Like Us Network, a pacemaker, Mark Cuban, and a vending machine: A Journey Mobile Payments

What's this? An ordinary vending machine you say? If that was your guess, it would be a mistake, but it would be understandable why you might not notice anything special. That's because, on the outside, this looks like any other vending machine plain-Jane. No screens or touch in special areas or NFC chips or anything like that grace its exterior, however, this machine can accept mobile payments for PayPal or Google Wallet.

How? Well, it has a special device in it - designed and developed by Red Like Us Keyston Ray Hernandez and Clay - which connects to the existing hardware inside and communicates wirelessly to accept payment and add credit and PayPal Google Wallet. Platforms Other payments are being planned right now.

Using either an application for smartphones that developed or mobile website (in order to identify a vending machine ID and to close the transaction cycle) credit is added to the machine when authorized. Pow! Their drink is out like a slipped a crisp dollar bill (or conversely as you fought for more than 3 minutes trying to deploy a bill that could be mistaken for a Spitwad).

 

Out of the transactional nature of the payment process, there is also a built-fi game. The application can also tabular loyalty points for sharing your purchase and trackable perform other activities. In one scenario, the team is investigating the product price variable depending on the influential status of the buyer. For example, someone with a high Klout score might get an item at a reduced price or even free if they agree to broadcast your purchase. They are even considering geo-fencing some vending units to broadcast your location to impulse purchases. Very clever.

There have been many concepts in recent years, especially international, who have tried and deploy the capabilities of alternative payment for vending machines, but many have required new hardware interfaces, changes or payment methods are agnostic and can add a considerable expenditure of capital deployment. That kind of spending is notorious for delayed roll growth and stifle innovation.

But the beauty of the network approach Like Us is that it is plug and play. You drop your little wireless node in the vending machine, connect it to the motherboard chip old school inside and mobile payments are enabled. No external alterations to the machine itself are required.

monetization

Obviously, it could be difficult to make items for sale, but the team is considering some options. They are investigating a convenience fee for consumers or possibly data rates to owners of vending their cloud node capacity.

What comes to mind as a viable option for monetizing would simply accept a reduction (and only) purchases where payment is facilitated by the system. I mean, that the purchase could not have happened otherwise so the court could be justified.

Overall, I think the concept is a great idea, but who cares what I think? What I really want to know is "what Mark Cuban thinks about it?" As it turns out, actually has an opinion about it and, in fact, is an investor. Mark has spent $ 75,000 so far on the device Like Us Network.

How Mark Cuban got to participate as an investor is an interesting story in itself. Mark and Ray Hernandez met during a freak accident at a gym where a man who had resolved an "event" of pacemakers and fell off a treadmill. Both Cuban and Hernandez and some other good friends, got the help of man, and then the conversation took place and the concept is on the radar of Mark. He advised Ray and Keyston and now we're here at the launch of the concept in TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2013.

As October approaches Launch, Build BotObjects Other Editions Video

BotObjects 3D printer is a printing company that promises "full color" in a system that uses a set of colored filaments for extracting colored plastic in layers. Like Makerbot, plastic ProDesk3D layered deposits and can print color bands around an object and not really specific points in a model.

That said, they have more video of the printer in action (I can not embed here, perhaps by design); the founders have offered a practice after a little back and forth.

After following this company in the last month or so, I've seen a number of 3D printers express skepticism in your product. I've seen a lot of vaporware in my day - I was one of the first guys to poo-poo the Phantom console at the time - and, at least, these guys are willing to work the crowd. The printer, as shown in these videos is not exactly full color printing - it is essentially only good in creating bands of color around a device - but could be programmed to add spot color in the right places.

Although I can not say I have seen this with my own eyes, my understanding of the technology we are seeing a working model will be ready to ship within a few weeks.

Is this a true color 3D printer? If you accept the clear limitations of the current incarnation then sure, it's entirely possible to create colorful plastic objects very well with this technology. If you are looking for something more detailed, however, you will need to use services like Shapeways to print real, full color sandstone. I am cautious but optimistic about BotObjects ProDesk3D, that is all I can be without seeing it in the flesh (or plastic).

