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Smart Power Strip brings its home automation dreams to Kickstarter
Smart Power Strip landed its way into the final round of our Insert Coin competition the other week at Engadget Expand, and while it didn't take home one of the giant foam commemorative coins (or the prize money attached), it was an impressive feat nonetheless. Not taking home the gold means that Roger Yiu and team could use the money even more. The project just hit Kickstarter, in hopes of snagging $100,000. A pledge of $99 will get you one of the smart outlets, so you can bring a touch of low-cost, smartphone-controlled automation to your home. You can check out our hand-on with the the device here and watch the crowdfunding plea below.
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.
Expand NY 2013 wrap-up
Did you end up missing out on the sheer abundance of technology that was Expand New York 2013? Don't fret: we've rounded up everything from our expo. Whether you're interested in the Insert Coin competitors, our hands-on time with new products or discussions with big names like LeVar Burton and Spike Lee, you'll find all the articles and media you need. Check out the full range of stories after the break -- it's the next best thing to having been there in person. [Image credit: Jenna Bascom, Flickr]
DIWire hits Kickstarter, is already doing just fine, thank you very much
It's been a good week over at Pensa Labs. On Sunday, the Brooklyn-based team walked off with the $10,000 judges' prize from our Insert Coin competition and now its Kickstarter project's already crossed the $64k mark (out of a $100k goal). In fact, we'd suggest that it doesn't even need this coverage, but we're too smitten with the device to skip it. For those who weren't at the Javits Center over the weekend (and managed to go a couple of days without checking in on this site), DIWire is a desktop CNC wire bender. That means you enter the designs and it'll shape a piece of metal wire accordingly. The applications for prototyping and artwork are pretty clear -- and once this thing is actually out in the world, we'll no doubt see all sorts of cool uses its creators never dreamt up. All of the $2,500-level awards are now gone, so the cheapest you'll be able to get one for is $2,750. No firm date on shipping for the product beyond mid-2014 at this point.
The Engadget Show 47: Insert Coin - New Challengers
We got to hang with Spike Lee, LeVar Burton, Reggie Watts, Ayah Bdeir, David Gerrold, Bens Heck and Huh and Rachel Haot. We played around with Occulus Rift, some electric skateboards, a surgical robot and a few 3D scanners. Once again, however, our Insert Coin competition was arguably the highlight of the whole Expand event. Ten products competing for two big prizes, to help jumpstart their crowdfunding campaigns. Once again, the diversity of the projects was staggering -- a fact that no doubt made it all the more difficult for our panel of illustrious judges to pick just one winner. In this second of two Engadget Show Expand specials, we follow the journey of our top five finalists, MyBell, GrowCubes, Smart Power Strip, DiWire and Blink Scan. Huge congrats as always to all the semi-finalists and a big ole thanks to co-host Mark Frauenfelder and our four-judge panel.
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.
The Engadget Show 46: Expand NY with LeVar Burton, Reggie Watts, Rachel Haot and more!
It's true, we're still beaming - which is saying a lot for a Monday morning coming off of little to no sleep. And while we'd have been slightly grumpy working through the weekend in nearly any other scenario, we just spent three days with 10,000 or so friends, colleagues and tech superstars, so we can't really complain too much. It's tough to pick a favorite moment from the inaugural Engadget Expand New York. Maybe it was watching LeVar Burton engage in a discussion with Timothy Jordan from the Google Glass team. It may well have been seeing Reggie Watts talk wearables with Pebble CEO Eric Migicovsky or witnessing Spike Lee get scanned with 3D Systems' new Sense handheld. Granted, we've only done this twice, but we think we can safely say that something magical happens when you put a lot of smart, creative types in a room for a couple of days. Between the giant robotic leg, Raspberry Pi competition, 3D printers, Occulus Rifts and two days packed with all-star panels, it was heck of a weekend. We realize not everyone could join us, of course, so hopefully this latest episode of The Engadget Show will serve as some consolation. At the very least, you'll get to see a robotic snake and at least one editor riding around on an electric skateboard. Surely that's worth at least 11 minutes of your time. Oh, and stay tuned tomorrow, for yet another episode of the show from the floor of Expand!
Facebook's head of special projects talks wearables, WiFi and human connections
The last time we spoke to Erick Tseng, he was still working for Google as a senior product manager for Android. Since then, he's left the Mountain View company for one just down the road: Facebook. Tseng came on to head up the company's mobile division, which obviously proved to be particularly important the past few years. At Expand NY, Tseng talked about his new role as product manager for the company's special projects group, which is still very tied to mobile, but in different ways. In particular, he addressed Facebook's efforts to make it easier to connect to public WiFi hotspots and its early dive into the wearables space.
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.
Expand NY workshops roundup: 3D Systems, littleBits, Leap Motion and more!
The stage at Expand acted as a platform for conversations between many people involved in the future of technology -- but there was a lot more that attendees were able to enjoy. Some of our nifty workshop sessions had 3D Systems show off its new Sense scanner; littleBits gave a demo of the Synth Kit; Leap Motion talked about its SDK and the implementation of it on 3D web apps; and Raspberry Pi revealed the results of the Make-Off contest. These are only a few of the workshops from our event in New York City, so head past the break to check out the full list -- we've got a video for each one.
