Josh On Design

Yes, the future is now, and not just because I bought a 2TB hard drive for less than 150$. Bionic hands, self driving cars, and printable solar cells...

Bluetooth has a use?!

While it hasn't been widely known, because I am not widely known :), I haven't been a big fan of Bluetooth devices. Due to their short range they end up simply replacing 6 foot wires, at an increased device cost and the extra hassle of having one more thing to charge (plus interference with endless other devices). But here's something that might change my mind..a a bluetooth hand!

This prosthetic hand lets you tweak settings via Bluetooth. It can handle up to a 200lb load, which clearly puts it into the six million dollar man range. Hmm. Perhaps that wireless technology is good after all.

Autonomous Audi TT

James Gosling, inventor of Java and my former co-worker at Sun, has been helping some Stanford students work on an autonomous car. Along with Audi, they've announced a TT-S that will attempt to drive the Pike's Peak International Hill Climb. (PS, it's partly running Java and Solaris).

eBooks as eJournalism?

Imagine the world two years from now when the tablet form factor is successful and we are all eReading. Monday Note tackles the question. Less overhead, easier access, newer long form formats emerge. The ebook as a form of journalism. The future might be Awesome!

Paper Solar Cells

They say that the key to making something cheap is to find a way to build it using microchip technology. Then you get to free ride on Moore's law and have someone else fab it for you. Flash memory followed this trend. So did accelerometers. They were once mechanical devices the size of a soda can. Once they could be made using CPU fabbing techniques the price and size dropped precipitously, and now they are being embedded in virtually everything.

So what's the next step beyond microchip tech... paper. If you can make something printable on paper then you can make it cheap. Amazingly cheap. And what's what may happen with solar cells. MIT has demonstrated a solar cell technology using essentially a fancy inkjet printer. The efficiency isn't great, but if it's a factor of a hundred cheaper than ridge cells no one will care.