3D-Printed Original Libertador Guns To become artworks in London Museum

The Liberator pistol made ​​headlines when its creator lit his 3D printer created, building guns that shoot really little more than the plastic components combined cost little more than your average Blu-ray. Now, the turning point in the history of DIY 3D printing is comfortably installed in a London museum, reports Engadget.

Liberator of Cody Wilson had his own faults from the beginning, which destroyed half of the case, but later proved he could give several shots. As John Biggs explained in an overview, which technically can be printed at home for anyone who wants one, but not all self-printed versions carried the story that make these original models Libertador.

As Biggs noted, homemade weapons are not new; It is a longstanding pastime, especially in the USA, with an illustrious history. But while once a lathe and other tools of iron metallurgy and some kind of dedication and sand is required, it is now more or less can be managed by casual fans able to spend some money on a 3D printer competition in downloading Internet files.

The project is developed by the London museum Victoria & Albert is designed to display a series of "projects of contemporary design", of which the printed-3D Libertador is a key example, and these are displayed between September 14 - 22 to the time, the Liberator has not led to a popular revolution or a wave of murders, but getting eyes-on the original could still be a story to tell the grandkids one day depending on how things go out.

CodeBender.CC crazy makes it easy to program your Arduino board from your browser

l official Arduino IDE is an austere piece of software designed for loading code for the ubiquitous and super-cool microcontroller. It is a standalone application, no network connection is not very pleasing to the eye. But what if you want to share programs and upload code directly from your browser? That is where comes into CodeBender.cc.

CodeBender is a browser-based IDE that supports up to almost any Arduino. You can use the program to copy the code sample scan code uploaded by other users and even store private fragments. Because collaboration is to clone code snippets and use in their own projects and there is even a curated list of cool fragments.

Founded by Vasilis Georgitzikis and Alexandros Baltas, the site left LAUNCHub a European seed fund. "It all began with my frustration as a computer engineer who is used to the development tools advanced, only to lose them when I moved to coding for Arduino, and my frustration as instructor Arduino in various hackerspaces around the world, when I spent 2 5 hours of each workshop 3 hours just to install the damn thing, "said Georgitzikis.

"We have also developed a technology that allows our users to program and control an Arduino-enabled network (ie Arduino Ethernet) via the network, directly through the browser using HTML5 technologies pure (ie WebSockets), which allows remote programming of the IO devices, "he said.

The system is responsible for the compilation and reporting of errors and ensures that the code you upload to your Arduino will not break your project. Unlike sites like Circuits.io, this system is not limited to simulate projects that allows full control of your Arduino hardware directly from the browser. Maybe this system will eventually allow me to dig my Arduino and really do something.

Researchers Create a Disney way of doing Geared figures that look surprisingly life-like

For centuries, the automatons oriented has been something of a dark art. To design a mechanical device to move like a human or animal was a trick in itself and to build rods and gears needed to drive the thing was even more complicated. A team of researchers from Disney, however, have created a system that will allow the puppeteers and fans oriented manufacturing clockwork robots using 3D printing and some metal bars. The most important thing is to look far cooler than this guy.

The designers set the system to "try" different gear configurations at different size ratios. This gave them a ready-made movements that could reproduce including parabolas, ellipses repeating odd and even moves that look random library. Type the researchers:
A designer can then enter an articulated character in the system software, select a set of action points on the character and outline a set of curves for the desired motion at every point. Then, the system is based on movement library to identify the mechanical assembly and its related configuration best suited to the desired movements. Simulation software optimizes the assembly to achieve the animation created by the designer.

Once the system is operating in the computer screen ensures that the gears do not collide or interfere with structural components. Then, the designer can create a 3D object and print on any 3D printer. Think of it as a sort of library / workshop directed that lets you remix robots movements and made ​​a very simple set of tools. Disney Research, Zurich, Disney Research, Boston, ETH Zurich and MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory worked together to bring the project to fruition. It also works well with "soft" objects, such as jellyfish, allowing real-looking animals move in lifelike ways.

