces are color coded: blue for power, pink for input, green for output and orange for wires. Each component has magnets on either side that snap together only in one direction, preventing you from assembling a circuit in the wrong way and potentially damaging the components. While the number of parts is fairly limited, they're all pretty flexible. The keyboard, for instance has two modes (hold and press), as does the noise generator and the sequencer. Even the oscillators can be switched between square and saw waves. That means those 12 bits in the box can actually generate quite a wide variety of sounds, from deep bass rattles and percussive ticks to swooping synth dives and arpeggiated leads. It's quite simple to get started designing your own instruments, and you'll probably even learn a bit about synthesizer design along the way. Of course, you can combine it with other LittleBits kits and add light sensors or displays to your homebrewed synth. Founder Ayah Bdeir likes to claim that it's the easiest to use modular synthesizer with this sort of power. And she's probably right. While nobody is going to mistake you for the next Daft Punk, you can still create an impressive set of sounds. Some of which might even prove usable in actual music.
MYBELL keeps cyclists safe by blasting their MP3s of choice (hands-on)
Biking in heavily trafficked areas can be dangerous -- and few know this better than NYC cyclists. Peter Pottier is one of many in the Big Apple to survive a near miss while on two wheels, and that experience led him to develop a digital noise-maker to help keep bikers safe. The handlebar-mountable MYBELL, created by Pottier and his two colleagues, pumps out sound at up to 96dB -- the average mechanical bell tops out at about 70dB -- and features LEDs to improve nighttime visibility. Safety is clearly the focus here, but Pottier says he wants to improve the relationship between bikers and drivers as well. "I looked at what was currently on the market, such as air horns, but I didn't want to ostracize bikers." (Who wants to be accosted with that honking sound, after all?) To that end, the MYBELL is customizable; you can upload any MP3 file to the device via micro-USB, and you can choose different LED patterns in night mode. On top of the novelty value, hearing screaming techno instead of a standard bell ring will theoretically be safer, thanks to the wider pitch and range which make it easier to detect. And, if you're lucky, your taste in music might even earn the respect of that otherwise-hostile SUV.