Makerbot Digitizer: Desktop 3D scanner goes on sale

The device takes around 12 minutes to scan a small, simple object

A desktop device that can quickly scan objects so they can be replicated using a 3D printer has gone on sale.

The Makerbot Digitizer, which costs $1,400 (£900), will be shipped to the first buyers in October.
Demand for the machine appeared to overload the company's store when it went on sale on Thursday evening.
The Digitizer is the latest product looking to bring 3D printing to mainstream technology users - but experts are sceptical.

The Digitizer is the latest product looking to bring 3D printing to mainstream technology users - but experts are sceptical.
The machine is designed to allow the replication of objects without any need for the user to learn any 3D modelling software or have any other special expertise.
It works by pointing several lasers at the object and detecting contours in the surface.
It also allows users to upload their 3D designs directly to Thingiverse, a website where 3D designs can be shared.

No hamburgers

The time it takes to scan an object varies, but one demonstration involving a small gnome was said to take around 12 minutes.
"The MakerBot Digitizer is for early adopters, experimenters, and visionaries who want to be pioneers in Desktop 3D Scanning," the company says.
"This includes, but is not limited to, architects, designers, creative hobbyists, educators, and artists."
However, Makerbot has made it clear that the scanner is not suitable for intricate designs and that users should not expect "too much" from the machine.
"Expectations should be realistic," the machine's FAQ page reads. "You will not be able to, for example, scan a hamburger and then eat the digital design."
It adds that objects that are shiny, reflective, and fuzzy are not well suited to scanning.
Despite the industry's hopes that 3D printing will be hugely popular in the near future, others have dismissed home 3D printing as something of a gimmick.
"Appearances have become completely unhinged from reality when it comes to the mania created in so-called '3D Printing' stocks," warned influential investment analysts Citron Research.

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Omate Truesmart watch secures Kickstarter funds

The Omate Truesmart watch is water-resistant and features a camera on its side

Omate Truesmart - a smartwatch with a built-in five megapixel camera - is set to go into production after hitting its crowdfunding target.

The device raised more than $100,000 (£63,760) of pledges on fundraising site Kickstarter, guaranteeing it will get the cash.
Another watch, Pebble, secured a record $10.2m via the funding site last year.
Omate's achievement comes ahead of the much-anticipated launch of a smartwatch from Samsung.


The South Korean firm has confirmed it is working on the product and has filed patents for possible designs.
It has not announced when it will unveil the product, but its next scheduled event is at Berlin's Ifa consumer tech show in a fortnight's time.
Working prototypes Unlike many of the smartwatches already on the market, Omate says the Truesmart can be fitted with a micro-Sim card to make use of its 3G chip.
This will allow it to make voice calls and send social media messages without having to be paired with a smartphone or tablet - although that is also an option.
Other details announced by New York-based team include:

Omate says its watch will be able to run apps and make voice calls

• Google's Android 4.2.2 operating system will power it, allowing it to run apps including fitness activity trackers
• The touchscreen will be 1.5in (3.9cm)
• It will be water-resistant, allowing it to be worn while swimming, but not if diving
• It will offer GPS location support
• It can be operated via gesture controls
• Its 4 gigabytes of internal storage can be boosted by up to an additional 32GB using a microSD card

One of Omate's three co-founders told the BBC that the project had been in development for one-and-a-half years and that they already had a factory in Shenzhen, China ready to go into production.
"We already have working prototypes, but not the final design," said Nick Yap.
"Most of the functions are there but we still need to add voice and gesture controls.
"There will be a swipe-based touch function and another when you move, like Nintendo's Wii games control. For example you will be able to flick your wrist to show the clock."
He added that his company planned to make samples of the finished product next month and to ship the first watches to customers in October.

Hyetis intends to offer a Swiss-built smartwatch with a 41 megapixel camera

The planned retail price is $299 (£190)
Luxury smartwatch Omate is not the only new firm teasing a camera-equipped smartwatch.
Earlier this month Geneva-based Hyetis announced plans for Crossbow - a product with a 41 megapixel camera in its side.
The developer said that it intended the device to be able to interact with iOS, Android and Windows 8 handsets and added it would cost $1,200.

