In the video, you can see the quadrotors working together and individually to build small structures using magnetic pieces. Keep in mind that these machines are working entirely from AI or Artificial Intelligence, which to think about is kind of creepy. Now, while building the structures, the robots are able to make micro corrections to snap each piece into place magnetically, which shows their rather impressive intelligence.

Think about this: What if these quadrotors could be built on a grander scale to construct actual buildings in the real world? That’d be pretty cool, right? It’s very possible to do, in fact, the scientists at GRASP or General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception say it’s quite possible to build much larger quads and even build several of the smaller ones to work in large teams to build real world physical structures. I know what you’re thinking, “this is the beginning of Skynet”, well as far as helpful and real world applicable technology, this isn’t Skynet, but it’s funny to think about the similarities between the quadrotors and the Skynet Hunter Killer flying machines.

Each quadrotor weighs just barely over a pound and can deliver a thrust of a little over 2.5 pounds. Swarm robotics; quadrotors working together in swarms is also a tactic displayed in the video. With this ability, the robots can easily work together, with enough units, to lift a heavy objects. If you think about it, swarm robotics would be a little more beneficial while building than an individual quad. If a mechanical failure occurs in the swarm, you still have the rest of the bots to carry the slack, while a failure in a single quad could be very dangerous. Nevertheless, this technology is astonishing and if applied to real world construction, could certainly be mind-blowing to view.

Best Buy’s Super Bowl advertisement, which will appear during the third commercial break of the 1st quarter of Sunday’s big game, will feature tech inventors like camera phone pioneer Phillippe Kahn and Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom. Although well informed readers like yourself might recognize those names, it’s safe to say that the general public may not.

This marks a definite shift from previous years of advertising. You remember Best Buy’s big Super Bowl spot from last year right? The Ozzy Osbourne / Justin Bieber commerical that has Ozzy wondering “what the f*ck’s a Bieber?” Here it is, to jog your memory:

“Big brands like to hire celebrities,” Best Buy Marketing Chief Drew Panayiotou told Bloomberg. “We looked at everyone from George Clooney to Stephen Colbert. We believe the inventors are more than enough. I give those 125 million viewers a lot of credit. I think they’ll appreciate the story.”

Best Buy was all set to air a celeb-heavy ad, common practice for the high-cost real estate of a Super Bowl commercial. But apparently, the outpouring of tributes to the late Steve Jobs that seemed to dominate the latter part of 2011 changed something. It spurred the idea of a tech-themed commercial.

The ad is not meant to be funny – focusing more on the story of how technology is brought to the consumer. It’ll be going up against Budweiser and M&Ms in its block.

Best Buy will be fighting in a Super Bowl ad space filled with blockbuster film trailers, Seinfeld reunions, vampires, Star Wars dogs, and a Ferris Bueller rehash starring Matthew Broderick. Will it make an impact? We’ll just have to wait and see.

[Image Courtesy Trendy Gamers]

February 27th is the big day, which is day one of the Mobile World Congress and people absolutely can’t wait to get their hands on the new padfone. The tablet itself has a 10.1 inch screen while the included smartphone, stashed in a compartment on the back of the tablet, has a 4.3 inch screen. The two devices can communicate wirelessly, so you can go from watching video on your phone then, if you feel you need a larger screen, simply insert the phone into the compartment and voila, you’re watching the same video on your tablet.

5 minutes and 20 slides rotating automatically in front of NYC’s brightest geeks, what would you say? For nearly two years Ignite NYC has cultivated a vibrant community of artists, technologists, thinkers, tinkerers, and personalities to connect, develop new relationships and projects, and answer this challenge. Enlighten us, but make it quick!

Drucker discussed an issue which many deem important, but most of the solutions have been repeated and regurgitated across tech blogs around the internet – How can women become more involved in prominent roles in the world of tech?

Drucker’s perspective is simple; females in tech should start referring to themselves as women instead of girls. Her insights are pretty funny, and thought-provoking. If you’re wondering how she defines a “woman”, it’s someone who’s menstruated and paid taxes. The reason for the distinction is because the term woman is associated with maturity and power, while girl implies immaturity and less power. Simple enough.

If I can interject with my own thought, I think the problem comes from women getting gipped when it comes to age/maturity neutral descriptors. Let’s take a look…

Man – Woman
Boy – Girl
Male – Female
Guy – ummm…Girl

A guy can be anyone. There are 5 year old guys, and 90 year old guys. Yet, we equate a guy to a girl, even though we use the same term when we’re designating a female child. I think it’s time we devised a maturity neutral descriptor for women/girls. Or women could simply refer to themselves as such in the workplace; that is, after their first menstruation and tax filing.

