There's a number of different platforms that enable people to build websites on the web without any programming knowledge. Drupal is one of them. However, there are still challenges and the platform can only get you so far without diving in deeper. This is obviously changing and MIT's Media Lab is proving that it'll become increasingly easier for any consumer to build websites or applications on the web. Their project, "Scratch", is creating a new experience that even 6 year olds can use to program on the web.
Scratch enables anyone to create interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art on the web. MIT is calling it "interactive content," that enables even a 6 year old to pull together images around the web, animate through various controls, and produce a final product that resembles a basic application or game. Much like Drupal uses a module system, Scratch enables users to snap together different types of blocks for integrating various features.
It's not only for 8-15 year olds, which is their primary target market. Introductory computer science classes at Harvard and Berkeley are choosing to use the software to teach students basic concepts and application design instead of starting students out with Java. Teachers on all different levels are interested in using the application to teach various different types of concepts. These forward looking teachers are realizing that education is moving in a more interactive direction. Textbooks will eventually die because learning isn't efficient when you simply memorize and spit back information.
Scratch is taking off, too. There's over 330,000 registered members and new projects popping up almost every minute with a total over half a million projects with over 12 million scripts. It's not just here in the states either. Now there are 120 events in 44 different countries.Continue Reading...
Lene Hau has already shaken scientists' beliefs about the nature of things. Albert Einstein and just about every other physicist insisted that light travels 186,000 miles a second in free space, and that it can't be speeded-up or slowed down. But in 1998, Hau, for the first time in history, slowed light to 38 miles an hour, about the speed of rush-hour traffic.
Two years later, she brought light to a complete halt in a cloud of ultracold atoms. Next, she restarted the stalled light without changing any of its characteristics, and sent it on its way. These highly successful experiments brought her a tenured professorship at Harvard University and a $500,000 MacArthur Foundation award to spend as she pleased.
A professor and student team have designed a network of modular floating docks to harness clean energy for New York City.
The eco-docks would generate the energy by harnessing tidal power from the city’s rivers; they should also help to add much needed green space above the dirty waters.
A free Facebook application launched by a pair of entrepreneurs to help college students bum rides at Cornell University has expanded into a viable Silicon Valley startup, counting as clients more than 30 college campuses, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Cigna Corp.
Zimride's business is simple: It connects drivers with riders looking to carpool to class or work. More broadly, it tries to capitalize on a social-networking niche at Palo Alto-based Facebook Inc. to help avoid greenhouse gas emissions and get cars off the road.
Consumer startups are tough. You have two basic choices: A paid offering or a free offering (or freemium). If you charge people a penny, you’ll turn off the bulk of your visitors. If you offer free services, you might grow to be the next YouTube, Wordpress or Facebook. Most entrepreneurs are not risk-averse and the dream of being big is just too appealing and the majority of us take the “free-route”.
Read on for lessons learned as Marcelo Calbucci, founder of Sampa, shuts down its doors.
The Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC) at Georgia Tech, is one of the better known university technology accelerators and has helped launch more than 120 startups. Combined, these companies have raised over a billion dollars in outside funding and produced millions in revenues. However, it's not the only incubator that's seen success at Georgia Tech. The Georgia Tech VentureLab also helps companies spinout of the university and commercialize cutting-edge research. They've launched over 150 more Georgia-based startups that utilize university IP.
There is clearly a trend here. Incubators that are built on campuses produce an ideal breeding ground for companies because it's surrounding ecosystem contains many of the resources required to start a company; technology, industry experts, scientists, researchers, business minds, young energetic entrepreneurs, research grants, and legal advice from tech transfer offices.
Are these university incubators becoming micro Silicon Valleys?Continue Reading...
The car might weigh less than some people at a meager 240 pounds, but it has a range of 1,336 miles on one tank of hydrogen fuel. The car, called SAHIMO, was developed by Turkish students at the Sakarya University Advanced Technologies Implementation Group (SAITEM). They're now working on a goal of raising their record from 568 kilometers on one liter of hydrogen to a full 1,000 kilometers. SAHIMO is predominantly made out of carbon fiber and cost the group $170k to make.
Although they've managed to squeeze an extraordinarily high number of miles out of a gall, it wasn't enough for taking first place at Shell. Instead, the SAHIMO won third place in Europe's 26th Shell Eco Marathon. According to Shell's website, the goal of the Eco-marathon is to "challenge students around the world to design, build, and test vehicles that travel further using less energy. It's an educational platform that encourages innovation, reinforces conservation and fosters the development of leading technology for greater energy efficiency." These types of competitions that engage students to engineer solutions to company challenges are becoming more popular.
Their next challenge is tackling the "Global Green Challenge," which is a "platform and testing ground for the next generation of vehicle technology. These competitions are similar to the concept of crowdsourcing because they put problems out in the open market for engineers, students, or general hobbiest to solve. Another interesting one is Local Motors, which we've written about several times. Their using the concept of crowdsourcing and competitions to design various parts of the car through submissions and community based voting.
