"See The Heat" - I Love This Tool - Infrared Temperature Probe for under $25 - Awesome Gift That Keeps On Giving

Face it. Guys love tools. There's just nothing better than having the right tool for the job. But things get even better when the right tool for the job can see the invisible and instantly answer mysteries with cold, hard facts. I'm writing this post because this little probe has answered so many questions that it just deserves to move out of its obscure little place on Amazon. For $25, you can put an infrared temperature probe in your pocket and answer an amazing range of questions. Maybe a little late to get it for Christmas. But I'd print a picture and order one for a tool-loving friend or Dad.

It's a really simple device. It has a little infrared sensor on the front that looks like a clear LED. Aim it at something, press the button, and you'll get a reading of that surface. Note that his unit only measures wide surfaces. Fancier units have narrow beam sensors to pick up the temperature of far away items like a vent on the ceiling. This one will just measure the entire ceiling. Or, if you're close to something, it will measure its temperature instantly without having to touch it.

Master Cool Dual Temp (Infrared and Metal Probe)  ($39.19 on Amazon)  This is the one I have. But I hardly ever use the metal probe, so the $24.49 version may be just fine. But the probe looks cool.

Master Cool Infrared Only  ($24.49 on Amazon)

Here's a mystery that the probe answered definitively. Why does our bedroom seem colder than other rooms, when the thermostat in both rooms is set to 69? Let's see. Measure the wall below this electronic switch (this is a hint)

Now measure just above the electronic switch. Hmmm. That's 5 degree increase just due to the switch. And it doesn't matter if its on or off, this is a little X10 transmitter switch that runs all the time.

Sure enough, by the time the wall gets to the thermostat, it's 69 degrees, just like the thermostat is reading.

But the walls are reading about 65 degrees. So our little electronic wall switch has dropped our actual room temperature by 4 degrees by fooling the thermostat into thinking the room is warmer than it is.

Okay, here's another example, in another room that has high ceilings. Is the heat rising in this room, and would a ceiling fan warm it up by pushing that heated air down? Let's measure the wall. It's 64.9

Now aim up at the ceiling. Temperature is 63.9. Will a ceiling fan help? Nope. End of that question. That's what I love about this probe. It answers questions definitively, in seconds.

Today we are having hot water problems. There are two storage tanks and a pump between them. Is the circulating water hot enough? Nope. 89.8 isn't nearly enough. Yes, you can feel the pipe, but it's hard to feel small differences. I just went and measured the pipe again, (about an hour later) and now its 95 degrees. The hot water is recovering, but very slowly. Ah, facts.

Here, I use the metal probe to measure the tepid hot water. (I don't use this metal probe much, but I'll bet it would be great for measuring meat temperature.)

Another favorite - figuring out if radiant floor heat is working. This floor is at 77, and its clearly working. You can touch it and feel that its warm. But other times, the difference between floor heat being on or off is one or two degrees! This probe can see that easily, even if there is a carpet over the floor.

Well, that's a lot of answers for $25, ($39 for the dual probe version) and this little unit has never failed to unlock the mysteries of the infrared world. Reminds me of that old TV show "Just the fact, ma'am." This little probe delivers lots of facts, and lots of satisfaction.

Photos and Kudos: @ScottKirsner, @Dharmesh and Russ Wilcox on Mass High Tech All-Star Awards #MHTallstars

Mass High Tech put on a very elegant awards show tonight, and I was excited to be there and see three people that I know win well-deserved awards. Scott Kirsner won for his work in fostering the local entrepreneurial community. I can attest to that, since over the years, Scott has provided many avenues for meeting people and getting the word out. I've attended the Nantucket Conference many years, and also met people by being a member of the Advisory Board. Scott has held numerous informal networking events, and his articles in the Globe have been a major outlet for high tech innovations. Thanks, Scott, for all you do, and for this well-deserved award.

Being a video guy, I had to be impressed with the super-widescreen and the live feed. It looked beautiful. The A/V company, Cramer, is a sponsor of the event and provided the setup. It was really well done.

Dharmesh Shah won for his work in social media and through his company, Hubspot. I first met Dharmesh at a Scott Kirsner dinner event.

After the event, I was talking to @Dharmesh about his followers on Twitter. He has 13,000 followers, and there are another 22,000 following @Hubspot. It's amazing. When I started Avid in 1987, the only way to be a broadcaster was to be licensed by the FCC. Now everyone can have their own broadcast network through Twitter, blogs, YouTube, and other techniques. And it's all free.

Russ Wilcox is also someone I came to know through (you guessed it) Scott Kirsner. Probably at the Nantucket Conference, but now I can't remember. Russ started E-Ink, and later took back the role of CEO and turned it into a huge success as the underlying display technology of the Kindle and other book readers and cellular devices.

It's funny how far a little neworking goes. I got to know Russ, and then later when I got involved in the MIT-Gordon Engineering Leadership Program, Russ agreed to be a mentor to one of the MIT students in the program. And of course, I wouldn't have known Russ if it weren't for Scott Kirsner.