New Structure occipital sensor turns your iPad into a mobile scanner 3D

People of Boulder / San Francisco-based occipital software people are very much - RedLaser application of the company was very successful in the early days of the App Store before the team sold it to eBay, which was 360 Panorama Panorama function before iOS 6 took some of the wind out of his sails.

Its roots may be in the software, but now the team is trying to do something very, very new. Occipital has just launched a Kickstarter campaign for their first hardware project: the structure, a portable 3D sensor that straps on the back of your iPad to be shipped by next February.

Update: Wow, the occipital team has flown beyond its funding goal of $ 100K in just over three hours.

"It took us out of our comfort zone," CEO Jeff Powers admitted. "We went from basically a team of three to about 13, which is still ridiculously small, and nobody sleeps anymore."

Those sleepless nights seem to have paid off. The structure itself is a ruggedly handsome piece of kit. Small and dressed in anodized aluminum, is not nothing like the goofy 3D sensors is likely to have been exposed to. That's a testament to the kind of tedious adjustments that went into making the structure of what is - is there a sensor full size PrimeSense Carmine, but went to the occipital cutting physical crust so the structure could fit in a pocket . Energy consumption also had to be cut dramatically since it was out of the battery iPad 4 (although technically it will connect to any iDevice in your arsenal that has a dock connector Ray).

The bit is really amazing how quickly the structure works in capturing all this data. Powers took the structure and some of the demo applications bundled by a short spin in our New York office, and within mere moment he was able to capture a virtual bust his ever-present marketing director and shooting off to Shapeways for printing. Scanning the topology of a side room was equally rapid, as in the process of launching a virtual
cat
in the mix of chasing balls that bounced 3D interpretations of the sofas and coffee tables.




That breadth of these demo applications speaks to the type of ecosystem that Powers hopes will rise around the structure in the weeks and months ahead. After all, as clean as it is, the market for a gadget that allows users to capture and export 3D models for printing is still quite limited. Powers Vision 'is much broader: the SDK being released along with the sensor structure will allow developers to create consumer-oriented applications that take advantage of all that the 3D data.

"We're really just building a device, we're building a platform," Powers said. For what he sees, occipital is not possible to build every possible game or application augmented reality measurement alone. Instead, the team will make the data accessible low level for developers, and make high-level APIs available to developers who know nothing about computer vision in an attempt to make the structure is as accessible as possible.

You can imagine the type of applications that might come along with the adoption of the structure. Looking to buy a new sofa? Analyze your living room and see if that sucker fits with his shelf. The realtors could benefit from easy capture models, manipulatives at offices and homes (although some startups already have an advantage on that front). Thankfully, while the structure is designed to fit in the back of your iPad, ambitious developers can use the connection to the PC, Mac and Android devices thanks to a hacker call a standard cable that allows connection through USB.

At first glance, this seems a drastic change for a company that has only ever focused on the development of software, not to mention the dangers of production and the pitfalls that come with the hardware of the large-scale construction. That does not mean that the ambitions of occipital 3D have completely come out of nowhere though. Earlier this year, the company closed its acquisition of startup ManCTL Frenchman, who was best known for a desktop application called 3D scanning Skanect that let users turn cheapo 3D sensors like the Kinect or Asus Xtion to capture data and turn them into full 3D color models in minutes.

Structure, then, it seems the next logical step. It is a convergence of two seemingly divergent realms of experience, and is possibly happening at the right time. Smartphones and tablets are becoming more capable by the day, which leads people to expect more from their daily companions. And with 3D printers moving into the mainstream, there is a growing sense of awareness about the value of conversion of objects and environments in 3D representations.

Even the Kickstarter campaign is a sign of the times. Powers admits occipital really do not have to go the route crowdfunded - he says they have enough above its previous round of funding to cover these very early production series - but it could not hurt to help build excitement among developers and measure demand for expensive add-on tablet. If you are interested in throwing your hat in the ring boasts a package of early adopters for $ 329, but the package will cost you $ 349, if you wait too long.

