DAPRA released a video of the LS3 Alpha Dog as it conquers a woody hillside. More intensive testing is to begin this summer.

First there were porters, then beasts of burden, then mechanized vehicles. And now we’re back to beasts of burden – and I mean beast! Yesterday Boston Dymanics took their Alpha Dog for a walk in the woods. After putting the LS3 prototype through the rigors of warehouse testing, like trying to kick it over with all their might, they decided it was ready for a real terrain test.

The Army considers physical overburden one of its top five science and technology challenges. Soldiers in the field can end up carrying gear weighing 100 lbs and the physical strain takes its toll. The LS3 (Legged Squad Support System) Alpha Dog is DARPA’s solution to lightening the solder’s load. But more than just navigating rugged terrain, yesterday’s demonstration tested the robot’s ability to follow a person using its “eyes,” a set of sensors that enable it to distinguish between trees or other obstructions and humans. You can actually see in the video that it follows the leader pretty well. With the strength to shoulder up to 400 lbs, the Alpha Dog will definitely be a soldier’s best friend. It also serves as a mobile power source that troops can use to recharge batteries for radios and other devices. It is still quite loud, however, so sneaking up on the enemy with Alpha Dog trailing probably wouldn’t be very smart.

This summer, DARPA and Boston Dynamics will begin an 18 month test period during which they will sharpen Alpha Dog’s capabilities. Its vision will be fine-tuned to follow individuals or designated objects and its ability to autonomously navigate over and around terrain obstacles will be evaluated. One planned test will see if Alpha Dog can complete a 20-mile trek while loaded with 400 lbs and without refueling. In addition to improving its vision, hearing technology will be added so that it can respond to commands like “stop,” “sit” or “come here.” At the end of testing, the robot will be given a chance to work with real Marines as they carry out field exercises. After watching the video, I’m pretty confident Alpha Dog will be ready.

[image credits: DARPAtv via YouTube and ieee spectrum]
[video credit: DARPAtv via YouTube]
image 1: Alpha Dog
image 2: Alpha Dog
video: Alpha Dog

Straight to the Inbox

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Wrist positioning is just one of many improvements that make the Michelango Hand feel more natural to amputees.

On January 12 Matt Razink received a prosthetic hand equipped with an electric opposable thumb. The Michelangelo Hand has given Razink so much added control that he no longer needs to change attachments according to the task. The new hand does it all.

The Wisconsin resident had lost part of his arm in a rock-crushing machine six years ago. He traveled to Advanced Arm Dynamics in Maple Grove, MN to try the new hand on for size. Advanced Arm Dynamics works closely with Otto Bock, makers of advanced bionic hands that are guided by the electrical activity of nerves and muscles in the forearm. Rezink has only had the Hand for a short time, but already it has made a world of difference. “It’s more natural to me,” he told CNN. “It’s like it used to be, before I lost my arm.” In the days and weeks to come, his control over the hand will only improve as he continues to train with it.

Along with the electric opposable thumb, the battery-powered Michelangelo Hand features a neutral mode for natural hand positioning, and a flexible wrist that can be moved up and down and turned inward and outward. Advanced software and improved electrical signal processing have also increased responsiveness and predictability, making movements that much more instinctive. A computer program is used to customize settings to each patient for maximum control. Movements are controlled by two drivers that control the fingers and the thumb separately. The fingertips are made with both hard and soft material that closely mimics the structure of real fingertips for more natural gripping. The PVC skin also looks impressively real, and it comes in several color variations for a more natural appearance.

In the following video from Advanced Arm Dynamics, retired army sergeant Ethan Payton demonstrates the Michelangelo Hand. I think you’ll agree that the level of control is pretty remarkable. The Hand is sure to be a game changer for the upper prosthetics field.

Ten US soldiers who’d lost their hands fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan have received Michelangelo Hands, but Rezink is the first civilian to do so. The added control doesn’t come cheap. A Hand costs about $100,000 and some insurance companies won’t cover it. According to Kare11 in Minneapolis, Rezink is currently negotiating with his insurance company to help cover the cost.

The vast majority of amputees suffer lower limb loss. In 2005, 623 Americans suffered amputation of a lower limb while only 41 lost an upper limb. Advanced Arm Dynamics argues that the huge disparity can turn many general prosthetists from investing in the training and specialized equipment required to treat upper limb amputees.

When Rezink lost his hand his biggest concern was not being able to return to work, to provide for his family. Hopefully the Michelangelo Hand offers a way back to life “like it used to be” for Rezink and others waiting for a hand that’s closer to the one they lost.

[image credits: CNN and Otto Bock via chemitec]
[video credits: Advanced Arm Dynamics via YouTube and CNN]
image 1: Michelangelo
image 2: Michelangelo
video 1: Michelangelo
video 2: Rezink

Jim Kramer uses strobes, water coloring, and high-speed photography to create works of art.

Jim Kramer is an amateur photographer, but his subjects aren’t waterfalls or cityscapes. He narrows his focus on a natural process that most of us see everyday but rarely take notice of. He captures the beautiful shapes found in drops of water. His palette is made up of water coloring, and he uses liquids like glycerol and dishwashing soap to alter the water’s consistency.

The Flickr photo has notes on Kramer’s setup, which one comment lauded as “technically impressing, creatively remarkable.” The images are taken against the frosted plexiglass backdrop panels. He uses seven Yongnua YN-560 strobes controlled by a strobe distribution box that allows up to eight strobes to be triggered simultaneously. And the drops of colored liquid fall from a Mariotte siphon that sits in the silver ring at the top of his setup. The height of the siphon can be changed. Right now it sits at a height of two feet above the water surface.

High-speed digital cameras capture beautiful shapes that result as droplets smack the water’s surface. He’s doing some really magical photography, just take a look at his High Speed Water Drop Collection. Admittedly off topic for us, but what a joy to look at, like the longterm exposures of Roomba Art. Many more pictures can be found on Kramer’s Flickr page. I’ve included Kramer’s own titles and descriptions of the images.

Edge Bleed: This is a glycol crown shot on black plexi with a single drop of red food coloring on one side of the drop zone.