It said that it intended to ship the product by the end of the year, although one tech journalist has suggested that may be an over-ambitious target.

"This strikes me as a start-up with a big idea," wrote Mike Elgan.

"I doubt they'll ship this year, and it's possible they may never ship. Still, it's an ambitious effort.

Tech consultancy Gartner predicts the global wearable computing market could be worth $10bn by 2016.

However, one of its analysts had doubts about the products being proposed by Omate and Hyetis.
"The whole point about the camera in Google Glass [eyewear] is that you can take a photo just by looking at somebody," said Carolina Milanesi.
"With these watches you'd have to position your hand and extend your arm to take a picture. The idea of including a lens seems like a gimmick and not something that people would want to use in that kind of way.
"But the idea of letting them be used underwater is a big thing because fitness trackers like the Nike Fuelband and the Jawbone Up can't currently go in the swimming pool."

Sell outs?

Pebble - whose smartwatch features an e-paper display to reduce power-use, but no camera - has been the most successful start-up of its kind so far.
The California-based firm revealed in July that it had received about 275,000 pre-orders for its device. The $150 product has since gone on sale at Best Buy stores in the US.

But Ms Milanesi said Gartner expected that it would be more established firms that would ultimately triumph in the sector.
"Pebble has helped kick off the whole idea, but I think for a lot of these companies it's about being bought out eventually or at least selling their assets.
"I think consumers are really looking for something from the key players - such as Samsung, Google and Apple - or maybe one of the established brands that already make watches."

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Ubuntu Edge crowdfunding drive misses target

The 30-day crowdfunding campaign to raise $32m (£20.5m) for the Ubuntu Edge smartphone has failed.

Developer Canonical raised almost $13m from 27,488 funders, surpassing the previous crowdfunding record of more than $10m set by Pebble smartwatches' Kickstarter campaign.

It had wanted to manufacture 40,000 handsets with its free operating system for qualifying backers by next May.
But all pledges will now be returned after it failed to reach its target.

"We realised that it is very difficult to crowdfund for both the development and the production costs together," Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth told the BBC.
"That's why the costs have escalated here. That's a new insight," he added.
Mr Shuttleworth said that in a future campaign Canonical would "try to find a different source for the development costs and have that secured" before launching a crowdfunding campaign to manufacture the handsets.
Chose 'fixed funding' Programs on the proposed smartphone would have looked like standard mobile apps when the handset was being used as a standalone device.
But they would have changed their user interfaces to that of a desktop application when the phone was docked with a monitor, Canonical had said.
In addition, the operating system could support apps written in the HTML5 web language, albeit at slower speeds.
The Ubuntu Edge campaign raised nearly $3.4m in the first 24 hours.
But the pace of fundraising slowed after that.
The campaign had offered the first 5,000 backers the chance to buy one of the new smartphones for $600. After that, contributors would have had to pay $830 for their smartphone.
Later in the campaign, Canonical reportedly introduced additional pricing tiers - of $625, $675, $695 and $725.
In an interview with the BBC last week, Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth said many lessons had been learned over the course of the campaign, and he would rethink the strategy of offering a discounted price to early funders.
Canonical chose to use Indiegogo's "fixed funding" campaign, under the terms of which all the money pledged must be returned if the campaign does not reach its funding goal.
The company could have selected a "flexible funding" campaign and kept most of the funds, after paying a higher percentage to Indiegogo for missing the target.
Canonical planned to make money by charging for support and training for Ubuntu and taking a share of online sales from handset makers who adopted its software.
Indiegogo's current funding record of $1,665,380 was set by Scandu Scout - a scheme to build a Star Trek-style Tricorder medical scanning device.
Other independent fundraising campaigns have attracted larger sums, such as Cloud Imperium Games, which has gathered more than $15m by soliciting contributions directly on its website. It raised more than $2m in a separate campaign on Kickstarter.

