Publisher pulling plug on division's last remaining Facebook titles; SimCity Social, The Sims Social, Pet Society, more closing by mid-June

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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Mike Reiners is the co-founder and CEO of NOMAD.

As of February 2013, 4.5 million iPads had been purchased for use in the U.S. K-12 academic environment. One million of these purchases happened in Q2 of 2012 alone, which represented more than the total number of K-12 iPads purchased up to that point. The growth rate is staggering, and doesn’t show signs of slowing anytime soon. But are our schools ready for the iSwarm?

They think they are. Nearly every day, you see another story about a school making a large iPad purchase. First, it was schools testing the waters by buying a class set of 30 to be usable by multiple teachers or assigned to one tech-forward pilot classroom. That quickly became full school rollouts, 1:1 iPad programs, private school recruiting tools, and even rolling kindergarten implementations. But keeping up with the Joneses does not constitute preparedness.

Now, this might seem like a self-defeating premise coming from a guy who makes his living building and selling apps, most of them with some kind of educational bent. Don’t get me wrong: I’d love it if even 10 percent of iPad-active elementary classrooms used my company’s apps, AWEsum! or AWEsum Plus, to build our children’s core abstract reasoning skills.

Furthermore, be assured that I don’t have anything against the iPad as a product, nor am I opposed to its use in schools. I’m simply imploring that we resist our very American tendency to rush to action, at least long enough to consider the following points:

1. Teaching requires planning. And planning requires time. Poll 100 teachers, and 99 of them will tell you they don’t have the time available to do their jobs as well as they’d like. (And save the cracks about “done at 3 pm” and “3 months vacation”; between undercompensated supervision of extracurricular activities, faculty committees, late nights spent correcting papers and summers of planning & fundraising, the average teacher makes less than $15/hour.)

When schools/districts are considering adopting a new textbook series, the curriculum committee may meet for a year or more to evaluate, decide, plan, and implement. The iPad isn’t just new curriculum for one subject; it’s an entirely new educational content delivery method. Yet we’re making snap purchase decisions, often coming from the administration level where the political/PR splash value is greatest, and not spending the time necessary to evaluate the overwhelming library of apps, iTunes U content, and iBooks.

Consider this: the most common iPad implementation plan (term used loosely) that I’ve encountered is to give each teacher a $X-per-student annual app budget, with virtually no oversight or coordinated collaboration.

2. Consider where we’re spending our education dollars. I have a number of good friends who were teachers, but have left the classroom for corporate positions. Oftentimes, these positions still have some connection to academic roots (e.g. educational sales, textbook curriculum development, or education consulting), but they carry two to three times the salary. Many of these friends were considered among the best teachers at their schools, and this is the point: We’re losing our best teachers.

For all the money that’s been spent on education reform in this country, the solution is not going to come from Santa showing up with a bag full of shiny new hardware, nor from tax referenda that rescue a few sports and activities. You want the best students? Make sure they’re being taught by the best.

Let’s say a high school of 1,000 students decides to purchase an iPad for each of its students. That’s a minimum of a half-million-dollar investment. Suppose instead the school invested $100,000 apiece in salary and benefits to retain (or recruit!) five outstanding teachers, who probably love the art of teaching, as they weigh their options and their future ability to support a family.

Think of what happens to an NFL football team and its surrounding fan base when it signs five high-powered free agents, all of whom are instantly among the team’s top ten overall players. Isn’t the successful education of our children at least as important?

3. The iPad is primarily a consumption device. A major buzzword in US education circles for the past few years has been STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics). We lament that we are losing so many prominent U.S. tech jobs to foreign-born scientists, engineers, and programmers. There is essentially universal agreement that we need to invest heavily in STEM education, particularly from a human resource standpoint. Well, guess what: Handing a student an iPad won’t inspire them to build it or program it. You’d be better off giving them a graphing calculator or a cheap computer and teaching them to code.

If you think the device is inspirational in and of itself, walk into a school that has a BYOD policy, then lift any content or usage restrictions and see how students spend their time. A few exceptional kids might surprise you, but for the most part, you’ll find a gaggle of Facebook and Twitter posts and some really high Temple Run scores.

Teach a man to fish, eh? Give a kid an app and you inspire her for a day; teach a kid to make apps and you inspire her for a lifetime.

4. Our students should be mobile multilingual. Android device sales now outpace iOS device sales by 8 percentage points in our country, and the gap is growing. Who decided Apple should be the sole delivery platform? Personally, I’ve been a Mac-vs.-PC agnostic for years, and I currently own an Android phone, Android tablet, and iPad as my everyday mobile devices.