NVIDIA Tegra Note Outs New Design For Low Cost Tablets

Thanks to a series of leaks and early appearances newest design Tegra tablet NVIDIA 4 engine has never been a secret, but the company has finally confirmed what has been working for the past few months. What was once known as the Tab is now called Tegra Tegra note, a hardware platform that NVIDIA tablet expected to add some much needed space cost tablet push.

Here's the long and short of it - design features a NVIDIA Tegra Note 7-inch screen running at 1280 × 800, a quad-core 1.8GHz Tegra 4 chipset (GeForce GPU with 72 cores), 1 GB RAM, 16 GB of internal storage and microSD card slot. Easily the most interesting addition to the mix is ​​DirectStylus technology company, which also input for pressure-sensitive pen, without expensive smart stylus and integrated digitizers. Throw in some sweet, sweet Android unrestricted (through NVIDIA sanctioned OTA updates) and you have an interesting bargain for tablets skeleton.

You are not really going to be able to buy a brand tablet NVIDIA Tegra Note or NVIDIA is really making. Instead, NVIDIA is making reference design Note Tegra available to a global set of OEMs and partners who want to run with it, which means that there is a decent chance that the no-name tablet uncle collected a few months down the road will actually sport some NVIDIA lineage.

In North America, NVIDIA is already associated with PNY and EVGA (perhaps best known for its graphics cards - seeing a trend here). They are competent companies but are not definitely established players in the tablet space so it will be interesting to see how the NVIDIA design work manages to take them. All this sounds a bit familiar to a certain subset of the demons to gadgets from another NVIDIA reference design based on the Tegra 3 back when that particular SoC architecture, fashion was expressed, but it is a little surprising to see NVIDIA refrain from Note Tegra promote itself when it has been willing to take changes in devices including riskier niche as the Shield.

And with an expected retail price of around $ 199 (although that is ultimately partners to determine NVIDIA) Tegra Note becomes a curious participant in a market that will be filled first level tabs prices competitive. Hell, we are basically already there - for an extra $ 30 or so, however, you are pushed to the world of higher resolution screens and more RAM with the Nexus 7, and those who would gladly trade Android stock for an experience curated may end up eying the new Kindle Fires as robust reporting.

Of course, NVIDIA has a lot of other pills to deal with these days. The company's Tegra 4 is reportedly going to appear on the tablet Microsoft Surface RT next generation should be revealed in detail next week.

Batthead of Vonkil is A, AA rechargeable battery remote control

I spent my formative years using up AA batteries at a frantic pace, and I can not count the number of times my parents said they wanted to zap my trusty Game Boy dead. While there is nothing they can do to save my childhood now, people have worked Vonkil Technologies something that should help a new generation of parents away toys kill at will.

Enter Batthead, the star of a new Kickstarter campaign you want to do your rechargeable AA batteries much, much smarter.

Here's the concept in a nutshell: they have essentially taken a rechargeable AA battery and crammed a Bluetooth 4.0 radio and an accelerometer in it. You will probably see where this is going - thanks to a companion app, users can enable and disable remote batteries in order to conserve more energy for when it is really necessary. Of course, parents can put on their hats trolls and off remotely toys for their children from a distance using their iOS devices (the Vonkil team says that Android support is in the works too).

The accelerometer adds a curious little awareness to the fold, and users can configure to activate the batteries only when they are moved or oriented in a certain position. I can already hear gossip about the questionable value it brings to the table, but the notion of a flashlight that turns on automatically when you pick it still seems terribly clean.

Now I can not blame you if all this sounds a bit familiar. A seemingly similar concept called the TetherCell was successfully kickstarted earlier this year (although supporters still expect the first shipments to exit). The big difference though is down to execution: while the TetherCell is also controllable remotely from an iOS device, the fact that the product itself is just a sleeve that wraps around a AAA battery means there is only as the team could physically squeeze into the thing. Since the cell contains a rechargeable Batthead addition to large number of sensors, we are ultimately left with a more capable power supply.

