The 3D printing revolution

A few years ago my company LiquidCool (f/k/a Hardcore Computer) purchased our first 3D CAD printer. We decided after spending many thousands on rapid prototype parts it made more fiscal sense to get a CAD printer, make our own parts and test them before going into mass-manufacturing. I remember the first part we made from a design in SolidWorks. It was a heat sink cover and in less than 10 minutes we had a fully functional part, in the exact specifications that was in our CAD model. I remember marveling at this incredible innovation and seeing a huge future for 3D printing for everything. You can literally take something from your imagination and see it in the physical world in minutes by printing it on a 3D printer. This just seems amazing to me.

It’s very clear 3D printing is in it’s infancy and the technology will continue to progress. It will proliferate into mass markets and soon everyone you know will have a 3D printer. Just as cell phones catapulted into ubiquity I believe 3D printers will blossom as well. Soon you will be able to print any object from metal, plastic, etc. etc. Follow me on this as it might sound like something out of a science fiction novel. Imagine for a minute breaking the case of your cell phone (something that happens frequently). Just imagine going to your computer, pulling up the case file you want, choosing the color or changing the design, hitting print and in 20 minutes your case design is ready for use. Printed right from your own personal CAD 3D printer. This is a reality that is here today!

With any exciting technology there is always a downside. As we have seen recently terrorists love the new 3D printers because they can make plastic guns that can get through airport security undetected. All the bad guys need is a good gun design, a 3D printer and a little bit of ingenuity. They have a gun fully capable of killing another human being. This obviously has the Government scared because if you can “print” a gun, without having to register the gun it’s a nightmare scenario. This can only mean buying a 3D printer in the future will be as difficult and as regulated as purchasing a gun. That day will come. So you better get your CAD printer before laws come out that limit and regulate the use of this machine. Like any good thing some won’t be able to use it responsibly and it will ruin it for the rest of us. Just a prediction, one that I hope doesn’t come true but I have a feeling we are there now.

The bottom line is CAD 3D printing is one of the most exciting things to come along in years. The technology is improving fast and what you will be able to print in the future will pretty much be anything and everything. Most importantly you can now have a way to create whatever is in your imagination and bring it into the world. That alone is truly astounding.

So lets go even further into the future. As partical physics unlocks everything from dark matter, particle arrangement and understanding the very fundamentals of how matter works we are at the doorway to even more amazing innovations in 3D printing. Imagine being able to literally recreate everything in this world simply by arranging particles in a certain way. Particles are what create mass, create matter and are what create essentially everything around you. If you have the ability to control particles, the mass of objects and the elements it’s conceivable to say in our lifetime we will be able to manifest an iPad out of thin air. As long as you have a map of what constitutes an iPad, and can control the matter that makes up the device. Can you imagine literally manifesting something from nothing. Try chewing on that idea.

As I always say the innovations and incredible technology being developed today is going to astound. We are at a tipping point where computers, software and innovation are allowing us to move into entirely uncharted waters. What we will find in this new world of science is going to change the world. To think just a year ago we discovered at CERN a particle that can go faster than the speed of light. The implications of this simple discovery could open the door to interstellar travel, new technologies, new materials and new ways of communicating. What an exciting time to be in technology. A new world and new markets await. As for 3D printing it will have a huge place in this new innovation driven world.

My sister: marketing genius, social media darling, speaker, author

I would like to introduce you to my sister Porter Gale. She’s a working mom, an author, public speaker, an A-level executive, a philanthropist, a marketing / creative genius and a pioneer in social marketing. There are many more things that I could add to that list but you get the point. She’s amazing and one of the most remarkable women I know. That being said I would like to take a minute to introduce her and why you should buy her new book “Your Network is your Net Worth.”

I have known my whole life that Porter was exceptional and was destined for greatness in her life. I will never forget when we were kids and she learned how to play the Cello. I was amazed that she could actually create music from a stick with reeds and huge strings that seemed impossible to press down. I would try to play her Cello and I made such a horrible sound that it scared me. Yet, when Porter touched the instrument a song came out. I remember being so jealous as a kid of all her amazing talents. She could do everything, including skiing circles around me. Then as we grew older her focus and level of achievement grew. From attending Boston College and then going to grad school at Stanford University where she was an academic all-star. She even won an Academy Award while she was at Stanford for a film she made called XXXY (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReKwdIbE6Xk). What’s even more impressive is XXXY wasn’t even her first film. Her first movie was called “2 Chicks, 2 Bikes, 1 Cause” http://archive.org/details/2Chicks2Bikes1Cause that was centered around her and a friend riding bikes form San Francisco to New York City for Breast Cancer Awareness. This film won critical acclaim, was on Lifetime and proved her uncanny ability to successfully take on unthinkable challenges. Who on earth could get on a bike and ride across the United States let alone turn it into a major documentary / fundraiser for Breast Cancer? She did! But her incredible success didn’t stop there – she went on to a wonderful career where she headed marketing for Virgin Airlines. She took an obscure airline brand and turned it into one of the most admire airlines in the world. Her concepts around customer experience, customer service and social marketing still play a huge role in Virgin’s success today. Then in true Porter fashion she left the amazing career at Virgin to become an entrepreneur, write a book and help start-ups turn into big companies. Her DNA touches so many things, so many people, so many companies it’s hard to fathom where she gets the energy.