So there's a moral to the story. A little bit of networking can go a long way. And a LOT of networking can change a region. New England is doing a lot more networking, and doing a better job of it. It's making a big difference. Thanks to Mass High Tech for a great evening and a great event.

It Takes a Blue Toyota To Photograph an Orange Tree: How to Capture an Autumn Maple With Curves from Japan

Every year, the tree near our garage explodes in color. And every year, I'm frustrated that I can't quite capture how amazing it is. But this year, I tried using my Blue Toyota Sienna as a reflector, and I used a borrowed Nikon D3x 24 megapixel full frame digital SLR to capture the beauty.

Finally, the car gave that tree the companion it needed to really show off.

Oh, wait. This isn't the Nikon. It's just the iPhone camera. And the old one at that... a measly 2 Mpixels.

I love how the curves of the hood give action to the tree. Every time I just aim a camera at the amazing tree, it seems to hide its beauty. But I like how these work.

Okay, kinda the same, but I just couldn't choose.

I wonder what causes that ripple effect.

A view on the side window. My neighbor's white picket fence peeks through.

Glorious orange.

Oh, I just think this is so cool. Look at the round window bolt cover. Even it has reflection of the tree.

I Photoshopped in the picket fence cause I thought it looked so cool. Not true. This is just how it came out of the camera. (With a smidge of exposure correction.)

Ah, the secrets of Toyota photography go on. It turns out you can make and ugly tree look great too. This wasn't a setup. Was just how the little iPhone camera saw things.

I love the little red leaf stuck in the rear wiper. Also look at how the distortion in the glass near the base of the wiper makes things look fluid.

And now it all looks very pedestrian and not so exciting, like it always seems to do each year. The blue Toyota is in the driveway on the right. The orange tree is in the foregrounc (you knew that.) And the "ugly tree" that was in the rear window is just behind the minivan. Ah, the orange tree has finally been captured. Maybe this spring I'll use the same technique on the Cherry tree, which also has defied great photography.

Four Artists Re-Examine Nature at Provincetown Art Museum: A Video Using Only iPhone Stills

Elissa and I recently attended the opening of an art exhibit in Provincetown. The exhibit was the creation of Susan Lyman, who spent years making it happen. Elissa has taken classes from one of the artists, Vico Fabbris. We have also bought some of Vico's drawings. Vico reverses extinction. He creates his own plants, and gives them a detailed story. Vico was one of four artists that each took a different look at nature. Nathalie Miebach takes careful measurements of nature and uses it to create new forms. In this exhibit, we see 3D art that is in fact a depiction of the weather over some period of time. Also, she used the weather to create a music score. The piano music during her segment is from that score. And Susan Lyman takes driftwood and carves it into life-like wooden forms.

I hadn't planned on making a video, but this event featured three artists discussing their works, and I decided to take a series of stills with the iPhone, and then edit them together. I wanted to capture the energy and excitement of these artiists. The fourth artist, Michael Mazur, died recently, and the show is dedicated to his memory.

Vico Fabbris 

Art critic and Mazur friend Chris Busa talked about Michael Mazur's work.

Nathalie Miebach and her 3D sculptures representing detailed measurements of nature.

Susan Lyman

Closeup of one of Susan's sculptures.

Photos and Notes from MIT Panel Discussion with Ray Kurzweil: The Democratization of Innovation #mitef

I recently had the pleasure of participating in a discussion with Ray Kurzweil about the democratization of innovation. The event was hosted by the MIT Enterprise Forum, and the discussion was moderated by Simeon Simeonov. This post provides some photos from the event, and some notes. I had a front row seat for the first part of the event, where Ray went through his discussion of exponential processes, and what they mean for humanity. These photos were all taken with an iPhone 3G.

The event began with a few remarks from a long time sponsor of the MIT Enterprise Forum,  Hamilton Brook Smith Reynolds   He mentioned that his firm had just won the largest jury award in history on a patent, $1.67 billion. This was meant to impress, and it did. He then gave a shout-out to the patent lawyer who won the case.

And here she is standing to take a bow. (I didn't get her name)

Sim Simeonov then gave the overview of the program, and introduced Ray Kurzweil.

A photo of the Eniac computer. These were not available by mail order. They had a significant carbon footprint.

I kinda jumped when this picture came up. I wasn't expecting it.

Ray used the reading machine for the blind as bookends for his talk. The original machine was the size of a washing machine. Later, he demonstrated a portable unit that is based on a cell phone.

Ray used a series of graphs plotted on a log scale. Any straight line means an exponential growth pattern. This phone industry graph is interesting because the growth in phone calls in 1890 was astronomical, and then "leveled off" to exponential growth, going from about 40 million per day in 1900 to about 400 billion calls per day in 2000. (as I read the graph from the photo)

This graph shows how many years of use it took for major innovations to be used by 1/4 of the US population. It shows that major innovations are spreading to the broad population in much less time than before.

