New Florence. New Renaissance.

Turning your iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch into a baby monitor

"Among the biggest advantages of the Evoz is its portability and the fact that it works with devices you might already own—you don't need to buy a single-purpose, baby monitor The Evoz lets you use one Apple device—say an iPad, iPod Touch, or iPhone—as a monitor that stays in the baby's room and a second device as the receiver. Once both devices have the Evoz app, you can take your receiving device and listen in on one or more children (or spouses) from wherever you are—around the world even!"

I would use it to monitor my beagle!

 

Wired's trash heap of devices

Wired lists 10 of its worst devices for the last year.

It starts with the Fusion Garage Joo Joo Tablet (not kidding that is the name)

"Twice the weight of an iPad with half the usability and an interface buggier than bucket full of cockroaches. And no access to apps. And a $500 price tag. No 3G connectivity, Google Talk or Adobe PDF reader. POP3 e-mail? Support for Microsoft exchange? Keep dreaming. A battery that conks out after only a few hours of use. All this can be yours for the low, low price of $500. We wish the JooJoo were just a bad joke with no punch line. Sadly it was a real thing and the absolute worst gadget of 2010."

The list includes Shake Weights,Looxcie Bluetooth Headset-Camera Combo (in photo) and more.

 

"The Universe's Ten Most Epic Projects"

Popular Science gallery on some really ambitious projects:

• Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider on Long Island, New York
• The Neptune ocean-observatory network off the coast of British Columbia
• The Very Large Array telescope in New Mexico (in photo)
• The National Ignition laser Facility in Livermore, California
• Juno, the Jupiter Orbiter
• Advanced Light Source, a particle accelerator in Berkeley, California
• The International Space Station
• Spallation Neutron Source in Oak Ridge, Tennessee
• The Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland
• The Earthscope, with 4000 instruments across the US and Puerto Rico

Video Games now twice as big as movies!

“Talent agents have long been part of the book, movie, and music industries. This wasn’t always so in video games, but the arrival of people such as Hilbert is a sure sign of a maturing and increasingly influential art form. Two decades ago developers made games in their garages, advertised them on the backs of comic books, and mailed them to customers in zip-lock bags. They saw themselves as software designers rather than as “talent,” a word traditionally used in the entertainment world to describe the likes of Tom Cruise, Jennifer Lopez, or anyone else who does something in front of a camera or microphone or on a keyboard.

Agents go where there’s money, and the video game industry is overflowing with it. Revenues reached $25 billion in the U.S. last year, according to the Entertainment Software Assn. That’s more than double Hollywood’s theatrical receipts. “

BusinessWeek

Photo of Jeff Hilbert, one of the most successful agents for games.

The De Dietrich Induction hob

“The DTiM1000C 90CM utilizes the entire 81cm x 40cm cooking zone as it features multiple inductors beneath  the ceramic glass surface. Using up to five differently sized pans just place each pan on the hob and it will detect the pan’s presence, wherever it is situated. Choose the power level (from 1 -15 or maximum Boost) and select the cooking time. Should you move the pan anywhere on the zone; the hob’s automatic pan detectors will ensure that the temperature of the pan remains constant, wherever it is moved.”

That is for the expert (and the hob is endorsed by French Chef, Pierre Gagnaire, owner of twice-awarded 3* Michelin Restaurant ‘Pierre Gagnaire’ in Paris’ ) 

There are other simpler modes for less demanding cooks.

Credit: Dennis Howlett who is in middle of refurbishing his own kitchen

All the President’s iPads

I interviewed Washington Post Co. executives for my next book.

While traditional media has been decimated by technology, impressive how the Post has become a diversified technology company. Its Kaplan unit is one of the largest on-line education companies. Its Cable One unit is one of the largest cable companies in the US and services a number of rural communities. It has digital properties like Slate. It has invested in startups like Avenue100 which provides marketing analytics to institutions, Trove (previously iCurrent) a social news site and aggregator and SocialCode, which helps companies with Facebook advertising and user engagement campaigns.

Here’s a fun video where Ben Bradlee lures Bob Woodward away from his typewriter and shows him the wonders of the iPad. Loved the scene where the lady goes “Was that Robert Redford?” as Woodward walks by.

Movie buffs, of course, will remember Jason Robards won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for playing Ben Bradlee in All the President's Men

100 things your kid may never know about

Wired magazine's list including these 10

• Inserting a VHS tape into a VCR to watch a movie or to record something.
• Rotary dial televisions with no remote control. You know, the ones where the kids were the remote control.
• The scream of a modem connecting.
• The buzz of a dot-matrix printer
• Booting your computer off of a floppy disk.
• Using a road atlas to get from A to B
• Doing bank business only when the bank is open
• Sending that film away to be processed
• Vacuum cleaners with bags in them
• Not knowing who was calling you on the phone

Aquaculture

Time has a nice feature on how wild fish is running out and what works/does not in farm aquaculture

"As a farmed species, the barramundi is just about perfect. It can survive in a wide variety of environments and lays eggs frequently. It has a flexible diet, and much like its fellow Australians, it is laid-back by nature, so it can endure the rigors of farming. Goldman launched Australis in Turners Falls in 2004 and was producing barramundi commercially by 2005. The fish is rich in omega-3 oils; Dr. Oz named it one of his top superfoods in 2010. Less than 20% of the barramundi's feed at Australis comes from fish meal and fish oil — a better percentage than for many farmed salmon, which can require as much as 50% of their feed from fish meal. The Turners Falls operation is an indoor, closed recirculating system, so there's little waste, little risk of disease and no threat that the barramundi will escape into the wild. Plus, barramundi tastes good, with the flaky mouthfeel of the better-known sea bass. Goldman's real challenge is convincing Americans — with their appetite for shrimp, tuna and salmon — that they should eat an unfamiliar Australian fish. "Selling it as sustainable helps," he says. "But once they try it, people like it."

Photo Credit

Crowdsourcing Legal Advice

Jay Mandal, the former lead mergers-and-acquisitions lawyer for Apple (AAPL), thinks he can help. He quit his lucrative corporate gig in 2009 to found LawPivot, a Q&A website that matches cash-sensitive startups with the lawyers who might be able to help them. Companies visit the site and pose questions, such as whether they need to trademark a brand or how to minimize liability from negative user reviews.

Behind the scenes, LawPivot’s algorithms funnel the questions to its roster of lawyers based on expertise and quality of past responses. For now, companies can ask three questions per month for free, though LawPivot plans to charge a subscription fee of $80 a month.

BusinessWeek

 

3M’s “periodic table”

As I interviewed 3M for my next book, I discovered the amazing variety of products they have that influence so many technology markets. Way more than Post-It notes and Scotch Tape. Particularly like the way they have organized their products into 46 areas on their version of the periodic table.

Click on Bi, and it describes 3M in Biotechnology, Mf describes what it does with Mechanical Fasteners, We with Accelerated Weathering. The company has more than 55,000 products (!) and has an uncanny ability to combine highly innovative technologies in new and unexpected ways.