What is Pinterest? Let’s get it straight from the horses mouth.

“Pinterest is a virtual pinboard. Pinterest allows you to organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. You can browse pinboards created by other people to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests.

People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and share their favorite recipes.”

Now, for those of you who have been questioning my “it’s not just for ladies anymore” approach as possibly sexist (who ever said it was for ladies in the first place?), how many sites talk about “the beautiful things” on the web? How many guys plan weddings? Share recipes? Pinterest was designed for women. And, it’s been great for that.

I cook quite a lot (chili, kebobs, etc). But, when my wife found this, I was an instant fan of Pinterest:

And, she’s planning this one for the Super Bowl:

So, upon investigating Pinterest for myself, I found the “guy” stuff. I talked about that yesterday. I did, however, neglect to mention the beer on Pinterest.

And the bacon.

So, how do you get on Pinterest? How do you find the bacon? How do you find other cool tech stuff? How do you set yourself up so you see what you want to see, and not so much of the wedding planning and hair curling?

A couple of things to understand about the concept of Pinterest first. If you are familiar with Reddit or other such “look what I found guys!” sites, the layout of Pinterest may be a bit different. Once you catch the lingo, though, you’ll be off and running.

The first thing you need to understand are Pins and Boards. Simply put, pins are pics and links you choose to share with others. Boards are the categories you put you pins into.

An old-school, low-tech parallel (and the image Pinterest is going for) would be dozens of cork bulletin boards (pin boards) around a room. You clip stuff out of magazines and pin them to different boards. One board might be all the “Cool iPhone Stuff” you find – protective cases, apps, rumors about upcoming releases, etc. Another might be “Cars”. Another “Clothes That Make Me Look Like a Double-Naught Spy”. Whatever you like.

Pins on Pinterest are images or videos, not just links (a la Reddit). You have to have an image to pin to your board. That image can certainly have a link associated with it. Pinterest offers advice on pinning and how to have a good pin on its Help page.

Part of the point of Pinterest is organizing (recipes, DIY projects, etc). The other is sharing. So, you can share your pins. More on that later.

So, now that we have the concept down. Let’s get you on and experimenting.

You have to be invited to Pinterest. Latest word is that Pinterest responds pretty quickly to invite requests. Hop over to Pinterest, hit the Request An Invite button (or this link).

Once you have your invite email, get signed up. You have the option to use an email address or a username as your Pinterest login. Use whichever will be easiest for you to keep track of. But know that the login page you will usually see asks for “email address”. Your username, without any email info, can be used there, though. Pinterest should change that labeling on the login page.

Ok. You’re in.

You’ll have a chance to select some other “pinners” to follow, to create some boards if you like. You can skip that for now while you find your way around.

Browse around all you like. The top middle of the page has a drop down that you can use to specify categories you would like to see. Start narrowing things down a bit and find things more specifically in your areas of interest. We’ll head into “Technology“.

Right off the bat, I notice this:

Which is linked to an article here.

Now we have the option to “Like” or to “Repin” this item. Liking it is familiar to Facebook users, etc. Whereas repinning adds this item to your own. You have to have made at least one board to pin to. I have one called “Tech stuff”, so I re-pin this item.

When re-pinning, you have the chance to include a description. You can mention another user you are following, if you like. This is done with the @ symbol, just like mentions on Facebook.

We also can Like this item on Facebook, Tweet it, get an embed code for it (which I have been using throughout this article), email it, or report it.

And, we’re off and running.

So, create a few boards for yourself. Browse around a bit. You can add people you follow to your boards s contributors. You’ll end up with tons of stuff you like fed to you. I suggest being specific in how you name your boards so your friends have a better idea on what you want there. Or, create a “From My Friends” boards that serves as a catch-all for stuff friends suggest to you. Then, re-pin what you like to your other boards as you want to.

Pinterest has a “Pin It” button you can add to your website so others can pin your posts, similar to how they can Tweet those posts.

They also have an iPhone app (though it is reported to be problematic right now), a “Pin It” bookmarklet for your browser’s bookmarks toolbar so you can pin items on the fly, and other goodies. http://pinterest.com/about/goodies/

While you are geeking out on all the cool tech stuff, don’t neglect the recipes. Any Super Bowl or office party can only get better with this recipe for cheesy garlic rolls just like Red Lobster makes.