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VIDEO: Close-up: UK's solar car race entry

 Every year teams of engineering students from all over the world flock to Australia to take part in the World Solar Challenge - a gruelling trek from Darwin to Adelaide in cars designed to be as efficient as possible at using the sun's energy.
Technology reporter Dave Lee went to meet Cambridge University Eco Racing - the only British-based team in the competition - to learn about their distinctly unorthodox design.

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Sony hints at cheaper PS4 games

Interview by Jonathan Blake, words by Jimmy Blake
Newsbeat reporters 

Gamers got their first glimpse of the new consoles at the E3 conference in June

 Sony has suggested its focus on independent developers will give customers a choice of cheaper games on the PlayStation 4. 
 
Speaking exclusively to Newsbeat, UK Managing Director Fergal Gara said the company expected to see "price points diversify hugely".
Sony's rival Microsoft has announced a new programme to attract independent developers.
One UK studio said the companies are now on "level terms" with indies.
Sony say they are committed to independent game developers.
The firm's rivals Microsoft recently said they planned to make it easier for smaller companies to publish titles for their new console, XBox One.
They've been criticised in the past for focusing on big budget games.

Fergal Gara Managing director, PlayStation UK and Ireland

Both companies have been giving more details about their consoles at the GamesCom conference in Germany.
"We've listened to game developers," said Fergal Gara. "We've tried to create a platform that serves their needs. So being quick, easy and economical to develop for.
"That opens up a whole new stream of talent that allows brand new games and exciting new experiences to come to our platforms."
After being criticised for its attitude to independent developers Microsoft is making it easier for gamers to build and publish Xbox One games.
They announced a new indie development model at GamesCom.
UK Marketing director of Xbox, Harvey Eagle, said: "The way it will work is that you become a registered developer, you submit a game information form and you ship your game, it's that simple.



"We've got a long history of working with indie developers over the years on [XBox] 360 and titles like Minecraft have been a huge smash which comes from that community."
Sony announced the PS4 would go on sale on 29 November. There is no release date yet for the Xbox One but it's due to go on sale before Christmas.
They also revealed that they had taken more than one million pre-orders for the new PlayStation.
The PS4 is priced at £349, £80 cheaper than the XBox One at £429. Games for the consoles are priced at around £60.

I'm sold! I was going to go over to PS4 from the 360. Fifa is the only game I want to play and now I'm sticking to Xbox

Dan Rogers Gamer

Microsoft is hoping to tempt gamers to the XBox One by offering Fifa 14 for free.
Harvey Eagle said they had "seen great excitement following the announcements".
Fergal Gara claims Sony's commitment to independent developers will help make gaming more affordable.
"We will have the enormous blockbusters," he said. "Great examples will be Kill Zone: Shadow Fall or Watch Dogs for example on release.
"But there are also free-to-play models such as the Little Big Planet hub that we announced and the indie titles fill a great gap in between for me.
"So it's not just about £40, 50, 60 or nothing - it's about free-to-play, right up to those blockbuster experiences."

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Will we ever want to have sex with robots?

Is this really the future of human-robot relations?

 Meet Roxxxy, the sex robot with a triple XXX. Depending on your view, "she" is either at the cutting edge of the human-robot interface, or a modern reflection on some men's difficulties in relating to real-life partners.

While sex aids are nothing new, what makes Roxxxy different is that "we've taken artificial intelligence" and "combined it with a human form," says creator Douglas Hines.
Of course, humanoid robots have been the stuff of science fiction for decades - ever since Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis, or Isaac Asimov's I, Robot stories.

The reality is somewhat more clunky.

