The intersection between robots, makers and marketing has hit fever pitch with the creation of a robot mixologist built in partnership with Coke and Barcardi. Meet the Makr Shakr. Read more »
If hardware is the new software, 3-D printers are a big reason. New research holds that even enterprise-class 3-D printers will be affordable enough to be widely deployed within a few years. Read more »
MIT will publish documents now under seal about the Aaron Swartz prosecution, but it will edit them to protect individuals’ privacy and the security of the school’s networks, according to MIT president Rafael Reif. Read more »
Friends, family and colleagues memorialized computer activist Aaron Swartz and put MIT’s role in his prosecution front and center on Tuesday afternoon at MIT Media Lab. Read more »
A proposed MIT Media Lab project backed by Lab director Joi Ito would allow the lab’s corporate sponsors to fund work by promising graduates. Read more »
Say goodbye to the much-hyped artificial leaf from MIT-spin out Sun Catalytix. According to MIT Tech Review the startup is now building a flow battery, which is a major change in strategy for the venture capital and Department of Energy-backed company. Read more »
If you want robots and people to work together efficiently, you need to cross-train them to build teamwork, according to new research from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab. Read more »
MIT researchers are looking to make more efficient solar cells by creating a funnel-like structure in a semiconductor material in order to make use of a broader spectrum of sunlight. Read more »
Two major trends could open the door to robotic care givers that help senior citizens stay in their homes longer. First, robots are getting more people friendly. And second: people are getting more robot friendly. Read more »
If you take a 3D printer, fill it with hydrogel, add a few cardiac rat cells and a novel design, you’d get this University of Illinois bio-bot, a self-propelled robot that is about a quarter of an inch long and may be the future of engineering. Read more »
There is no shortage of ambition in this class of startups. NDB Nano claims to turn air into water; Ovuline “makes” babies; Careport automates post-hospital care; BetterFit aims to take the trial-and-error out of medications; and Urban Hero has reinvented the spring. Read more »
Build-your-own cell phones, a “finger-worn executive assistant,” immersive TV, 3-D printed houses: These are among the many cool technologies on display at MIT’s Media Lab. Read more »
MC10 wants to take wearable electronics into the heart of healthcare where they can aid in surgical procedures and track personal health stats, according to CEO David Icke. Read more »
Sure, Baxter the Robot can pack boxes or maybe even assemble furniture. But he — er, it — may one day help senior citizens stay in their homes longer. Rethink Robotics’ Baxter made his public debut Wednesday at EMtech 2012 at MIT. Read more »
Given the world’s inability to stem the flow of CO2 in the atmosphere — or even put a price on that flow — new scenarios to mitigate global warming are coming to the fore. Pumping sulfuric acid into the stratosphere could help, says Harvard’s David Keith. Read more »
A two-way partnership will allow the Boston Globe to tap into the research prowess of a university. The arrangement may be another way to reinvigorate traditional news outlets. Read more at paidContent »
Some of the names on this year’s Technology Review list of 35 innovators under 35 are SUNY Buffalo materials chemist Sarbajit Banerjee, Lookout Mobile Security’s John Hering, as well as some familiar folks like Dropbox’s Drew Houston and Pinterest’s Ben Silbermann. Read more »
MIT grad students studying Robust Robotics designed a plane that can operate in tight spots — avoiding pillars and low ceilings — without a GPS or outside help. The plane uses an on-board laser range finder and inertial sensors to fly right. Read more »
Cheap, abundant, natural gas in the U.S. is remaking the American energy landscape. Can turning it into chemicals make one startup – and its new investors, which include Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen – filthy rich? Read more »
Ginger.io, an up-and-coming Boston area health IT startup, is opening an office in San Francisco. The company, which grew out of MIT, will retain its Cambridge, Mass. headquarters but morph into a bi-coastal effort, according to CEO Anmal Madan. Read more »
The high-tech industry, heck industry in general, would be better off if academic researchers could bring the fruits of their labor to market faster. That’s an old argument, brought up anew in a blog by Matt Welsh, a software engineer at Google. Read more »
Funding innovation and manufacturing (and job creation) is a big theme in this election year for Obama’s administration. The DOE announced Tuesday that it’s giving away $54 million to 13 projects for technologies that will help manufacturers reduce energy use and lower production costs. Read more »
