smarterer

The spectacular science of exploding glass

When you drop molten glass into cold water, you get a curious object: a Prince Rupert's Drop, shaped like a teardrop with a long, wiggly tail. What's so curious about the Prince Rupert's Drop is that you can hit the bulb as hard as you like with a hammer, throw it against the wall, and yet, even though we think of glass as fragile, it will not break.

That is, until you hit the sweet spot. If you damage any part of the tail, just a tiny bit, the entire drop explodes outward in a stunning display.

Although the drops have been around for centuries, the reason for this strange behavior has only been discovered recently -- and it can be seen by watching the glass explode in slow motion. That's what YouTube science educator Destin of Smarter Every Day has done. … Read more

Smarterer pulls in $1.75M for job skills testing

Is the resume D.O.A.?

Boston-based startup Smarterer thinks so. The company has raised $1.75 million from True Ventures, Google Ventures, and a handful of angel investors for its job-search-meets-gamification platform.

Sure, its name doesn't quite roll off the tongue as nicely as it should, but the approach of the company is that there must be, in this age of the creative economy, a better way to evaluate job candidates besides where they've been and how long they were there.

The answer: a series of brief online multiple-choice tests on a certain topic, as chosen by … Read more

Match your browser to your bandwidth on Android

Some Android browsers deliver all the content, while others cut back for faster browsing. Choosing the correct browser for your connection type each time can become tedious--but there's a quick fix.

With Smart Browser Chooser, a free app on the Android Market, you can decide which browser is used based on your connection speed. All it takes is a couple minutes of setup and whether you're on Wi-Fi, 3G, or 2G, your Android device will know which browser to load for the best user experience.

Note: In order to use this app, you need … Read more

Greenstart unveils latest clean-tech startups

At a ceremony attended by San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee, Greenstart showcased its first four investments in green tech.

The green-tech incubator, which has been described as a Y Combinator for green tech, had announced in June it was looking for ideas that could produce what is known as fast startups--small, nimble companies that are "capital efficient and capable of generating revenue in 12 months or less."

Yesterday afternoon, Greenstart announced its first picks.

The Picowatt from Tenrehte Technologies is a Wi-Fi-enabled plug with the ability to collect and send data over a home network. It enables electronic … Read more

Network, don't fail me now!

Everything in IT depends on the network.--and not just in an abstract, "need it occasionally" sort of way. The packets must flow for virtually every operation, every job, every transaction. Whenever packets drop, or links go down, we're disconnected and isolated. Information doesn't flow; apps don't work; users don't proceed. We need the network up and running, millisecond by millisecond, every millisecond of every day.

Our utter, urgent dependency won't lessen in the coming years. It will intensify--redoubling and redoubling again. Cisco calls its vision of the future "together." HP … Read more

IT's new age of possibility

It's only been around about 50 years, but information technology has already affected almost the entire landscape of human activity. How science is pursued, how products are designed, how commerce and supply chains work, how businesses are run, how human beings communicate with one another--there's almost no arena in which IT isn't a critical enabler.

Given this, it may sound peevish to say IT has, at the same time, been hide-bound and conventional. But IT has been conventional. Oh, sure. We've had our moments--modernizing supply chains starting in the 1970s, the PC and distributed computing blooms … Read more

IBM touts Smarter Buildings push

IBM is hoping to use technology to create greener, smarter buildings.

Big Blue announced Monday that it will team up with partners and customers to venture into the next phase of its Smarter Planet initiative: Smarter Buildings. The goal is to help buildings, manufacturing plants, and other facilities consume less energy and water and make them easier to operate.

Announced Monday, one of IBM's new partnerships is with Johnson Controls, a manufacturer of products that optimize energy use in buildings. The two plan to combine Johnson's energy-efficient technologies with IBM's Tivoli software to offer customers a way … Read more

IBM games highlight benefits of 'Smarter Planet'

People don't usually associate IBM with video games, but a couple of interactive games now rigged up at Florida's Epcot theme park have Big Blue's stamp all over them. They're part of the revised "Smarter Planet," an experiential exhibit aimed at highlighting how technology is helping to ease global problems such as road traffic, city crime, and subpar local water supplies.

Through one "match" game, guests will discover that more than 2 billion people are using mobile phones to open and use bank accounts for the first time; or that only 11 percent of the United States money supply is cash; or that by unplugging household appliances while not in use homeowners can save cash, up to $286 every year. From the same kiosks, guests can take a poll and compare their answers with those of other visitors.

Another game, called Runtime and created by Disney, lets players personalize their avatars and run, jump, and dance through a computing time line that journeys through the Babbage computer all the way to the Internet, spotlighting IBM's achievements along the way. Guests can also e-mail their personalized version of the game to any computer in case they want to dance through the evolution of the ThinkPad at home.

The exhibit--which opened Friday and runs indefinitely--is powered by an IBM Smarter Data Center, part of the company's larger Smarter Planet initiative aimed at marketing green solutions to world problems.… Read more

Are we ready for IBM's Smarter Planet?

By now you've surely seen at least one of the IBM "Let's Build a Smarter Planet" TV ads. I like them. They talk about computing possibilities that are truly big-picture. I also believe in the message that IBM is fundamentally delivering in these ads: systems that harvest data from a variety of wired and wireless sources are capable of producing new types of information and solving some important problems. The technologies needed (RFID, pattern recognition, Complex Event Processing, etc.) to turn the vision into reality are here and now.

And while they may put a very … Read more

SmarterFox updates to 3.0, changes name

SmarterFox, one of my favorite Firefox productivity add-ons, recently updated to version 3.0. In the process, it added a new feature, fixed some miscellaneous bugs, and changed its name to FastestFox.

For a major version upgrade, changes are slim. The most notable new feature is the ability for FastestFox to automatically surface related search results from Amazon and OneRiot at the top of a Google results page. The related search results show up in addition to an original SmarterFox bar that lets you repeat a search on OneRiot, Amazon, Yahoo, Twitter, and Delicious. The FastestFox release notes are quick … Read more