Scvngr founder Seth Priebatsch scavenges for a WiFi signal on what could be the first iPad on Mt. Washington.
By Rodney H. Brown
In a news world filled with endless stories about Apple Inc.’s new iPad tablet device, here’s one you probably haven’t heard – the alleged first use of an iPad at the top of New Hampshire’s Mt. Washington.
Seth Priebatsch, founder and ‘chief ninja’ of the location-based gaming technology platform company Scvngr Inc., sent in a picture of the chief ninja himself sitting on the top of Mt. Washington this weekend with his iPad in hand. Always prepared, Priebatsch knew he wouldn’t get a WiFi signal up there – and the 3G cellular versions of the iPad aren’t out yet – so he brought along a Sprint Overdrive mobile hotspot so his iPad could also arguably be the first to surf the web on the tallest mountain in New England.
After getting on some post-hiking web surfing (and knowing him, some Scvngr work), Priebatsch then “skied down Tuckermans Ravine with the skis on my feet and the iPad in my backpack. I’ve got some scratches, but the iPad is flawless.”
So what does this tell us? The iPad doesn’t get altitude sickness. Being at the top of the tallest mountain on the Eastern Seaboard, which has just about every type of radio tower on it, gets you at least five bars on your cell device. Preibatsch is fit (have you hiked up Tucks – and past it to the summit – recently?). And geeks never want to be far from their latest toy.
No word, though, on whether or not Priebatsch was actually running a scavenger hunt while up there. Probably not – trying to stop and search for clues while schussing down Tucks can be hazardous to your health.
Tweet this: kids addicted to social networking still do well in school.
A study of more than 1,100 University of New Hampshire Students by its Whittemore School of Business showed there is no link between heavy use of Twitter, Facebook or any other social media Web site and their grades. Some 63 percent of heavy users of social media, defined by UNH as spending more than 61 minutes per day on such sites, received straight As or As and Bs for a semester, compared to 65 percent of light users, or ones that use social medial less than 31 minutes per day.
Poor students also tend to be poor students, even without spending time on YouTube or MySpace. Some 37 percent of heavy users got Bs and lower in their classes, compared with 35 percent of light users.
The findings shouldn’t surprise most techies — collegiate distractions are not unique to the Internet age, and one’s Facebook addiction is another’s PBR vice. Yet gadgetry does not necessarily make people any smarter either. Only 26 percent of students said they use social media for educational reasons. Tweeting exam answers to a classmate doesn’t count.
The city of Boston’s iPhone app, is available for download today. The email archiving pothole-and-whatnot-reporting app allows residents to send the city service requests, including photos and location information.
Mayor Menino is holding a 2 p.m. press conference to announce the app’s availability with Bill Oates, the city’s CIO; Nigel Jacob, the mayor’s emerging technology adviser; and Dave Mitchell, founder of Nashua, N.H.-based software company Connected Bits, which developed the app.
60 Minutes took a look at New Hampshire Inventor Dean Kamen’s latest invention, a prosthetic arm developed by his company, DEKA Research & Development, with a four-fingered hand with an opposable thumb.
MHT first wrote about the arm in 2007. DEKA created the prosthetic with help from Holliston-based Liberating Technologies Inc., and funding from DARPA’s $100 million Revolutionizing Prosthetics project.
The robotic arm is powered by a lithium battery and equipped with multiple microprocessors, sensors and haptics technology. The prosthetic is designed to move and function similar to a real arm and hand that can grasp bottles and lighter objects.
Users control the arm — which is designed to be able to curl weights of up to 20 pounds — with sensors in their shoes and a joystick they can either move with their shoulder muscles or remaining portions of their natural arm.
Last month, MIT researcher Hugh Herr — who lost both of his legs below the knee to frostbite at age 17 — landed $20 million for from General Catalyst and WFD Ventures for his startup iWalk, which is developing robotic ankle and foot prosthetics.
