HoverMast cam launches in 10 seconds

The HoverMast is a hovering surveillance machine that can be deployed in 10-15 seconds from a small vehicle such as an armored SUV

The HoverMast is a hovering surveillance machine that can be deployed from a small vehicle such as an armored SUV. The machine, developed by Sky Sapience and currently at the prototype stage, can be deployed to an altitude of up to 50 meters (164 feet) within 10-15 seconds.

Because the machine is tethered, a hard-wired power connection allows the HoverMast to hover as long as there is fuel in the tank in the vehicle to which it's anchored. Cables also provide a data link to send live pictures back to the ground.

The machine is equipped with real time video cameras capable of both day and night-time surveillance, but it can carry an additional payload of 6-9 kg (13-20 pounds) which, according to sUAS News, might include additional sensors, radar, signals intelligence or even laser designators - potentially identifying targets for missiles or artillery.

"The classic application for the HoverMast is Border Protection," a Sky Sapience spokesperson told Gizmag. "We estimate the most common usage of the HoverMast will be with real time video camera capable of delivering day and night pictures to the user."

The HoverMast can be landed and stowed in 10-15 seconds and operates in maximum winds of 25 km/h (16 mph).

A prototype HoverMast is set to be demonstrated in April, with line production commencing before the end of the year.

Sources: Sky Sapience, sUAS News

3D printing, Kickstarter and old-fashioned perseverance: The tools of the modern inventor

David Alden, inventor of the Recoil Winder, to learn more about how 3D printing and Kickstarter are democratizing inventing 

The near concurrent rise of Kickstarter and semi-affordable 3D printing means we live in a time when it is easier than ever to be an inventor of physical things. Kickstarter, the social network which lets members of the public invest, or, more accurately, support and become early adopters of new technology, has opened a completely new route to funding that is both democratic and meritocratic. 3D printing on the other hand means inventors can create test prototypes with relatively little expense and minimal difficulty. But though it may be easier than ever to be an inventor, that is not to say it is at all easy.

David Alden, whose spring-loaded Recoil Winder cable management device clearly struck a chord raising more than 14 times the original US$10,000 investment target. Both Kickstarter and 3D printing may have been essential to the development of the Recoil Winder, but Alden's story also demonstrates the need for good old-fashioned perseverance.

I think we can all identify with the problem the Recoil Winder seeks to solve. Was identification of this problem the start of the story? Had you tried other cable management systems before coming up with the Winder?

David Alden: The creation of the Winder was entirely organic. We had just completed building a new home, and my wife and I had designed every element of the home around the things that we owned; furniture, books, art, electronics etc., but once we were in the home I was bummed that the one thing that did not have a spot was our cords and chargers.

They were constantly on the counter and stuffed in drawers, and it was a detail that really bugged me. As is my nature, I sat down and resolved to figure it out. As a fly fisherman I had a few extra fishing reels in the garage, so I started winding my cords up around those, which was cool, but totally impractical. I then got out a couple of tape measures, cut off the tape, added a wire hook, and bam, I was winding cords. All of this was done in about 30 minutes.

The light bulb went on and I decided on the spot to start Recoil. Little did I know that the whole tape measure concept had some fatal flaws, and so I spent nearly the next year figuring out how to really make it work. The nuances and mechanical realities were far more complex than I had anticipated.

During this process, I definitely looked at every other cord storage solution on the market, and none of them seemed to get it right.

There's a lot of work to get an idea from an idea to a first prototype, and it's a step that many people don't take. Are you used to making things? Was the prototype hard to build?

David Alden: I have been involved in the snowboard industry for about 30 years. Anyone who was involved in snowboarding in the earliest days was automatically in product development. What little equipment that was available sucked, and barely worked. If you wanted snowboard boots, you bought a pair of hiking boots and cut and sewed until they worked. If you wanted metal edges on a board, you ripped them off of a pair of skis and screwed them onto your board. If you wanted a decent pair of bindings, you bought some plastic, melted it over the stove and formed your own. This process taught me that building stuff is just a matter of going out to the garage and building stuff ... and I have been building stuff ever since.

