Technology

DreamVendor: a 3D printer vending machine

At universities across the country, you’ll find soda and snack vending machines in the hallways of higher learning. I wouldn’t doubt you might also find some machines selling beer. But, here’s something different: in the lobby of Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering, they’ve got a vending machine that is one of the coolest things I’ve seen: it delivers creations, 3D printed ones.

It’s called the DreamVendor, a mysterious sounding name, which actually pretty accurately describes it. It’s a one-of-a-kind, interactive 3D printing station to enable Virginia Tech students to freely and quickly fabricate prototypes for their academic, and even personal, design projects.

I think this offers an excellent example of how 3D printing could be done at public libraries. Anyone want to take on the challenge?

(via 3D Printer)

Technology interaction with Touché

Touché is a new sensing technology that proposes a novel Swept Frequency Capacitive Sensing technique that can not only detect a touch event, but simultaneously recognize complex configurations of the human hands and body during touch interaction. This allows to significantly enhances touch interaction in a broad range of applications, from enhancing conventional touchscreens to designing interaction scenarios for unique use contexts and materials. For example, in our explorations we added complex touch and gesture sensitivity not only to computing devices and everyday objects, but also to the human body and liquids. Importantly, instrumenting objects and material with touch sensitivity is easy and straightforward: a single wire is sufficient to make objects and environments touch and gesture sensitive.

(via @genebecker)

Conflict minerals and technology

I recently completed a short article on the connections between social justice and hardware for an upcoming issue of Access magazine. In the article I mention the use of conflict minerals in cell phones. Conflict minerals, which include the 3Ts (tin, tantalum, tungsten) and gold, are minerals mined to fund armed conflict and thereby contribute to human rights abuses, notably in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They are currently found in all consumer electronics products.

As mobile technology is a major focus for the profession, I believe that a greater awareness of this issue may help librarians and libraries make more informed decisions when purchasing technologies. I would encourage both individuals, institutions and our professional organizations to take an interest. In the same way that students are demanding conflict-free campuses, perhaps we should have conflict-free libraries.

For more information, follow the links below;

Blood in the Mobile (Documentary)

Raise Hope for Congo

Make it Fair

 

Project Glass from Google

We think technology should work for you—to be there when you need it and get out of your way when you don’t.

A group of us from Google[x] started Project Glass to build this kind of technology, one that helps you explore and share your world, putting you back in the moment. We’re sharing this information now because we want to start a conversation and learn from your valuable input. So we took a few design photos to show what this technology could look like and created a video to demonstrate what it might enable you to do.

Project Glass (via The Creator’s Project)

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