We all know that the Apple ecosystem is designed to work well within itself, and struggles (intentionally?) to support multi-platform users. We’re potentially doing our children a great disservice by forcing them into mastery of only one OS environment and its support of learning structures – and I’d say the same thing about Android if it were the beneficiary of a crowd mentality artificial monopoly.

In summary, let’s think about what we’re doing. Blind, quick-trigger actions in education, especially expensive and invasive ones, have historically disastrous results. What’s needed now is a lot of conversation across sectors, a lot of focused training, and a commitment to keeping the teacher-student educational relationship at the forefront.

Mike Reiners is the co-founder and CEO of NOMAD, an app development startup based in St. Paul, Minnesota. He is also a 17-year veteran high school mathematics teacher (still actively teaching). Mike lives in the Twin Cities with his wife and three young beta testers.

Photo credit: Northern Ireland Executive/Flickr

Filed under: Entrepreneur, Lifestyle, Mobile, VentureBeat

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And why are we still talking about its adventure games over 15 years later? ...

knowyourmeme




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By now, you’ve probably realized why you’re Facebook news feed has filled up with pink and red profile pictures.

This week, Facebook users were urged to substitute their profile picture for a simple graphic designed by the Human Rights Campaign. The goal is to demonstrate widespread support for marriage equality with two high-profile cases getting underway in the Supreme Court.

Facebook released data today showing that millions of people changed their profile pictures on Tuesday March 26 in the hours after the campaign was launched. Roughly 2.7 million people updated their profile photo — 120 percent more than usual. Facebook’s data science team also discovered:

• Roughly 3.5 percent of 30-year-old Facebook users updated their profiles in response to the events surrounding the HRC campaign.
• A total of about four million users out of an estimated 160 to 180 million users in the U.S. changed their profile pictures last Tuesday.
• On average, 2.3 percent more self-reported female users updated their profile photo, compared to 2.1 percent more self-reported males.
• Washtenaw County — home of Ann Arbor, Michigan and the University of Michigan — topped the list for the county where most people changed their profile picture. (In general, college neighborhoods showed the biggest spike in profile changes).
• Tech towns ranked high: San Francisco and San Mateo County also saw a jump in profile changes.

The bigger question is whether social media-led campaigns like these actually work. Will it make a real difference in D.C?

“We’re seeing a ripple effect take shape — not only in local communities but across the country,” said Kate Maeder, a new media and political consultant with Storefront Political Media. Influencers like Martha Stewart gave a nod to the movement by posting a picture of a red velvet cake, prompting online communities to debate the issue.

However, Meader said the Supreme Court won’t be swayed by a frenzied social media campaign. “They aren’t tied to the election cycle and are there to uphold the constitution, so the rules are different,” Maeder explained. 

Facebook’s data science researcher Eytan Bakshy is optimistic about the campaign’s efficacy. In a blog post, he wrote:

For a long time, when people stood up for a cause and weren’t all physically standing shoulder to shoulder, the size of their impact wasn’t immediately apparent. But today, we can see the spread of an idea online in greater detail than ever before. That’s data well worth finding.

With all the data that Facebook has gathered on grassroots support for marriage equality, advocacy groups have an opportunity to drum up new membership. But it remains to be seen whether the HRC will takes advantage of this outpouring of social media activity.

Will the HRC’s social media campaign make a real difference? Let us know what you think in the comments section below…

Filed under: VentureBeat

In what’s surely a win for lovers of long-form journalism (or needlessly long, rant-filled blog posts), Amazon has just rolled out a new “Send to Kindle” button for online publications to embed into their websites.

Previously, to gain this kind of functionality you needed to install a browser plug-in to send articles or links to your Kindle device, which was a bit clunky at times but got the job done. Now all you need to do is click the “send to” button on the website to transfer over those articles — both to your Kindle devices or any of the Kindle Apps. Clicking the “Kindle” button on a website will prompt you to sign in to your Amazon account and then ask you to determine which devices you want to read the article on. (As shown in the screenshot, I can choose between sending it to my iPad or Nexus 7.  Kindle Fires and Kindle Readers should also pop up in the list of options for those that own them.)

The button itself was built specifically for websites and WordPress blogs, and a handful of sites are already using it, including The Washington Post, BoingBoing, and Time. Amazon is allowing  publishers some degree of customization over how the button looks, probably so that it fits with the overall design.