Drop Collision: Red/Blue High Speed Water Drop Collision

Liquid Mercury: This is a glycol crown on a piece of partially water covered black plexiglass. It has a metal feel to me

Crowning Moment: The moment just before the formation of the crown. The disk on the bottom is the primer drop of glycol. The surface is black plexi. Lighting is from 4 Yongnuo YN-560's behind a piece of opaque white plexi.

Singing In The Rain: I can't seem to find the words to describe this one... I'm anxiously awaiting to hear the comments... I hope you love it as much as I do!

All the color in this shot comes from the gels. I used (2) Green, (1) Yellow, and (1) Blue on the backdrop strobes. In fact, this shot had the least amount of post of any shot in recent memory. I simply cloned out a couple stray drops, and did normal adjustments

Flammenco Danseuse: In this shot I intentionally created some waves in the drop tank prior to releasing the drops. I like the way the reflection is disturbed in this one. This is a triple drop collision shot, with the very beginning of the crown on top of the umbrella. Thanks RoyalDuck for the title (yet again!)

Four Color Crown: Same type of shot as the last one, this time 4 colors were used in the drop zone (red, green, yellow, and purple). Thanks for looking, commenting, and fav'ing my photos! I appreciate ALL! Somebody on Reddit mentioned that it looks like the Google Chrome logo exploded... I thought that was an interesting observation... it kinda does, doesn't it?

Red and Blue: I shot 3 strobes through a red background, and used blue gels over the front strobes for this shot. Getting enough light for the shot was tough, you lose a lot of light shooting through colors.

[image credits: IR Cincy Jim's photostream via Flickr]
images: High Speed Water Drop Collisions

With 3D printing, doctors can now create better bone implants at less cost than with conventional implants.

An 83-year-old woman suffering from a lower jaw infection became the first person to receive a jaw implant manufactured with a 3D printer. Infections such as hers are normally remedied with reconstructive surgery, but doctor’s deemed the procedure too risky because of her age and health. Instead they turned to LayerWise, a company that specializes in 3D printing of metallic structures.

Titanium powder was melted with a high-precision laser into layers guided by a computer model of the jaw. The computer model was digitally divided into 2D layers and printed at 33 layers per millimeter. The 3D printing made it possible to create an implant that just as intricate as the real thing. With articulated joints, cavities that foster muscle attachment, and grooves to guide nerve and vein regrowth, the new jaw was an intricate piece of hardware. It normally takes several days to make a custom implant, but the 3D printed implant took just a few hours to print. After the implant was made it was treated with a bioceramic coating by Cam Bioceramics BV. The surgery to attach a jaw implant normally takes around 20 hours. But because the printed implant fit so well surgeons were able to attach it in just four hours. A shorter surgery makes for a shorter recovery. The patient was able to go home with her new jaw after only four days. Normally recovery takes weeks. She was able to speak a few words after waking up, and the following day she was able to swallow again. Being made of titanium, the new jaw weighs 107 grams or about a third heavier than the patient’s own jaw. The doctors think she’ll adjust easily.

The implant is treated with a bioceramic coating prior to implantation.

The new method was made possible by research performed at the Biomed research group at the University of Hasselt in Belgium and researchers at four other universities. The surgery was performed last June but is only now being announced. Later this month the patient will undergo a follow-up surgery to remove healing implants which have served as place-holders for the patient’s teeth. After they’re removed, false teeth will be screwed into their place.

The structures that can be produced by the layer-by-layer materialization of 3D printing are practically limitless. By comparison, creating medical implants with conventional metalworking is time-consuming, expensive, and the implants don’t match the original as well. Last year an orthopedic surgeon used a 3D printer to make bone models from CT scan images that doctors could use to prepare for surgeries. Others are trying to push the medical implant envelope by printing organs! It will be a while before our bodies’ organic material will provide us a reliable ‘ink,’ says Ruben Wauthle at LayerWise, citing many biological and chemical issues that are yet unresolved. Even so, 3D printing could be a major boon for medicine in the near future. No doubt others will adopt printing for jaw and other types of bone replacements. The patients will be better off, and hospitals will save time and money.

[image credits: LayerWise]
images: LayerWise

Feeling good!

A few days ago we launched the Singularity Hub membership program, and I am pleased to announce we are off to an amazing start.  We’ve already got an outstanding group of people from around the world that have joined the membership program, and we’re adding more every day.  If you haven’t taken a look yet, I hope you will consider joining us soon.  For those who want to know more, here is a summary of what we have planned for the coming weeks:

As many of you know, Futuremed officially starts today at Singularity University, and Singularity Hub will be on site throughout the week to provide live, in depth coverage only for Singularity Hub members.  Peter Diamandis, Chairman and Founder of both the XPRIZE Foundation and Singularity University will be giving his keynote speech to Futuremed tonight (Monday at 6pm PST) and Singularity Hub will provide members with a live stream.  On Tuesday of this week, at 8:30am PST we will also be on hand to stream Ray Kurzweil’s Futuremed opening presentation titled “Exponentials in Medicine”, followed by several other presentations throughout the day.  For members that cannot attend the live streams, we will archive the videos for you to view at your leisure.

We’ve got interviews lined up this week and next with most of the staff at Futuremed, and we’ll also be interviewing a great list of individuals including Sonia Arrison (author of  100+), Aubrey De Grey (Chief Science Officer of the SENS Foundation), and Michael Anissimov (Media Director for the Singularity Institute). The best thing about these interviews is that we will be hosting them as Google+ Hangouts, which means members will have the chance to join the interview via webcam and directly participate in the conversation with our guests.

The discounts are already rolling in for our membership program, and we’ve got tons of other discounts that will be coming in throughout the year.  For starters, all members get 30% off on their purchase of the awesome products at RobotoWear.  We’ve also got a $10 coupon for purchases at Thinkgeek.

Although the events, interviews, and discounts above are going to be very valuable to those who join our membership program, what I am most excited about in the coming weeks is for all of our members to begin the process of getting to know each other and socializing for everyone’s mutual benefit.  We will be hosting member-only hangouts on Google+ pretty much every day this week, and via the mailing list,  we will begin sharing ideas about cool products, trends for the future, and so on.