Walking robots currently have little commercial value - they are expensive and are prone to falling over if they are placed on anything other than a flat surface.
One of the best of the bunch is Japan's all singing and dancing female robot, HRP-4C, from the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST).
The main drawback of this type of robot is that they have a very short battery life - they only last for about 20 minutes.
It is enough for a rather impressive dancing routine from HRP-4C says the team, but for little else.
"One practical application for biped humanoid robots is the entertainment industry," says AIST "provided the robots can move very realistically like humans."
Loving the robot In 2007, the British chess player and artificial intelligence (AI) expert David Levy said in his book, Love and Sex with Robots, we would be having sex with robots in five years - and be capable of falling in love with them within 40 years.
His argument is based on improvements in robotic engineering and computer programming - and extrapolating from the income generated by the porn industry each year.

Such robots would be a "terrific service" for mankind, he argued.  
As for Roxxxy, she weighs in at 60lb (27kg) is 5ft 7in (1.70m) high and comes with a variety of hair colours, moveable limbs and 'lifelike' skin.
She is the brainchild of electrical engineer and computer scientist Douglas Hines, the founder of TC Systems and True Companion, who formerly worked in the artificial intelligence lab at AT&T Bell Laboratories.
He says the sex robot developed from his firm's line of healthcare robots, which were designed to look after elderly or infirm patients.
"Our skill-set is based on commercial and military robotics and what we did is we looked for an opportunity in the marketplace to apply that technology.
"One very obvious market is healthcare - but there's a less-known which is gaining more and more momentum which is the sex industry."

'Exciting time'

Mr Hines says his aim in developing his robot's artificial intelligence engine, was to go beyond a simple sex aid and to provide companionship.

"The life experience with a partner goes beyond that - and that's really what we've gone for," he told BBC World Service's Business Daily programme.

However, no matter how well-programmed a robot may be, it is still a machine, and he agrees a plastic and metal humanoid is not capable of replacing the real thing - yet.
"We are getting closer and closer. The gap between what is robotic and mechanical and what's human-like will minimise, so it's a very exciting time."
Roxxxy costs up to $9,000 (£5,700) and there is also a male version called Rocky. Later this year the company plans a more advanced model which it says will be mobile and autonomous.
At the heart of our relationships with such machines, fictional or not, is the question of what it means to be human and to relate to others.
While no machine, however well-engineered, can ever feel empathy - something which defines us humans - it might be able to simulate it well enough to allow us to play along and treat it as if it were a sentient being.
Novelty appeal

Dancing queen - HRP-4C - is the one on the right

But will there ever be more than a fetish or novelty appeal in such robots?
In a survey earlier this year, one-in-11 people - some 9% - told a YouGov poll for the Huffington Post in the US that they would be prepared to have sex with a robot.
That works out at over 25 million Americans - which could translate into a lot of robot sales.
Yet critics caution that we should not be too quick to embrace robots like Roxxxy.
"It is time to reconsider the premise that a robot is better than nothing," says Sherry Turkle, psychologist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"Because, if you are trying to solve the problem of care and companionship with a robot, you are not trying to solve it with the people you need to solve it with - friends, family, community."
Not promising "We may think we are only making robots," she told this year's meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, "but really we are re-making human values and connections.
"The pretend self of a robot calls forth the pretend self of a person performing for it," she said.
And that, she says is not promising "for adults trying to live authentically and navigate life's real, human problems".

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Steve Ballmer: Microsoft's Mr Monkey Boy

Four words will come to sum up Steve Ballmer's 33 years at Microsoft: "I love this company."

They were shouted breathlessly during a now infamous presentation in 2000 in which a whooping Ballmer bounded across the stage to gee up Microsoft's employees. The clip - which saw him dubbed Mr Monkey Boy - went viral.
In another performance, he perspired his way through a chant of "developers, developers, developers".
As he announced his retirement, the 57-year-old reaffirmed his passion via a company-wide email. "I love this company," he said again - but now the debate has turned to whether his company loved him.
Born in Detroit, Ballmer studied mathematics and economics at Harvard, where he became close friends with Bill Gates, Microsoft's founder.

In 1980, Gates hired Ballmer to be the company's first business manager at a time when the firm had just 29 people on its payroll.

