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Beer

Video SteadyServ Helps Keep the Draft Beer Flowing (Video) 48

"With iKeg's Technology We Guarantee You Will Never Run Out of Beer," boasts the SteadyServ website. As you listen to interviewee Mike Flockenhaus, though, you'll realize almost immediately that SteadyServ isn't making equipment for home use, but for bars and taverns that serve draft beer. Here's another good line from their site: "With the new iKeg® system, we aim to ensure that you get your beer, in the right place, at the right time. We also want to simplify the lives of all the hard-working people in the beer industry. After all, wanting and having your beer are not the same thing." Even better, it looks like they're hiring. Wouldn't it be wonderful to help keep America from running out of draft beer? (Alternate Video Link)
Build

Video Are Matt's Robot Hexapods Creepy or Cute? (Video) 35

University of Arizona grad student Matt Bunting doesn't come across as a mad scientist. That's a very good thing, because his robot hexapod creations are easy to imagine crawling across the USA in large hordes, devouring everything in their path and using all the electricity they come across to feed their Queen Hexapod, a 3-D printer mounted on a hexapod chassis that turns everything fed to it into more robots. Luckily, the real life Matt is an affable (self-described) "Roboticist, Electrical Engineer, Musician, and Rock Crawler" who freely admits that at this time his robotic creations have no practical application whatsoever. This is probably true, except for the fact that they can liven up a music video like mad, as you can see on YouTube in Pedals Music Video (featuring REAL robots) . Our little video is a lot simpler, of course. In it, we interview Matt and he tells us what he's up to with his robots, and gives some 'how to get started with robotics' advice for budding young engineers. (Alternate Video Link)
The Courts

Court Rules the "Google" Trademark Isn't Generic 159

ericgoldman writes Even though "googling" and "Google it" are now common phrases, a federal court ruled that the "Google" trademark is still a valid trademark instead of a generic term (unlike former trademarks such as escalator, aspirin or yo-yo). The court distinguished between consumers using Google as a verb (such as "google it"), which didn't automatically make the term generic, and consumers using Google to describe one player in the market, which 90%+ of consumers still do.
Hardware

Video SparkFun Works to Build the Edison Ecosystem (Video) 75

Edison is an Intel creation aimed squarely at the maker and prototype markets. It's smaller than an Arduino, has built-in wi-fi, and is designed to be used in embedded applications. SparkFun is "an online retail store that sells the bits and pieces to make your electronics projects possible." They're partnering with Intel to sell the Edison and all kinds of add-ons for it. Open source? Sure. Right down to the schematics. David Stillman, star of today's video, works for SparkFun. He talks about "a gajillion" things you can do with an Edison, up to and including the creation of an image-recognition system for your next homemade drone. (Alternate Video Link)

Comment Re:What's the angle? (Score 1) 35

Great question. We are seeing a lot of interest among enterprises to have AWS-like functionality in their own datacenters. And we also know that they are eager to use OpenStack. So at Eucalyptus we decided to do something about it. Here is my blog about the topic: https://www.eucalyptus.com/blog/2014/08/11/why-eucalyptus-keynoting-openstack-conference

United States

Net Neutrality Comments Surge Past 1.7M, an All-Time Record For the FCC 81

An anonymous reader writes Following Wednesday's Internet Slowdown campaign, the Federal Communications Commission says it has now received a total of 1,750,435 comments on net neutrality, surpassing the approximately 1.4 million complaints it saw after the exposure of Janet Jackson's breast during Super Bowl XXXVIII in 2004. Wednesday saw citizens submit more than 700,000 new comments to the FCC, and place more than 300,000 calls to the agency.
Build

Video Two Bit Circus is 'a Big Band of Nerds' (Video) 8

Brent Bushnell, CEO of Two Bit Circus, is today's interview victim. Two Bit Circus is an amalgamation of technology, play, entertainment, and "immersive social amusements." They develop games like the ones shown in their Great Forest Challenge demo reel video. Their big push right now is preparing for STEAM Carnival – Los Angeles, which will be held October 25 and October 26 at CRAFTED, a permanent craft market at the Port of Los Angeles. The STEAM Carnival is also available as a traveling event; if you'd like to host it in your town, Two Bit Circus just might be able to accommodate you. (Alternate Video Link)
Linux

Video Learning About Enea's Real Time Linux Embedded OS (Video) 27

Jon Aldama is the Product Marketing Manager for Enea A.B., but he prides himself on being a developer first and a marketer second -- a point he stresses early in today's video. Enea is behind Operating System Embedded, whose Wikipedia page, some say, "appears to be written like an advertisement," which an unkind person could also say about the Enea A.B. Wikipedia page. In any case, Enea works with the Linux Foundation's Yocto Project workgroup, whose main webpage says, "It's not an embedded Linux distribution – it creates a custom one for you." This is all open source, which Jon says is a big corporate principle at Enea -- and he should know, since his previous job was as an Open Source Compliance Officer and Software Analyst at Ericsson. (Alternate Video Link)
Open Source

Video A New FOSS Conference Comes to Florida (Video) 9

Bryan Smith has worked with the organizers of several Linux and Open Source events and has spoken at more than a few, but he has always wanted to see more FOSS events in Florida, the state where he lives. There was a Florida Linux Show back in 2008 and 2009, but all that remains of it today is a "ghost" Web page. But that's the past. This year Bryan has put together FOSSETCON, which debuts this September 11 - 13 in Orlando. It's an ambitious undertaking -- but Bryan has rounded up a lot of solid sponsors, and that's often the key to holding a successful IT event. (Alternate Video Link)
Open Source

Video Slashdot Talks with David Nalley About Apache CloudStack (Video) 13

This Citrix Web page at buildacloud.org says, "David is a PMC (Project Management Commitee) member of the Apache CloudStack project, jClouds committer, Fedora contributor and an Open Source Evangelist for the Open Source Business Office at Citrix." CloudStack has been an Apache Top Level Project since March 2013, with David on board all the way. He's obviously the right person to turn to for an Apache CloudStack update, including some commentary on the differences between Apache CloudStack and OpenStack, two projects often viewed as competitors. (Alternate Video Link)
Open Source

Video David Klann Talks About Using Open Source Software in Broadcast Radio (Video) 35

David Klann works with Driftless Radio, call letters WDRT, in Wisconsin. This is community radio, with no huge advertisers or morning shock jocks with names like Bobba the Fet Sponge. They use open source software for just about everything except accounting, and that includes processing their audio for both OTA (Over the Air) and online streaming. Their transmitter runs a "stripped down" version of Debian, and David is proud that they had 3 1/2 years of uptime -- that only ended when David did a kernel upgrade that forced a reboot. (Alternate Video Link)
Open Source

Video State of the GitHub: Chris Kelly Does the Numbers 34

I talked with Chris Kelly of GitHub at last week's LinuxCon about GitHub. He's got interesting things to say about the demographics and language choices on what has become in short order (just six years) one of the largest repositories of code in the world, and one with an increasingly sophisticated front-end, and several million users. Not all of the code on GitHub is open source, but the majority is -- handy, when that means an account is free as in beer, too. (And if you're reading on the beta or otherwise can't view the video below, here's the alternative video link.)

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