Tech Scavenger

The picture above shows a bit how I feel right now - flying high with an uncertain landing!

I quit my job of 13 years to pursue my passion for technology. Today is my first day as an entrepreneur!

Since I wanted to document the process and I still had the blog up, I decided to continue posting here once again.

My old tech scavenger posts slowly diminished but my passion for innovation hasn't. I finally found something that with some elbow grease, some luck, and the right execution could change how organizations all over the world do business! I'm super excited to be a key player in this process. 

Going forward, my goal is to post here regularly, to help people get a moment to moment take on what it is like to start a business. 

Today I was tying up some lose ends from my old job, getting my office situated, old work phone ported, and my first business trip planned to meet with my partner in Maui (I know, rough right?). To say I'm excited is a huge understatement, but man, if I wasn't still a bit tired after putting the kids down tonight!

I had my first noob-businessman embarrassment today as well... I came up with a name for our business that seemed to allude to our overall goals as an organization, etc, AND it appeared to be a name that was not yet taken! Wooh! So I called a lawyer who I wasn't really sure about to begin with, to go ahead and setup an S-Corp with the name I had in mind. He gets back to me immediately and says "uh, Josh, that's taken already. Didn't you check the website?" 

What website? Well apparently the state of california has a convenient site to check business names and it somehow works even better than Bing.

If you're going to start a business in California, remember to check here first! http://kepler.sos.ca.gov/

I haven't been posting for awhile due to a lot of travel at work, general busyness at home, etc. This article brought me back!

For years now scientists have postulated that type of faster than light travel (FTL) could be accomplished with something called and Alcubierre drive. One of the chief problems was that it required a ridiculous amount of energy, more than we could ever hope to produce. 

However, Harold White of NASA says that physicists have found a way to radically reduce the energy requirements involved, allowing for a theoretical speed of 10 times the speed of light to be achieved. 

If he's right, who knows, maybe we'll be traveling to the stars before I'm 100! 

Read the link above for more information. Just to dampen the enthusiasm with a dose of realism... I'm sure there are a lot of issues to be solved other than just the energy problem, but I'm excited to see that at least one of the show stoppers involved in the Alcubierre drives has been solved!

HT: Slashdot

I covered this here a little while, back but with the Curiosity landing and increased interest in space, and some incremental progress being made in terms of developing the 3D printed structure idea, I thought this subject deserved another look. 

3D printed structures allow buildings to be built very quickly by using a print head progressively "print" layers of the building. Also, with the right print head, you can often print your structures using primarily local materials.

The inventor of the product makes what is, I think, a salient point. If you can build with local materials, perhaps tech like could be used to build structures in hostile, remote environments like the Moon and or Mars. 

We are close, very close to seeing cybernetic body modifications going mainstream. Right now it is sort of an underground industry, but I'd like to see clinics and the like for modifications like those described in the article. It won't be long, I'm thinking. I'll be one of the ones who get in line early I'm guessing. 

If you've been asking yourself that question, I heartily recommend this article from Mark Gibbs at Forbes. For years now, admitting you are a cold fusion researcher has been analogous to admitting you study unicorns in the wild. 

I'm not versed enough to say whether or not that view is fair, but Gibbs spends some time going over the status of various Cold Fusion research organizations.

A new coating prevents scar tissue from building up around brain implants, allowing for implants to become much more permanent.

With the controversy building around the prosthetic sprinter, new brain implants, eye implants, etc, you begin to wonder when bio-electric/bio-mechanical improvements will become the norm. 

I won't be surprised if my grand kids are regularly in at the shop for "upgrades". Heck, I suppose I won't be surprised if I'm going in for some sort of robotic enhancements as I get older.

We don't currently produce significant quantities of rare earths, used in Lithium batteries, among other things, here in the United States. Right now, the bulk of the world's production is in China.

A major reason that we no longer mine rare earths here is that one of the by-products, thorium, is slightly radioactive and therefore subject to all sorts of environmental and regulatory hurdles. 

This is great news for consumers. Up till now, Verizon has been charging ~$20 extra a  month if you want to use your phone to provide internet access for your other devices. Up until last year though, you could get around that charge with a third party app.

Anything with lasers gets coverage here... especially when it helps people out! Read the article. The technology behind these implants is simply incredible. The fact that they are simulating nerve impulses to help create an image is mind boggling. 

This particular new test is near and dear to my heart because I love football so much.  

Football comes with some higher than average concussion risks and too many of those can spell problems for ex athletes, especially later in life. Too many times, there is a temptation to ignore concussive symptoms and "just play through it", even though doing so dramatically increases chances for further injury.

There were times when I played where I was tempted ignore my concussion symptoms. Fortunately, I didn't and I still have the use of at least part of my brain!