Researchers at the University of Michigan have developed a new form of concrete that is able to heal itself when it cracks. Surprisingly, no human intervention is required, just water and CO2. The self-healing concrete works by enabling the infrastructure to form microcracks instead of larger ones that cause failure from strain on the system. The result is more durable concrete that may be able to save buildings from earthquakes around the world.
“It’s like if you get a small cut on your hand, your body can heal itself. But if you have a large wound, your body needs help. You might need stitches. We’ve created a material with such tiny crack widths that it takes care of the healing by itself. Even if you overload it, the cracks stay small,” said Victor Li, the E. Benjamin Wylie Collegiate Professor of Civil Engineering and a professor of Materials Science and Engineering.
“We found, to our happy surprise, that when we load it again after it heals, it behaves just like new, with practically the same stiffness and strength,” Li said. “Self-healing of crack damage recovers any stiffness lost when the material was damaged and returns it to its pristine state. The material can be damaged and still remain safe to load.”
This is a perfect example of a technology developed in a university lab that provides entrepreneurs an opportunity to commercialize and develop into new a product. It seems there is a direct correlation between engineering and technology level at schools and the type of startups that emerge. Technology enables society to create higher degrees of leverage between man and machine. Thus, enabling entrepreneurs to create products that provide enhanced value that pushes civilization forward.
I think this may be one of the reasons why entrepreneurs from MIT are so successful. They are simply exposed to more technologies and ideas that they can use to build companies. Most startups from undergrad are student-centric. As entrepreneurship in school continues to expand, there should be increased efforts to introduce the right students to the right technologies. I'm sure there's many technologies sitting on the shelf waiting to be commercialized. In fact, technology is advancing so fast that humans are having trouble applying them to society - it's one of the reasons why Singularity University was formed .
The growth of entrepreneurial activity on campus started with the formation of student clubs and organizations with a goal to bring like-minded individuals together, whether it be to just meet up or actually start companies together. Although, many of these clubs have been around for a while, it's only been fairly recent since these initiatives have been augmented with the addition of business plan competitions, on-campus incubators, and undergrad and grad school entrepreneurship programs. For example, the grand daddy of all competitions, the MIT $100k business plan competition, has only been around since 1989. It's taken some time for other schools to catch on, too. Just take the Boston College Venture Competition, they only launched 2 years.
Business plan competitions and incubators will continue to spring up, but what's next? There are many business schools that have student-managed stock market investment firms...so why not do this with a venture capital model? I predict that this will be the new frontier for entrepreneurs, startups, researchers, inventors, and engineers on campus - Student-managed venture capital funds will take business plan competitions to the next level. We're already beginning to see this at Purdue University.
Purdue University's student-managed venture fund just placed a $100k investment in Kylin Therapeutics Inc. The investment is part of a $2 million dollar round led by In-vivo Ventures and Golden Pine Ventures. Krannert School of Management MBA's made the decision as part of their program, which included the analysis of business plans and allocation of the funding.
The funding will go towards commercializing a cancer therapy, called pRNAi, that grew from research at Purdue University. Kylin Therapeutics is using the funding to bring the technology into its clinical stage and closer to market release.
In a recent article, Professor Kenneth Kahn commented that “the Student-Managed Venture Fund serves as an investment vehicle to spur commercialization of Purdue research...Just as importantly, the fund is an educational vehicle to provide hands-on understanding of venture capital and investment for the university’s entrepreneurially minded students.”
There are countless technologies under development in university labs that are just sitting on the shelf waiting to be commercialized. These technologies have real applications and viable solutions for worldwide problems. The combination of research labs, entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurial initiatives like student-managed venture funds can provide a backbone and model for bringing these technologies to market.
I predict that student-managed venture funds will begin popping up in years to come to help complete this framework and model for bringing new technologies and companies to market. These initiatives will play a critical Just look at the success and track record of MIT entrepreneurs and alumni. Combined, companies that have sprung from MIT entrepreneurs produce an estimated $2 trillion in revenues annually. If you pooled them together, they would make up what would be the equivalent of the 11th largest economy in the world.
Kylin Therapeutics:
Kylin Therapeutics, Inc. is a cutting-edge biotechnology company, employs a revolutionary RNA nanoparticle technology platform called “pRNA” to exploit the enormous potential of RNA interference (RNAi) for treatment of many common diseases. This visionary platform has enormous potential to meet the huge market opportunity for treating cancer and other diseases with RNA-based therapeutics. The unique capabilities of the platform have enabled Kylin to overcome the most significant challenges in the development of RNA-based therapies.
The Law of Accelerating Returns states that technology grows exponentially. "Within a few decades, machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, leading to The Singularity - technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history. The implications include the merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence, immortal software-based humans, and ultra-high levels of intelligence that expand outward in the universe at the speed of light." Explains Ray Kurzweil, a futurist and inventor, who has been called the successor and "rightful heir to Thomas Edison." He's won countless awards including the "National Medal of Technology", the highest award a President can bestow relating to the field of technology, "Engineer of the Year" from Design News, and "Inventor of the Year" award from MIT.
