Solar Sinter – 3D Printing in the Sun

On 2017/06/05   /   IT Matters, Technology   /   Leave a comment
Solar Sinter – 3D Printing in the Sun

Find yourself stuck in the desert and in need of a bowl, a hat, robotic arm, or maybe an art deco sculpture for the living room?

Markus Kayser may have the answer. He’s created a solar powered 3D printer you can use anywhere you can find sunlight. The “Solar Sinter” – a machine inspired by 3D laser printing – uses silica-rich sand instead of a polymer. The sun’s rays are used instead of a laser to melt sand and mold it into glass patterns.

It’s called Selective Laser Sintering – or SLS for short. It refers to the heating of powdered substance into liquid form.

 

Tested in the African Desert

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Is Your Browser Telling You Everything? How Web Domains Aren’t Always What You Think

On 2017/05/23   /   IT Matters, Security & Privacy   /   Leave a comment
Is Your Browser Telling You Everything? How Web Domains Aren’t Always What You Think

Developer Xudong Zheng created a web page to educate people about a new security threat online. The danger was rooted in the weaknesses of several browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, and Opera.

He found that web addresses could have one appearance while being registered as something completely different.

To show the potential danger, he set up a dummy site. https://www.xn--80ak6aa92e.com/ is a URL appearing in several browsers as www.apple.com. How did he do it? Keep reading to find out.

Back in the early 90’s, only ASCII characters were used in domain names. ASCII, short for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, assigns a number code to each standard English character. If you were working in certain industries or in college school during the 80’s and 90’s, you may remember using it to share document texts between computers and countries.

ASCII

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Analemma – High-rise to Space

On 2017/05/17   /   IT Matters, Technology   /   Leave a comment
Analemma – High-rise to Space

Architecture is moving up, according to Ostap Rudakevych.  The partner and co-founder of NYC-based Cloud Architecture has designed a building that will orbit the earth … while hanging from an asteroid. The firm specializes in artistic installations and speculative design.  

We’ve already experienced life in space with Skylab and the International Space Station.  Cloud’s new Analemma Tower will now allow residential and commercial architecture to leave the ground and move into orbit.

analemma skyrise

How high can we go?

The 28.5 km high building (about 17.1 miles) will dwarf the world’s tallest skyscrapers.  It will stretch through the atmosphere at about 34 times the height of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa (the tallest building in the world).  That’s 11.8 times the height of the proposed Dubai City Tower, part of the Jumeirah Gardens Project.  With the top suspended at an elevation of 32 km and the bottom level at 3.5 km, the top level gets 40 more minutes of daily sunlight than the bottom.

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“The Internet of Us” – How One Company is Embracing RFID

On 2017/05/03   /   IT Matters, Technology   /   Leave a comment
“The Internet of Us” – How One Company is Embracing RFID

It only takes seconds to become a cyborg.

Jowan Osterlund has helped more than 1500 people make the leap.  And he does it with tiny, rice-sized capsules. Each has its own power source and microchip that transmits information by RFID (Radio Frequency Identification). At one festival, the biohacker and body piercing specialist even injected tiny, glowing LED lights in the arms of enthusiastic attendees.

The ID chip is injected into the fleshy part of the hand between the thumb and forefinger with a syringe. The tiny capsules feature NFC technology (Near Field Communications).  Only a device centimeters away can read any information.


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Compare these 15 Virtual Reality Headsets

On 2017/04/28   /   IT Matters, Technology   /   Leave a comment
Compare these 15 Virtual Reality Headsets

VR Headsets are more commonly user with computer games, however they can be used for so many other exciting applications for simulation and training. Some headsets even have eye and head tracking sensors!

Applications include:

  • Architecture and Real Estate – The ability to be immersed in the new building or room, have 360 degree views and it really helps you better understand scale. Some things look big on paper but in reality are too small.
  • Education and Tourism – Great for history, geology, geography and previewing potential holiday locations.
  • Automotive and Flight Simulators – Car designers are using this in addition to pilots to better refine their handling skills
  • Medical – Practice before surgery and some of their simulators even have haptic feedback so you can feel the amount of pressure required

virtual reality

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