Of course, there are some caveats to consider. Do not go expecting these things to beat a whole Eneloops confidence, for example. The team has not released that yet capacity rechargeable cell (I reached out and will update the post if and when they do), but I can not imagine that longevity has not had a success considering the amount of space for all those other bits must assume. And then there's the price difference to consider, too - a single, run-principles Batthead without an accelerometer will cost you $ 19 CAD, while the fully dressed version will cost you $ 40 CAD. Not exactly the most cost-effective way to feed their countless remote controls, but it may be worth it just for some handyman and home fans out there online.

A High-End Surface Pro 2 with the feed cover and dock will cost $ 2,197

Yesterday Microsoft announced two new tablets surface and a set of accessories designed to help your highest slot tablet hybrid business environment of the company. The new Surface Pro 2, the top of the fountain, and the docking station are a trio of products that Microsoft expected to boost sales of its corporate hardware.

New Microsoft tablets are now for pre-order, but the top of the source and the spring will not be released until early next year.

It is worth noting the price of the get-up, though. The Pro Surface 2, sans any extras, starts at $ 899 in its most basic format. This SKU has a modest 64 gigabytes of internal storage. The area of ​​higher-end Pro 2, with 512 gigabytes of storage, costs $ 1799, or double the price of their cheapest construction.

The docking station and pan cover will cost $ 199 each, the other when they are released. Therefore, to collect surface flagship Pro 2 SKU, along with the hardware that Microsoft is building for the extension of its use in the corporate world, spend $ three under the $ 2,200 mark. That's a high price.

Therefore, Microsoft is more than willing to charge for your company facing the Surface Pro 2 At the other end of the scale, Microsoft is selling its original tablet surface RT $ 349, and the first generation touch $ 79 coverage . It is also selling the Surface RT as part of a discounted package that includes an indoor black Touch for as little as $ 400.

Deltaprintr $ 400 is a cheap way to make really big 3D Prints

Another day, another 3D printer. This time we have a model that comes from SUNY Purchase College, where he is working on a laser cut, compact printer that can do 3D Altos Extra models simply by swapping some parts.

The printer plastic pumps 100 microns, more than an acceptable resolution, and uses few moving parts. You'll notice that the printhead rides up to three lanes. This will allow longer bar or add extensions to bring the platform bigger things.

Created by students Shai Schechter, Andrey Kovalev, Yasick Nemenov and Eugene Sokolov, the project is currently in pre-beta and intends to launch a crowdfunding campaign in November. You can sign up for updates here.

The team hopes that the product is completely open source and because it uses very few expensive parts that are capable of very aggressive price. While I love projects like these, I'm anxious to see how they build their software - one of the most important parts of a package of 3D printing. While it is solid would be totally down with this cold equipment.

BlackBerry launch a painful-To-Use BBM App For Desktops [Updated]

Despite its recent acquisition, BlackBerry announced it will launch a desktop application in BBM BlackBerry Jam Asia 2013 this week. Unfortunately, the long-awaited implementation leaves much to be desired. BBM come to desktops, from Windows-based PCs. Since most major BlackBerry customers were customers of the company, these customers spend much time behind their desks. This version should have come way before. But even more surprising, the desktop application messaging service is horrible.

After installing the application, users will have to connect their phones to their computers, probably via Wi-Fi. If you're in a coffee shop and want to send a quick message from your laptop, you first have to find a way to connect the phone to the computer. Is the PlayBook nonsense again.

Messaging someone should be everywhere and effortlessly. You should not have to wonder if your phone is active to send a message from your computer. Some applications allow you to send text messages from your computer. But the point is that BBM is not SMS - is supposed to be better. Moreover, BBM messages pass BlackBerry servers, like
Facebook
messages, I-Messages, WhatsApp messages etc, and these other services not redirect all your messages through your phone.

That's why BBM limited to one device at a time is a serious defect that should have been corrected. Many people have a phone, a tablet and a computer and want to use the same services on all three devices. In its current implementation, it is not possible without a dirty trick to BBM. Due to the limitations of multitasking, even iOS users sometimes need to restart the application to deliver messages desktop - that is, if the BlackBerry can fix their servers and actually launch BBM for iOS and Android.

