An Aerospace Engineer Has Completely Reinvented The Ice Cream Scoop

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-midnight-scoop-kickstarter-2014-9

One of Michael Chou’s biggest pet peeves was not being able to scoop frozen ice cream.

“I couldn’t help but feel there was a better way,” Chou, a mechanical and aerospace engineer for the University of California San Diego, explained to The Daily Mail. “I like my ice cream frozen and hard – melting it with a hot spoon or letting it sit out for half an hour ruins it.”

So the 35-year-old Michigan father spent two years to invent the The Midnight Scoop, a “better ice cream scoop” that has the ergonomic design that allows you to scoop even the hardest ice cream.  

What makes The Midnight Scoop different is that the curved end forces you to push the ice cream with your palm, thereby using the muscles in your arm and chest instead of with the weaker muscles in your wrist.

The key is in the handle which is curved to fit your palm and keep your wrist straight. The scoop is also specially designed with a thin and pointed end that can easily slice through ice cream.

Made from a coated and forged aluminium alloy, it will cost $50 with a lifetime warranty. The Kickstarter project has already exceeded it’s $17,500 goal by over $20,000 with still eight days left in the campaign.

You can donate to The Midnight scoop on Kickstarter here.

SEE ALSO: 10 Ingenious Reinventions Of Everyday Products

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This Stat About Digg Reveals Biggest Difference Between Starting A Tech Company Now And Ten Years Ago

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-biggest-difference-between-starting-a-company-now-and-ten-years-ago-2014-9

Vox's Timothy B. Lee has a great story on Digg's comeback. In it, he reveals a super interesting stat.

It's a stat that explains why starting a tech company today is so different than starting a tech company when Digg was founded, ten years ago. 

First some quick backstory.

Digg was founded in November 2004. By 2009, it had 30 million monthly visitors. 

Google wanted to buy it for a couple hundred million dollars.

But by 2012, Digg's traffic was down to 1.5 million visitors a month.

That year, Digg sold for $500,000 to a New York holding firm called Betaworks.

Now Digg is back up to 8 million visitors a month. It's not profitable for Betaworks yet, but executives say there is a "realistic plan" to get there.

Anyway, here's the stat: Back in 2012, when Betaworks bought Digg, it cost $250,000 per month to keep the site running, even with its tiny amount of traffic. Today, it only costs Betaworks tens of thousands of dollars per month, with 5x as much traffic.

The reason for the cost disparity: Back in 2012, Digg was run off of servers owned by the company. Today, Betaworks rents server capacity from another company. Digg is hosted in the cloud.

Running a company from the cloud is standard practice these days. Netflix is still running from Amazon servers. Before it was acquired by Yahoo, so did Tumblr. Probably all the startups you can think of run this way. Only the really gigantic companies out there now own their own servers.

So whenever you see a list of a bunch of silly startups and worry that there's another bubble going on, remember that all those companies cost a lot less to run than all the dotcoms or even early Web 2.0 companies did.

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This Is What Painting In Virtual Reality Looks Like

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/tilt-brush-lets-you-paint-in-virtual-reality-2014-9

Virtual reality is on its way, and it won't be just for gaming.

A great example is Tilt Brush, which is an exciting new app for the Oculus Rift that lets you paint in virtual reality.

Tilt Brush takes advantage of VR's unique characteristics by allowing you to create beautiful three-dimensional paintings using virtual paint, smoke, stars, and light.

In order to paint in all dimensions, Tilt Brush lets you rotate, flip, and reposition a grid that operates as a stationary plane in space.

For example, if you wanted to paint the ground of a forest, you would adjust the grid to be parallel with the virtual ground; if you then wanted to paint a tree, you would simply rotate the plane 90 degrees.

When you're finished with your virtual creation, Tilt Brush will let you export it to a GIF form so you can share it, according to The Verge.

Tilt Brush is created by San Francisco design studio Skillman & Hackett, and while Tilt Brush is still just a prototype, they've already won a Proto award for their virtual reality user interface.

Unfortunately, you'll have to wait for the consumer edition of the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset in order to try Tilt Brush for yourself. But in the meantime, you can check out another stunning creation below, or check out the full demo video here.

Virtual reality can't come soon enough.

SEE ALSO: The Best Apps For Your New iPhone 6

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Vuzix brings offline Nuance voice control to its smart glasses

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/09/24/vuzix-brings-offline-nuance-voice-control-to-its-smart-glasses/

If the only news you're waiting to hear from Vuzix is the smart sunglasses the company announced in January, well, this story isn't for you. But if you have one of the company's M100 smart glasses, then read on, because Vuzix has just released a big software update (version 2.0) with significant changes to the Android-based platform. Most significant, perhaps, is OS 2.0's offline Nuance integration for voice control -- and yes, that means it doesn't need the internet, at all, to work. The upgraded platform also promises longer battery life and faster performance, comes with redesigned user interface and desktop launcher, and supports Bluetooth Low Energy for music streaming and phone calls. As a nice plus, you can now download future updates over the air, while devs get a new SDK. All M100s from here on out will come preloaded with OS 2.0, but if you already dropped a grand to get one long ago, you can download the updated software from the Vuzix website.

Filed under: Wearables, Mobile

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Source: Vuzix

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The Evacuator Makes Jumping Out a Window a Sane Way to Escape a Fire

Source: http://gizmodo.com/the-evacuator-makes-jumping-out-a-window-a-sane-way-to-1638163153

If a fire starts on a high floor in a skyscraper, there's a good chance it could cut off the means of escape for everybody on the floors above. But a Dutch company wants to solve this problem with technology that's not dissimilar to what stuntmen use to stay safe.

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