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In 2012, I Ordered A Custom-Built Robot Off The Internet

// February 4th, 2012 // No Comments » // technology

The future is here. In 2012, I went to a website on my computer, designed my own robot – every piece, part, and color – and had him shipped directly to my desk at work. It was easy, it was fun, and it only cost me $30. And I’m convinced it’s the future.

Of course, he’s not a *real* robot, more of a figurine, but it’s still one of the coolest experiences I’ve ever had. I stumbed across My Robot Nation via Brian Jepson, who I had the pleasure of meeting at Maker Faire NY last year. The site is pretty simple – they’ve built a web-based design process where users can choose from thousands of options to customize their very own robot figurine.

Once you’ve picked all the parts and pieces, you proceed to the color chooser, where you can hand-select the color for pretty much every part of your robot.

Once you name your robot and finalize your order, My Robot Nation uses a 3D printing technique to literally ‘print’ your creation out using gypsum powder and ships it right to you.

As you can see by the photo of my robot, they’re quite detailed, though unfortunately, the limbs do not move (perhaps a future upgrade to the site will allow moveable arms and legs?) but your little robot is certainly all kinds of awesome.

I built a 3-inch version, which was $30. They’ll build up to 6-inches for $170. Yeah, it’s a bit pricey, but come on, you get to build your very own robot! I’ll be honest – I’m already itching to build another one.

I’m convinced that 3D printing is going to literally change the way many industries work in the very near future. If it was this easy for me to ‘print out’ a figurine, imagine all the other things you could design easily and then print out using a 3d printer.

Xbox Upgrade Is One Step Closer To The Future

// February 2nd, 2012 // No Comments » // Family, technology

I’m firmly convinced that when my daughter is old enough to play video games, I’ll hand her a controller and she’ll look back at me, baffled, asking ‘What’s this, Dad?’ The controller – with buttons and joysticks and the like, will be relegated to nostalgia, similar to Nintendo’s ‘Virtual Boy’ or the trackballs of yore. To further this, Microsoft recently released an upgrade to the Xbox 360 dashboard that redesigned the whole thing to be Kinect-enabled. Kinect, as you’ll recall, is Microsoft’s controller-free control system for the Xbox – it includes motion-tracking, such as gestures, as well as a microphone and voice recognition, for speech control.

The motion-tracking portion of Kinect is OK – it’s not superbly accurate, which makes the games more of an entertainment piece than something that serious gamers would be interested in. The system needs to get much more accurate to be able to take on real gaming. However, the voice control is phenomenally cool. I kid you not – the following situation actually happened. Aside from pressing the button to turn my Xbox on, I was able to talk the system all the way through from the main dashboard to watching an episode of Modern Family, entirely from the couch without ever touching a remote control. 100% voice. That’s amazing.

The news that Microsoft is now requiring its partners to make their apps ‘Kinect-enabled’ is no surprise. The improvement in experience is so significant that I wouldn’t expect anything less. In fact, the few apps, such as Last.FM, that weren’t updated, are now noticeably painful to use – even though they’re the same as they were a few weeks ago.

Now, imagine that when you buy your next Xbox gaming system (entertainment system, really these days), it doesn’t come with a controller. You simply plug it in and talk your way through the rest of the setup. Now, imagine that for a family, it recognizes not only commands, but VOICES. It would know that Reese (at age 10 or so) was the one who gave the ‘turn on’ command, so it would present a kid-friendly version of the dashboard. None of that scary Modern Warfare 10 business, just all butterflies and sunshine. The possibilities are endless.

Just plain crazy.

My Top Tech Toys Of 2011

// January 30th, 2012 // 3 Comments » // technology, toys

I firmly believe that technology should enrich and enable our lives, so it’s no surprise that I use a lot of technology in my life. Some of these gadgets are for personal use. Some are for work, and others are just for fun, but here’s a list of the top tech toys that I discovered or started using in 2011.

1. T-Mobile G2 – I got this phone in November of 2010, and it’s been an awesome device. After I rooted it, overclocked it, and put HTC’s Sense user interface on it, it’s been a killer phone. The slide-out keyboard is really what makes it for me, plus having a real camera button.

2. Apple iPad 2 – I tried desperately to use a few different Android-powered tablets, but I just couldn’t. Honeycomb might’ve been built for tablets, but it sucks to use full time. The iPad can’t do half the things I did with my Android tablets, but what it does do is miles better.

3. Apple iPod Classic – I tried for literally years to duplicate two simple functions with various software solutions on various smartphones, and I just couldn’t. Given the size of my music library, I needed a portable solution that can sync playcounts/times and star ratings from desktop to mobile and back again. I finally broke down and bought an iPod Classic and couldn’t love it more. It doesn’t have apps or all that nonsense, but it does precisely what I need it to, and it does that well.

4. Xbox 360 w/ Kinect – after a few years of not even having a TV in the house (no kidding), I finally got one, along with an Xbox 360 w/ Kinect. The media experience with this thing is awesome, especially with the dashboard update that came late in 2011 and brought speech recognition throughout most of the software. I can literally tell my TV that I want to watch Modern Family without ever touching a remote control. Awesome.

5. Nokia BH-905i – these headphones are just plain awesome. Most of the time I use them wired to my iPod or iPad, but they also have stereo Bluetooth, which connects easily to my laptop. They also have active noise-cancellation technology, so I can watch a movie while Reese screams her brains out (or plays noisily with her toys….) and not miss a thing. Even when the house is empty, I’ll put these bad boys on and just disappear into the music.