No doubt there is a huge mental barrier between wishing for a new product and just going out to the garage and building it. I'm not sure why that is. These days CAD and 3D printing have changed all that. It has never been easier to just go build something. Really all you need now is an idea, a CAD person and a 3D printer.

You've been open about the process of iterative design you used to develop prototype after prototype. How many versions of the Winder do you think you came up with? How long did this process take? Did you hit any dead ends conceptually or technologically?

David Alden: At least 75 versions over about 6 months. No kidding. What I did not realize is how hard it would be to figure out how to keep the spring from spinning-out when a cord wasn't on the winder. If someone "hits the switch" with no cord on the winder, the thing spins out. What a drag. I even convinced myself at one point that people might think it was fun to spin-out the winder and then rewind it, it might even be a feature people liked. I had this picture of people sitting on a phone call and spinning out their winder and then winding it back up for fun. I was delusional. At first this challenge was fun, after awhile not so much.

I was completely defeated by this one problem, then one night standing in my kitchen the solution came to me, and I had our final design modeled and built the next day. Game on.

The upside to this process was it had me obsessed with cord management for a long time, and I developed several different products out of this process. Those products will be released over the next few months.

 At what stage of development did you decide to go with Kickstarter? Was Kickstarter the obvious route for funding? Did you consider alternatives?

David Alden: Through the process, several people mentioned that my product was perfect for Kickstarter, but I wasn't listening. I had the wrong idea that it meant selling small pieces of the company to "backers." I know that over the life of Recoil, I will have to part with percentages of the company to keep it funded, so I am uber-wary of giving up equity too early in the process. Then one day I opened my ears and listened to how it really works, that people would actually pre-order and pre-pay for product that wasn't even in the warehouse yet. What? Wow. Really? I read everything I could find on Kickstarter that night, and asked my nephew to film our video the next day. Three days later I launched. I would love to say that I am totally savvy and have had my eye on Kickstarter from the start, but no.

I did have the advantage of having tooling already underway in China, so I knew that I would be able to build and deliver product in a reasonable amount of time. I think people need to be careful of launching Kickstarter too early, better be sure you can come through if your project gets funded, you can be sure that among your Kickstarter backers there are bound to be a couple of attorneys who won't be too stoked if they don't get their product in a reasonable time frame.

What stage are you at with the Winder now?

David Alden: Tooling is nearly complete, and it is nice to know that I can now finish paying for those tools. I wrote the factory a check for half of the tooling before we launched on Kickstarter, and honestly I have no idea how I would have paid for the other half if Kickstarter didn't succeed - (*audible sigh of relief*). I traveled to China a week ago to oversee production, assembly and packaging, and we will have product stateside early April.

Any plans to broaden the product range down the line?

David Alden: Yep, wait until you see what I have up my sleeve. You know that waterfall of cords and cables that are pouring down behind your desk right now? Push your chair back and take a look. What a mess. Enjoy it while you have it, because I am making it my personal mission to clean that up for you.

Postscript

It's interesting that Alden warns prospective inventors to be cautious of launching a Kickstarter campaign too early in the process - and the Kickstarter website is not wholly without cautionary tales of, if not outright failures, then at least customers disgruntled at delayed products and poor communication. These risks are highest when the products launched are physical - Kickstarter is also home to funding campaigns for digital-only content - films, video games, music projects and writing projects among them which sometimes appear to launch with little more than an idea behind. Though that may work for such products, inventors of physical products may be wise to listen to Alden's words of caution.

Interesting, too, is Alden's familiarity with getting his hands dirty with physically hacking at snowboard gear in order to make improvements. Sure, 3D printing is a boon to designers of physical things, but it is not a wholesale substitute for practical experience and expertise. But it's undeniable that both Kickstarter and 3D printing are having a democratizing effect upon the making of things.