While this move is wonderful for readers, I have to wonder what the long-term implications will be for allowing people to strip out all the advertising from the website in order to rip the content onto the device of their choice. Of course, there are already a ton of other “reader” features that are automatically built into browsers, devices, and applications, so this may be a moot point. (There’s also something good to be said for publications that make it easier for their audience to interact with products/content.)

Do you plan on using the “Send to Kindle” button more often? Let us know in the comment section below.

Filed under: Business, Media, Mobile

If you’ve got $40K burning a hole in your pocket and a hankering for a truly massive TV equipped with so ultimate a  high definition resolution that there’s almost no content available to honestly satisfy all of those lovely 8,294,400 pixels, Samsung’s got a TV for you.

It’s the 85-inch S9 UHD TV — official designation UN85S9 – a monster TV first unveiled at CES this January, and available for pre-order at Samsung.com in “late March.” Which would make it pretty bloody soon.

Samsung says the UN85S9 is not just big, it’s also good, with an extremely high contrast ratio (unreleased), deep blacks, and “vivacious whites.” I am not making this up. And in case you can’t access any of the world’s tiny library of ultra high-def content, Samsung says the TV upconverts high-def feeds to ultra high-def, also known as 4K.

The UN85S9 is thin for its size, and appears to float in its easel-like frame. Samsung has also equipped it with 120 watts of 2.2 sound, which it says is six times better than the average TV.

But this isn’t the biggest TV Samsung will release this year.

Samsung has not yet released pricing for the S9′s big brother, a 110″ monster. One can only assume that if the UN85S9 is in Mini Cooper territory, the big guy is in Mercedes territory.

Toshiba also announced an 85″ 4K TV at CES. Pricing and availability have not been released, however.

Filed under: Business, Gadgets, Lifestyle, VentureBeat

Crimestoppers U.K. is soliciting the public to help them crack down on grow-ops by mailing marijuana-scented postcards to more than 200,000 homes. [View the story "Scratch and sniff cannabis cards mailed to U.K. residents" on Storify]

Scratch and sniff cannabis cards mailed to U.K. residents

Storified by CBC News Community· Wed, Mar 20 2013 13:19:05

Wordpress

Chances are, you know what marijuana looks like -- or could at least find out pretty fast, thanks to the internet, but could you recognize the smell of a full out grow-op ifyou walked past one on your way to work?

 

Crimestoppers U.K. is trying to train citizens todo just that by mailing marijuana-scented postcards to more than 200,000 homes across England.

It is their hope that by teaching less pot-savvy people toidentify what a neighbourhood "cannabis farm" smells like, the public can help policecrack down on the rising number of illegal grow-ops in the country.

Bbcimg

The cards feature a white "scratch and sniff" patch that,when activated, is said to release the scent of cannabis during it's growingstate -- which is different than the scent of pot being smoked.

 

They also list eight signs that a cannabis farm may begrowing nearby, encouraging residents to look out for things like "constantlycovered or blacked out windows," "visitors at unsociable hours" and "lots ofcables." #weedthesigns of cannabis cultivation | Crimestoppers UKCannabis farms grow more than just drugs Is there one near you? Cannabis farms grow violence and organised crime Cannabis isn't the harml...

While the organization assures that theirscratch-and-sniff cards contain no THC and can't get a person high, some arepoking fun at the fact that Crimestoppers sent them "drugs" in the mail.

Jonesing for a hit? Crimestoppers got ya covered. Collect the set! #weedthesigns #cannabis (CC @Glinner ) http://pic.twitter.com/3WFGKNXwdq¬InvitedInterlocutor Thought I might listen to some Hendrix when I get my cannabis scratch and sniff card.johnbolch The Naw scratch and sniff cannabis cards. gave me the giggles just reading it. http://pic.twitter.com/DzxBFUcWB7connie scott If you're growing weed, hang a neighbourhood watch Cannabis farm scratch & sniff card in the hallway as cover!#WeedTheSignsHomerthestoner Scratch and sniff cannabis cards being handed out by crimestoppers. I wonder who'll be the first to try smoke one :D http://pic.twitter.com/8L7v121SWUHenry Moyo The cannabis scratch and sniff card smells just like my postman.boothby graffoe According to Crimestoppers, there was a 15 per cent rise in the number ofcannabis farms found in U.K. homes between 2011 and 2012.

 

"Cannabis isn't the harmless drug people oftenthink it is," reads the charity's website. "Organised crime gangs that grow it can bring crime, violence andintimidation into a neighbourhood. Cannabis farms are not good for anyone."