The bronze statue was apparently commissioned by Gabor Bojar, Founder and Chairman of GRAPHISOFT. It was sculpted by Hungarian artist Ermo Toth and stands proudly in front of the GRAPHISOFT headquarters.

Oh yeah, and it’s in Budapest.

According to a press release, here’s the connection between Jobs and GRAPHISOFT:

The relationship between GRAPHISOFT and Apple can be traced to the 1980′s, when Jobs came across the first version of GRAPHISOFT’s ArchiCAD software at the 1984 CeBIT in Germany. His first impressions of the software led him to throw Apple’s support behind the development and distribution of ArchiCAD.

Apple also introduced GRAPHISOFT to its worldwide distribution network, which remains a cornerstone of the business today.

“Apple’s support included cash and computers at a time when GRAPHISOFT was a small company with limited resources, working within the economic and political confines of what was, at the time, communist Hungary,” Gabor Bojar said. “With its attention to excellence in every detail, Graphisoft Park’s environment embodies the spirit of Steve Jobs,” Viktor Varkonyi, CEO of GRAPHISOFT said. “I can’t think of a better place to commemorate the man and his legacy,” he continued.

Check it out:

We’re not quite sure what he’s doing in this artistic representation. Is Jobs discussing a product? Eating? He appears to have an iPhone or something in his right hand – is he demoing something?

Whatever the case may be, it’s probably not long until we see some Steve Jobs statues popping up here in the States.

“Kindle Fire is the most successful product we’ve ever launched – it’s the bestselling product across all of Amazon for 11 straight weeks, we’ve already sold millions of units, and we’re building millions more to meet the high demand. In fact, demand is accelerating – Kindle Fire sales increased week over week for each of the past three weeks. People are buying Kindle Fire because it’s a simple, fully-integrated service that makes it easy to do the things they love – watch movies, read books and magazines, listen to music, download apps, play games, and surf the web,” said Dave Limp, Vice President, Amazon Kindle. “Our family of Kindle e-ink readers are close behind Kindle Fire on the Amazon.com bestseller list. Customers continue to report preferring their Kindle e-reader for long-form reading, and in fact we’ve seen many customers buy two Kindles – both a Kindle Fire and a Kindle or Kindle Touch – this holiday season.”

Not even a mention of a pitch of how Fire will only get better after updates to fix acknowledged problems start becoming available.

So what of all that hubbub about the Fire being kind of a drag? A visit over to Amazon’s website reveals that the tablet has an average rating of 4 stars with over 6,000 reviews, which gives some pretty sound reliability to that high rating, and over half of those reviews give it the highest possible rating of 5 stars. Take this with a grain of salt given the source of this info, but even the “most helpful, critical review” still gave the Fire 3 stars.

As you see, an overwhelming amount of people still found that review to be helpful. What’s more is that the author of that review posted an update fifteen days later to say that “a recent software update seems to have fixed several of the above problems” and praises the improved performance. Although the option isn’t available, that update might have pushed the worst constructive rating – a still better-than-decent 3 stars – up higher.

Several technology sources, including this website, PC Mag, The New York Times, All Things D, and Jakob Nielsen (he disliked it so much he gets two links), have all given the Fire mediocre-to-punishing reviews and yet… people can’t seem to gobble up the Kindle Fire fast enough.

Market analysts are predicting that Amazon will sell as many as 6 million Kindle Fires before the end of this year, which would trump the first-quarter debut sales of Apple’s iPad, the tablet by which all tablets are to be compared. There’s also speculation that the Kindle Fire will grab a sizable chunk of the tablet market next year – a market that, until now, has pretty much been the dominion of Apple.

Maybe it’s the professedly easy usability of the Kindle Fire. Maybe it’s the much more affordable price tag. Maybe Amazon’s got some marketing warlocks on their payroll. Or maybe – just maybe – the tech community’s opinion is not representative of what the average person desires in a tablet. Regardless of how this discord can be explained, the Kindle Fire is not Amazon’s “most successful product” they’ve ever launched without some good reason.

If you’re a Kindle Fire user, are you happy with it thus far? Do you find that the tech community is usually spot-on about all things technological, or are you often in disagreement with the technorati?