No release date yet, and the company showed only the Windows version at the conference. WhatsApp does not have a desktop client, so you could say that the release of BBM is better than nothing. But BBM 2.0 desktop will have to be more than a simple interface that redirects messages to your phone. For now, it's just an empty shell.

Update: It turns out that a show on stage was made is a way to extend BlackBerry 10 on the desktop. Here is a statement from Chris Smith, Vice President, Handheld Application Platform & Tools BlackBerry:

      "This was a demonstration that showed how applications can be projected from one BlackBerry 10 device to a Windows or Mac OS. In the demo, the power of BlackBerry 10 is used to detect the connection via WiFi or USB then adapt the user interface and mirror the content on the desktop monitor.

      The concept of proof is used to show only one of the possibilities of mobile computing - "and to display integrated into the BlackBerry 10 platform that our developer community could exploit capabilities into their own applications.

Quantified Work: Meet Stir, Desk A former smart iPod Engineer, Health-Tracking and height-adjustable

If you're like me, you spend too much of their day sitting at his desk, hunched over his computer. During busy days - especially once the "zone" standing - it is easy for a couple of hours to fly without leaving a sedentary position. For this reason, I'm probably not the only one who could use a gentle reminder, just a little, "Hey Rip, who has been sitting for two hours, what's up, and lazy?"

Well, my friends, the Fitbit can remind you that you are behind in your footsteps, but what if you could remind her desk stand, or take a break? With Revolver, a person born in Los Angeles startup founded by former Apple employees, Disney and IDEO, now you can buy a smart desktop that will do just that.

Stir Kinetic Desk, the first product launch, which launches today, combines software health monitoring wearables as popular Fitbit and connected up with hardware and machine learning to create a work experience that really promotes movement - and, in so doing, his health.

Founder and CEO of JP Stir Labrosse was one of the first 35 employees to join Apple's iPod division, where he led development teams in two initial engineering projects to iPod. No surprise, then, that the Bureau of Kinetic borrows some designs and interfaces Apple family, including a touch screen function, which has a size of iPod very kind, shape and look to it. It is this touch interface that acts as the main table "control panel" that allows users to change the configuration and height of your desk, or to move from sitting to standing (and vice versa) just by double tapping.

 

Not only that, but the screen displays graphics and visual representations of a user's movement, so you can quickly see how long they have been sitting and what their work habits and use looks like. The desktop contains a thermal sensor presence and computer equipped with the software health monitoring, allowing you to track your movement and display the data through its touch screen.

While it may sound almost uncanny, not to worry, the table is not yet equipped with Siri's voice or any kind of personal assistant. While Labrosse was willing to admit that the tourist Stir Kinetic could incorporate some features 9000 HAL-like Watson or on the road, for now, the board intends to work with the Internet of things, not to try to command and master his office.

In fact, the board of control and adapts to your personal routine so that has meant to optimize the health and productivity. The desktop displays how many calories you've burned, time spent standing in front sit - and his answer to "who is the fairest of them all table?" Course.

Labrasse, echoing recent study by Harvard Business Review called sitting "smoking of our generation", which is probably a little over dramatic, but it is true that in our modern working environment overworked, connected to través-, we spent more time in the chairs on our feet. While his desk Kinetic not remind you to eat, shower, end coding and go outside or be a best friend, who will help you stay upright and conscious healthier routine that is right around the corner .

The desktop also contains a setting called "active mode", which can be activated by pressing a button on the front of the table, which will mode "Whisperbreath" - meaning that the table asks you to move after you've been sitting too long in one smooth motion, one inch up and down. Then you can tap twice to change position.

New Smart desktop Stir also comes with integrated ports AC and USB (eight four, respectively), connected to a single power cord plugs into the wall, and comes with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, which hopes CEO eventually allow the desktop devices to integrate with third-party health and fitness. Think: Your desk may come your fitness and wellness own graphic. Imagine that. The team also eventually release a control panel web based that lets you see your data and health work on the fly.

Stir Kinetic Desk has a wooden surface, comes in white, espresso and four colors bottom surface, and will be sold at an expected $ 3,890. Not cheap, but hey, you can not put a price on good health, people, especially when it comes to your office furniture that keeps you healthy.