Oussama Khatib and Shu-Yun Chung have brought us the SupraPed. Khatib and Chung, researchers at Stanford, are working on a system to allow bipedal robots extra stability by giving them a pair of walking sticks. Unlike us weak humans, however, the robots will bend and twist in all sorts of ways to get across chasms or over large obstacles. Read More
Kickstarter has been around long enough that the Kickstarter double-dip is now a well-established thing – basically it’s the practice of a company returning to the crowdfunding well to secure the resources for a new product launch. The original Vaavud was a wind meter that required no power and plugged into your smartphone’s 3.5mm stereo input jack, but that actually… Read More
Sonos has today announced yet another way for you to listen to the music you love, wirelessly of course, in your home. SoundCloud, the social sharing platform for audio, has joined Sonos as a music partner and goes live today as a beta for Sonos users. For those of you who are not familiar with Sonos, the company sells a wireless hifi speaker system taht includes multiple speakers and a… Read More
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella released a letter to employees today via the Microsoft website, and while the missive is aimed at employees in terms of syntax, it’s clearly designed to address the public, too. The occasion for the letter is the kick-off of Microsoft’s fiscal 2015, ahead of the final results for FY 2014, which drop July 22. The subject matter is a call to action,… Read More
FreedomPop, the startup out of LA that has been going after U.S. carriers’ wireless business with a “free” basic mobile offering, is now bringing a SIM-only version of its service to Europe and beyond. Today, the company announced that it will kick off first with FreedomPop in Belgium, with rollouts also in the UK, Germany, France and Spain, as well as to markets in the… Read More
Apple has a few new patent applications with the USPTO (via AppleInsider), all relating to sapphire glass displays and elements for its use in mobile devices. The patents cover a method for making sapphire glass display covers stronger, a way to create illuminated buttons with sapphire, and a way to embed markings below a sapphire layer. Read More