Did u know that serious organised criminals are endangering lives by turning houses into cannabis farms. What's next door 2 u? #weedthesignsCrimestoppers Many appear to disagree with Crimestoppers' stance, however, and are using the group's own "#weedthesigns" hashtag to let their Twitter followers know.
Cannabis prohibition is an unjust infringement on human rights and personal freedoms #weedthesigns #crimestoppersMr den @CrimestoppersUK Crime, violence & intimidation coming from gangs growing cannabis is a result of prohibition, not cannabis #weedthesignsSambo Here #weedthesigns fans! This is the #scratchandsniff #cannabis card they forgot to publish #breakthetaboo #britain http://pic.twitter.com/JbyxFt9s2GRegulate Cannabis UK So can we safely say the the new hashtag from @CrimestoppersUK #weedthesigns has been effective in raising awareness about #cannabis? Yup.Regulate Cannabis UK What are your thoughts? Would you recognize the smell of a marijuana grow-up if you walked past one?

Do you think that enlisting the public to help police find grow ops is a good idea? Share your thoughts below.

Patrick Stewart's upcoming wedding is set to be officiated by his longtime friend and X-Men costar Sir Ian McKellen. That's right, Magneto is marrying Professor X. Gandalf is marrying Picard. [View the story "Gandalf to officiate Captain Picard's wedding" on Storify]

Gandalf to officiate Captain Picard's wedding

Storified by CBC News Community· Wed, Mar 20 2013 19:43:12

#meme I Want To Go: Professor X/Captain Picard To Marry Long Time Girlfriend, Magneto/Gandalf To Officiate Wedding http://twitpic.com/cczcnxCodices of Meme Sorry / you're welcome sci-fi superfans; the ever-so-dreamy Captain Jean Luc Picard (actor Patrick Stewart) will soon be marrying his jazz-singer fiance Sunny Ozell, taking him off the market until death they do part.

But there's a silver-haired lining to the situation; Stewart's wedding ceremony is set to be officiated by his longtime friend and X-Men costar Sir Ian McKellen.

That's right, Magneto is marrying Professor X. Gandalf is marrying Picard.
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McKellen, 73, broke the news this weekend during an appearance on The Jonathan Ross Show.

"I'm going to marry Patrick," stated the British actor when the topic of X-Men: Days of Future Past came up. "How else do you put that? I'm going to officiate at his wedding."

Sir Ian McKellen On The Jonathan Ross Show Full Interview (16-3-13).swiss2007 No date or location has been leaked, but McKellen did reveal that Stewart, 72, and Ozell, 35, wouldn't be the first couple he's joined in matrimony.

"I've done it once before with two guys having a civil partnership. I was crying my eyes out," he said.

News of the upcoming ceremony inspired similar reactions across the web.
So apparently Ian McKellen will officiate Patrick Stewart's wedding http://bit.ly/15Y9E8l (via @TheMarySue) http://pic.twitter.com/kEKUMae6YsCatie Leary Ian McKellen is officiating Patrick Stewart's wedding. I'm crying. #xmen #JonathanRossJo Geaney I just found out Patrick Stewart is getting married BUT Ian McKellen is officiating the wedding so it's a rollercoaster of emotion todaysarah james In case you haven't heard, @IanMcKellen will be officiating @SirPatStew's wedding. AWESOME: http://j.mp/WVeoeythinkgeek Many took the opportunity to geek out over the fact that the Gandalf the Grey from the Lord of the Rings films (McKellen) and Star Trek's Captain Jean Luc Picard (Stewart) hang out, and that the Marvel's Magneto (McKellen) and Professor X (Stewart) are not, in fact, mortal enemies, but good friends in real life.
Just read that Gandalf/Magneto will be conducting Captain Picard's wedding. Nerd heaven.DMHardc Sir Ian McKellen (Magneto!) is officiating the wedding of Patrick Stewart (Prof X!) and I just died of amazing. http://popwatch.ew.com/2013/03/18/ian-mckellen-patrick-stewart-wedding/#more-243811 ...monica hesse I am so happy Captain Picard and Gandalf are friends. sniff.Wakawaka WineReviews Ian McKellen will officiate Patrick Stewart's wedding. Worf must've been busy. http://filmdrunk.uproxx.com/2013/03/ian-mckellen-officiating-patrick-stewarts-weddingVince Mancini Pandawhale Others were more interested in booking McKellen for their own ceremonies -- or scoring an invite to the wedding.
I will get married purely to try and get Ian McKellen to officiate. Seriously. OMG and if Patrick Stewart was there, too... ERMAHGERD!Shell Shocked Gandalf is going to officiate at Jean Luc Picard's wedding! I need an invite #jonathanrossIzzie Rivers Holy fandom. Ian McKellen is performing Patrick Stewart's wedding. I wonder if Ian's available for vow renewals too.http://www.startrek.com/article/gandalf-to-marry-picard-and-his-fianceeRichelle Mead PATRICK STEWART (CAPTAIN PICARD) IS GETTING MARRIED AND IAN MCKELLEN (GANDALF) IS THE OFFICIANT #omg #iwanttogo ...Amanda Jarman That Gandalf will officiate at the wedding of Captain Jean-Luc Picard, we give you thanks and praise, O Lord. http://entertainment.time.com/2013/03/19/sir-ian-mckellen-to-marry-sir-patrick-stewart-no-not-like-that/Unvirtuous Abbey In an appropriately nerdy twist, the Taiwanese animation company NMA has given the Ian McKellen / Patrick Stewart wedding their signature wacky CGI treatment:

Magneto to "marry" Professor Xnmatv

kraftfuttermischwerk  reddit

This is one new home where you are guaranteed not to have a problem with noisy neighbours - a converted 17th-century chapel, complete with graveyard. Residents in St Dials, Cwmbran, South Wales, have dubbed the ghoulish property the 'tomb with a view' after it was put up for sale at just £8,000. Planning permission has been granted to turn the historic building into a bijou one-bedroom home, complete with the graveyard where up to 50 people are buried. Read more: 
dailymail

This morning, cleaning-and-errands service Exec is spreading its message of free time and idle hands to four new cities: Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York City.

The company just started busting out of its Bay Area home last month with a cleaning service launch in San Diego; it also has a presence in Seattle now.

“In order to scale, the main thing we’ve done in the past several months is focus on building our logistics technology behind the scenes to provide the easiest possible customer experience,” Exec (and Justin.tv) founder Justin Kan told VentureBeat in a brief email.

“A lot of what we do is figure out what our operations people are doing on a day-to-day basis every week and then build tools and tech to automate those processes (and then repeat, week after week). That’s let us scale from one to three to seven cities without adding additional core team members in SF.”

To promote the launches, Exec is announcing a sort of insane-sounding contest: Whichever city gets the most new cleaning visits by next Wednesday gets all its cleanings free of charge. You can track the action at a special site set up for that purpose.

The startup also recently launched an iOS app for booking cleaning appointments while on the go; moreover, it gave its website a design overhaul last month, thanks to former Microsoftie Karen Cheng.

Filed under: VentureBeat

The latest Kickstarter darling comes from an unlikely source: teen television.

After years of rumors and waiting, fans of the detective series Veronica Mars got their wish today with the launch of a Kickstarter to revive the series as a film. Fans ended up raising $1 million on the crowdfunding site in around four hours, beating out the previous record-holder, the PC game Planescape: Torment, by two hours.

Veronica Mars starred Kristen Bell as a teenage detective who solved mysteries far outside the scope of a typical high school student. Think Dashiell Hammett meets The O.C. The show ran for three seasons, but fans have been clamoring for more ever since it was taken off the air.

By reaching $1 million, the project is now halfway toward completing its $2 million goal. Warner Bros. still owns the rights to the series, but creator Rob Thomas notes that the studio will come aboard if there’s enough interest from fans.

“Kristen and I met with the Warner Bros. brass, and they agreed to allow us to take this shot,” Thomas wrote on Kickstarter. “They were extremely cool about it, as a matter of fact. Their reaction was, if you can show there’s enough fan interest to warrant a movie, we’re on board. So this is it. This is our shot. I believe it’s the only one we’ve got. It’s nerve-wracking.”

Breaking Kickstarter records so quickly is exactly the sort of fan response Warner Bros. needs (and it didn’t even have to lift a finger!). I’m a huge fan of the show, and I’ve also been covering news about this potential movie for years now, so it’s good to see something really finally begin to take shape. (Full disclosure: I’ve also backed the project with probably more funds than is wise.)

The project’s success also bodes well for the future of film production and distribution. Television producers can now tap directly into their fandom to fund projects, even if they’re still shackled to a huge Hollywood studio when it comes to ownership rights. It’s also a big deal for fans of cult TV shows: We saw Universal revive Firefly for the film Serenity, and Netflix brought back Arrested development from the dead, but now there’s yet another way to bring their beloved shows back to life.