Anyone who has used Microsoft Excel since 1993 has likely dabbled at least once with VBA, or Visual Basic for Applications. Now, a pair of MIT students have created an plug-in alternative to VBA called IronSpread, which uses the cross-platform Python scripting language. Read more »
In an interview with GigaOM, the editor of MIT’s venerable Technology Review talks about why he has decided to take a “digital first” approach to publishing the magazine, why he doesn’t plan to implement a paywall — and what he sees as an alternative. Read more »
The greater Boston area’s bid to be the go-to big data hub will get a boost as Intel and MIT will announce the Intel Science and Technology Center for Big Data as well as bigdata@CSAIL, a research group for MIT academics and industry researchers. Read more »
We’ve heard an awful lot about lean startups lately. Now it’s time to focus on Phat Startups — companies willing to take big risks to solve big problems — like clean energy and nuclear waste remediation, according to Jamie Goldstein, general partner at North Bridge Venture Partners. Read more »
Charles River neighbors Harvard and MIT are working together on technology to power free, online coursework for students. The two schools will share ownership of the new $60 million edX initiative but the underlying MITx technology will be open-sourced for use by other schools. Read more »
Clarence Wooten had some words of wisdom for MIT Sloan School of Management grad students who might go the startup route. Wooten-backed startups include Image Cafe which debuted in 1998 and was bought for $23 million seven months later by Network Solutions/Verisign. Read more »
The chip industry has a problem — can looking to the architecture of the web help? The tradeoff between faster performance and power consumption has led the chip industry to add more and more cores to each chip to keep delivering more speed and features to users. Read more »
We’ve seen 3-D printers that create previously designed objects, but what about smart grains of sand that self-replicate things? It’s not science fiction: MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory is demonstrating intelligent, 1 cm cubes that can assume any shape through magnetism principles and algorithms. Read more »
Hot Berlin startup Amen has got plenty of hype for building a simple app that lets you say if things are good or bad. But fresh money and major new additions — including deep integration with Facebook and iTunes — could make it a whole lot more useful. Read more »
Tablets and smartphones are very personal devices, but software for them is built for the masses. What if you need a very specific app on your Android phone? You could build it yourself with the MIT App Inventor even if you have very little programming knowledge. Read more »
Tapping into computer models that can simulate chemical reactions between materials could significantly speed up the pace of progress for battery innovation. Read more »
If Amazon opens an office in the Boston-Cambridge area as reported, it would boost a high-tech community that often feels overlooked and undervalued compared to Silicon Valley and Seattle. Amazon is recruiting engineers for an as-yet-unannounced Boston area venue slated to open in 2012. Read more »
“Cloud first” markets — those where companies’ first serious engagements with information technology are in the form of cloud computing — are beginning to emerge. For the BRIC economies in particular, this might mean a chance to adopt low-cost solutions that will give companies a clear ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Researchers from UC Santa Barbara, Intel and IBM have shown they can send data between servers without those pesky Ethernet cables, using 60 GHz wireless and bouncing radio signals off the ceiling. It’s crazy, but wireless could offer fat pipes economically over short distances. Read more »
MIT next spring will launch a pilot of MITx online-only courses geared to reach prospective learners around the world. And, the university plans to open source the underlying technology coursework infrastructure for use by other educational institutions. Read more »
Most venture capitalists obsess on the latest shiny object for youngish consumers. That’s remarkably shortsighted. The aging U.S. population is a potential gold mine for entrepreneurs that can build technologies to help this huge population remain active and stay in their homes as long as possible. Read more »
Efforts to modernize the U.S. grid in recent years have emerged as a hodgepodge of pilot projects, the installation of new technology and hefty financial backing from the U.S. government and private investors. How to plan for such a change is a daunting task. Read more »
