Open source 3D Printer

Posted on October 31, 2008 by Mark Urbin

The RepRap.  RepRap stands for Replicating Rapid-prototyper, meaning that a reprap machine can make the parts to build another reprap machine.  Which is kinda cool. 

If you want to build your own click here.

Stuff made by a reprap.

I heard about this when the inventor was interviewed on The Future and You podcast.

Filed under: Gadget, Open Source | Tagged: , , | 7 Comments »

Ammonia powered engines

Posted on October 25, 2008 by Mark Urbin

Motor Trend has an article on using ammonia for fuel.  It’s a good article, it points out pluses and minuses of using ammonia as a fuel source.

One thing it doesn’t mention is that a pair of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers NCOs had a pickup truck fueled by ammonia driving around the Washington, D.C. area back in the mid 1960s.

Filed under: alternate fuel cars | Tagged: , , , | Leave a comment »

The First Android Phone

Posted on October 21, 2008 by Mark Urbin

Popular Mechanics has a review of the T-Mobile G-1 phone.

Here is the short form review.   A nice 1.0 product.  A bit bigger than the iPhone, but it has a physical keyboard! Folks with stubby fingers have been complaining about the iPhone virtual keyboard since day one. The G-1 also has a vitural keyboard as well, so take your pick.

The big plus for the G-1 is the Android software.  Unlike Apple’s iPhone OS, it’s open and neither Google or T-Mobile will “gateway” applications the way Apples does through iTunes.

Since its written by Google, expect nice integration with Google’s online apps.  The Android GMail interface is mentioned as the best mobile GMail app so far.

It will be interesting to see Android based phones on different hardware and supported by different carriers.

Filed under: Google, Operating Systems, Smart Phone | Tagged: , , , | 2 Comments »

ipowerweb fails the customer service test

Posted on October 20, 2008 by Mark Urbin

Not really news, they have been a pain to deal with for years.

Now the final straw.  I’m moving my domains off their service, and ipower doesn’t send out a confirmation of transfer notice.  So, I have to wait days for transfer wait to time out.  

It’s this type of behavior that is why they are losing customers to companies that understand the concept of customer service.

Filed under: Bad Customer Service, Internet | Tagged: , | Leave a comment »

Storing solar power

Posted on October 20, 2008 by Mark Urbin

One of the big stumbling blocks to widespread solar (besides its current high cost), is the ability to store power for use at night or cloudy days.  Daniel Nocera, a professor of chemistry at MIT, has found an effective way to use sunlight to extract hydrogen from water.

This is lab scale only so far.  The big question is how well does this scale up?

Filed under: solar power | Tagged: , , | 4 Comments »

U.S.S. Independence

Posted on October 14, 2008 by Mark Urbin

The Navy is rolling out it’s new littoral combat ship, the U.S.S. Independence.  The 127 meter long trimaran hull will pull 60 knots (that the Navy will admit publicly to), with a crew of 40.  In addition to the advanced sensor package, it carries a configurable mix of guns, missiles and helicopters.  It can even carry Strykers and Humvees to put ashore after it softens things up with missiles and it’s Bofors 57mm gun.

Plus it just looks cool.

U.S.S. Independence

U.S.S. Independence

Filed under: Miltech, US Navy | Tagged: , , | 7 Comments »

Now on Twitter

Posted on October 12, 2008 by Mark Urbin

Urbin Technology is now on Twitter.

Filed under: Internet | Tagged: , , | Leave a comment »

This is scary

Posted on October 8, 2008 by Mark Urbin

Japan’s Daily Yomiuri Online has a very chilling story about Communist China concerning technology imported their country.

The Chinese government plans to introduce a new system requiring foreign firms to disclose secret information about digital household appliances and other products starting from May, sources said Thursday.

…

If a company refuses to disclose such information, the Chinese government plans to ban the firm from exporting the product to the Chinese market, as well as bar production and sales in the country, according to the sources.

Critics worry that such a system risks seeing the intellectual property of foreign firms passed onto their Chinese competitors.

In addition, the envisaged system poses security concerns if coding technology used in digital devices developed in other countries is leaked to China, they added.

There already is a serious problem with Communist China complete disregard for IP rights.  Giving them access to the source code of every IC based device that is imported to their country is only going to make that worse.

HT to Doug Ross

Filed under: security | Tagged: , , , | Leave a comment »

Microsoft is going into the cloud

Posted on October 3, 2008 by Mark Urbin

Microsoft is playing catchup with Google and entering the Cloud Computing space. Here is what CEO Steve Balmer had to say about it:

 “We need a new operating system designed for the cloud and we will introduce one in about four weeks, we’ll even have a name to give you by then. But let’s just call it, for the purposes of today, Windows Cloud.”

…

“Just like Windows Server looked a lot like Windows but with new properties, new characteristics and new features, so will Windows Cloud look a lot like Windows Server.”

…

“We’re not driving an agenda towards being service providers, but we’ve gotta build a service that is Windows in the cloud.”

Microsoft probably feeds the need to respond to Google’s new browser, Chrome.  What I’m hearing about Chrome is that isn’t so much as a entry into the browser market, but a platform for more robust “cloud” based apps such as Google Documents.

One of the exisiting theories is that Chrome is the first componet of a Google OS.  Chrome is supposed to be the interface to the applications.  If you look under the hood of Chrome, it is built more like an OS than a browser.  

All it will need is a thin layer to access the hardware (boot, and then interface with video/storage/audio/periferal I/O(USB for a start)/network interfaces)  and it’s pretty much good to go.

This would a thin client model with most of the applications out in the cloud, and as much of the data as well.

It seems that Microsoft is taking this serious enough to announce their own cloud base computing plan.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Filed under: Internet, tech rumors | Tagged: , , , , , | 1 Comment »