A few weeks back, Mayor Menino visited Artaic’s Boston Marine Industrial Park headquarters to present a $50,000 loan from CreateBoston. The video above features a demonstration of the mosaic-by-robots company’s technology.
MHT first talked to Artaic in December 2008.
By Galen Moore
As many as 400 tech-minded students, bankers, lawyers, investors and entrepreneurs took to Boston’s streets in the drizzle last Friday afternoon in the Quest for Innovation.
The fundraiser and community-building exercise sent just over 100 teams scrambling through the city on a technology-themed scavenger hunt powered by Boston-based Scvngr Inc.
The event’s beneficiaries include four youth-focused entrepreneurial non-profits: NECINA Youth Entrepreneurship Service, TiE Young Entrepreneurs, the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship’s New England chapter, and Youth CITIES. A fifth beneficiary will be chosen by the winning team, which hailed from the DartBoston young entrepreneurs’ group.
“You had entrepreneurs, VCs and lawyers competing against each other — and then you had entrepreneurs, VCs and lawyers on the same team,” said Seth Priebatsch, the founder and CEO of Scvngr. “On a rainy afternoon, you might have expected a low turnout from a different group.”
Angel investor and Avid Technology founder Bill Warner shot a video of the event, and several participants posted photos to the photo-sharing service Flickr, which someone turned into a music video using the photo compiling service Animoto.
Priebatsch said Scvngr’s metrics showed an unusually high rate of participation in the activity. The company develops mobile-phone-powered scavenger hunts for events. All the teams did well on the questions, and the top 10 were all within 10 points of one another — a metric that shows all the teams got involved, he said. “Numerically speaking, everyone had a great time.”
Highland Capital Partners’ Michael Gaiss initiated the planning for the sold-out event. Sponsors included Deloitte, Foley Hoag LLP, Mass High Tech, Microsoft’s New England Research and Development Center, the Museum of Science, Polachi Access Executive Search, Silicon Valley Bank, the UMass Venture Development Center, Wilmer Hale and Xconomy.
Testimony of Terry Mcguire Final 10-6-09
Polaris partner Terry McGuire testified yesterday before chairman Barney Frank and the U.S. House Financial Services Committee. As chairman of the National Venture Capital Association, McGuire (testimony above) tried to persuade lawmakers to keep the venture capital industry from having to register with the SEC.
Closer to home, Spark Capital’s Bijan Sabet is scheduled to testify at the State House today against the use of non-compete As of about 1 pm, he hadn’t testified yet, but wasn’t alone in his opinion. After the jump, read Sabet’s written testimony. (more…)
The Globe takes a look at some recent developments in the 50-year old field of personal rapid transit — which is like the T, except you get your own, automated trolley, on-demand. So I guess it’s like the T only in that they both run on tracks.
The Globe story neglects to mention Belmont-based startup Rail-Pod Inc., which is looking to deploy the technology in tourist areas. I checked in with Rail-Pod co-founder Brendan English via e-mail, and he said the startup is developing its vehicle, and will be at the Rail-Volution conference at the Westin Boston Waterfront at the end of the month.
Last spring, MHT took a look at some of the nonlethal weapons being made by New England tech firms, including Raytheon’s Active Denial System and Foster-Miller’s “ballistic net.”
Billerica-based LED-maker Luminus Devices supplies the LEDs necessary to make a “puke light,” which is exactly what it sounds like. At the time, Luminus CTO and 2008 MHT All-Star Alexei Erchak joked that making weaponized flashlights was actually his original vision for the company.
Now, thanks to the Series of Tubes, you can build your own flashlight which, when you shine it at a person’s face, will make that person vomit. What could go wrong?
Incidentally, a sound cannon also briefly mentioned in that MHT story, made by California-based American Technology Corp. has been used on American citizens for the first time. Pittsburgh police fired “shrill beeps” at protesters trying to march on the G20 summit last week. After the jump, subject yourself to the same shrill beeps via YouTube.
By Julie Donnelly
Worcester-based synthetic vaccine company Antigen Express Inc. is hard at work making the next generation of vaccines against both avian and swine flu.
The company wasn’t among the five pharmaceutical giants to be approved to produce the H1N1 vaccine that will be distributed throughout the U.S. in the next few weeks. In fact, Antigen Express is still waiting for the FDA to approve protocols for clinical trials of its H1N1 vaccine — company President Eric von Hofe said he expects those conversations to happen in the next few weeks. Von Hofe said the company is currently doing trials in Lebanon and is seeking approval to do clinical trials from European Union regulators as well.
The FDA has never approved a synthetic vaccine for prophylactic use. But von Hofe said that he thinks the regulator is starting to warm up to the novel technology.
“Back when there was the H5N1 (avian flu) scare, the FDA was very skeptical of synthetic vaccines. But then they tried to make a vaccine out of eggs and they just couldn’t do it because it was so toxic. Now I think they may be more open new technologies,” von Hofe said.
Antigen Express uses a combination of three peptides, which are strands of linked amino acids, to develop its vaccines. Von Hofe said the company discovered that one of the peptides the company is using for its H5N1 vaccine, also in development, is from a part of the virus that is identical with H1N1. So now the company has to identify the other two peptides for the combination, get approval from U.S. and/or EU regulators to start trials and do the trials. This whole process should take more than a year, which means the company won’t be a player in this year’s fight against pandemic flu.
… Unless things go horribly, horribly wrong. Von Hofe said that if the swine flu mutates halfway through the season, and the vaccines being manufactured now are ineffective, the government could push up the time lines for other vaccines in development, including, perhaps, Antigen Express’ vaccine.
Boston Dynamics, the Waltham-based maker of military robots that are incidentally quite entertaining, should really look into monetizing its test videos. Gizmodo posts videos of the Little Dog, the Scrappy-Doo of the headless robotic dog set.
Designed by Katie Byl of Harvard’s Microrobotics (typing that word almost shut my brain down) Lab, which has also developed robotic flies.
Boston Dynamics has the Big Dog and the Precision Urban Hopper in the can, and announced in April it’s developing a humanoid robot. This should be good.
After the jump, watch another video of the Little Dog operate in view of an organic version of a robotic dog made from biological materials, who does not seem happy about the whole situation. (more…)
I’m surprised this didn’t happen sooner — the Smoking Gun has posted the plea agreement struck between the Commonwealth and a guy who worked at a Springfield Postal Service processing center, who had been making Netflix DVDs disappear from the mail. The former post office worker had reportedly lifted more than 3,000 DVDs, which added up to more than $36,000; the Smoking Gun says he can expect to do about a year in jail.
Last week, Netflix gave a group of coders $1 million for improving their recommendation algorithm by at least 10 percent.
Back in 2007, the Globe toured California-based Netflix’ ultra-secret, unmarked processing center in Northborough, where identically dressed employees sort copy after copy of Crash, the Departed and the Bucket List every day. But all the secrecy and algorithms and matching t-shirts in the world won’t help you once envelope leaves the building.
Harvard/Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory photo
NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory is a telescope orbiting the earth and controlled from a building within walking distance of Paddy’s Lunch. Despite that, the Harvard-run satellite is tracking down X-ray emissions exploded stars, galaxy clusters and the areas surrounding black holes.
Harvard’s Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, which operates the telescope, has released detailed images and video of the Milky Way. The image above is actually a mosaic of 88 separate “pictures” taken by the telescope. Check out the observatory web site for all kind of interactive animations and high-resolution images.
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