industries

MakerBot and open-source hardware pioneers Adafruit Industries have partnered to produce a limited edition Adafruit Replicator 2 3D Printer bundle.

For $2,295, buyers get a Replicator 2 -- one of the hottest consumer-grade 3D printers on the market today -- and three of Adafruit's most-popular kits. A Replicator 2 normally sells for $2,200.

The three kits included in the package are Adafruit's MintyBoost V3.0, an open-source hardware charger; a 512MB RAM Raspberry Pi Model B; and a Timesquare do-it-yourself watch kit with a red display matrix. … Read more

Talk about a shift in behavior -- or maybe that should be text about a shift.

It seemed only a matter of time, but today the Telecommunication Industry Association (TIA) said that 2012 marked the first time that U.S. wireless data spending topped voice spending. Also, according to the association's 2013 ICT Market Review & Forecast report, there are more wireless subscriptions than there are adults in the country.

The "industry is squarely in the middle of an historic transition," said Grant Seiffert, president of the association that represents high-tech manufacturers and suppliers of communications technology. &… Read more

I'm in search of a new phrase to replace "pie in the sky" to describe the latest ambitious space mining startup. On its face, the notion of 3D printers on asteroids seems more ridiculous to me than a simple lemon meringue in the clouds, and yet that is exactly what the just-launched venture Deep Space Industries (DSI) proposes to do.

Less than a year after Planetary Resources announced its own plans to mine asteroids in space, DSI is upping the ante with its own vision for zero-gravity resource extraction that goes one step further to include actually producing things in space using the company's "MicroGravity Foundry... a patent-pending breakthrough in 3D printers able to output complex metal components using a simple process with few moving parts."

The idea is that it should be much cheaper and more efficient to build what's needed to further space exploration using resources extracted from asteroids than shuttling materials from Earth. Imagine sending a robot into a mountain with some mining tools and a 3D printer. The robot mines material to feed into the 3D printer, which prints up more robots and supplies to build a smelter at the mouth of the mine, which is then used to build even bigger things. You get the idea.… Read more

It was one year ago today that an unprecedented outcry against the Stop Online Piracy Act proved to Washington officialdom that sufficiently irritated Internet users are a potent political force. After Wikipedia, Google, Craigslist and other major sites asked their users to contact their representatives, the deluge of traffic knocked some Senate Web sites offline, and votes on both bills were indefinitely postponed.

The massive public outcry that, by some counts, involved more than 10 million Internet users concerned about the proposals' impact on free expression has turned the protests into a cautionary tale on Capitol Hill. Aides now worry … Read more

Foxconn International Holdings, another manufacturing division at Hon Hai that hasn't reached the same success as Foxconn Technology Group, is getting a new chairman.

The company's board of directors announced (PDF) today that Samuel Chin, its current executive director and chairman, will retire on January 1 to spend more time with his family. Tong Wen-hsin, another company director, will replace Chin as chairman. However, Chin will stay on an adviser to the chairman for 12 months.

"The company would like to take this opportunity to express its gratitude to Mr. Chin for his valuable contribution to the … Read more

American conglomerate General Electric believes machine-to-machine, or "M2M" for short, advances will fundamentally alter the way business operates.

This morning at its "Minds and Machines" conference in San Francisco GE took the wraps off a new suite of "Industrial Internet" (PDF) technologies and services that it says will help airline, railroad, healthcare, manufacturing and energy companies increase productivity and reduce costs -- $150 billion in waste, it claims.

All this, just by connecting industrial machinery to the Internet (and the people that use it).

The quick and dirty of the announcement:

The U.S. Supreme Court spent this morning wrestling with an obscure section of copyright law that could curb listings of used DVDs, CDs, books, and even GPS devices through marketplaces including eBay and Amazon.com.

Large copyright holders -- including software companies, the Motion Picture Association of America, and the Recording Industry Association of America -- have urged the court to limit Americans' right to resell legally purchased products manufactured outside the United States.

Many of the justices seemed skeptical. Justice Stephen Breyer suggested that the copyright holders' reading of the law would invoke a parade of "horribles,&… Read more

The folks at Kaspersky Lab are aiming to create their own secure operating system, but this one would run on industrial systems rather than your average home PC.

In blog posted today, company CEO Eugene Kaspersky confirmed the rumors of a new OS, describing the background behind the effort and hinting at the development process.

Cyberattacks present a growing and challenging problem for industries maintaining systems that must be powered on all the time. If a virus affects a computer at most companies, that computer can be unplugged from the network so as not to infect other devices, Kaspersky said. … Read more

If Baxter had a favorite band, it might be The Carpenters. Rethink Robotics' new droid could hum "Close to You" while it gets cozy with human workers along the assembly line.

The Boston-based startup launches Baxter today, billing it as a revolutionary humanoid robot that could help stem the tide of manufacturing going overseas for cheap labor.

For one thing, Baxter itself is surprisingly low-cost. Priced at $22,000 including software upgrades, it goes for far less than traditional industrial robots and puts automation in the hands of small and midsize companies that may not have been able to afford it. Labs and universities are also expected to show interest.

Also, unlike most factory robots, Baxter doesn't require a safety cage. People can work alongside the droid, which is covered in soft materials in case of impact. Sensors tell it when people are near, and it will stop moving if it does make contact with something unexpected. … Read more