Tag Archives: Small Business

Business, Technology

Google Cloud Print: Charge for Your 3D Printer Use at Any Storefront

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Google – Cloud Print. I know it’s just in beta at this moment, but I know these guys.  I also wrote a previous article about 3D printers in the Cloud not that long ago.  Coincidence?

The business model: connect your 3D printer(s) to Google’s Cloud Print, and allow people to print to your small storefront, stationary, or office supplies stores, as if they were printing two dimensional paper copies.

I wrote about the consumer taking their three dimensional models, and they have a wide range of ‘turnaround’ profit applications, as listed in my previous post.

Business, Technology

Grid and Cloud Computing Going Head to Head: Profit for You

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I was thinking about what was around before cloud computing.  I thought about mainframes and allocated computing cycles, then I thought about the SETI @ Home project with it’s transformation to grid or shared computing with Boinc.  Why did this seem to go by the wayside, or not maximized to become a secure cloud hosted by servers throughout the world.  A charge back model could have been created to allow users to receive monetary value for their compute cycles.  There are traditional answers which have halted it’s progress, however, there is a business model that allows anyone with a web host shared or leased, to turn a profit, such as Bloggers.

The world, from a personal computing standpoint, has progressed to laptops which have a highly utilized hibernate mode, which does not lend itself to leverage available compute cycles, because computers and the human processes that use computers are more efficient.  Laptops are just as powerful as our ‘old’ servers, and so our servers for project use have been relegated solely to the world of academia.

Although, I find extremely interesting, there is an opportunity where grid computing can have life once again, through blog hosted servers.  People who have blogs, which are hosted on servers other than WordPress.com or Google’s Blogger, have lower compute requirements for posting and serving up text and media then traditional apps hosted on web servers.  Hosted bloggers should be able to identify their utilization of their server, and calculate the ability to ‘lend’ server time.  In addition, a WordPress Plugin, for example, may be created as a User Interface, as well as a Boinc application interface.  A web server version of Boinc and a deployment binary package would need to be created and deployed on your web server.  At that point, WordPress APIs crafted as a plugin can be used to invoke the processing. Additional plugins or widgets for WordPress would allow for:

  • A widget on a blog side bar to display the results of a project your site ascribed to for grid computing, such as dynamic, refreshed charts and graphs
  • A plugin to embed short codes on blog pages to derive any information from the Boinc app client hosted on your Web Server.
  • A widget that allows YOUR customers to sign up, and short codes to display your charge back rates for allocation of your data streaming and CPU time.

Any project listed on the GridRepublic, or linked to by the Boinc Client from Berkeley is a potential client for your shared computing resource.  In fact, anyone, such as a game developer looking to lease cloud computing and storage resources may be a client.

The Boinc client hosted in a web server may, if engineered to parallel process, integrate in a cooperative of web hosted blog sites, for faster computing, and higher revenue margins.  This would be a phase two to the project, dividing up computing requirements to multiple servers.  An open source project for affiliate networking, and even Google Wallet, or coincidentally, PayPal, an Amazon company, may be used collect and then allocate funds based on a charge back formula to ‘affiliate’ web hosted blogs.  And this has never been tried before because?  Comments welcome.

Business, Technology

Concept to eBay Sale: Use a 3D Printer to Produce Your Imagination

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I was just looking at eBay, and what items I had on sale.  Then as any eBay enthusiast would do, I thought about what other things I could put up to the eBay market.  At the moment I don’t have access to my own personal effects. I was sullen for a moment, and at that moment the spark of inspiration struck, why can’t I use a 3D Printer, build, create something from my imagination and put it up for sale on eBay.  It could be literally anything from a piece of Jewelry, a Craft, a Reproduction of an Antique, in fact, any reproduction I am able to envision.  I see a period when massive amount of reproductions are put up for sale, legally, of course, where ‘reproduction’ is stated.  The art is being able to capture all perspectives of the object, and reproduce it.   As an example, if you’ve been to a museum, and take pictures at many multiple angles of anything from a painting, jewelry, statues, and so on, then use your imagination to push the image into 3 dimensional reality.

How much would you pay for an amazing 3 dimensional Diorama of Vincent van Gogh‘s painting of Cafe Terrace at Night?  At the Home Depot, a Mural 18 in. x 24 in. Wall Tiles sells for $260, and that’s for a 2 dimensional view.  How much would an art collector, or anyone appreciate someone pushing the image to a third dimension.  An excellent perspective, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, could sell very well.

Then I looked up the price of these 3 dimensional printers, and the prices were what you would expect for a new technology entering the market.  The prices range on eBay for these printers from a few hundred dollars, a thousand dollars, to several thousands, and this is, of course, due do the size of the machine, and how big the reproduced object would be manufactured.  There are costs of the materials to build these items, similar to an ink cartridge for a printer.  MakerBot seems to be a name brand in 3 Dimensional printers, and they tout the price of $2,199 as affordable model.

Apparently, this is a feasible business model today.

The price of a printer to steep?  Now imagine a big cloud company comes along, and allows you to use one of their 3D printers in their cloud, and then ships it off to you, or puts it in their “Amazon Locker”.

 

Business, Technology

Google Glasses for Dynamic Language, and Local Gesture Translation, and Let the Deaf be ‘Heard’

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If you have Google Project Glass / Glasses with WiFi to WiFi device connectivity to a smartphone with a pair of head phones, or Glasses, and use Bluetooth, you can have local Language dialect and gesture translation instantly to your ears.  If you are looking at someone and they are articulating in anyway, either by signing, using local gestures, or are speaking in any dialect, an instant, fluent translation program reads and understands the real-time video frames per second (FPS) or Frame Rate, either using 50/60/120 FPS, then applies object recognition to read lips, or human movement, then plays a voice in your own local language dialect in your head phones or Bluetooth.

Travel the world and experience the cultures truly as the locals do, empathize, or use them in the workplace and truly eliminate discrimination against the deaf.

Object recognition may need to be applied to each video frame or sampling of the video stream from the real-time video feed of the Google Glass / Glasses.

Also, managers who employ people who are deaf may apply for a tax deduction or even get the glasses for free with a tax write off for their company.  In part, thank the people that produced Mr. Holland’s Opus. Watched the movie last night.  Great movie! In part, thanks to my mom who is somewhere in the middle east on a cruise

Also, I can see a new wave of popular kids coming up with gestures, and instantly recognized using the Glasses. Sorry kids.  Supposedly, these glasses will ship to Android Google Developers for the cost of $1,500 USD by the end of the year; however, that is just rumor, and if you know Java, an relatively easy programming language to pick up, the Android OS Java extensions are relatively easy as well.  A Small price to pay for a huge market, and maybe even tax deduction for a small business under Research and Development costs.  See your local small business government affairs office for more details.

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