In other words, the Singularity Hub membership program is quickly becoming THE place on the web to connect with the thousands of people around the world that are passionate about the amazing future that science and technology can bring to mankind.  Again, please consider joining now – as more and more awesome people become members, the membership program will become exponentially better.  Now what Hub reader can resist an exponential!  If you have any questions or comments at all about the membership program, we’d love for you to drop us a line at singularityhub@gmail.com.

Thanks,
Keith Kleiner
Founder/Editor Singularity Hub

The Pandora of movies. Films by Eve Sussman and Rufus Corporation are clips pieced together by a computer algorithm.

Indie movie makers can be a strange bunch, pushing the envelope of their craft and often losing us along the way. In any case, if you’re going to produce something unintelligible anyway, why not let a computer do it? Eve Sussmam and the Rufus Corporation did just that. She and lead actor Jeff Wood traveled to the Kazakhstan border of the Caspian Sea for two years of filming. But instead of a movie with a beginning, middle and end, they shot 3,000 individual and unrelated clips. To the clips they added 80 voice-overs and 150 pieces of music, mixed it all together and put it in a computer. A program on her Mac G5 tower, known at Rufus as the “serendipity machine,” then splices the bits together to create a final product.

As you might imagine, the resultant film doesn’t always make sense. But that’s part of the fun! As the Rufus Corporation writes on their website, “The unexpected juxtapositions create a sense of suspense alluding to a story that the viewer composes.”

It’s a clever experiment even if some viewers end up wanting to gouge their eyes out after a sitting. And there is some method to their madness. The film, titled “whiteonwhite:algorithnoir,” is centered on a geophysicist named Holz (played by Wood) who’s stuck in a gloomy, 1970’s-looking city operated by the New Method Oil Well Cementing Company. Distinct scenes such as wire tapped conversations or a job interview for Mr. Holz are (hopefully) woven together by distinct voiceovers and dialogues. When the scenes and audio are entered into the computer they’re tagged with keywords. The program then pieces them together in a way similar to Pandora’s stringing together of like music. If a clip is tagged “white,” the computer will randomly select from tens of other clips also having the “white” tag. The final product is intended to be a kind of “dystopian futuropolis.” What that means, however, changes with each viewing as no two runs are the same.

Watching the following trailer, I actually got a sense…um, I think…of a story.

Rufus Corporation says the movie was “inspired by Suprematist quests for transcendence, pure space and artistic higher ground.” I have no idea what that means but I hope they’ve achieved it. Beautiful things can happen when computers create art. And it’s only a matter of time before people attempt the same sort of thing with novel writing. Just watching the trailer, it’s hard to tell if the movie’s any good or not. I missed the showings at the Sundance Film Festival, but even so, they probably didn’t resemble the trailer anyway. And that’s okay, because that’s the whole point.

[image credits: Rufus Corporation and PRI via YouTube]
[video credit: PRI via YouTube]
image 1: whiteonwhite
image 2: Rufus
video: whiteonwhite

Witha PogoPlug NAS box, a few antennae, flash memory and some batteries, and you've got a cheap, disposable F-BOMB with which to collect data on adversaries.

Attach a camera to a drone, fly the drone around the back of the house, locate the bad guys. Robotic UAVs are being used for surveillance by everyone from the military to local law enforcement to emergency personnel. But if you think about it, drones are kind of big and really noisy, not the ideal tool for spying on someone. Their data gathering capabilities are limited too and they’re really expensive. What about a computer, small and durable enough for you to toss over a fence or inconspicuously attach to a car? Equipped with Wi-Fi cracking software or GPS, it could infiltrate someone’s computer or track someone’s location without them knowing.

Allow me to drop the F-BOMB. The Falling or Ballistically-launched Object that Makes Backdoors, that is. Invented by Brandon O’Connor as an alternative to high-tech and costly spy devices, the F-BOMB is made so cheaply with off-the-shelf parts that you’ll feel perfectly okay with losing one or two. Very convenient when it’s sitting in the backyard of a drug lord hideout.

Before building the F-BOMB, O’Connor challenged himself with several constraints. He wanted multiple wireless radios, USB capability for expansion (add GPS for example), battery life that lasted hours to days, a size small enough that it won’t be found by the “bad guys with guns,” as he calls them, and do all this without spending thousands or even hundreds of dollars.

The key addition was the PogoPlug. The PogoPlug is a NAS (Network Attached Storage) box, a data storage device through which people can share information over the Internet. It runs on Linux which makes it pretty user-friendly, according to O’Connor. Normally the boxes cost about $150, which would have made the F-BOMB too expensive for O’Connor’s purposes, but the company is having a hard time selling the devices. PogoPlug’s misfortune becomes O’Connor’s advantage as he can now purchase them for just $25 on Amazon.com. And that’s the most expensive bit of hardware. Add the antennae, eight gigabytes worth of flash memory and a plastic casting that’s 3D-printed and you’ve got a little spying computer you can build for under $49. Four D batteries will provide power for 30-plus hours.

Aside from being cheap and reproducible, building a monitoring device with commercial off-the-shelf, or COTS, components from Amazon or craigslist means when the bad guys find it in their backyard they won’t be able to trace it to you. Were the F-BOMB to require any kind of made-to-order, a determined person could find the manufacture, start asking questions.

O’Connor talked about the F-BOMB (“because one time I worked for DARPA and they love terrible acronyms”) at ShmooCon 2012. As you’ll see in the video, he’s nothing if not enthusiastic.

The F-BOMB won an award from DARPA’s Cyber Fast Track program. The title of the project is “Reticle: Leaderless Command and Control,” which kind of makes me wonder what else he’s developing. As Forbes reports, O’Connor was tight-lipped about what DARPA might do with the technology.

But we can venture a few guesses. The platform can be attached to a quadcopter and dropped onto a roof. It can be hidden inside a carbon monoxide casing, or any other imaginative cover container such as a box of stale Triscuits that you’re pretty sure no one’s going to touch. As I mentioned before, Wifi-cracking software will allow you to eavesdrop on a person’s computer, and you can track someone with a GPS module. And if you’re more in the business of science than spying, you can add temperature or humidity sensors to collect data for meteorological research.

