Mark Cuban invests in PowerPot.
The PowerPot is an awesome device that charges your phone by boiling water in a pot. The device has just become the next hot thing, thanks to its appearance on ABC’s hit reality show, “Shark Tank.” (Video)
South Korea’s internet speeds blow away the rest of the world
Here’s a speed test conducted at a coffee shop in Seoul using its free WiFi.
South Korea is a connected country. There’s free WiFi just about anywhere you go, even at the airport. And if you travel a lot, you know free WiFi at an airport is nearly impossible to come by. Not only is there free WiFi everywhere, but that Internet is much, much faster than what you typically get in the U.S.
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Harvard professor Clayton Christensen predicts half of U.S. colleges to fail in next 15 years
Dowling College main administrative and faculty offices building.
On Long Island, New York’s south shore on the Dowling College campus, a fleet of unused shuttle buses sits in an otherwise empty parking lot. A dormitory is shuttered, as are a cafeteria, bookstore and some classrooms in the main academic building.
Chinese company 3D prints 10 houses in a day
3D printed house.
In Shanghai, China, the WinSun Decoration Design Engineering Company claims to have 3D printed ten houses with inexpensive industrial scraps in 24 hours. (Photos)
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Robots are writing more news than you think
Ninety percent of the news could be written by computers by 2030.
Software is writing news stories with increasing frequency. In a recent example, an LA Times writer-bot wrote and posted a snippet about an earthquake three minutes after the event. The LA Times claims they were first to publish anything on the quake, and outside the USGS, they probably were.
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Ideas Box – a ready-made library for humanitarian crisis victims
Ideas Box
Easy access to information is something most of us take for granted. In some parts of the world however just being able to browse a few books is nearly impossible, especially for people who are refugees or victims of a humanitarian crisis. Immediate living necessities including clean water, food, shelter clothing and medical care in these situations are the primary concern. (Video)
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Lost Luggage – 3D printable luggage
Just e-mail ourselves 3-D printable files of our stuff.
Janne Kyttanen, a Finnish designer and creative director of 3D Systems, has vastly improved on the concept of luggage. He thinks we can just e-mail ourselves 3-D printable files of our stuff. If we go by his new project Lost Luggage, the era of suitcase-schlepping may soon be over.
The problem with profitless-on-purpose startups
SpoonRocket
There are dozens of services operating in and around San Francisco like – Homejoy for cleaning, BloomThat for flowers, Postmates for courier service, SpoonRocket a gourmet meal-delivery service, and on and on. Most of them provide cheap, convenient amenities at the tap of a smartphone app. Few of them are profitable on a corporate level. And together, they’ve formed the backbone of a strange urban economy: one in which massive venture-capital injections allow money-losing start-ups to flourish, while providing services that no traditional, unsubsidized business can match. It’s an economy built on patience, and the hope that someday, after the land grab is over and the dust has settled, a better business model will emerge.
Shapeshifting furniture of the future
The inFORM
The inFORM–a shapeshifting display that you can reach through and touch–was meant to be a sort of digital scrying pool through which MIT could imagine the user interfaces of the future. Currently on display at Milan’s Design Week, the inFORM’s successor (called, appropriately enough,the Transform) is a scrying pool too, but instead of helping us imagine the interfaces of the future, it’s here to teach us what the polymorphous furniture of tomorrow will be like instead. (Videos)
Map reveals how the entire world could be connected using a global underground network
Web developer Chris Gray came up with his idea for a global Underground map when he was visiting Australia.
What if you could board a train in Madras, India and travel to Boston without changing trains? One man has imagined the world as a giant London Underground map where people can travel freely between countries and traverse vast bodies of water from the comfort of their seat while vehicles speed through vast tunnels.
MIT building robots out of paper
Printed robot
MIT lead researcher, Ankur Mehta is working on a project that quite literally enables people to print robots on a standard piece of paper at home. It might sound crazy, but there’s a lot of complicated math to back up the fact that you can create nearly any shape you like by folding paper. Once you’ve created the proper shape, Mehta demonstrates that you can combine it with about $20 worth of electronics to create a fully functioning robot.
The world’s first connected electric toothbrush
Kolibree connected electric toothbrush.
Kolibree has launched a Kickstarter campaign for its connected electric toothbrush, a product that first caught our eye at CES in January. The Paris-based company hopes to raise $70,000 by May 25, and it’s already reached $56,000 from backers at the time of this post. (Video)
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