The Evolution of Portable Audio Recorders

Read a story about the evolution of portable audio recording gear from the reel-to-reel era to 21st Century hand-held digital recorders.

Robot Designed for Elderly

Listen to a two-part story about a robot with a smart speaker designed for elderly people living alone. Part 1. Part 2.

Yoonseo Kang, Canadian Robotics Wiz

10 years ago I wrote a story for The Toronto Star about Yoonseo Kang winning a Thiel Fellowship that provided $100,000 with the proviso that he not go to college. At the time, Kang was living on the Open Source Ecology farm in Missouri helping to design and build open source hardware. Here’s an update in The Toronto Star on the Canadian robotics wiz, who started his own company and is building a humanoid robot.

Pamela’s Cochlear Implant

In 2009 my wife Pamela got a cochlear implant. It was done by the NYU Cochlear Implant Center. This 9-minute podcast tells the story of her hearing loss and the profound difference the cochlear implant has made in her life. Pam is a painter. Check out her Instagram page.

DIY Kayak Lift in Vermont

Listen to a radio story about a group of neighbors near Lake Seymour in Vermont who came together to build a custom kayak lift for a paralyzed resident who spend a lot of time in his kayak on the lake. The kayaker, David Wieselmann, created a website and mobile apps to help wheelchair users find accessible venues and the transportation to get to them. It’s called Where to Wheel.

No Heat? Get Your Landlord's Attention With Cold, Hard Data From This Tiny Sensor

Many New Yorkers suffer from a lack of heat during the winter. But tracking an apartment's temperature is a tricky task for tenants. That's where the small and affordable Heat Seek sensor comes in. Read the story on pcmag.com

Why Classic Car Owners Pay Big Bucks to Electrify Their Vehicles

Classic cars are not always the most environmentally friendly vehicles. Meet the companies that electrify Porsches, VW Beetles, and other sought-after rides, and the collectors who pay big bucks for the conversions. Read the story on pcmag.com.

A Half-Dozen Raspberry Pi’s Help Keep This Maine Oyster Farm Afloat

Running Tide Technologies is a high-tech aquaculture start-up that counts software developers and data scientists among its 30-person staff. Here’s the scoop on a new climate-focused underwater venture. Read the story on pcmag.com.

Exoskeleton Helps Folks With Bad Knees Get Back on the Ski Slopes

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The Elevate exoskeleton, a kind of high-tech knee brace, offloads about 30 percent of your body weight, significantly reducing the load on your quadricep muscles and knee joints. My man Ted Bonnitt tried it out in Park City, Utah. Read the story at pcmag.com.

Adding Smell to Virtual Reality

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Consumers have been slow to purchase VR headsets, largely due to price and limited content. But several start-ups are making devices that will give people a whiff of the virtual world. Read about this on pcmag.com.

Otherlab’s Elastic Machines

Read a piece about Otherlab, the R& D laboratory in San Francisco founded by engineer Saul Griffith.

Maine Maker Gardner Waldeier is known on YouTube as Bus Huxley

Meet Gardner Waldeier of Waterford, ME. He cooks up a storm, he builds a house from trees on his property and entertains with videos produced as Bus Huxley.

Here’s a radio piece about the people who showed up on a cold fall weekend to help raise the frame of Waldeier’s House Built From Trees.

Read about Bus Huxley’s sojourn to Vermont to serve as the site surpervisor of a commercial retail build.