OnLive Desktop Plus Puts Windows 7 on the iPad in Blazing Speed - State of the Art. Invented: World's Lightest Material, 99.99 Percent Air. A collaboration of researchers from HRL, CalTech, and UC Irvine have created the new world's lightest material--some 100 times lighter than styrofoam. It's even lighter than aerogel, one of our favorite ultralight materials. The material is a micro-lattice in structure, with the 0.01 percent of the material that's solid consisting of hollow tubes that are only 100 nanometers thick. It's rated at a density of 0.9 mg/cc, lighter than even the lightest aerogels, which have only achieved 1.1 mg/cc. It's also extraordinarily strong and shock-absorbent, thanks to all that air: it can compress by 50 percent and completely recover its shape, highly unusual for a material that is essentially metallic. It was actually inspired by architectural structures rather than other ultralight materials--the team looked to the Golden Gate Bridge and the Eiffel Tower to see how those structures are so light and yet so strong.
Build a Portable USB Air Conditioner Out of a Filtered Water Pitcher. 3D Printing and the Future of Manufacturing [Infographic] There has been quite a bit of discussion on IndustryWeek over the last year or so about how far additive manufacturing has come in the industrial sector and what the industry leaders are bringing to the manufacturing market. But this infographic by 3D printing service, Sculpteo, offers a different perspective on the booming movement: the non-industrial user. Amid business tips, applications and a basic overview of the technology, the graphic notes, "Today, almost anyone can become a manufacturer or contribute to the manufacturing process. " If applied correctly, that point might be the biggest business opportunity presented by the technology to date. Or it could be the biggest threat imaginable to small-scale manufacturers. Why Facebook Is Winning The Great Tech War In India.
In Fast Company's recent cover story, The Great Tech War Of 2012, Farhad Manjoo plotted the battle plans for the four U.S. tech titans: Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. The four companies have dominated somewhat separate parts of the U.S. tech space in the past, but are speedily converging on each others’ turf. Their ongoing skirmishes are daily evidence of this overlap, which will lead up to an all-out tech war in 2012.
As Manjoo explains, each stands a chance at a big win. The four have, of course, been active in international markets, as well. Facebook Unlike Apple’s products or Amazon’s service, access to Facebook's product comes without economic or geographical barriers--anyone with Internet access can sign up for an account. And Facebook is getting serious about its Indian users. Meanwhile, India’s Internet connected population is growing too. But there’s one part of Facebook’s rise that will be slow to reach the subcontinent. Google Apple With the iPad, it's back to pricing. Facebook Timeline Pixel Mystery. There must be some headache with the new Facebook Timeline pixel widths out there.
March 30th, 2012 is the date and it’s coming up fast! Some page owners have already begun implementing, but making it look good requires some tweaking. SkandNet Media (Download the PDF here) made this handy infograpic: However, beware that these Facebook Timeline pixel measures might be off. Things happen when the image within Facebook as you upload them. If we look at the recommendation from Vectorash.ro, you can see that the profile picture have a different size. And the difference is quite noticeable. Well, I’m sure we’ll see some novel creativity with the cover photo, but is it just me or isn’t this a bit like blinking objects in web design? Hopefully we’ll get to see some sleek designs as well in the near future… Where Is Dropbox's Power? - Joshua Gans.
By Joshua Gans | 11:37 AM November 2, 2011 Dropbox is the simple file syncing service that has grown, in just a few years, to 50 million active users. 96% of those users do not give a cent to Dropbox. The remaining 4% pay for more storage and purportedly make it profitable; this percentage is growing every day. I use Dropbox because of its simplicity, but for my main backups I use SugarSync, which follows the same “freemium” strategy as Dropbox. For SugarSync, I’ve chosen to pay for the premium service, which offers me more storage and ensures my documents folder is the same across all my devices. But recently, Dropbox has garnered all the press.
Why didn’t Dropbox sell out to Apple for a likely nine-figure sum? But Houston and Jobs clearly agreed on the concept itself. What Houston and Jobs disagreed about was the business model that matched the idea. Apple is not alone. It looks like Apple’s iCloud is designed to achieve Jobs’ vision. Simplicity makes it easy to switch. 'Circle' printer concept flips conventional design on its axis.
For something that we use so infrequently, the printer takes up a hugely disproportionate amount of desk space. Sure, there are plenty of tiny printer designs out there already, but designer Yang Jae Wook wants to take things in a different direction with Circle, a "courteous printer" concept. Circle is designed to rotate a piece of paper around a vertical drum before ejecting the printed page, curled around the device’s exterior for the smallest possible footprint. Unlike that weird circular printer concept that we saw from Samsung in the mid–2000s, Circle uses a completely traditional printing mechanism, only flipped on its side.
As good as Circle looks, the curled prints would probably require a thorough smoothing regimen before you’d want to hand them to your boss.