It sounds crazy, but his controversial essay, "The Law of Accelerating Returns ," an extension of Moore's law, has gained a large amount of credibility.
The Law has raised critical questions:
How can we possibly utilize these technological advances if we can only digest them so fast?
How can we ensure that these technologies are used for the greater good for mankind?
How do we protect ourselves and prevent potentially lethal technologies from falling into the wrong hands?
How can we strive to understand and facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies?
Most importantly, how can we apply, focus and guide these tools to address humanity’s grand challenges?
As discussed in the video, the goal is to link interdisciplinary fields of study to form creative, innovative, and radically different approaches to mold solutions for some of the most pressing issues of our time. Singularity University hopes to accomplish this by offering courses and enabling students to cross pollinate concepts and ideas in the following fields:
Future Studies & Forecasting Networks & Computing Systems Biotechnology & Bioinformatics Nanotechnology Medicine, Neuroscience & Human Enhancement AI, Robotics, & Cognitive Computing Energy & Ecological Systems Space & Physical Sciences Policy, Law & Ethics Finance & Entrepreneurship
A new way to examine the world issues:
Adam Bly, Founder of Seed, a magazine that curiously examines revolutionary ideas and breakthroughs in science, set a similar imperative in his latest edition:
The world today is more interconnected and more complex. We connot solve epidemics, for exmpale, without solving climate change; we connot solve climate change without rethinking growth; we cannot reconsider growth absent an understanding of population and demographics; and we cannot anticipate population shifts without considering epidemics. It now takes multibillion-dollar particle accelerators to progress in our understanding of the universe, supercomputers to advance our knowledge of how the mind works, and dozens of disciplines to make sense of cancer. And the pace of all this change? Fast. Navigating this unfolding reality, realizing opportunity within this massive change, requires that we reboot the system and adopt a fresh approach to governance and problem solving. We need a new way of looking at the world.
By the way...Ray Kurzweil was a college entrepreneur, too:
Not surprisingly, Kurzweil started a company when he was a sophomore at MIT back in 1968, too. Soon after when he was 20, he sold his program, called the Select College Consulting Program, to Harcourt, Brace & World for $100,000. He's now the Chancellor of Singularity University.
We are now in the steep part of the exponential trajectory of information technologies in a broad variety of fields, including health, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence. It is only these accelerating technologies that have the scale to address the major challenges of humanity ranging from energy and the environment to disease and poverty. With its strong focus on interdisciplinary learning, Singularity University is poised to foster the leaders who will create a uniquely creative and productive future world.
Microsoft put its Photosynth technology to work yesterday at the Presidential Inauguration and the results are impressive. In a nutshell, the application builds a navigable, 3-D model of a landscape by compiling, sorting, and repositioning a collection of photos. Here’s the kicker: the app is crowdsource-capable. (What is crowdsourcing? ) Working with CNN photographers located among the masses, Microsoft successfully mapped the scene around the Capitol building. By allocating each photo to a specific point cloud, or notable point of focus within the photo, the application calculates patterns and variations in the photo cloud, locates the vantage point of each photo, and finally positions it accordingly within the model.
The decision to showcase technology calculating vantage points and mapping a seemingly infinite area at an event where the President is exposed to a massive crowd underscores the security potential of Photosynth. It is not hard to imagine Presidential security using this software to track a sniper hidden within a sea of people. More astounding is that the application’s performance improves with increasing scale, as more photos create a more detailed model.Continue Reading...
Imagine the utility of nearly indestructible flexible displays? After years of research it looks like scientist have finally been able to mold that dream into a reality. With help from the US Army, Arizona State University's Flexible Display center has been able to produce a prototype (shown above) that can be sewn in a sleeve of a hoodie, or military uniform. In the future, combat soldiers may be able to receive "real-time readouts of positions and battle operations."
The U.S. Army established the Flexible Display Center at ASU in February 2004 to spearhead the next revolution in information displays. FDC collaborates with academia, industry and government on rapid technology development, innovation and integration to create a new generation of innovative displays that are flexible, lightweight, low power and rugged. These revolutionary displays will usher in a new era of powerful real-time information sharing through ubiquitous commercial and military application in everything from portable pocket-held and vehicle-mounted devices to permanent and temporary conferencing/command rooms.
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The car might weigh less than some people at a meager 240 pounds, but it has a range of 1,336 miles on one tank of hydrogen fuel. The car, called SAHIMO, was developed by Turkish students at the Sakarya University Advanced Technologies Implementation Group (SAITEM). They're now working on a goal of raising their record from 568 kilometers on one liter of hydrogen to a full 1,000 kilometers. SAHIMO is predominantly made out of carbon fiber and cost the group $170k to make.
Researchers at the University of Michigan have 
