Rimac Concept One ~ Croatian Electric Supercar

Nice wheels! CNN spots Rimac Concept One...

CineMoco ~ Camera Motor Controls by Cinetics!

Our MIT Imaging Ventures alumco Cinetics has done it again! Founder Justin Jensen and colleagues are Kickstarting CineMoco...

"...a compact motor controlled dolly and slider for video and timelapse photography. [...] The modular system delivers camera moves ranging from dolly shots to motor controlled timelapse, and you can carry it on your back."

Check it out and back them!

Participatory Chinatown ~ Gaming-as-Planning!

Thanks to new MIT Media Lab student Erhardt Graeff for pointing me to Emerson Professor Eric Gordon and colleagues and their work on Participatory Chinatown...

"...a 3-D immersive game designed to be part of the master planning process for Boston's Chinatown. [...] you'll then be tasked with considering the future of the neighborhood by walking through and commenting on proposed development sites. Every one of your comments and decisions will be shared with real life decision-makers."

Everyday ~ Noah Kalina self-photos 2000-2012...

Kottke spots Noah Kalina's 4,514 self-portraits, one taken Everyday from January 11, 2000 to June 30, 2012. It is, he says...

"A Work in Progress"

Understanding MIT ~ Creativity Hubs & Ecologies

My colleague Bob Simha and I are hosting our Understanding MIT seminar again this Fall 2012 every Tuesday afternoon 4-6pm starting next week September 11th to survey research universities and how they work, with the Institute as our live-case study. Each week, we invite a different senior academic, administrative, and trustee leader of MIT to share with us what they do to help the Institute stay vital in the short, medium, and long term -- and ask what we can do to be pro-active in improving MIT as well.

This is part of my larger action-research agenda on understanding creativity hubs and innovation ecosystems.

MIT Neurotechnology Ventures ~ Minds+Money

My MIT colleague Ed Boyden and I (with Rutledge Ellis-Behnke in Germany) are again hosting our Neurotechnology Ventures class this Fall at the Media Lab starting Thursday afternoon 6 September 2012 from 2-4pm. This course is all about envisioning, planning, and building ventures -- both entrepreneurial startups and intrapreneurial product-lines or business units -- to bring neuroengineering innovations to the world.

Compelling venture themes include Neuroimaging, Neuromarketing, Neurology/Psychiatry Screening & Diagnosis, Mood & Behavioral Influencing, Rehabilitation, Neurosurgery, Neuropharmacology, Brain Stimulation, Prosthetics, Sensory and Motor Augmentation, Regenerative Neuromedicine, Learning, Memory & Cognitive Influencing, and more.

MIT Development Ventures ~ D-Lab Action 2012

My MIT colleague Alex (Sandy) Pentland and I are again hosting our D-Lab Development Ventures class this Fall 2012 at the Media Lab, this time with special focus on frugal, DIY, and ultraffordable technologies as well as exponential innovations including mobiles, big data, and analytics.

As always, we look forward to the latest new venture concepts our students propose -- in domains ranging from Health & Wellness, Energy & Sustainability, Education & Creativity, Commerce & Financial Services, Civic Engagement and beyond -- and we try to help the most motivated teams and promising ideas actually start and thrive!

Filament Eruption ~ NASA Spots Solar Whiplash!

io9 points to NASA SDO imagery of recent Solar Filament Eruption...

Blue Moon ~ Simon Smith's NASA Photoshot...

NASA APOD spots Blue Moon photo by Simon Smith...

Good time to wink at Neil!

Kuroshio Sea ~ Kids spot Churaumi Aquarium!

Rion Nakaya of The Kid Should See This spots video of Kuroshio Sea main tank at Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium captured by Jon Rawlinson. It's older video at this point but still lovely mesmerizing;-)

Modular Apartments ~ NEAPO's 5-Story Buildup

Finnish modular construction firm NEAPO just shared images of their latest project, a five-story residential apartment building...

"38 apartments with total floor area of 2,508 m² constructed of large modules, the size of the entire apartment. The prefabricated modules as well as the lift shafts are delivered to site as single elements. The building consists of 38 apartments (modules), the largest with a surface area of 73 square meters."

Benguela Railway ~ Angolan Infra History+Today

Moved 2 Monrovia makes a very nice and timely discovery of a vintage colonial-era 1960s promo brochure for the Portuguese-built Benguela Railway from Angola's Lobito port city to the deep interior border with the Congo, complete with background, timetables, passenger and freight photos, and route map...

Disaster Resilience ~ Qantas A380 Engine Blown

Fascinating documentaries on Qantas A380 engine catastrophe... And here's more about the Airbus A380 aeroplane...

Stretchable Electronics ~ MC10's Skin Patches+

Technology Review's David Talbot and Kyanna Sutton write about MC10 Making Stretchable Electronics which can conform to skin...

"Gold electrodes and wires just a few hundred nanometers thick are deposited on silicon wafers by conventional means, then peeled off and applied to stretchable polymers. The serpentine wires elongate when the polymers stretch, either when the balloon inflates in the heart or as the patch moves around on the skin. The electrodes measure electrical impedance to detect the electrical signals in cardiac tissue or moisture levels in the skin. The company is building on lab prototypes made by University of Illinois materials scientist John Rogers, a company cofounder. [...] In addition to its hydration patch, it is working on patches that use sensors to detect heartbeat, respiration, motion, temperature, blood oxygenation, and combinations of these indicators. MC10's skin patches can wirelessly transmit information to a nearby smartphone."

Check out embedded photos by Ken Richardson...

Flat Lens ~ Phased Array of Optical Antennas...

Cool work at Harvard SEAS on making a really Flat Lens...

"Our flat lens opens up a new type of technology,” says principal investigator Federico Capasso, Robert L. Wallace Professor of Applied Physics and Vinton Hayes Senior Research Fellow in Electrical Engineering at SEAS. “We’re presenting a new way of making lenses. Instead of creating phase delays as light propagates through the thickness of the material, you can create an instantaneous phase shift right at the surface of the lens. It’s extremely exciting.” [...] The flat lens eliminates optical aberrations such as the “fish-eye” effect that results from conventional wide-angle lenses. Astigmatism and coma aberrations also do not occur with the flat lens, so the resulting image or signal is completely accurate and does not require any complex corrective techniques. The array of nanoantennas, dubbed a “metasurface,” can be tuned for specific wavelengths of light by simply changing the size, angle, and spacing of the antennas. “In the future we can potentially replace all the bulk components in the majority of optical systems with just flat surfaces,” says lead author Francesco Aieta."

(Thanks to Wired's Jakob Schiller for spotting)

DIY Toy Car ~ Cameroonian Kid Proto-Engineer!

UD spots Recycled Toy Car Made In Cameroon by DIY proto-engineer clever kid! A few more years and he'll be ready for MIT...

Patagonia ~ Lovely Southern Chilean Timelapse

Thanks to Kuriositas for spotting Patagonia timelapse...

"The film was created by Raúl Tomás Granizo, who was raised in Spain but fell in love with Patagonia -- and you can see why. He is the founder of wildglimpses, and is a freelance wildlife filmmaker and nature photographer always looking for the essence of nature. We think he has captured it supremely here!"

Pulse of Fire ~ NASA MODIS Sees Earth Burning!

DailyMail spots NASA MODIS-enabled Earth Observatory visualization of annual Pulse of Fires!

MIT 24/7 ~ Saluting our Essential Operators!

Nice Labor Day salute from MIT to our essential operators who ensure smoothly running campus systems 24/7!

Muscle Music ~ Interactive Old Spice Ad Humor;-)

Stupid funny...