Though the Recoil Winders Kickstarter campaign may have wound up, the product website says orders will open in a matter of days with a 15% discount for early adopters.

Product page: Recoil Winders

Phone-based scanner detects harmful bacteria

Scientists have created a scanner that can be attached to a mobile phone, to detect the presence of E. coli bacteria in liquid samples

Soon, you may never have to play Russian roulette with potato salad again. Instead of just hoping that E. coli bacteria aren't present in your foods or drinks, you could instead use your mobile phone to find out for sure. That phone would have to be equipped with a bacteria-detecting scanner, which researchers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science recently created - in a prototype version, for now.

The device attaches to the phone's camera and incorporates semiconducting quantum dots, combined with a grouping of glass capillary tubes that contain antibodies. When E. coli bacteria from liquid samples are placed within the scanner, they are captured on the capillary surface, where they get "excited" by the light from built-in LED bulbs.

This reaction causes the quantum dots to emit florescent light, which is magnified by a lens located beneath the capillaries, and then captured by the phone's camera - essentially, the device scanner serves as an inexpensive miniature florescent microscope. The specific concentration of E. coli is determined by quantifying the amount of light being emitted within each tube.

So far, there's no word on when or if a commercial version of the device might be available.

A paper on the research was recently published in the journal of The Royal Society of Chemistry.

Source: UCLA via Popular Science

Samsung shows off latest Galaxy Beam projector phone

The Galaxy Beam is a smartphone with its own built-in pico projector

Samsung has officially unveiled an updated version of the Galaxy Beam, a smartphone with its own built-in pico projector. The biggest feature of the phone as you might guess is its ability to project pictures, video, and other media onto walls, ceilings or any other flat surface via a 15 lumens projector that Samsung says can display images up to 50-inches wide.

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Samsung originally showed off the Galaxy Beam at Mobile World Congress in 2010. At the time, the Android handset was only slated to make an appearance in Singapore. This year's announcement brings an updated version of the handset sporting Android 2.3 Gingerbread, and while release details have yet to be announced, the phone will likely be available in a few additional countries.

The 2010 version of the Beam came running Android v2.1, had a 3.7-inch screen, and a 9 lumens projector. The updated 2012 version shown off at Mobile World Congress 2011 comes running Android v2.3, has a 4-inch screen, and comes rocking a much more powerful 15 lumens projector.

The projector is the stand-out feature of the phone. Beyond that, you're looking at your standard run-of-the-mill Android handset. The phone has a 5-megapixel built-in camera, and has a 1GHz dual-core processor, 8GB of internal memory, and a 2000mAh battery.

Samsung has yet to announce pricing or availability for the 2012 Galaxy Beam.

HTC One X unveiled as HTC's first quad-core smartphone

The HTC One X unveiled at MWC 2012 is HTC's first quad-core smartphone

At Mobile World Congress 2012 in Barcelona, HTC announced its new flagship handset, the HTC One X. Like the Optimus 4X HD from LG also unveiled at MWC 2012, the phone will be HTC's first quad-core handset.

The 4.3-inch One X comes sporting a NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor, 1GB of RAM and a 4.3-inch 1,280 x 720 HD display. With an 8-megapixel rear-facing and 1.3-megapixel forward-facing camera, the phone is capable of capturing high-resolution still photos simultaneously while shooting 1080p video that can also be edited directly on the smartphone.

Much like other HTC handsets of late (such as the HTC Sensation XE and HTC Rezound), the HTC One X comes with built-in Beats Audio, offering the phone a bit of a sound advantage over some of its competition. The phone will also ship running Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), and will offer 25GB of free DropBox storage in place of expandable memory.

The global version of the HTC One X is rumored to be released on April 5 2012 and priced at around US$650. A dual-core LTE version of the One X is set to come to AT&T in the U.S. later this year.