O’Connor has a security and software consultancy called Malice Afterthought. He learned about such things teaching at cybersecurity schools for the military as well as working in the security devisions of VeriSign and Sun Microsystems. The website describes him as “dreamer and mad scientist capable of making even the most challenging tasks into reality.” Being that he kind of runs the consultancy himself, he probably wrote the description himself, which is kind of weird. Anyway, he certainly has created a little security monster in the F-BOMB. Effin’ cool.

[image credits: Forbes and Wired]
[video credit: USSJoin via YouTube]
image 1: F-BOMB
image 2: F-BOMB
video: F-BOMB

The upright, folded hands is a sign of confidence. So is driving a BMW. With ConnectedDrive Connect, BMW owners can do both!

While robotic cars have a ways to go yet before rolling (themselves) out onto showroom floors, BMW is incorporating driver assistance features into its cars that drivers can use – and they can sell – sooner rather than later. Their semi-autonomous driving system, ConnectedDrive Connect, was announced last year. The car maker has finished its closed track test runs and has released a video of the car out on the Autobahn for some good old fashioned hands off driving fun.

ConnectedDrive Connect includes four types of sensors – radar, camera, laser scanners and ultrasound distance sensors – that allow it to track cars in front of it up to a distance of 50 meters. It also detects cars in adjacent lanes. A driving simulator produces driving strategies on the go. For example, the car slows if it’s moving to fast into a turn, and it taps the brakes to maintain control going downhill. Like any cruise control the driver sets the speed and the maintains a safe distance behind a car in front of it. The system can be enabled between speeds of 30 and 180 km/h (81 mph). I’d be a little worried if that truck in the next lane splashes some mud on the car that it doesn’t go pell mell into the car in front of me. The sensors are “largely resistant to dirt build-up” according to BMW, but I’d wipe down regularly just to be safe. BMW owners probably don’t need to be reminded of that anyway.

But it’s really no fun to just simply maintain a safe distance, not with a Beamer. If the car in front of you is going too slow, ConnectedDrive Connect senses your impatience, changes lanes, and leaves the slowpoke in the dust.

To date the BMW 5 Series has logged 5,000 kilometers in “highly-automated” mode on freeways. When can we expect to see BMW drivers begin using both hands to apply their makeup? The company says it’s a few years yet before CDC goes into production. One of the things they’ll have to improve is the GPS tracking. Right now they only take the car out on roads that they’ve mapped to within centimeter accuracy.

It is becoming increasingly likely that your next car will have some kind of driver assistance. Last year carmakers spent over $10 billion in advanced driver assistance systems. By 2016 that number could increase to $130 billion, according to an ABI Research projection. The rapid spread will be due largely to their incorporation into more mainstream cars rather than being an option for luxury cars. As the technology is improved production costs are decreasing, making it increasingly feasible to add driver assistance to less expensive cars. Volkswagon’s Temporary Auto Pilot (TAP) is similar to ConnectDrive Connect in that it maintains a safe distance behind cars and keeps the car from veering out of the lane. And both Volkswagon and BMW get the job done without the ungainly periscope-looking sensor on Google’s Prius.

[image credits: World Car Fans]
[video credits: motorsixty via YouTube]
image: ConnectDrive Connect
video: ConnectDrive Connect

Dropcam adds HD, infrared and two-way audio to their new Dropcam HD.

The dropcam surveillance camera was already about as user-friendly as could be, now it’s added high-definition video and two-way audio to its arsenal of awesomeness. The previous model, Dropcam Echo rolled out in 2010, was presented as an affordable ($279, $199 direct) home surveillance system. Like the Echo Dropcam’s new camera, Dropcam HD, connects through Wi-Fi and works through Dropcam apps for iPhone and Android so you can stream video to your iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Android phone, and even a Kindle Fire tablet. The apps are free, but if you want to record the footage Dropcam offers a cloud-based DVR service. The $9.99/month plan allows up to 7 days of continuous recording with time-stamped motion and audio alerts. Because the data is recorded on Dropcam’s servers you don’t have to use valuable hard drive space to store video, which comes in handy given that the new camera has a 720p HD resolution, 16 times the resolution of Dropcam Echo. Storing videos in the cloud also allows users to log into the Dropcam network and review their videos from anywhere. You can keep the footage you want just by specifying date and start time and the length of time you want to save. New video recordings automatically erase old ones from offsite storage so you don’t have to do it manually. Email notifications are sent when the camera detects motion within its field so you don’t have to sift through hours of footage like a convenience store video rewind. And because Dropcam HD is powered by AC, you can potentially record your back patio 24/7.

Another feature added to Dropcam HD are twelve infrared LEDs that give it night vision for full 24-hour surveillance. Speakers have been added to so, together with the camera’s microphone, you can hear what’s going on and talk back. Who needs an iPad2 to Skype from anywhere?

Dropcam has also miniaturized the camera. It’s new circular plastic chassis fits into a wall bracket that gives it more pivot than the Echo had. And the small camera can be removed from the bracket and placed in a concealed location to make sure the babysitter isn’t pocketing the family silver.

In the following video CNET talks with Dropcam CEO Greg Duffy at CES 2012 about Dropcam HD.

Cameras such as dropcam are the perfect hardware to accompany video 2.0. Sites like Hulu and On Demand cable features mean you watch what you want, when you want. And YouTube revolutionized personal video. People can now instantly self-publish and share their videos, opening up an online dialogue in the form of comments, sharing and editing. Gone are the days of static content – Internet videos are works in progress. With its Wi-Fi connectivity and ease of use, Dropcam HD is the perfect “appware” to make creating videos as easy as sharing them.

[image credits: anandtech]
[video credits: CNET channel via YouTube]
images: dropcam hd
video: dropcam hd

Blue Marble (1972):

Taken on December 7, 1972 aboard the Apollo 17 during its mission to the moon, this photograph was the first of its kind to successfully capture the southern ice cap. Since NASA first released it, this image has become one of the most iconic, and recognizable pictures of the globe ever taken.

Image Credit: NASA Johnson Space Center

Blue Marble (1997):

25 years after the original Blue Marble, NASA compiled the latest in satellite images to create this anniversary portrait. While the base image was taken on September 9, 1997, vegetation and oceanic coloring was created using data collected throughout the fall of that year. That coloring data was draped over topographical models created by the U.S. Geological Survey. The completed computer file for this portrait was 26 MB, making it one of the largest ever taken by NASA at that time (though that’s only equivalent to less than 10 photos shot with an iPhone 4S). The moon in the image is an artistic conceit, created from a 1994 photo swollen to twice its relative size.