Update: The Veronica Mars movie reached its goal of $2 million in just 10 hours. Needless to say, fans are taking this well.

Hallelujah! It's a green light my friends. I love you all, but particularly the donors among you. #Veronicamars .@IMKristenBell—
Rob Thomas (@RobThomas) March 14, 2013

Production is scheduled to begin this summer, with a release in early 2014.

Filed under: Media, VentureBeat

T-shirts are not in limited supply on the internet. Throw a virtual rock, and you’ll hit five custom T-shirt building sites, including algorithmic ones with millions of mostly-nonsensical messages.

So why start yet another T-shirt website? Apparently, to make T-shirt buying a social event, or even a cause.

“TeePublic is a Kickstarter for t-shirts,” BustedTee general manager Adam Schwartz told me on the phone today. “I think when people are backing Kickstarter campaigns, they’re often backing a cause … who’s behind it and what they’re doing it. There’s something powerful about feeling like you’re connecting with and supporting the artist.”

Source: John Koetsier

Yup, a Kickstarter for t-shirts

Schwartz and Josh Abramson, who founded Vimeo as well as CollegeHumor, the hilarious but raunchy site for, yes, college humor, are launching TeePublic out of public beta tomorrow. And while it would appear that gaining traction in this extremely competitive market is a very tall order indeed, they have differentiation and, frankly, a plausible plan.

The plan?

Find the best and most interesting artists, designers, and internet celebrities. Feature any t-shirt from those or any other designers for 30 days. Keep only the ones that sell at least 30 copies. Feature those winners on the site more prominently. And then … pay designers $5 for each shirt sold.

It’s about quality and crowdsourced curation, Schwartz said, complete with the now-familiar crowdfunding standbys like how many people are “funding” the shirt, how many days are left in the campaign, and a progress bar. But it’s also about building a platform for designers to actually make a living.

“Very obviously there are a lot of sites out there,” he told me on the phone this afternoon. “But the thing we saw is that even if you can get a shirt or two up on Threadless, it’s a nice coup, but it’s not sustainable. We’re trying to attract a certain level of designer, trying to attract quality.”

And … trying to make designers more than a few bucks for a latte on the weekend.

Abramson sold BustedTee — along with CollegeHumor and Vimeo — Barry Diller’s InterActive Corp in 2006. But IAC is about “billion-dollar companies,” Schwartz says, and media companies at that. So Abramson bought BustedTee back from IAC in the summer of 2011. The site has been growing “at a nice rate” ever since, but it wasn’t the place or the platform for a “kickstarter” for T-shirts.

“The T-shirt market is really crowded, and filled with low-quality content,” Schwartz says. “We’re finding stuff we think is awesome.”

photo credit: Paul Mayne via photopin cc

Filed under: Business, Entrepreneur, OffBeat, Social, VentureBeat

3D-printed gun site Defense Distributed has obtained a federal license to manufacture and sell firearms, the organization announced Saturday on Facebook.

The site has a mission of making all sorts of 3D-printable objects — including rifle receivers, plastic Glock handguns, bullet casings, and even grenades — more accessible than ever. While the site is certainly controversial, there is something admirable about pushing the limits of what 3D printing can mean. Defense Distributed head Cody Wilson is positioning his organization as the anti-Makerbot because he seems willing to go down the 3D-printing rabbit hole while MakerBot founder Bre Pettis is not.

“When this guy decided that ‘radically open’ meant not so radical, not so open, DEFCAD was born,” Wilson says over an image of Bre Pettis’s face in a recent video (see below).

But now Defense Distributed has taken a major step toward legitimacy with approval by the United States government to manufacture and sell guns. Wilson submitted an application to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms in October 2012 to become an official gun maker and dealer. It took about six months for the organization to finally get approval.

Defense Distributed posted a photo of its new federal firearms license on its Facebook page:

While this is a big step, Wilson told Ars Technica recently that he will not start making and selling guns quite yet. He will wait until he gets an “add-on” to his license, which will let Defense Distributed manufacture a broader range of weapons. If approved, the add-on would let the organization manufacture automatic rifles.

Texas-based Defense Distributed has seen a lot of traction in the past few months. Its DEFCAD site has attracted more than 250,000 downloads to date and now has more than 3,000 visitors per hour.

The most recent Defense Distributed video gives an overview of the organization and its upcoming DEFCAD search engine for 3D-printable parts. Take a look below.