OS X Mountain Lion: 7 Out of 10 Ain't Bad

The preview of OS X Mountain Lion that Apple has released contains 10 major new features. They're not all equally impressive, but these seven already have me drooling for OS X Mountain Lion, which won't arrive until late this summer. It seems like a world away. Almost makes me want to become a developer to get the developer preview.

Not long after I expressed my irritation and desire for a converged iOS and Mac OS X experience, Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) announced its OS X Mountain Lion sneak peek. I claim no influence over Apple, of course, just the fact that OS X Mountain Lion is bridging the rift between iOS and Mac OS X. Of the 10 major new sneak-peek features revealed by Apple, seven are freaking awesome. The other three? Eh, whatever. Maybe.

But these seven already have me drooling for OS X Mountain Lion, which won't arrive until late this summer. It seems like a world away. Almost makes me want to become a developer to get the developer preview. Here they are:

Reminders: This little clean and elegant app that appeared with iOS 5 has quickly become one of my favorite apps on my iPhone. It handily replaced other to-do apps (sorry) because it hits the right blend of ease of use with cool power.

I can use it for task lists, as well as create reminder notices on my p based on dates and times ... or my location. My biggest beef with it? Right now, it's limited to my iPhone in that I have to tap out my list items on the phone. There's no Mac version that syncs with it, and that means I can't seamlessly move from my Mac to my iPhone. But now, with OS X Mountain Lion, I'm going to get that experience. And I can't wait.

Notification Center: Again, this built-in feature of iOS 5 is awesome. With a simple downward swipe, I can see my Reminders, Calendar, weather, and recent Mail activity, among other features I don't use, like the stock ticker. Boom, it's always there for me, no matter what app I'm in, no matter when I wake up my iPhone. As new email comes in, I'm not fond of the little rotating banner notification occasionally getting in my way, but I'm willing to let it slide for those few times I like it.In OS X Mountain Lion, a swipe will reveal a right-side column of Notification Center material, as well as small notification banners that will appear in the upper right corner of your screen. If you're in an app in full-screen mode, a swipe will also let you show Notification Center. How cool is that?

Notes: Wow, I was pleasantly surprised to see the Notes app from iOS 5 get a Mac-friendly makeover and a cocktail of caffeine and B vitamins. Notes on my iPhone can get a bit cluttered. I welcome a syncing mechanism to let me refine quick thoughts and ideas while I'm at my desk using my Mac. In addition, I'll be able to pin notes to my desktop as well as let iCloud keep them all automatically up to date across my iPhone and iPad, too.

Messages: I've been playing around with the Messages Beta preview, and while I like it, I'm still getting used to how it works with my Mac and my iPhone together. And part of that integration also has to do with friends who may or may not have iPhones, Macs and even iOS 5 on their iPhones.What's clear right now? Messages is pretty cool when someone catches you on your Mac -- I very much enjoy chatting and texting from a real live keyboard. On my iPhone, I've got limited stamina and short attention span for texting. Handy tool, no doubt, but I rarely am willing to text anyone when I'm sitting in my office in front of my Mac. Messages not only opens up this handy way to communicate for me, but it also integrates other instant messaging services like Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Talk and Yahoo(Nasdaq: YHOO) Messenger.

Share Sheets: Basically with Share Sheets, Apple is giving us a handy little button to push out content to other people. You can email a Web page, Message it using Messages, or even tweet it via Twitter. You can also use Share Sheets to post photos to Flickr or send videos to Vimeo. The Share Sheets functionality and button will appear in apps, too, like Notes, Reminders, Photo Booth and iPhoto. What's so cool about this? This functionality will be built into the entire OS X experience, instead of some feature that's connected to a Web page or iOS app. It will make engaging with friends, family, and colleagues fast and easy.