He held various different roles at the company over the years, including senior vice-president of sales and support, senior vice-president of systems software and vice-president of marketing.
And in 2000, he took the top job, succeeding Gates as chief executive.
'Email machine' But the "vision", as the company put it, remained very firmly with Gates - Ballmer's legacy in technology will not be as a Steve Jobs-like innovator, but instead a salesman.
Indeed, it was a slew of bad calls that critics say have been Ballmer's weakness throughout his tenure.
"Microsoft has had a lost decade, missing every big thing that has come along," said Dan Lyons, former technology editor at Business Week.
"When you look at the string of opportunities that Microsoft has let slip through its fingers, it's incredible."
His time at Microsoft has been peppered with foot-in-mouth moments. In 2007, in the days after Apple co-founder Steve Jobs' presentation unveiling the iPhone, Ballmer dismissed the device as being "not a very good email machine" which wouldn't appeal to businesses because of its lack of a keyboard. "We've got great Windows mobile devices," he said.
Today, Apple and Google-powered phones dominate the smartphone market - while the Windows Phone is growing but minuscule in comparison.
And in other areas - such as tablets - the company has been equally slow off the mark.
According to the most recent figures, Microsoft has made just £562m from sales of the Surface, its tablet launched last year with great aplomb. Last month, it wrote down $900m worth of unsold stock.
"We built a few more devices than we could sell," Ballmer admitted.
Xbox success Yet there have been several success stories during his time at the company.
As chief executive, he nurtured the entertainment and devices division into a major arm of the business - the Xbox being one of the standout successes to come out of the company in recent years.
In his own words, it is Microsoft's work with PCs that Ballmer regards as his greatest achievement. But it is a perceived over-reliance on this part of the business that often irked investors.
Other industry leaders believe that Ballmer's oversight saw Microsoft become a company that depended on people needing its products, rather than wanting them.
"He pretty much oversaw the decline of Microsoft," says Jim McKelvey, co-founder of mobile payments firm Square.
"Microsoft continues to slide into more irrelevance. It's a big company, there's a lot of change that's needed there.
"I think they were very dependent on a monopolistic control. When the internet made operating systems less relevant, Microsoft could no longer force mediocre products on people."
Under Ballmer's leadership, Microsoft tripled its revenues and doubled profits. He himself will leave with a personal wealth estimated to be $15.2bn.
Investors, meanwhile, are optimistic - shares in the firm jumped by 9% at the news.

Can smartphones clean your house?

 
Uber's on-demand car service has inspired a raft of companies looking to disrupt the cleaning services industry

On-demand smartphone technology has altered the way consumers book everything from cars to hotels. A spate of technologically-savvy companies now wants to use those same methods to transform the way we clean.

Adora Cheung and her brother, Aaron, used to spend marathon coding sessions in Aaron's San Francisco apartment, frantically working to build the next hot start-up. Finally, one day Adora looked around her - and realised the place was a disaster.

"We were basically coding 24/7 and his place just became a mess - I mean, he's a bachelor," she says with a laugh.

Unwilling to sacrifice precious work time to vacuum his floors, the two set about trying to find a cleaner - a process that they very quickly discovered was harder than it seemed.

"The cleaners would never answer the phone or the quotes would be really high - and then once we did find cleaners, it was hard to schedule," she says.

So the siblings started Homejoy in July 2012. It's a simple website that looks to better connect cleaners with customers, and to streamline the logistics of finding, vetting, pricing, and scheduling a home-cleaning.

 
Homejoy founders Aaron and Adora Cheung initially cleaned customers' homes themselves

At first, Ms Cheung and her brother cleaned customers' homes themselves. But demand quickly outstripped the capabilities of the Cheung siblings, and now the company has expanded to 26 cities in just six months, contracting with hundreds of cleaners along the way.

"Cleaning has always been seen as a luxury business so only the top 1%-2% of Americans can use it," says Ms Cheung.

"The fact is it doesn't have to be that way."

Ready for disruption

Continue reading the main story

Amount spent on residential cleaning in the US

• 2006: $9.87bn
• 2011: $11.25bn
• 2016 (projected): $14.32bn

Source: The Freedonia Group

In the US, the home cleaning market has always been remarkably fragmented.

