Today I had a lovely flight above the California coastline from Santa Ana to San Francisco. As we began our descent, I was dozing off when the stewardess woke me up to ask that I put my headrest back down. I had been about to enjoy a nice nap. And furthermore, the seat is actually…
Posts By / Ryan McIntyre
Robot-Simian Unity!
From the New York Times: Monkey’s Thoughts Propel Robot. This is a pretty astounding feat. A monkey in North Carolina with electrodes implanted in its brain walked on a treadmill watching a video feed of a walking robot in Kyoto, Japan. A real-time output from the Monkey’s brain was sent to the robot and enabled…
Mercury Rising
Sending spacecraft to another planet is a pretty neat trick. The number of disciplines that must work together perfectly to get a camera out to Mercury that can send back pictures to us is astounding and makes most of the technologies we invest in at Foundry Group look like child’s play. This shot of Mercury…
CES 2008: The Experience
In many ways, this year’s CES was a repeat of last year’s: bigger and flatter TVs, flatter and lighter PCs, and, of course, more of the clusterf**k that is Las Vegas when 140,000 techies show up to attend the show, resulting in half-hour cab lines, booked-solid restaurants and the longest airport security line I have…
Foundry Group Invests in Memeo
Today, Memeo announced that they’ve raised an $8.1m Series B round of financing, led by Foundry Group. I’ve joined the board of Memeo and am excited to be working with Hong, Steve, Chris and the rest of the Memeo team, as well as Series A investor Rudy Garza (G51) and outside director Scott Petry, with…
Terabyte Hard Drives, Golly!
OK, so I’ve posted many times in the past about the magic of Moore’s Law (and the increase in storage density which is an even steeper curve), and after working 15 years in the technology industry, you’d think I’d be used to exponential growth. But the fact that Samsung recently announced a 3-platter, one terabyte…
Data Point on Digital Music Distribution Revenue Splits
Following up on my post pointing to David Byrne’s excellent article about music distribution options for musicians, from the biggest acts to the smallest indies, I thought I’d offer a real world data point. My (very indie) record label, Toothless Monkey Music, distributes CDs through CDBaby, which I have to say is one of the…
Fun With Lasers
Armed with icicles hanging from my front porch roof, a green and a red laser pointer, a plush-toy velour pumpkin and a Canon EOS 10-D set for 30 second exposure, I set out to experiment with light painting. I was inspired by my friend Carl Rosendahl’s excellent APAD (A Picture A Day) photoblog, and his…
David Byrne on the State of the Music Industry
Scotsman, musician and polymath David Byrne just penned an excellent article in Wired regarding the current state of affairs for record companies and artists for distribution of CDs and digital music. An authoritative must-read for anyone in the music business. Technorati Tags: Music
Lossless Audio on iTunes
From Slashdot, speculation that iTMS will offer tracks in Apple Lossless format as early as next year. Assuming they also make these tracks free of their evil DRM, I’d be happy to pay a premium over the standard mp3/AAC tracks available. As a recording engineer and studio owner, I definitely can hear and appreciate the…