Ben Huh wants internet culture to go pop so you can has more lulz
If Ben Huh, the man behind the meme-generating Cheezburger site, were writing this, you'd probably just be looking at a string of gifs and the occasional LOLcat. And, chances are, you'd find that seemingly random list of internet flotsam and jetsam amusing. Maybe you'd even save one to your desktop, enhance it with some low-level Photoshop skills and share it back out to the web. Which is precisely what Huh would want you to do; to catch, remix and re-release "found content" with an added layer of humor and whatever tools are available. It's what Huh, speaking at Engadget Expand, calls a "Happy Moment," and it evolves with every new format. You need only look to Twitter for the greatest example of this.
And your Insert Coin winners are: DIWire and GrowCubes!
The votes have been tallied, the judges have conferred and we have a pair of winners in our Insert Coin competition. First up, our panel of experts have settled on a victor after much debate, and Pensa Labs will be taking home the $10,000 judge's prize for its DIWire. The automated wire-bending machine is sure to find a home in many a maker's workshop. The readers though, chose something different. Attendees and viewers at home cast their support for GrowCubes. The idea of stackable greenhouses small enough for a New York City apartment really captured the imagination of the public. And for that they'll be taking home the $15,000 reader's prize. So congratulations to our winners! Of course, the story doesn't end here for any of our Insert Coin competitors. We're sure some successful crowdfunding campaigns lie in their futures.
Narrative Clip lapel camera shows up at Expand in its final form, we go hands-on
The last time we saw the Narrative Clip lifecasting camera, it had a see-through casing allowing you to see the circuitry within. Heck, it even had a different name. As it happens, though, the company's co-founder, Oskar Kalmaru, stopped by Engadget Expand this weekend, so we got a chance to see the lapel camera in its final form. If you choose to shell out $279 to buy one, you'll see it has a metal clip and lightweight plastic housing, with black being the color of choice for everyone who pre-ordered on Kickstarter. (If you were to buy it now, you'd have a choice of gray, white and orange.) Since our first look, however, the functionality has remained exactly the same. Which is to say, the camera automatically takes a photo every 30 seconds, but you can tap the housing to take a snap at any time. Inside, there's 8GB of internal storage; to upload your pics to Narrative Clip's cloud service, you'll need to plug the camera into your computer using the built-in micro-USB port. Once you upload your photos, you can choose to share just individual shots if you like, or what the company is calling "moments" (i.e., groups of shots). That's all she wrote -- if you want more of a refresher, check out our earlier hands-on video after the break.
Live from Expand: David Gerrold
We've got lots of lingering Tribble-related questions, and thankfully we've got just the man to answer them. David Gerrold created the frisky furry creatures for the original Star Trek series, the Sleestak creatures who menaced the Land of the Lost and has gone on to win numerous awards for his science fiction novels. November 10, 2013 4:00:00 PM EST Follow all of Engadget's Expand coverage live from New York City right here!
NYC Chief Digital Officer Rachel Haot on providing digital access to all
"The foundation of New York City's digital strategy is access," explains Rachel Haot, fresh off her Expand press day opening remarks. "We define that as access for all New Yorkers, regardless of income level, regardless of the resources you may have in your household. Libraries play a very vital role in this; schools do as well, [along with] recreation centers run by the city's parks department -- and we've even invested in senior centers, where we are connecting more seniors with the internet and providing training." Haot's served as New York's chief digital offers for three years or so, tasked with the seemingly overwhelming goal of making technology available to the citizens of the largest city in the country. The question of income gaps plays a key role in the city's continued push to bring high-tech jobs to New York as the cost of living threatens to push out potential startups. Haot counters that the city continues to offer affordable spaces in the five boroughs. She also offers up a list of perks the Big Apple provides over those areas we've come to know as tech hubs. "New York City is a completely unique destination that presents completely unique opportunities for any entrepreneur," she adds. "One of the reasons we hear people come here is, first and foremost, diversity. You look at a lot of other tech hubs and it's a one-horse town. It ends up being an echo chamber, or a bit of a bubble. In New York City, you're always kept humble, because there are so many industries, and they're always intersecting. I think that provides and enables enormous creativity and collaboration."
The future of motion interfaces: Wave goodbye to the mouse
We're still big fans of Douglas Engelbart's original pointing device, but human/computer input is moving past traditional peripherals. We're rapidly approaching a future of touchscreens, motion sensors and visual imaging control solutions. "Gone are the days, probably, of the keyboard, mouse and maybe even touch input," Samsung's Shoneel Kolhatkar told us. During a panel on the future of gesture and motion controls at Expand NY, Kolhatkar suggested that these technologies could fade away within the next 20 years. His fellow panelists, Pelican Imaging's Paul Gallagher and Leap Motion's Avinash Dabir agree that there's more to the future of computing than the traditional point and click.
Live from Expand: Rethinking Education
Technology is revolutionizing the way kids are learning, from tablets and laptops in classrooms, to introducing coding curricula in public schools. We'll be talking to representatives of three very different educational tech companies, including One Laptop Per Child, SparkFun and Code.org. November 10, 2013 3:05:00 PM EST Follow all of Engadget's Expand coverage live from New York City right here!
Live from Expand: Ben Huh
The man behind Lolcats and Fail blog joins us for a lighthearted after-lunch discussion about everything that makes us laugh on the internet. November 10, 2013 1:55:00 PM EST Follow all of Engadget's Expand coverage live from New York City right here!
Live from Expand: Know Your Digital Rights
Patents, digital rights, the NSA -- it's a lot to wrap one's head around. Thankfully, we've got some of the most knowledgeable folks in the biz, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Julie Samuels, Techdirt's Mike Masnick and American University Washington College of Law professor Michael Carroll. November 10, 2013 1:15:00 PM EST Follow all of Engadget's Expand coverage live from New York City right here!
