The Web Innovators Group last night showed a welcome change from the high-tech meetup’s earlier sessions this year. This winter’s WebInno meetings were deluged with job seekers – but last night’s group of about 300 seemed to include more people wearing the event’s trademark “I’m hiring…” name badges, or pitching their own companies in informal networking sessions.
Out of the event’s featured “main dish” presenters, three-year-old Book of Odds Enterprises Inc. was the fan favorite. The company is developing a semantic search site that parses probability statistics from the web and presents them in a format designed for consumers. With a beta invite key, you can find out, for example, that if you live in a city, the odds you average less than six hours’ sleep a night are 1 in 3.5.
The beta site’s search engine seemed to be having trouble this morning: searches for common odds queries – like car accidents, business failures and plane crashes – yield no results.
But the audience at WebInno liked the idea. They voted it tops in a text-message vote, over Batch Book, a Providence-based small business CRM software, and Epernicus, a social network for scientists.
Pawtucket, R.I.-based toy maker Hasbro plans to release an online, Google Maps-ified version of the board game Monopoly, according to the Guardian. Google apparently has a sense of humor about itself, but not enough of one to name the game what everyone will likely end up calling it anyway — “Google Monopoly.”
Monopoly City Streets launches tomorrow. According to reports, players get $3 million to play Monopoly using real streets. Given recent antitrust rumblings in Italy, the game could end up being a good test of the search giant’s algorithm’s ability to parse confusing search terms, or a handy way to divert web traffic from people searching for “Google” and “monopoly.”
And since including Adobe or WordPress would run counter to the spirit of the game — it’s not called Healthy Competition City Streets — the game allows you to design houses and hotels using Google Sketchup, and is releasing news on a Google-hosted Blogger.com blog.
Scott Kirsner takes a look at the BrainGate Company, a Boston and L.A.-based startup working on software that would allow quadriplegics to control computers with their thoughts. The BrainGate Co. was created by former Brown researcher Jeff Stibel from the remnants of Foxborough-based CyberKinetics Neurotechnology Systems.
MIT, Stanford and the Technical University of Munich are working together to develop the Robot Operating System, an open-source OS that could help robots and roboticists collaborate, according to New Scientist:
This desire has its roots in frustration, says Brian Gerkey of the robotics research firm Willow Garage in Menlo Park, California. “People reinvent the wheel over and over and over, doing things that are not at all central to what they’re trying to do.”
For example, if someone is studying object recognition, they want to design better object-recognition algorithms, not write code to control the robot’s wheels. “You know that those things have been done before, probably better,” says Gerkey. But without a common OS, sharing code is nearly impossible.
And from the comments, a possible down side:
Lets hope its 100% virus proof.
Hacked robots could be a problem well before the self aware ones decide to “KILL ALL HUMANS!”
The article is populated by a cast of characters from the New England robotics scene — MIT, UMass Amherst and DigitRobotics’ UBot, Brown researcher Chad Jenkins, and Barrett Technology CEO William Townsend and the company’s WAM arm.
After the jump, watch video of the UBot at the UMass Amherst robotics lab last summer. (more…)
Connecticut newspaper the Day reports General Dynamics Electric Boat is working on a submarine that could travel submerged at about 100 knots, or about four times faster than the current fastest sub.
Electric Boat plans to test a version of the DARPA-funded sub off Rhode Island in early 2010:
The technology, if developed, could revolutionize ocean transportation if it could be adapted to cargo and passenger ships.
The vehicle would travel inside a large gas bubble created in the water, a process known as supercavitation. The bubble reduces drag, since the drag is much lower in air than in water, allowing the vehicle to travel at high speeds.
Supercavitation is not new. The technology has been applied to weapons, but never to transport vehicles, according to DARPA.
The Burlington-based maker of mobile field administration software for the architecture, engineering and construction agencies announced in 2007 that it had closed a $6 million Series A. The second close on that fund brings Vela Systems’ Series A to $10.5 million, and its total funding to at least $11.9 million – including a $1.4 million angel round closed in 2006.
The two-year old Chelmsford company is developing plastic polymers that are tough and have high melting points that can be used as flame retardant additives. FRX officials said these materials do not include halogens like traditional flame retardants, making them safer for the environment. The materials can also be used as stand-alone plastics.
Two new sites — Happn.in, and Venturefizz.com, — are offering themselves up as hubs of all things Boston. One is tracking Beantown’s Twitter memes; the other is mapping the Bay State’s high-tech economy by aggregating job postings, company profiles, news feeds and influential tech blogs in one place. (more…)
The Providence Journal reports that Middletown, R.I.-based electric scooter company Vectrix has laid off 20 workers — almost its whole staff — and may file for bankruptcy.
The last time MHT checked in with the company, it was planning to use fuel cells to power the scooters.
The “fence” will use sensors and S-band radars to track small objects in low earth orbit for situational awareness in space. The first radar system is expected to be delivered in 2015.
DirectoryM Inc.’s 12 founding employees have ponied up another $2 million to expand the online database centralization startup globally — after buying it out from its investors in March 2007 for $6 million.
GreenRay develops solar AC modules with fewer parts and simplified installation as a means of lowering cost. The funding will be applied to the manufacturing, distribution and commercial launch of GreenRay’s solar AC module.
In today’s Finance Roundup, Google Ventures makes its third investment in a MIT$100K startup, Rhode Island issues tech bonds, and Raytheon gets more Patriot missile money.
The state sold about $12.4 million in 2009 Series A bonds to fund IT upgrades to outdated systems. Rhode Island also sold about $11.8 million in Series B bonds to fund energy conservation projects at the University of Rhode Island, including replacing energy equipment such as boilers, heating systems, air conditioning systems and lighting systems.
Click the link above to hear former Globe reporter and current president of Krasner Health Strategies Jeffrey Krasner interviewed local hospital CEOs/bloggers Charlie Baker and Paul Levy at the Convergence Forum in Newport last week.
After the jump, watch video of Genzyme CEO Henri Termeer speaking at the Convergence Forum. (more…)
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