alpha

littleBits, makers of the eponymous educational circuitry kits, has announced the close of its series A funding round this morning, having taken in $3.65 million from various investors. True Ventures, funder of companies like MakerBot and FitBit, leads the group, with Khosla Ventures, O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, and Lerer Ventures pitching in.

Along with the funding, littleBits has also announced that supply chain and manufacturing firm PCH International will be helping to scale up production.

littleBits kits are made up of a series of electronic modules that connect together with magnets, with a color-coding system to guide assembly. Each … Read more

RIM headlines these days speak doom and gloom, but at least some developers see a brighter future.

According to the handful of devoted BlackBerry developers I spoke with at today's BlackBerry Jam 10 world tour event in Santa Clara, Calif., RIM proved at the BlackBerry 10 Jam in Orlando last May that the beleaguered smartphone-maker finally "gets it," and is prepared to give developers the tools they're asking for to create apps for the QNX-based BlackBerry 10 platform.

The press didn't realize the interesting stuff that was really happening, these software authors maintained, since RIM … Read more

The spring showers of cameras continues with two new entry-level Alpha models from Sony: the compact interchangeable-lens replacement to the E-mount Alpha NEX-C3, dubbed the NEX-F3, and the replacement for the A-mount SLT-A35, the A37. Along with the A37 comes a new A-mount lens that Sony will be offering as a kit, the 18-135mm f3.5-5.6.

Both cameras are based on the same 16-megapixel sensor and use the same generation of image-processing engine. So which one deserves your $600? It depends on what you need. The F3 is compact and relatively lightweight, but the A37 performs better and offers … Read more

There has been a disturbance of late in the Appledome.

For Siri has been accused of believing that the Nokia Lumia 900 is better than the iPhone 4S in which she resides.

Even though she changed her mind -- some might say mysteriously -- the stain on her character would not go away.

Well, now the vast and objective brains at Wolfram Alpha have churned their cogs in order to put a stop to this nonsense.

I am grateful to Search Engine Land for having the patience and fortitude to listen to Wolfram Alpha's deep and complex analysis.

However, … Read more

Boston Dynamics, creator of the very awesome BigDog and a menagerie of other bots, is sending two small reconnaissance robots to the U.S. Army for testing.

Sand Flea and RHex, developed with funding from the Army's Rapid Equipping Force, are off to the Army Test and Evaluation Command (ATEC) to pass safety and reliability assessments.

Three RHex units have already been delivered to ATEC and Sand Fleas will join them later this year, Boston Dynamics said in a release. The machines could improve soldiers' awareness of threats in war zones.

RHex is a six-legged, 30-pound crawling bot inspired … Read more

Released over a year and a half ago, the Alpha SLT-A55V was at one point the flagship of Sony's (then) new translucent-mirror lineup. It's since been surpassed by the A77 and the A65V, leaving it to occupy the a-bit-less-entry-level position above the A35. The new replacement, the SLT-A57, comes in at the same price as its predecessor but without the built-in geotagging capabilities that were notable in the A55, and with a few new features.… Read more

DARPA is quickly becoming the supplier of my nightmares.

As if the monstrous AlphaDog wasn't intimidating enough, it now has a feline friend, the "Cheetah," that will certainly have you running for the hills. Chances are you won't be able to outrun it, though.

Created by Boston Dynamics, Cheetah is allegedly now the fastest legged robot on the planet. DARPA released a video today showing the bot running at various speeds on a laboratory treadmill, ultimately hitting its maximum speed of 18 mph. This breaks the previous land-speed record of 13.1 mph set back in 1989. … Read more

According to a report by the New York Times, nearly 25 percent of the traffic handled by search engine Wolfram Alpha comes from Siri, Apple's voice-controlled personal assistant software.

Apple announced a partnership with Wolfram Alpha in October when it released the iPhone 4S and introduced Siri. Wolfram Alpha differs from other search engines in that its results are based on data curated by Wolfram Alpha, not on algorithms attempting to sort the Web like Google or Bing.

Despite early criticism of Wolfram Alpha's self-described "computational knowledge engine," including its initial focus on mathematical and scientific … Read more

Because of Apple's partnership with search comparison engine Wolfram Alpha, Siri now has the ability to search the entire Best Buy catalog, a feature added to Wolfram Alpha today.

Best Buy has public APIs that have allowed Wolfram Alpha to leverage the data from more than 35,000 products that Best Buy sells. Because Wolfram Alpha was built on a natural-language interface, as Siri is, the ability to get accurate and informative results using voice recognition is that much more impressive.

Siri, using Wolfram Alpha's access to Best Buy's APIs, has access to pricing information, tech specs, … Read more