Gatekeeper: This new security setting feature lets you decide how to install applications on your Mac. Right now, you can install apps in a variety of ways, which also opens up a small door for the possibility that you could install malware -- for instance, if you were tricked into downloading and installing it, perhaps even through some ingenious social engineering and not nefarious file-sharing.For most people, this isn't such a big deal. For a whole generation of socially connected teenagers and kids, I don't have a lot of trust in their abilities to discern what might be safe or what might not be safe. It's not that the Mac is inherently unsafe, it's just that you shouldn't be stupid. There's a reason I lock the doors to my house. The odds of a criminal walking in are small, but the risk is high. Anytime you have either high odds or high risk, even if paired with low odds or small risk, you need to lock your doors, so to speak.Gatekeeper lets you choose to only allow users to download and install apps from Apple's curated App Store. Bad guys can still kick in a door, but any extra margin of safety that users can choose to use or ignore on their own is always welcome.

AirPlay Mirroring: If you have an Apple TV, you can now stream what's on your Mac to your HDTV via an Apple TV. This is so cool! You can do this now with an iPad 2 or iPhone 4S, as well as stream some content via your iPhone 4. Instead of huddling around a small screen, you can share with family members or work colleagues. The limitation is a need for an Apple TV, but the unit is small enough that I've considered packing it around to some work meetings.If a Mac-friendly office shelled out $100 for the connectivity in a conference room, it's easy to see AirPlay getting a lot of use. Having Apple TVs available in classrooms ... well, you can imagine the possibilities.

What About the Other Three?

Of the 10 major new features Apple chose to highlight, there are three that fall flat with me. Here's why.

iCloud: How can iCloud fall flat? Am I kidding? Nope. The promise is fantastic for iCloud, that it can seamlessly connect all your apps across your devices, sync them immediately, and provide you online storage and synced files.But how easy will it be, really? The answer is that it remains to be seen. For instance,while I so far mostly like iCloud, I'm not always sure what it's doing or why I have to keep entering in my Apple ID and password all over the place. For a few days after I first started using iCloud, I had iTunes on my own Mac tell me I could not play songs that existed on my own Mac hard drive via some iCloud snafu. After updating iTunes and such, the problem went away. But in that moment, I was pretty freakin' irritated. And confused. It made zero sense.At another time, I was trying to play songs from a playlist on my iPhone, and it was as if my iPhone was trying to operate from within a freezer -- a bit slow to start playing a new song. Finally I realized that somehow the resident songs stored on my iPhone 4 had been replaced by a virtual playlist that was streaming from iCloud -- I think. After you struggle a bit, you stop trying to skip through songs in a playlist and just listen. That's not an answer. But then the symptoms also disappeared after my last iTunes update.The result of iCloud glitches? Supreme irritation. Have all these things been settled? I think so. Then again, they've worked just well enough that I haven't made the time to go over each and every iCloud setting on all my devices. But if I lose one important note, one important Reminder, either on accident or via an errant click ... iCloud will get my blame, rational or not. iCloud is like fire. It could be fantastic and probably will be, or it could be painful. Or both.

Game Center: If you're into social gaming, and a lot of people are, fantastic. For kids? Great. For adults who barely play? Utterly meaningless.

Twitter: It's a social media force, no doubt, but if you're not tweeting, you barely care. However, if you tweet and follow fellow Twitterers, you will probably love it. It's just that a relatively small population of Mac users also want Twitter integration with OS X.

All in All, Wow!

The ability to swipe your way around OS X is pretty handy, and it makes MacBooks with small screens suddenly usable again. Throw in Reminders, Notifications and Notes, and our next-generation version of OS X will be more efficient than ever.

In fact, all of these new features have me seriously considering re-training myself to work solely on a MacBook Pro, using the touch and swiping, along with multiple desktops and full-screen apps to segment my work. Instead of using a big 24-inch monitor that only is awesome when I'm at my desk, might I be a better worker while on the go too? OS X Mountain Lion is finally the OS that gives me hope that being mobile might be nearly as good as being chained to a desk.

Will Microsoft Open a Branch Office in iPad Land?