In today’s Finance Roundup, a bootstrapping group meets in Cambridge, a New Hampshire incubator gets funding from an incubator incubator, and Philips buys Teletrol.
A new networking group for bootstrapping technology startup founders meets for the second time in Cambridge tonight …
“I think there’s a lot of groups out there that are specifically trying to put entrepreneurs in touch with investors and I’m avoiding that route,” Lawlor said. “Ultra Light is really about trying to build a business rather than trying to get investment.”
The Manchester, N.H., company supplies software platforms to allow retailers and other multi-site building owners to control lighting, temperature and other energy intensive aspects of a building. Founded in 1985, the company employs about 37 people in Manchester.
The Amoskeag Business Incubator (ABI) in Manchester, N.H., is a step closer to receiving a $120,000 federal appropriation to help it establish a “soft landings international incubator” designation with the National Business Incubation Association (NBIA) in Athens, Ohio, the incubator announced yesterday. (more…)
In today’s NewsFlash roundup, Northeastern launches a new Master’s, a Sepracor drug trial comes up disappointingly inconclusive, and IMS Health gets a chief privacy officer.
The energy contract runs through May 31, 2010, and moves the Granite State closer to its goal to have 25 percent of its power from renewable sources. ConEdison, based in White Plains, N.Y., said in a statement the wind power comes from developments across the U.S. The energy supplier purchases renewable energy credits that equate to the amount of electricity supplied to the state.
The program is intended to give engineers or technical business majors cross-disciplinary education in technologies that are sustainable and marketable. The program will comprise engineering and capital projects financing and will teach students how to integrate traditional energy systems with alternative systems using solar, wind, hydropower and photovoltaic technologies.
The Connecticut Clean Energy Fund is once again accepting applications to its solar rebate program thanks to $3.1 million in fresh funding.
The rebate program, which provides rebates of up to 40 percent for installation of small solar photovoltaic systems, had been closed since November because all previous funding had been allocated. The new funding comes from a mix of federal stimulus funds and electricity ratepayer charges. (more…)
Woburn-based LogMeIn has gone public –the first New England company to do so since Merrimack, N.H.-based GT Solar raised $500 million in its IPO in July 2008.
The company, which will trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker LOGM, raised $107 million, $21 million more than it expected when it filed in January.
The duck boat parade kicks off at the Four Corners McDonald’s this afternoon.
CrunchGear dropped by Lemelson-MIT’s EurekaFest last week, where one of the projects exhibited was a hybrid car developed by students at Merrimack High School in New Hampshire.
Dean Kamen has developed another coo-coo bananas vehicle — this time a scooter that can burn anything that burns as fuel.
Gizmag reports about the scooter and has renderings:
Built around a fairly conventional battery and electric motor combination to provide the drive to the wheel, something Kamen’s experience with the much-hyped Segway makes relatively easy, the radical part of the design is the inclusion of a Stirling engine to recharge the bike’s battery pack. Based on technology that pre-dates the internal combustion engine by nearly a century, the Stirling engine is closer in concept to a steam engine, using external combustion, and without the need for a fuel that can be injected and burned incredibly fast inside a normal engine’s combustion chamber, it can run on virtually anything that burns – opening the door to easily renewable fuels rather than relying on dwindling fossil fuel supplies.
Although the prototype bike has yet to be shown in public, unlike Kamen’s Stirling-engined car which has been demonstrated several times, Kamen himself is understood to have been using the prototype to zip around his own estate.
In April, Kamen partnered with GM on the PUMA, a a two-wheeled, electric-powered urban transportation vehicle. And of course, Kamen unveiled the Segway Human Transporter in 2001.
In a news world filled with endless stories about Apple Inc.’s new iPad tablet device, here’s one you probably haven’t heard – the alleged first use of an iPad at the top of New Hampshire’s Mt. Washington.
Tweet this: kids addicted to social networking still do well in school.
The city of Boston’s iPhone app, is 
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