Image Credit: Reto Stockli with the help of Alan Nelson, under the leadership of Fritz Hasler

Blue Marble (2001):


Collected from June to September of 2001, this image integrates various land, ocean, and atmospheric readings almost entirely gathered by MODIS. Photos were taken every eight days to avoid cloud images that may block the sensors. Visuals of city lights were gathered over nine months and superimposed. The entire globe was captured in this model with the true-color represented accurately for every square kilometer of the surface – allowing for both sides of the planet to be shown. At the time of release it was the most high definition, true-color, image of the Earth to date.

Image Credits: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Image by Reto Stöckli (land surface, shallow water, clouds). Enhancements by Robert Simmon (ocean color, compositing, 3D globes, animation). Data and technical support: MODIS Land Group; MODIS Science Data Support Team; MODIS Atmosphere Group; MODIS Ocean Group Additional data: USGS EROS Data Center (topography); USGS Terrestrial Remote Sensing Flagstaff Field Center (Antarctica); Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (city lights).

Blue Marble 2012:

The newest Blue Marble was created from images collected by VIIRS during four orbits on the Suomi NPP satellite around January 4th, 2012. The National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System Preparatory Project (NPP) was recently renamed for Verner E. Suomi, considered by NASA to be the father of satellite meterology. With that name change comes a focus on improving understanding of Earth’s weather and improving forecasts to never before seen levels of accuracy. In a sun-synchronous orbit, Suomi NPP passes over each portion of the Earth at roughly the same local time, allowing each section photographed to be exposed to approximately the same light level. This latest Blue Marble once again represents the current pinnacle of NASA terrestrial imaging power.

Image Credits: NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring

The NPP Satellite was just launched in October 2011 and from its position 512 miles above the surface it continually collects images of the Earth in sections about 3 million meters across (~1900 miles). The following image, though not a member of the Blue Marble series, demonstrates how these large wedge photos can be overlain together to form a complete view of the planet. Well, almost complete, for this image the North Pole was not able to be photographed due to a lack of sunlight during the winter season.

Image Credit: NPP Land Product Evaluation and Testing Element

Blue Marble 2012 represents forty years of NASA sharing its celestial view with humanity. From well timed photographs on long-range manned missions, to artistically compiled images, to data driven models, to automated observations gathered by satellites, these portraits give us a unique perspective on Earth. Humanity’s commitment to science and exploration has provided a point of view we could have never achieved otherwise. It may feel like we’re simply stuck on a warm wet rock hurtling through space, but Blue Marble reminds us that we live on a wondrous, beautiful planet.

[image credits: as listed in text]
[source: NASA, Suomi NPP]

The Kickstarter team has helped $130M go towards 17,000+ projects. Click to see one of the coolest team pictures ever.

Five hundred years ago, most Western artists lived off the charity of wealthy patrons. Today, you are that patron, and with Kickstarter you’ll be funding a lot more than just art. The Manhattan based company, not quite three years old, works as an online network to match worthy projects with crowd-based funding.  On Kickstarter an artist, advocate, or even engineer will post a call for help, often with a video detailing what they want to do and how your money will be used. Almost anything is fair game, from putting on a rock concert to designing a better iPad keyboard. Every visitor to Kickstarter decides on their own which project, if any, they wish to help fund and how much they want to give. Through word of mouth and internet buzz, Kickstarter has  helped 17,000+ projects succeed, raising more than $130 million in pledged support! Almost $100M is from 2011 alone. Kickstarter’s growth is phenomenal, and they are expanding into realms many may have thought beyond the reach of crowd-sourcing. 17 films at the Sundance Film Festival (about 10%) were funded on Kickstarter. Two projects have nearly broken the million dollar barrier. Increasing numbers of projects feature high-tech devices that are more commonly found at startup incubators than community supported websites. Kickstarter is making an impact not only in the lives of artists and patrons, but in the very industries those participants come from. This flourishing network is a prime example of the delightfully disruptive power of crowd-sourcing…and it’s just getting started.

Everyone from the Red Cross to Radiohead has turned to the internet to raise money, but Kickstarter is a little different. They ask as much from their project leaders as they do their donors. Their philosophy of crowd-sourcing seems to have two major tenets: 1) patrons are consumers, and 2) when it comes to funding it’s an all or nothing game. The first part of their philosophy lends itself towards one of the best parts of donating money to Kickstarter – you get something in return.  Every project offers various rewards for those who pledge different amounts of money. For a music show it could be a ticket to the event at $20, or a VIP pass at $100. When the project is aimed at producing a device, the rewards tend to function like pre-sales. Give them $50 now, and they’ll ship you a copy of the gadget once they get produced. In this manner, every pledge is kind of like an exchange. Backers offer money, and project leaders give either a token of appreciation, a valuable asset, or a one-of-a-kind momento depending on the pledge level. Leaders of the project determine the rewards offered, and are encouraged to make them as desirable as possible.

Most projects attract attention through a video that accompanies the project’s home page on the Kickstarter site. In 2011, 80% of projects had one. The following is a montage that celebrates the mixture of vision, charm, and insanity that one finds in Kickstarter fund request videos:

Once the pledges start rolling in, however, a project isn’t done proving itself. That’s when the “all or nothing” aspect of Kickstarter comes into play. Each project has a set amount of time (typically 30-60 days) to raise pledges. If they don’t meet their goal, the project will not be funded, and none of the backers’ credit cards will be charged. In other words, if a project decides they need $50k to put on a concert, they can’t walk away with $35k and do the best they can with the limited funds. It’s all or nothing. Either a project meets its goals (and backers are thus more likely to get their rewards as promised) or the project disappears and patrons can move on to find another (more successful) project to sponsor.

Between tantalizing rewards, and a system that doesn’t broker half-assed attempts, Kickstarter provides a kind of security to its potential patrons. Sure, any project may fail even if it reaches its funding goals, and some tech projects take much longer to enter into full production than expected (I’m still waiting for my video camera spy-glasses) but the Kickstarter system makes it more likely that money given to a project will yield a tangible benefit. Unsurprisingly, this quasi-reliability has attracted a lot of interest and a lot of money.