According to research firm the Freedonia Group, in 2011 there were more than 600,000 cleaning businesses - a reflection of the fact that many are small companies with only a handful of employees.

While 600,000 firms might seem a lot, the reality is that as more and more US households become two-income families and as the population ages, the demand for cleaning services is growing - and the industry is barely keeping up with demand.

The Freedonia Group estimates that by 2016, the market for residential cleaning services in the US will grow to $14.3bn (£9.15bn, €10.70bn), up from $11.2bn (£7.20bn, €8.40bn) in 2011.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

The way people have bought cleaning services hasn't changed in such a long time”

Oisin Hanrahan Handybook

Homejoy and its competitors all make the same basic point: the cleaning services industry is one of the last areas untouched by the shift towards on-demand ordering, and as a growing industry, it's ripe for disruption.

"The way people have bought cleaning services hasn't changed in such a long time," says Oisin Hanrahan, the founder of Handybook, a company that operates in eight US cities which allows customers to schedule everything from cleaning to IKEA bookshelf assembly.

"If you think of all the other services that have evolved - Amazon for online shopping, Uber for car services, the way you buy hotel services, it makes no sense that there's not a logical way for us to buy these home services."

Mr Hanrahan argues that while the issue of trust may have kept innovators away from the space - if you think about it, booking a total stranger to come into your house sight unseen is rather scary - as people have become more comfortable with on-demand services like AirBnB and Uber, the mental barriers have started to come down.

Now, "the market is absolutely enormous and at the moment we're only scratching the tip of the surface," says Mr Hanrahan.

Uber for maids

Handybook's Oisin Hanrahan thinks young professionals no longer possess cleaning and handiwork skills of earlier generations

But how better to scratch that tip? Enter the techies.

Take Homejoy, which, like its competitors, uses a complicated algorithm to match cleaners with customers.

Homejoy scours Yelp reviews, posts Craigslist ads, and uses word of mouth to find cleaners who might be self-employed or eager to leave their corporate job, which can often pay as little as $9 (£5.75, €6.70) an hour.

It then tests, vets, and trains cleaners, who list their availability and their geographical preference.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

You spend something like 6% to 9% of your life cleaning - that's a crazy amount of time that potentially could be better utilized for something else”

Steve Gutentag GetMaid

All this information is entered into a database, so that when a Homejoy customer goes to open the app on their phone to demand a cleaning, the system can maximise the cleaner's time for the day and ensure that every customer can find a cleaner who fits in with their schedule.

"We're able to perfectly match supply and demand," says Ms Cheung, who argues that Homejoy's system benefits not just consumers - who get a lower price and more convenient scheduling - but cleaners as well, who often earn more than the industry average and can better plan their commutes.

"We're part of this trend where you can use technology to make things super-efficient in ways that you've never been able to before," says Ms Cheung.

Home economics Homejoy, Handybook, Exec, and others all say that while improving the efficiency of the cleaning services industry was their initial goal, their ambitions are larger: to make cleaning a basic service and to change, however slightly, the housework equation.

"You spend something like 6% to 9% of your life cleaning - that's a crazy amount of time that potentially could be better utilized for something else," says Steve Gutentag, the founder of New York City based GetMaid which aims to outdo its competitors by allowing customers to book a cleaner who will arrive within ninety minutes.

It might sound grandiose but in a way it makes sense.

 

Homejoy recruits cleaners using word of mouth and by placing ads on sites like Craigslist.

Economists have long known that there is a cost to housework. According to one study, if the value of housework had been included in GDP calculations in 2010, it would have added 26%.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that on average, Americans spend 22 hours a week all on this unpaid, uncounted work.

"I'm not gonna put lipstick on the pig - there're definitely people who appreciate these services because it's just more convenient," says Mr Gutentag.

But for those of us looking for just that little extra justification to go easy on the dusting - and the price point to indulge - a little economic rebalancing doesn't hurt.

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