This slide is Ray's "and then the world changes" slide, but he didn't focus on it heavily. In Ray's books, he postulates that advances in electronics, medical scanning, and nanotechnology are all moving on an inexorable exponential curve, and within 40 years technology will be so advanced that it can actually "host" a brain, and become a carrier and propagator of human spirit. In other words, in 40 years or so, the avalanche of technological change will mean that humans will have a choice of how they wish to propagate their spirit and their species. Personally, I believe that DNA has many, many tricks up its sleeve, and won't reveal nearly enough of its secrets to us in 40 years that we could ever consider replacing it. I believe that 40 years from now, stock in DNA-based creatures will be as strong as ever. At the same time, I also agree with Ray's point that exponential growth in multiple areas will lead to technological change that we can barely imagine today.

This graph was the second of two. I didn't capture the first. But they both show the rate of technological change. Ray plotted major paradigm shifts throughout history, and when they occurred. They came out linear on this log plot, which means it is an exponential curve. He then quietly mentioned that people criticized him that he might have picked the shifts that matched his desired curve. So he put up this slide that plots paradigm shifts from 15 sources. Ah, this was an MIT moment. It's a big lecture hall with blackboards, and here is the graph that seems really, really hard to refute. Edward Tufte would be proud.

This one is a really basic graph. We probably did this in 8th grade. Linear vs. exponential graphs. But I learned something new. Ray pointed out that early on in an exponential process, things can appear to be linear. But if you wait a while, the two curves diverge greatly. His point is that technology is usually on an exponential curve, and you need to plan for that, even in the early days. I don't think I'll forget that point.

Ray then pointed out that each individual technology levels off eventually, but then another technology takes its place. Taken together, the exponential growth continues over decades and centuries.

This is an example of a century of growth, but with many different technologies.

Costs drop exponentially.

Bits shipped grows exponentially. (Luckily they don't require any fixed volume, or we'd be in trouble!)

And here we have the computer beginning to match the power of a human brain, at 10 to the 26th calculations per second. (Well, we don't do that, but our brain architecture is so rich that Ray estimates how many raw cycles are needed to match our mental capabilities.)

Ray spoke for about an hour in a very gentle, persuasive tone. He makes his case step by step, and with lots of interesting data behind his points. As an engineer, though, it was fascinating and frightening at the same time. He basically said that we are going to make so much progress, so quickly, that it won't take long before we're faced with fundamental decisions about what does it mean to be alive. Frankly, I'm hoping it will all take way longer than that. Perhaps technology can be enjoyed, more like art, for centuries to come.

Ray ended his talk with a demonstration of his newest invention, a portable reader for the blind. The white device has a camera in it. He aimed it at the printed page. It captured the photo, recognized the text, and began speaking. This got the audience to applaud.

Then, it became clear that Ray likes to drive his point ALL the way home. He aimed it at some Spanish text. It recognized that and spoke it in Spanish. Then he asked it for an English translation, and it was instantly provided. More applause, and very well deserved. It was a very impressive talk, and a great technology demonstration.

After Ray's talk, Sim led a discussion between me, Ray, and the audience, about the future of technology and innovation. It was a very lively discussion. After the event, the discussion continued at the 4th floor bar in the Stata Center.

The Quest for Innovation: Roving Reporter Interviews With Teams At The Start (#Quest09)


The threat of rain didn't deter hearty New Englanders at Friday's Quest for Innovation. Over 100 teams participated, and they were ready. Watch the video to hear their sophisticated plans for victory. Want to know who won? Check out the Twitter traffic here. Congrats to organizer Michael Gaiss of Highland Capital and CEO Seth Priebatsch of SCVNGR.

Teams received clues  via cell phone.

The crowd at City Hall Plaza grew as the Quest got ready to start.

From Don Dodge/Scott Kirsner and a MassTLC unConference Session: Extensive List of Startup Resources

In his blog post today, Don Dodge provides an extensive list of resources for local startups. Much of this list emerged from a session at Thursday's MassTLC Innovation 2009 unConference titled: Turbo Charging the New Culture of Entrepeneurship in MA, which was led by Scott Kirsner, Tim Rowe, Gus Weber, Don Dodge, David Biesel, Tom Summit, and Shawn Broderick.

Here's Don's blog post: http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2009/10/boston-startup-events-resources-people-you-need-to-know.html

A listing of 80 sessions from the conference is available at www.masstlc09.org

The Flying Car at MassTLC unConference Part II: An Interview with Carl Dietrich of Terrafugia

When I first called Carl Dietrich at Terrafugia, we didn't know each other at all. I just figured that something as cool as a flying car would be inspirational to all our attendees. And, I used to fly a lot starting when I was a teenager, so I couldn't resist seeing if they would bring the "roadable aircraft" over to Burlington, just a short hop from their factory in Woburn.

Well, when I actually got to see the vehicle in action, it was even more amazing than I had imagined. I felt inspired by what Carl and Terrafugia have done. I shot some video footage at the event, and even did a quick interview with Carl. I couldn't resist editing it together with a little music and a few titles so people who couldn't see the vehicle in person can see just how amazing it is.

Carl, thanks for bringing the car, plane, flying car, roadable aircraft, to the event. And to everyone reading, take a gander at this 6 minute video. It's worth watching!