Justin Kazmark, one of Kickstarter’s 30+ employees and their PR guru, was able to walk through some of the impressive figures the organization has been able to generate. In 2011, $99M was pledged, up from $27M for 2010, bringing the total to around $130M. 27,000 projects were launched in 2011, of which about 11,800 met their goals. That’s up from 11,000 launched and 4000 successful in 2010. The project success rate stayed about the same, however (46% in 2011, 43% in 2010) and the overall number of successful projects has surpassed 17,000. For every dollar a patron pledges to a project that meets or exceeds its goal (and thus gets funded) more than 90 cents will reach the project’s coffers. 5% goes as a fee to Kickstarter and between 3-5% goes to Amazon to process payments. Even with those fees, in overall terms Kickstarter is an efficient service for both patrons and project leaders. Of the $130M+ that’s been pledged, 85% eventually made it into the hands of projects – that’s a fantastic figure considering that about 45% of projects succeed. Because Kickstarter validates the credit cards of patrons as they pledge, the collection rate for successful projects is “close to 100%”. When it comes to getting raw patron interest converted into project finances, 85% is awesome – kudos to Kickstarter.

Of all the stats surrounding Kickstarter, however, perhaps the most impressive is the number of people who participate. There have been more than 1.25 million supporters! 200,000 or so of those have funded multiple projects. A few people go crazy, with the most prolific patron supporting over 700 projects! Even when not garnering pledges, project pages on Kickstarter generate some serious traffic – 30 million people visited Kickstarter in 2011 (up from 8 million in 2010), and media outlets regularly cover Kickstarter projects (Singularity Hub included).

Some projects have attracted so much attention and support that their success seems out of place. Tik Tok is a device that converts an iPod nano into a multitouch wristwatch. In 2010 it raised more than $940,000 from 13,512 backers – most as effective pre-sales for the device at $25 or $50. More recently, the Hidden Radio and Bluetooth Speaker raised almost as much money (~$938k) from just 5358 backers. Again, most patrons were pledging at levels where the reward was an advanced copy of the device. Kazmark says that these high levels of donations spread beyond tech gadgets which offer effective pre-sales. Dozens of art and design projects have surpassed the $100,000 mark. These include films, concerts, and much more. As more and more people learn about Kickstarter, the size of the projects it can handle grows as well, and the potential for multimillion dollar projects is here.

That’s both wonderful and strange as supporting a Kickstarter project is not like entering into an online marketplace. “It’s about getting behind a person not a product,” says Kazmark, “and we have to make people aware of that. We have to educate people. It’s a new experience. I’ve backed my own share of projects…it’s hard not to back some things. I just trust this person and that they’re going to do their best. Sometimes thing don’t go as planned. It’s kind of a cool place in between commerce and patronage. A space where we can test the idea before it happens.” The idea is certainly for there to be a value-exchange. Backers should be receiving valuable rewards for their patronage, and the system seems custom fit to offering pre-sales for gadgets (or tickets to concerts, etc). Yet there’s no receipt of sales, no guarantee. Kickstarter does its best to vet a project, and the project leaders are expected to do their best to fulfill their vision if their fund-raising goal is met. Transparency is encouraged at every step of the process. In the end, however, social pressure and community expectation are the only real safeguards when someone pledges money and expects a reward in return. There’s always a chance you could not get what you thought you were “buying” (did I mention the video glasses I’m still waiting for?).

Yet the money keeps flowing in, and Kickstarter’s influence is continuing to grow. Kazmark mentions that successful projects in games (perhaps especially app-based games), film, and comics may be transforming those industries. Why should a designer, author, or artist go through a major publishing house when they can raise funds on their own through Kickstarter? Most of what those established production companies can provide is seed-money and marketing, and Kickstarter is a way of crowd-sourcing both. With a grass-roots approach, artists can maintain full rights and royalties to their work and hopefully launch themselves into their careers. To Kazmark, this “creative independence” is the whole reason behind their work – “There’s value in the world beyond things that can make money.”

So now there are a growing number of filmmakers, game designers, comic artists and writers, gadget designers, musicians, and other creative types who know that they don’t have to go through normal channels to be successful. The crowd-sourced model is viable, respectable, and gives them a much better deal in many cases. It’s hard to understand where that trend may lead to in the long term, but it seems possible that it will lead to increased creative freedom and money going to individual artists, not producers.

There are other trends to consider as well. Singularity Hub has seen a growing number of tech projects which have raised impressive amounts of money from Kickstarter. Sometimes at very high pledge amounts – 10k or more from a single backer. At that level, one wonders if equity in a company shouldn’t be a reward offered. It is illegal in the US for businesses to crowd-source equity in that way, but a bill currently in Congress may change that (if you don’t mind some political slant, you can learn more here with a nifty video). Until such equity-raising crowd-funding becomes more routine, however, Kickstarter seems unlikely to participate in such exchanges.

Besides which, they have their eye on a different short-term prize. Kickstarter is gung-ho about expanding outside the US. While backers come from all over the world, every project requires a US driver’s license and bank account. That was to be expected at first as many Americans tended to equate online funding of offshore projects with email scams featuring Nigerian princes. Now, however, Kickstarter is ready to go international. Kazmark says the company will work to clear legal and administrative hurdles, reach out to creative types in new markets, and build interest and trust abroad. Within a few years Kickstarter could be crowd-sourcing projects in every corner of the globe. Expect the number of backers and dollars pledged to increase exponentially when they do.

As big as Kickstarter may get, however, it’s always going to come down to the individuals that conceive of and fund-raise for these projects. Every project on the site, whether it fails or raises a million dollars, is someone’s dream. Perhaps that’s a romantic way of looking at it, but the passion and hope is clear in so many of these projects. Perhaps this type of crowd-sourcing is becoming so popular because it sells that dream as well as it offers more tangible rewards. I’ll let you decide. Here are some of the most exciting, heartfelt, and enjoyable videos from 2011, as decided by the Kickstarter staff. I can feel my heart and my wallet opening:

*All 12 of the Kickstarter staff favorites can be found here.