Top photo via Defense Distributed/YouTube

Filed under: OffBeat

Active Mind Technology is seeking to remake the game of golf with Game Golf, which measures a golfer’s stats and makes them available for you to analyze and share with your friends. It is one more example of how technology can provide us with way too much information about ourselves as well as how far golf has to go arrive in the 21st century.

The wearable product tracks the location of your shots, the distance the ball traveled, and which club you used. Then it syncs that data to the cloud, and you can look at the results on your smartphone and then share them with your friends. The device is another example of the craze for the “quantified self,” a movement that advocates self-knowledge through numbers.

“Golf is a category that needs to be shaken up,” said John McGuire, the chief executive of Active Mind Technology, in an interview with VentureBeat. “It needs something new.”

There is plenty of sensor technology being applied to analyzing golf swings and helping golfers — that’s nothing new. But this device has a lot going for it. The product was designed by Yves Béhar, the creator of cool tech gear like the Jambox wireless speaker and the upcoming Ouya game console. It’s also being promoted and backed by pro golfers Graeme McDowell and Lee Westwood.

Tapping crowdfunding, Game Golf is raising up to $125,000 for the project over the next 30 days on Indiegogo. Game Golf uses accelerometers, gyroscopes, global navigation system (GPS), and near-field communications to track everything in a seamless fashion. It does not, however, measure the velocity of your swing and how good it is.

Perhaps the most important thing it tells you is the distance that you hit the ball with each club — a piece of data that most golfers never know with any precision, said John McGuire, chief executive and founder of Active Mind Technology, the company that makes the Game Golf device, in an interview with VentureBeat.

“We are doing what Nike FuelBand does for running,” McGuire said. “We want to change the sporting experience for amateur players.”

The company plans to launch the product in this summer. You can preorder it now.

“Game Golf not only gives everyone access to crucial data to dramatically improve your golf game and handicap, but it also makes playing more motivating, rewarding, social, and fun,” said McDowell, an investor and winner of the 2010 U.S. Open. “The product is extremely intuitive, doesn’t disrupt your game and is essential for any golfer looking to understand their game better, knock down their handicap, give themselves a competitive edge and compete with their friends and family across the globe.”

McDowell and Westwood have worn the devices in tournaments and are offering feedback to Active Mind Technology.

Béhar’s company, Fuseproject, designed the device and its different parts to be wearable. You can attach the main device to your belt, and then you screw the small red plugs into the top of your club grips. Those red plugs are NFC-enabled, so when you put them near the main device, it records which club you are using. Then it figures out how far you hit the ball as you pull out the next club to line up your next shot.

The device can upload the data via a universal serial bus (USB) to your computer. Or it can load the data via a wireless Bluetooth connection. It syncs the data to the cloud. On the iPhone, the app tracks, analyzes, and shares the data. Beyond shot distance, the app tells you your percentage of balls hit in the fairway, the greens you hit in regulation, and your putting performance.

The social part of the app is interesting. McDowell said that he can use the technology to share his best strokes with followers on Twitter and Facebook. A player can also participate in contests such as the “longest drive” on a hole. If you follow a friend, you’ll find out as soon as the player finished a round and what they scored. Friends can compete against each other long distance.

“The design of the Game Golf app and product has been closely integrated: a beautiful and dynamic presentation of play data, easy and fun ways to share, nondisruptive hardware and experience,” said Béhar, who is an investor in Active Mind Technology and is CEO of Fuseproject. “The design and user interface is crafted to deliver a 21st century experience of the game.”

The device can track two full rounds of tracking on one battery charge. Over time, Active Mind Technology plans to use the technology to measure and “gamify” other sports, McGuire said. Other sports that could benefit from the technology include soccer, cycling, swimming, and biking.

McGuire founded the company in 2010 when he moved from Ireland to San Francisco. The company has 20 employees, including some at a development center in Galway, Ireland. In addition to Behar and McDowell, investors include Chamath Paliphaitya, Jerry Yang, Ed Colligan, Hosain Rahman, Seagate Technology, ACT Ventures, Enterprise Equity, Cross-link Partners, Moroda Ventures, and 11-time world surf champion Kelly Slater.

McGuire has a background in software and behavioral technology as it applies to professional athletes. His aim is to help everyone improve their results by changing behavior. McGuire said his company has raised a seed round already and is in the midst of raising more money.

Filed under: Big Data, Gadgets, Mobile, VentureBeat

Google had its first $50 billion year in 2012. But with its massive investments in mobile, someday it might make that much just on the little plastic and metal devices we carry in our pockets.

