Women are under-represented in the tech sector. Not only that, but they’re underpaid, often passed for promotions and faced with every day sexism. It’s no wonder women are more likely to leave the industry within a year compared to their male counterparts. MORE: Why Aren’t There More Women in Tech? | Next Generation
CREATING EVEN A few seconds of a hand-drawn animation—think old-school Looney Tunes, or earlier Disney films like Snow White—is a painstaking process that requires artists to draw hundreds, if not thousands, of frames. Over the years, advances in digital animation tools have streamlined that process and, in doing so, created a new aesthetic best seen in the faces of Pixar’s canon of characters.
Microsoft Research, along with the University of Hong Kong and the University of Tokyo, just unveiled a proof-of-concept technology that could bring back the charm of older, hand-drawn cartoons, with the speed and fluidity of today’s animation software. “Autocomplete hand-drawn animations” debuted at the Siggraph Asia conference, and it’s an interactive system that watches what the artist draws and then predicts what frame or line might come next. READ MORE: Microsoft’s Dope New Tool Is Like Autocomplete for Drawing | WIRED
For Voss, Wall, and their colleague Nick Haber, a Stanford post-doc, the idea is that their Glass software will help autistic children recognize and understand facial expressions and, through them, emotions. It operates like a game or, as Voss calls it, an “interactive learning experience.” Through the Google Glass eyewear, children are asked to, say, find someone who is happy. When they look at someone who is smiling, the app recognizes this and awards “points.” The system also records what the child does for later review. “You can plot, as they wear the glasses, how they’re improving, where they’re improving,” Wall says. “You can look at video to understand why.” READ MORE: Clinical Trial Will Test if Google Glass Can Help Kids with Autism | WIRED
Researchers in Jaron Lanier’s lab at Microsoft are exploring ways for people to share the experience of mixed reality. READ MORE: Microsoft Researchers Test Multi-Person Mixed Reality | MIT Technology Review
Makerarm is a robotic 3D printer, laser cutter, drawing and ink printer, fabricator and assembly machine all rolled into one that fits on a desktop and promises to make pretty much anything – including an entire laptop (It milled us the TechCrunch logo into a block of wood instead). READ MORE: Makerarm Is An All-In-One Robotic Laser Cutter, 3D Printer, Painter, Fabricator And Assembler | TechCrunch
Video games could be the greatest storytelling medium of our age – if only the worlds of art and technology would stop arguing and take notice…READ MORE: The first great works of digital literature are already being written | Technology | The Guardian
We spend a lot of time on our digital devices and we should be able to express ourselves through them. Unfortunately it’s all beige and brushed aluminum these days. We at Qwerkytoys are about to shake things up with our first product, the Qwerkywriter. Qwerkywriter connects wirelessly via Bluetooth to iPhones, iPads, iMacs, MacPros, Macbooks, Android Tablets Devices, Windows Tablets, and more. MORE: QWERKYWRITER | Typewriter-Inspired Mechanical Keyboard
Related: Qwerkywriter’s retro iPad keyboard is a flawed masterpiece | Engadget
RePhone Lets You Turn Anything Into A Phone | TechCrunch
The project is actually a tiny circuit board with a SIM slot and an optional screen. It also supports Bluetooth. You’re going to want to get the $49 Kit Create, a tiny watch-like system that includes a little case and all the modules. It’s like getting a tiny unlocked cellphone for under $50. This is obviously an experimental board but I checked it out a week ago and it seemed to work fairly well. It includes programming libraries in Arduino IDE, Lua and Javascript that allow you to connect the phone to the web and even IFTTT…
Finally, game cartridges you can plug in to your smart phone: Pico Cassette sends data through the headphone jack using audio signals | ARS Technica
Enter Pico Cassette, a Japanese outfit that says it’s bringing back “the next retro” with tiny game cartridges that plug in to a smartphone’s headphone jack. The tiny “cassettes” (the general Japanese term for cartridges) are built on PlugAir technology, which uses a specially designed iPhone or Android app to draw power from the headphone jack and send data using specially modulated audio signals…
As you browse books and e-books on Amazon.com, the Library Extension checks your library’s online catalog and displays the availability of that item on the same page. If the book is available at your library, you’ll know instantly – with a quick, convenient link to reserve the title! READ MORE: Library Extension – See book availability from your local library while you browse Amazon.com | Library Extension for Chrome
BERLIN — Weston Hankins, an entrepreneur in Germany currently juggling three startups, was complaining to a friend one night about the lack of computer programmers in Berlin, when they stumbled into an idea: What if they trained refugees to code? “It was just so obvious,” said Hankins, who, along with his friend Anne Kjær Riechert, reasoned that coding classes for refugees would not only offset a shortage of technical skills across Europe, but also help kickstart the students’ new lives. “We can help them integrate because we know the startup community and we’re well connected here,” Hankins said. Also, he pointed out, “they need something to do.” READ MORE: Entrepreneurs launch coding school for refugees in Germany | Mashable
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