Emerging Musings

A collaborative place to rant and rave about technology, the Internet of Things etc......

[emergingmusings]

Hmmm...looks familiar, No?

These Engineers May Have Solved The Most Annoying Thing About Using Public Bathrooms

No one likes awkwardly waiting in line for the bathroom, which is why the engineers over at Made By Many developed a way to see if there are free toilets before you even leave your seat.

It looks like it's just a fun side project for their office, but there are a lot of places that could use something like this.

The digital advertising and design firm posted a lengthy blog post this week  showing how it created a device that tells you when your bathroom is unoccupied.

The team used a cheap, $35, Raspberry Pi computer, some circuitry components and homegrown software to create the device.

Check out Made By Many's Blog post: http://madebymany.com/blog/is-the-toilet-free

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At Boston Children’s Hospital, new system aims to predict health hotspots - The Boston Globe

Drawing from the field of data science called predictive analytics, Boston Children’s Hospital has joined with a startup named Etiometry to develop a system that aims to forecast changes in a patient’s condition before the alarms go off.

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Why Nike Is (Probably) Killing Off The FuelBand

Why wait for Apple to kill a bad product when you can team up instead?

Just a few interesting points from the article:

On Friday, CNET reported that Nike is planning to layoff as much as 80% of the company's Digital Sport division, the team behind the Nike FuelBand. For its part, Nike is denying the scope of layoffs, but the wording of the company's statement seems to suggest that even if the scope of the layoffs is being misreported, the sneaker company could still distance itself from FuelBand and not upgrade the hardware going forward.

If you're surprised, you shouldn't be. Wearable fitness trackers like the Nike FuelBand are about to go the way of the dodo. Here's why Nike is (probably) killing the FuelBand off.

Main reasons:

"The Fuelband Sucked"

"Smartphones work better than Fuelbands"

"The iWatch Cometh"

Can't say that I am surprised...

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Printoo: Paper-Thin, Flexible Arduino™-Compatible modules! by Ynvisible

Printoo is an Arduino-based platform of paper-thin, low-power boards and modules that gives makers new levels of creative flexibility

Printoo is a platform of paper-thin circuit boards and modules. It gives makers an open-source, lightweight, flexible, and modular Arduino-compatible platform to create just about anything you want! What makes Printoo amazingly unique is that it comes with a range of printed electronics modules previously unavailable to the public. These are electronics building "blocks" of the future, only not so rigid.

The Flexibility To Bring 3D Printed Objects to Life : Printoo is the first development board that is flexible and light enough to bring any of your 3D printed objects to life - no matter what shape it is! Add internet and Bluetooth connectivity, input, output, motorization, light and motion sensing, and power... Even SOLAR, to almost any configuration or weird shape you print!

Powerful cores, modular components, free code, free apps: Plug the modules together, tinker with the Arduino™ sketches we are making available, and use the apps to connect and control Printoo - bringing your ideas to life!

The Internet of Printoo: We built the apps you need to connect Printoo to the Internet. You'll be able to remotely control your Printoo creations or use them to trigger or perform action on the Web - from your smartphone, tablet or laptop, from anywhere in the world! IFTTT never looked so easy or weighed so little... 

The Coolness of Paper-Thin Boards and Modules:

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ORBneXt - Your World at a Glance. by Advanced Lumonics Labs

ORBneXt is an always-on Wi-Fi connected, desktop data display device. It connects you to all of your data and devices at a glance.

What is ORBneXt?

ORBneXt is an always on, Wi-Fi connected, engaging LED data display device that can be placed anywhere in your home or office. It allows you to visualize any piece of information you find important using colors at a glance that can be controlled from anywhere in the world via our iOS or Android App or even from the Web application.

For example, if you set the ORBneXt to monitor your outdoor temperature or UV index, it will glow different colors based on this information, such as red for warm weather or purple for extreme UV or blue for cooler weather or green for low UV index, and all the ranges in between. Glancing at the ORBneXt will give you a heads up whether to grab a jacket or apply sunscreen when heading out the door.

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BetaBoston - RunKeeper launches ‘life tracking’ app Breeze to make Fitbit irrelevant

Boston’s RunKeeper today debuts a new mobile app that aims to help motivate you to move yourself even when you’re not working out. While the idea is simple — a step counter paired with well-timed push notifications to help you hit daily goals — the company aspires to make wearables from the likes of Fitbit and Jawbone no longer necessary.

First, a bit more on how the “life-tracking” app, Breeze, actually works. It’s worth noting up front that the app is only available for iPhone 5S right now because that’s the only device with the M7 co-processor, which automatically tracks motion without draining the battery. That means that when you open Breeze for the first time, the app is already able to pull in how many steps you’ve taken in the past seven days.

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Is Your Connected Car Safe From Hackers?

A new breed of Internet-enabled cars from Tesla, Ford, GM, Toyota, and others offer drivers new features and conveniences--but also create loopholes that let criminals track and even unlock far-away cars.