[image and video credits: Kickstarter (various projects)]
[source: Kickstarter, Justin Kazmark]

Udacity gives students videos that they can watch at their own pace and be continually quizzed on.

This past August fellow Singularity Hub writer Aaron Saenz wrote about Udacity, the online university created by Stanford artificial intelligence professor and Google autonomous vehicle leader, Sebastian Thrun. At the time Thrun was gearing up to teach his Introduction to Artificial Intelligence course to a class of 200 at Stanford. But why teach 200 when you can teach 1,000…or 160,000? With Udacity, Thrun and fellow AI giant Peter Norvig created an online version of the course, and anyone that wanted to enroll could – for free. The homework assignments and exams would be the same as the ones given to the Stanford students, and they would be graded in the same way so online enrollees could see how they stacked up to some of the brightest students in the world. It was to be a grand experiment in education.

Now, the semester’s over. The exams have been taken, the homework’s been turned in, computers logged off and pencils set down. How’d it all turn out? Thrun spoke recently at the Digital Life Design conference about he and Norvig’s experience. As you’ll see, his students weren’t the only ones with much to learn.

Online, the course went viral. Over 100,000 people enrolled in the initial weeks. By the time the lessons began Thrun and Norvig were instructors for a class size of 160,000. With students all over the world, they enlisted the help of some 2,000 volunteer translators to translate the classes into 44 different languages. Discussion groups were set up on social networks like Facebook so students could help each other, forming what Thrun called an “entire counterculture.”

Thrun also proudly pointed out that he was teaching more students than all the students of Stanford.

The lessons themselves were very simple – at least in method if not in content. Material was explained by Thrun and Norvig as they drew on sheets of paper. Kind of like the overhead projector lessons before the days of Powerpoint, except the online students could interact with the drawings. Rather than simply lecturing to the student and asking them to regurgitate the information on exams, the online format allowed for constant quizzing. Students would be asked a question then answer it by clicking or entering values right on the drawings. They wanted the student to actively think, be constantly challenged and given constant feedback.

The flexibility that this format offers is immediately clear. If the student misses a point or doesn’t quite understand, he or she can rewind, watch it again. Get the quiz wrong, just take it again…and again if you have to.

Until you get it right.

Udacity's artificial intelligence course attracted 160,000 people from all over the world.

When the course began, however, it wasn’t like that. Initially Thrun had structured it as he had structured every other course over the past twenty years of teaching. Give the kids really hard material, then it’s sink or swim. But then he received an email from a parent who called his class a “weeder” class, and told him his daughter was dropping out. It was an epiphany for Thrun, compelling him to make a bold claim: “Grades are the failure of the education system.”

Thrun’s sudden dislike of grades is with its all-or-nothing nature. If we get a “C” on an exam we obviously haven’t mastered the material. Yet even if we get a “C”, the professor moves on to more advanced material anyway that will likely depend on the previous, unmastered material. After the email,
Thrun completely revamped Udacity to break the mold. If a student is having trouble with a problem they continue to work on it until they get it right. To Thrun, that’s still worth an A+. Imagine that, an entire class of students who can test at an A+ level. He sums up the attitude by paraphrasing a point made by Salman Khan, founder of the online Khan Academy: “When you learn to ride a bicycle, and you fail to learn a bicycle, you don’t stop to learn a bicycle, give the person a ‘D’ and move onto unicycle.”

What will education look like in the future? If other educators buy into the Udacity model it would be a sea change in the approach to education. An email Thrun received from a student in Afghanistan shows just how radically it is already changing.

I spent the last few days under incoming mortar and rocket attacks, then dodging checkpoints under questionable legal status to exfiltrate a war zone to a third world air field until things settled down. I had about an hour of fairly solid internet connectivity to be able to get the assignments done, and still managed a respectable score. This is a typical week here for me.

Okay, it’s time to address the note-taking, 800 ton gorilla in the room. Don’t we always hear that the key to a better education is to make classes smaller? How can two people possibly teach a class of 160,000 students? Obviously Thrun and Norvig didn’t grade the homework and exams by hand. What kinds of pioneering AI professors would they be if they didn’t employ their subject matter to correct it? AI programs shouldered the grading, and even handled question submissions. The multitudinous questions submitted by the students are sifted by a program and the most common ones are plucked out to be addressed. Not only does this make effectively answering questions possible, but it will highlight confusion points where the curriculum could be fine-tuned.

Will online education bring about the end of 'class as usual?'

One might logically question the format, wonder if learning by yourself on a laptop turns education into a lonely and impersonal experience. But anyone who’s watched a movie on a long plane ride knows the blissful isolation of plugging in ear phones and watching the latest action/romance/comedy/family movies. If done thoughtfully, educators can take advantage of the intimacy of just you and your laptop and create an amazingly personal learning experience despite being one of 200,000 enrolled. Here, Udacity seems to have succeeded. With its illustrations literally drawn out for the students, the lessons made one student feel that Thrun and Norvig were “personally tutoring” her. Anyone who’s sat in an auditorium, looking over the heads of 200 hundred other students at the far away professor and Powerpoint projections knows that the impersonal feel of an average university classroom has much room for improvement. Incidentally, two weeks after Thrun’s AI class began at Stanford the class attendance had dwindled down from about 200 to about 30. They preferred him online rather than in person.

Udacity is now offering up two new courses, CS 101: Building a Search Engine and CS 373: Programming a Robotic Car. Together with David Evans, a professor at the University of Virginia, Thrun will teach you how to build a search engine in just seven weeks. The Search Engine course doesn’t require any programming experience. The Robotic Car course is more advanced, but don’t be scared off. Thrun says that familiarity with linear algebra and statistics and programming experience is useful, but none of this is required.

If you have 22 minutes to spare, I think you’ll enjoy Thrun’s talk. If you don’t, just go to 15:45 and listen as the moving student testimonials come in from all over the world. They alone should convince you that Udacity is on to something great. It was made clear that Thrun thinks so, when he shocked the audience by announcing that he was leaving his tenured position at Stanford. “I feel like there’s a red pill and a blue pill,” he told them. “You can take the blue pill and go back to Stanford…but I’ve taken the red pill and I’ve seen Wonderland.”