In fact, digital ad company WordStream has counted no fewer than 21 ways that Google is monetizing mobile, from good-old-fashioned Google AdWords to Groupon-light Offers to augmented reality assistant Google Goggles and, someday, Google Glass.

Google even wants to replace your dead-cow wallet with a shiny digital one. But if you won’t buy what you want with Google Wallet, it hopes to at least guide you to your next purchase with Google Shopper.

Here’s the full list, in visual form, along with WordStream’s perception of how well Google is using its mobile tools to generate mobile money:

photo credit: Louish Pixel via photopin cc

Filed under: Business, Cloud, Gadgets, Lifestyle, Mobile, Top stories, VentureBeat We're holding our third annual VentureBeat Mobile Summit conference this April 1-2 in Sausalito, Calif. The invitation-only event gathers the top 180 executives from all segments of the mobile ecosystem to develop a blueprint for the industry’s growth in the coming year. For more information and to request an invitation, click here.

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Hard work may pay off, but there's a big difference between tackling a difficult task and putting in a lot of hours. Cal Newport, assistant professor at Georgetown University, decided to look at the work habits of talented people and found that busier wasn't better. In fact, it was much worse than limited, focused work. More »

Mexican police have confiscated a homemade cannon that shoots cylinders of marijuana over a border fence and into California, the Associated Press reports.

The Mexicali, Mexico drug dealers did some innovative work to make the cannon function out of the bed of a truck. They used plastic pipe as a shaft and a crude metal tank for the base. Compressed air from the engine of a car created the pressure needed in the metal tank to shoot the cannon. (See a picture of the actual cannon here.)

This isn’t the first time such an incident has occurred. U.S. Border Patrol agents found similar canisters that were launched over the border into Arizona in December. More than 30 cans of marijuana were found at that time, and evidence suggested a “pneumatic-powered cannon” with a carbon-dioxide tank was used to launch them.

The cylinders, in this new case, were packed full of weed and weighed as much as 30 pounds. That means the improvised cannon had some impressive power.

All we can say is … that’s one groovy cannon, baby.

Weed cannon illustration by Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat

Filed under: VentureBeat

The Internet may be home to an endless sweep of distractions, memes, and cat pictures, but it’s also really small.

So claims a recent research paper by Hungarian physicist Albert-László Barabási, who says Internet users are only 19 clicks away from any of the estimated 14 billion web pages online.

Using a simulated model of the web, Barabási determined that though the Internet is massive, search engines, aggregators, and indexes keep it tiny. Just like Kevin Bacon links the stars of Hollywood, Google links the pages of the web.

That interconnectedness persists at scale, too, which means that no matter how big the web gets, it will essentially remain the same size.

But what Barabási’s research really shows is that companies like Google and Facebook are succeeding in their missions to connect the world. Google’s mission, as it explains it, is ”to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” which is exactly what it’s doing.

Facebook’s is a permutation of the same theme: “Facebook’s mission is to make the world more open and connected,” the company says. Same goes for Twitter, at least as of January 2011: “Our goal is to instantly connect people everywhere to what is most meaningful to them.”

Universal, unencumbered connectedness is the mission behind just about all major Internet companies nowadays. Everyone wants to be Kevin Bacon.

Filed under: OffBeat

For all the constant chatter about gold, I had never seen the real thing in such vast amounts - the Bank of England's gold vault in a Wimp.com video. The scene is so weirdly banal. The weirdness is only accentuated by the incoherent  explanation of the reason that the BOE keeps gold.

Google Glass got one step closer to reality yesterday with Google expanding its preorders. Now it also looks like the connected glasses are going to get more fashionable, with spectacles startup Warby Parker reportedly in talks to help style the device.

The New York Times reports that Google is currently negotiating with Warby Parker to make frames that will be a bit less geeky than what the device is currently peddling. Warby Parker is a hot e-commerce startup known for its stylish frames, so it could help make the product more palatable to people who aren’t tech enthusiasts.

Ideally, a Warby Parker line of Google Glass specs could be a popular device for the right price. Google Glass is sort of like having a smartphone on your face, with the ability to record and share what you are seeing and potentially display information over your eyes that you might want or need. Google showed off how versatile Glass can be last June, jumping out of an airplane and streaming the experience to a live audience.

Google reportedly plans to start selling Glass to the public some time later in 2013.

Check out the latest Google Glass video below to get a better feel for the experience it could provide.

Google Glass photo via Google

Filed under: Gadgets