Recently, Tesla owners received a wake-up call. At a conference in Singapore, an information security expert revealed that Tesla's electric cars can be hacked using simple techniques. Nitesh Dhanjani, a Ernst and Young security executive who moonlights as a well-known writer of technical books, alleges that Tesla's connected cars, which are constantly in communication with far-away servers, can be remotely accessed via brute-force hacking. Dhanjani has a vested interest in this particular subject--he's not just a security expert, but the proud owner of a Tesla Model S.

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Cambridge Company Creates iPad-Sized Tech to Diagnose Diseases in Real-Time

What if there was a device the size of an iPad that contained the power to diagnose in real-time the world’s most devastating diseases? Now, what if the diagnostic tests themselves could be processed at a fraction of the current system’s costs?

The Harvard- and MIT-trained physicist and doctor founded Nanobiosym at the intersection of the fields of physics, biomedicine and nanotechnology to satisfy tremendous unmet needs in global health in the developed and developing world. Though Dr. Goel’s research began nearly two decades ago, it wasn’t until last fall that Nanobiosym surged out of stealth upon winning the coveted grand prize and $525,000 in the Nokia Sensing XChallenge for its GeneRADAR technology.

Taking up the same air space as an iPad, GeneRADAR is a mobile device that can test for AIDS and HIV, E.Coli, tuberculosis, diabetes and even some types of cancer in mere minutes, with only a drop of blood or saliva.

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Chilling App Reveals Security Cameras All Around You By

The Google Glass app Watch Your Privacy outs those cameras, but outs you too.

If you're walking around London, you already know that 7,431 cameras are watching you. We urbanites are well-aware that electronic eyes track our every move, but we’ve given up trying to do much about it. Cameras lurk on walls and on street corners, at ATMs and over cash registers, and who knows where else. We choose to forget.

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Four cleantech firms get funding through InnovateMass

Inventing stuff is one thing; getting people to use it is another matter entirely.

In order to help innovative cleantech startups in Massachusetts with the bedeviling problem of commercialization, the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center — a quasi-government agency funded by a surcharge on state electrical bills — has awarded more than $500,000 through the InnovateMass program to four local clean energy companies with working prototypes. The companies have also received an additional $1.2 million in private and public investments from partnered organizations.

The companies are expected to use the money to demonstrate their products to the public and ready them for commercialization.

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Google Patents Tiny Cameras Embedded In Contact Lenses

Google has a new patent application with the USPTO (via 9to5Google), which takes one of the basic concepts of Glass and extends it even further, embedding tiny cameras that could be embedded in contact lenses for various uses, including photographing what a wearer sees, or providing the basic input for a contact-based assistive device for the visually impaired.

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AMAKER: World's First Dual ARM Open Source 3D Printer

by AMAKER

A next generation assembled 3D printer that is easy to use and anyone can own. Open source. Endless possibilities

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Get A Snapshot Of Your Browsing Habits With This "Internet-Selfie" Tool

Are you an extreme Internet user? Find out with Surfkoll.

How many cat videos did you watch in the last seven days? Did you visit LOLCats.com more than FunnyCatSites.com? Or perhaps you gorged yourself on FunnyCatPix.com, but only on Thursdays at 3 p.m. A new Chrome and Firefox plug-in called Surfkoll, ("Surf Report" in Swedish), doesn't get quite so specific, but it does offer up detailed stats about your Internet history for the last week.

The site was created by Swedish agency Rodolfo (the same people who gave us the social media "out of office" tool, Relaxed) as a promotional vehicle for Nackademin college. "Initially the purpose was to make more people realize that they know more about IT than one might think, and hopefully generate an interest in studying IT at Nackademin (in Sweden)," says Rodolfo's Ludwig Jonsson "A frequent Internet user may well qualify for studying IT at Nackademin. However, the service has gained a lot of interest from users and has developed into a stand-alone service as a nice way to map out your online behavior."

The tool will show you how many sites you've visited in the last seven days, your most visited sites and when in the week you're most Internet-active. But are you an "extreme" Internet user compared to everyone else? Or are you only "low?" According to Surfkoll, you may not be spending enough time online after all.

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TinkerBots Building Set - Indiegogo

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Innovation showcase brings 'wow' factor

Boston Children's Hospital exhibit brings big technologies, promising platforms to forefront

Boston has long proven itself a mecca for healthcare innovation, a hub of some of the best minds and most prestigious hospitals in the nation. And the 2014 Boston Children's Hospital Innovators' Showcase proved no exception.

Featuring some 35 innovations developed by engineers, researchers and clinicians at Boston Children's, the exhibit boasted an array of cutting-edge technologies and problem-solving platforms. Amid the bustling showcase floor were, among others, robotic implants, phototargeted nanoparticles, drug delivery devices and clinical IT platforms that could signify big things for patient care. 

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If you’re old enough to remember the days when VCRs and Betamax video recorders represented cutting-edge technology, you probably remember the controversy that accompanied them. You could record movies and TV shows off the air, and lend the tapes to your friends. You could fast-forward through commercials. It was a terrible crime, according to the biggest media companies. The head of the Motion Picture Association of America, Jack Valenti, testified to Congress that “the VCR is to the American film producer ... as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.”