6. Bose In-Ear Headphones – I got my first pair of these at the Nokia: Go Play event and bought a replacement pair two years later. These are my everyday earbuds, and I love them because I can have my music as loud as I want and no one around me can hear it. They’re brilliant for listening to music in public, as well as at my desk at work. They’re pricey, but I haven’t found any other headphones that fit as good.

7. Angelcare monitor – I lost a cousin to SIDS when I was a kid, so having a good nighttime monitor with the heartbeat pad is priceless. This unit also has video, which is cool. I have a full review coming soon.

8. Enercell Portable Power – this is similar to the Proporta units that I’ve loved for years, but it’s available at any RadioShack, and it’s a bit smaller. Other than that, it’s the same – huge battery cased in plastic with USB-out. I don’t travel with less than two in my bag.

9. Chumby One – I don’t remember how long I’ve had this, but I know I got it off Woot. I didn’t really use it until I talked with the Chumby guy at the NY Maker Faire, who told me I could get it to automatically change ‘channels’ if I used alarms. So brilliant, it now automatically loads Pandora in the morning and Groove Salad when I get home from work. Excellent.

That’s it – I originally started this with the idea to do ten, but I could only come up with nine, so it’s your turn. Let me know your top tech toy in the comments below.

iPad 2 For Content Creation At CES

// January 20th, 2012 // No Comments » // cool, technology

When the Apple iPhone came out, it changed the game, but only for some parts of the mobile industry. One aspect that it didn’t even come close to touching was that of ‘content creation’. In fact, most of us who had already been creating content – blogs, podcasts, videos, photos, etc decided that the iPhone was ideal for ‘content consumption’, not creation. There’s quite a difference there, and it fit.

However, while other platforms and devices are still awesome for creating content, the iPhone (and its larger brethren, the iPad) are now realistic tools of content creation. Heck, just head over to iPadCreative.com to see some great examples of this. In my job at RadioShack, content creation is a large part of my job description, and it’s awesome that I have plenty of devices to choose from. I also have a cool boss, so when I saw the iPad Movie Mount from Makayama last year, I told him I was buying one, and he said ‘cool.’

We got the mount, played with it a bit, and decided the iPad 2′s 720p video capture was perfect to really make the most of it, so we took three iPad 2′s with us to CES last week to shoot ALL of our footage with it. Here’s the video explaining our rig:

Filming with the iPad 2 at CES was crazy – there were people actually taking videos/photos of US instead of the booths! Most of the comments were positive, how it was cool to see something outside-the-box like that. For me, it was interesting not using a phone, which I’m used to at events and such. You can view all of our videos here.

I would definitely shoot with the iPad again – we had some extra bits included that allowed us to use 2 wireless lav mics and a 3rd handheld wireless mic, but other than that, it was straight up iPad.

What do you think? 

Tech Bloggers: would you consider shooting ALL of your next event coverage with a phone or tablet, instead of a pro camera?

Everyone Else: does seeing products being USED by a company make you more likely to consider buying them from that company?

CES 2012 Is A Wrap

// January 13th, 2012 // No Comments » // technology

It’s Friday, and I’m finally home after a week in Las Vegas wandering around the monstrous show floors of the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show, looking at all the gadgets that were announced only days before. From smartphones to ultrabooks to massive TVs to the craziest accessories you could never dream up, it was a trip, that’s for absolute sure.

Together with RadioShack and Gizmodo, we put together over 15 videos from the show floor, highlighting some of the coolest demos and products. You can watch them on The Shack Blog. I do have some thoughts on various things that I saw at CES this year.

For starters, Nokia rocked it. Their booth, even though it was in the South Hall, upstairs, was pretty much always packed. They were demoing the Lumia 710, Lumia 800, and Lumia 900 (the latter of which was only just announced on Monday), as well as their suite of accessories and services/apps. The Lumia 900 won something like 5 or 6 different awards at CES – impressive for a company who was pretty much entirely written off by most of the tech blogs less than 18 months ago.

The TVs were also something you have to see to believe. I have a modest 46-inch Samsung TV at CasaGuru – it’s not ‘smart’ or anything, just a big enough screen to enjoy movies from, and it’s hooked up to my Xbox and an old eMachines PC running XBMC. We don’t have regular TV, just Netflix and Hulu. For 2 years before this, the only TV we had in the house was a 21-inch CRT I’ve had since high school.

Being in front of these hot new TVs, though…..just wow. LG’s 55-inch OLED TV was mind-numbingly awesome, as was its GINORMOUS 84-inch 3D TV. Samsung’s smart TVs are simply impressive, as well – the AllShare feature really does a great job tying in tablets, smartphones, and TVs for a totally connected livingroom. Brilliant.

Honestly, the TVs and phones were all that really knocked your socks off. There were tablets here and there, but all somewhat ‘meh’. I’m not a big camera guy, so the new stuff from Nikon, Canon, Fujifilm, and others were of little interest.

I also had an absolute blast seeing all the online-type-folk. It’s always good to shake the hand of someone you talk to online, and there was no shortage of opportunities.

I know most of the tech bloggers who’ve been every year always complain about CES and say how much they hate it, but whatever. A week in Las Vegas with so many gadgets? You’d have to be crazy to not want to be there.