According to glassdoor.com’s list of the 50 Best Places to Work for 2012, the feedback from employees at Facebook gave the company a rating of 4.3 out of 5, with 4.01-5.0 meaning “Very Satisfied.” This ranking was high enough to place Facebook as the third ranked company overall but it is slightly lower than the 4.6 ranking the social media colossus received in 2011 when it was the #1 overall ranked company.

Edging out Facebook for the top two spots were Bain & Company and McKinsey & Company – two consulting firms that couldn’t sound more Wall Street even if you renamed them Gordon Gekko 1 and Gordon Gekko 2.

Glassdoor compiled a highlight video the top companies in order to fill your heart with greed and work-lust. Enjoy and covet much:

Seriously, did you see that dude skateboarding down the hallway at work during that Facebook segment? Skateboarding! At work! It’s like a Silicon Valley Level 5 Shangri-La. Unreal. Way to rub it in, Facebook. I can only imagine that the coolness factor will soon be a bi-coastal phenomenon now that Facebook is opening up an office in New York City. Get those applications in quick, kiddos.

Not to be completely forgotten, Google and Apple also placed in the top ten overall companies to work for in 2012 at #5 and #10, respectively. After what I’ve read and seen of the Googleplex, I’m a little surprised that they’re not a little higher. That place makes Disney World look like a snooze-fest.

Glassdoor included more than 65,000 companies for the 2012 awards. The full report card from Glassdoor can be viewed on their website, but if you’re like me and curious about what the worst companies are to work for in 2012, you’ll be disappointed that no such information is available in this report.

That chip is there to celebrate Robert Noyce, the influential tech figure that is credited with the being one of the minds behind the microchip. Noyce died in 1990, but this Doodle recognizes his birthday – he would have turned 84 years old today.

Noyce graduated from MIT and immediately jumped into research. He eventually landed a job at the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory, but shorty left the company as part of a group called the Traitorous Eight. These eight left the company due to a difference of opinion regarding managerial style and the direction of research.

He then co-founded Fairchild Semiconductor, an highly influential company headquartered in San Jose, California. In 1968, he founded Intel with Gordon Moore – and you probably know a little about that company.

Noyce was also an advocate for education, understanding that preparing kids for the technological improvements of the future was key to success. A year after his death, his family set up the Noyce Foundation, a charity charged with helping kids excel in math and science, among other things.

Check out this amazing footage of Noyce from 1981. You’ll be amazed at how he describes the future of work – and how he accurately predicts the rise of the information sector. As one YouTube commenter points out, it looks like he’s talking about Skype about halfway through the piece. And because of this, he says people will live “where it’s conducive to live, not where it is conducive to work.”

“More than 800 million people around the world rely on Facebook, and more than half of them visit every day. Operating at such a large scale, and innovating as quickly as we do, we need to recruit the most talented engineers in the world,” said Mike Schroepfer, Facebook’s Vice President of Engineering. “New York has a strong history of innovation and is home to thousands of talented technical people, and we want them to help us solve the challenges of designing and building the next generation of Facebook.”

Facebook Engineering NYC“Building an engineering presence outside the West Coast is a big step for us, one we would take only if we found the right combination of talent and community support. We’re particularly grateful for the encouragement and assistance of New York’s elected leaders, who understand what it takes to build a climate where technology can fuel economic growth and the creation of high skilled jobs.” — Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook Chief Operating Officer 1 hour ago · 3 likes · 0 comments

Facebook is putting Serkan Piantino at the helm, an engineer who has been with the company since 2007. Piantino led the team that was behind Facebook’s news feed and its upcoming Timeline feature.

It appears that the New York political muscle is thrilled with the plan, as Senator Chuck Schumer praised the decision as one that will “help to continue fueling innovation in the greatest city in the world.” New York’s other Senator Kirsten Gillibrand thinks that Facebook’s new presence will “help position New York City to lead in the high-tech economy of the future.”

NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg also praised the move:

Facebook is capitalizing on what more and more tech companies are realizing: that New York City is the best place in the world to recruit and retain a talented workforce The growth in the tech sector is creating jobs and further diversifying our economy. That’s why we are invested in expanding our engineering workforce by building a new applied sciences school in the city. We want to do everything we can to make sure that Facebook can grow here, and that the next Facebook will be founded here.

The new office will open up in the early part of 2012, but Facebook is already accepting applications. Their New York careers page already lists openings for software engineers in the fields of ads, data infrastructure, tools, and web performance.

In October, Twitter opened a brand new office right in the middle of Madison Avenue. That move was also praised by Bloomberg and Gillibrand as the right move in growing NYC’s technology sector.