[image credits: Udacity and Xbxg32000 via WikiCommons]
[video credits: DLDconference via YouTube]
image 1 and 2: Udacity
image 3: lecture hall
video: DLDconference

SkyLight co-founders Andy Miller and Tess Bakke.

The SkyLight is really a simple device derived to solve a simple problem: how to keep your smartphone still enough to take high quality photos through a microscope. Watching other people holding their cell phones up to their microscopes, SkyLight co-founder, Andy Miller, realized that he wasn’t the only one in search of a low cost and easy way to take pictures of microscope images. I recently had the joy of chatting with Miller and fellow co-founder Tess Bakke about how the SkyLight came to be, and how they think it will impact research, medicine and education.

The SkyLight is essentially an adapter that fixes a smartphone to a microscope. Using the phone’s camera to peer through the eyepiece and snap photos, you get images that are practically indistinguishable from images taken with professional microscopy cameras. The big difference is that conventional microscope cameras can cost hundreds to thousands of dollars, while the SkyLight is just $60. Of course, you’ll need a smartphone too, but you probably already have one in your pocket.

The SkyLight adapter consists of a movable platform that the smartphone fits into, and a base that locks onto just about any microscope eyepiece. After connecting the smartphone to the eyepiece, you adjust the platform position to align the camera correctly, and adjust it up and down for focus. Lock it up, and you’re ready to take pictures.

“I was building a microscope in college,” Miller tells me casually, as if microscope-building was as normal as joining the chess club, “and I was trying to attach a telephone to that microscope and I realized, well, it’s fine if I can attach one cell phone to one microscope but it would be pretty feasible to have a universal adapter that would allow me to attach any phone to any microscope.”

Miller likes to build microscopes, but there’s a purpose behind his geeky pursuit. While studying bioengineering and global health at Rice University, he designed and built the Global Focus microscope – a simple, affordable microscope that can be built for areas of the world with limited resources. With off-the-shelf lenses and mirrors, an LED flashlight for a light source, and running off batteries, the microscope could take bright field and fluorescent images and cost only $240 to make. Right now there are 20 prototypes being tested in the US, Central America, and Africa.

Not too shabby: a 10X image of esophageal cells taken by an iPhone 4S.

As the Kickstarter page confesses, “Now he’s bent on making meaningful change through design.” The SkyLight is a simple idea that could have profound results. Connecting a cell phone to a microscope not only saves money, but in a developing country, it makes the difference between quality care or not. Don’t have a pathologist in your rural Kenyan village? No problem. Just send the images to the hospitals in Nairobi. SkyLight can literally bring together innovative solutions such as the Global Focus microscope and the $80 IDEOS Android smartphone, which 350,000 Kenyans had scooped up as of this past summer, to extend the reach of much needed quality healthcare.

The idea for the SkyLight came to Miller while building the cheap microscopes in Africa. The lack of resources available there forced him to create a general design. “How do you make it work with anything you might have?” He made a product that would work with any cell phone. Had he been in the US and had all the resources he needed, Miller expects the adapter he’d have come up with would have been specifically built for an iPhone and only an iPhone, or a specific microscope together with a specific phone. The tightened constraints in Africa forced Miller to make a more general use device, and it’s all the better for it. The SkyLight can work for different phones and different microscope with different kinds of eyepieces. And even though they’re focusing on microscopes at the moment, the team expects that SkyLight will eventually be used to mate smartphones with other types of cameras such as spotting scopes, the telephoto cameras used by birders. Check out their gallery of images here.

Think you could tell the difference between images taken with a phone and conventional camera? While they haven’t rigorously compared the images taken by their smartphone with images taken by conventional microscopy cameras, they’ve already passed the eyeball test. As Miller tells me, the Kickstarter page “received the most attention from…doctors, pathologists who want to do doctor-to-doctor consult.” Some physicians actually contacted the group and asked that they take pictures of samples. They took the pictures with an iPhone 4S with a resolution of 8-megapixels. After posting the pictures on their website they were contacted by multiple pathologists who told them that it’s good enough for them to make diagnoses.

The SkyLight won the Proto Labs Cool Idea! Award in the program’s inaugural year. According to their website, Proto Labs is the “world’s fastest” maker of CNC machined and injection molded parts. Their Cool Idea! Award is aimed at producing high quality prototypes for startup businesses that might not have the resources to follow through on a good idea. In a press release about the award, Proto Labs cited how SkyLight enables researchers, clinicians and educators to communicate in new ways by combining tools already available to them. Winning the award was a key achievement for SkyLight’s mission to make the adapter available to those who need it. The mold that Proto Lab has created lowers production cost and makes it more affordable. The SkyLight was listed on Kickstarter for $60, but Miller and Bakke hope to work with an NGO in the future and offer the adapter for even less.

Bakke emphasized SkyLight’s social enterprise aspect, mentioning their 5 to 1 promise: for every five SkyLights they sell they’re going to donate one to schools or other places like a local health program that could use them.

We shouldn’t forget that the camera in use is still a phone. Miller and Bakke point out that SkyLight could be used live; that is, you could connect a collaborator with a live view through your microscope all the while having a conversation.

“Can you move it a little to the left…great, now zoom in.”

As an easy and inexpensive way to generate and share images, SkyLight is an ideal telemedicine tool. Wanting to explore SkyLight’s potential, the company has sending their prototype to telemedicine researchers to tap their imaginations. At the same time they’re encouraging apps developers to come up with apps to improve image-based smartphone telemedicine and telediagnosis capabilities. Miller mentioned one app that would be universally useful would be an app that pushes images directly to a server, and labels and organizes them. That way people wouldn’t have to email or text themselves every image they want to keep.

Right now the adapter is still in its testing and production phase, but they expect SkyLight to be ready around the first of March. When that happens there will be no shortage of takers. Their first production run will be aimed at filling Kickstarter orders and getting feedback for improvement.

Kickstarter is great for turning great ideas into real tools. SkyLight’s goal was to raise $15,000. They ended up with over $22,000. I have no doubt that these two, enthusiastic young people and the SkyLight will get a lot of attention in the coming months. All they did was find a way to combine technologies that already existed, showing us once again you don’t need to reinvent the wheel to create something useful.

[image credits: SkyLight]
images: SkyLight