Microsoft has created a prototype version of its Office suite for the iPad, according to a recent report, though Redmond said the news was based on inaccurate info and offered no further explanation. Microsoft making Office for iPad is plausible -- it already makes various Mac software apps. However, it's also possible that the company would want to keep its much-used productivity suite closer to home.

A sighting "in the wild" of Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Office for the iPad set speculative tongues wagging Tuesday, even as the Redmond crew denied the existence of the app.

The buzz began when Matt Hickey wrote in The Daily that the app was only weeks away. He also scribbled that he had hands-on experience with a prototype of the app. A photo of an iPad running the software accompanied his report.

The software's interface contained elements of Microsoft's only app for the iPad, OneNote, and its Metro interface found in the company's mobile operating system Windows Phone 7 and its upcoming Windows 8 OS, according to the report.

Microsoft disavowed Hickey's report. "The Daily story is based on inaccurate rumors and speculation," the company said in a statement provided to MacNewsWorld by Serina Hall, account coordinator for Waggener Edstrom. "We have no further comment."

Exclusive for Microsoft Tablets?

Analysts interviewed by MacNewsWorld who are familiar with the tablet market were divided on the prospects of a version of Office for the iPad.

Microsoft may not want to bring Office to the iPad because it wants it to be exclusive to tablets running Windows 8, hypothesized Michael Cherry, an analyst with Directions On Microsoft. "If Office is only available on the Windows 8 tablets when they release, that might give people a reason to buy Windows 8 tablets," he reasoned.

There are financial considerations, too, he added. "Most of the apps for the iPad don't have a very high price tag," he noted. "Microsoft may be asking itself can it make money writing Office for the iPad?"

"I use my iPad all the time, and I don't feel like I have to have Office to make my iPad valuable at work," he added.

Windows 8 Carrot

The Office guys at Microsoft see the iPad as a huge potential market, but the device guys see Office as a carrot to attract users to Windows 8 tablets, observed IDC analyst Tom Mainelli.

"When Microsoft looks at the market and what it needs to do to make Windows 8 tablets successful, it sees Office as a key component for that," he said.

"Even if there's an Office for the iPad in the works, we probably won't see it until Windows 8 tablets ship into the market," he added.

As an iPad user, Mainelli confessed that he'd love to have a version of Office that ran on the tablet. "There are plenty of third-party apps that do what Office does, but none of them can promise a level of compatibility with a real-deal Office application," he observed.

Balancing Act Microsoft needs to balance any potential financial gains from an Office for iPad product with financial and strategic gains for Windows 8, Mainelli's IDC colleague Al Hilwa explained.

"That's a tough decision," he said. "That's why I'd say," he continued, "that if Microsoft does support the iPad, it won't do it until Windows 8 is out and it's a big success."

That doesn't mean, however, that an Office for the iPad couldn't be in the works at the division of Microsoft that makes products for Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) computer lines. Its Office team works separately from the Windows Office team.

"That group could do Office for the iPad and do it reasonably well," observed Rob Enderle, president and principal analyst of the Enderle Group.

"If this rumor is true, then the development path will go to the Mac development group, not the Office for Windows group, and that's how they're going to make it work," he added.

Best Guess: It's Coming

Microsoft is a big company, and in big companies it's not unusual to have divergent interests, explained Gartner (NYSE: IT) Vice President for Mobile Computing Ken Dulaney.

"Not every business unit works in lockstep with the other one," he noted. "They all have individual profit goals."

So Microsoft could be hedging its tablet strategy, he continued.

"It's like betting on two things, hoping that both will work out, but if only one works out, at least you've won something," he said.

Historically, Microsoft has made Office for Apple products, he explained. So there seems, he continued, that there's some logic behind Microsoft creating a version of Office for the iPad.

"If I were writing a research note on this," he added, "I'd say that there are existing data points that would make me guess that they're going to make a version of Office for the iPad."