When Porter first shared she was writing a book it really excited me. Mainly because I knew it wouldn't be a normal book. I knew it would be real, open, educational, insightful and would help someone become better. Well, in true form her book appeared out of thin air (an impossible feat in itself) and was given a name "Your Network is your Net Worth." It's such an apt title for Porter because she has a network unlike anyone I know and she shows you how to develop your own network. How to cross the social divide and impact everything from your personal life to your business life. Living social takes on a whole new meaning after you read her book. Also, I know Porter opens up in this book about our lives growing up, some of her challenges and once again I'm blown away by her courageousness. What you will discover in this book are new ways to approach meeting people with similar interests and building relationships that will impact your life forever. This is a must read for a student, entrepreneur or someone looking to expand their social horizons. I cannot say enough about this book. Plus, I’m obviously partial because it’s my sister. So don’t take my word for it – take a word from Porter’s friends like Guy Kawasaki who wrote the foreword to her book and Randi Zuckerberg from Facebook who have openly evangelized the importance of this book.

More than anything please help me support my wonderful sister by going to this link and pre-ordering your copy today. We want to blow away her publisher!! http://www.portergale.com/your-network-is-your-net-worth-book/

You are not safe (by Graham Morrison, Editor, Linux Magazine)

I love the magazine Linux Format and I’m a regular subscriber. Linux is a fabulous OS and is the foundation behind things like Android the number one selling mobile OS. This month the editor Graham Morrison devoted the magazine to digital security. His opening remarks in the magazine really hit home and was something I had to share. It sums up the clear and present danger regarding the unsecure Internet. Here is what he said:

“Almost without our noticing, the web has become an integral part of our lives; it’s become the hub for shopping, banking, communicating, working and entertaining. Many of us carry device that keep us connected all the time, and we think nothing of quickly grabbing our email, checking a forum or sending a message from wherever we might be. It’s in many ways more magical than the sci-fi future I was promised in the 1970s. But many of us are also in denial about two things. The first is that we think our presence on the internet is absorbed into the background noise of a billion other people going about their business, and that this makes us less of a target. And the second is that we know how prone our online habits make us, whether that’s because of rubbish passwords, or shared passwords, or an open access point, but we do nothing about it.

There is a mathematical function somewhere with one line for a growing threat and another for decreasing security, and the only certainty is that at some point in the near future, they will cross. This is why we’ve decided to revist the world of online security, in an attempt to highlight some of the dangers of assuming the web is safe. Linux is the perfect platform for this kind of experimentation. The reason why the operating system is so secure, for example, is because any developer can look at the source code and work out what’s happening. The arcane and hidden data transfers that make up the world wide web should be no different. in this issue we investigate some of the tools that can reveal this hidden world, as well as showing you how easy it can be for these tools to be turned against us. And just like with Linux, the solution to these weaknesses are increased transparency, awareness and education. It’s like debugging the Internet.”

What he points out and which I totally agree – the Internet needs to be debugged. This is really a brilliant way of thinking about the Internet. Still, the challenge remains we are using the Internet for something that it wasn’t intended. The Internet was made specifically to be open, for sharing and was originally a protocol used by Universities to share information. Now that we have connected everything to the Internet (schools, banks, our lives) security is now a major issue because everything is at risk. Especially, as the growth continues to explode and third world countries use the web for war. The scary reality remains “if you can touch it, you can steal it.” That is and will remain the problem of the Internet. The bad guys can touch it, therefore they can steal what’s on it or disrupt what’s attached to it. Hacking is just a matter of math and bit patterns. I would also add we live in the supercomputer era and now that the average criminal has access to unrivaled computer horsepower the stakes are going up even higher. We simply have no idea how bad things will get if we continue to have our heads in the sand with denial of the problem.

The solutions that my company CRAM has created deals with the “touch it” problem and we will continue to develop, and enhance our patent-pending solution as one of the only solutions that can truly secure your data in the cloud or out of the cloud.

PCs going away? Think again.

If you believe the hype machine from Apple or the tech media that honestly believes that Tablets / Smartphones will eliminate the PC you are all sorely mistaken. The PC is not dead in fact my prediction is the PC is going to make a huge resurgence in the next few years. I’ll get into ‘how’ in a couple seconds. So don’t jump on the PC bash-wagon just yet because there is a big second act coming. Now, I cannot deny the current numbers. PC shipments are at an all time low, Windows 8 wasn’t the savior of the PC market like everyone hoped and the market is speaking by purchasing Apple. You simply cannot deny the numbers.

We have also seen a PC market run by investment bankers and not by innovative technologists. I have nothing against investment bankers but you can clearly see the challenges in the PC market stem from looking at the industry from only a financial perspective. That thought process looks at “how cheap can we make the product, how do we increase margins and grow new markets.” Where are the R&D budgets, the innovation that drives this market? The market got too focused on making money and not focused enough on what really makes money – the wow factor of incredible innovation. Show me a major player that is doing any innovation and turning the industry upside down? Apple did with iPhone and iPad. Who is the counterpart in the PC world? Right now one company gets it and it’s the most admired company in the world – Apple. Now, you can see Apple slipping because they have forgot about NEW innovation. Steve Jobs was a master at taking risks, chances on new tech and sometimes even failing. Not every new thing will have success. But it’s the learning from failures, pushing the envelope that gets you to amazing breakthroughs. Why are more big companies not taking the chances? I would much rather die a fast death trying to come up with the next big thing than dying a slow death by squeezing the pulp out of already commoditized products hoping to get lucky. It takes one iPhone to change the world. A lot of big companies forget that. I truly hope the big companies put faith in the incredibly talented engineers that year after year see budgets shrink, ideas not realized and chances not taken. Just go to CES. The lack of innovation the past many years from the majors is really sad. All you see is following trends that some Gartner or IDC analyst say’s I the next big thing. It’s shameful. I would die to go into a major’s booth and see something out of the box, something awe inspiring and innovative. I’m still waiting. Now, the good news is there are some bigger companies that get it. Look at the moves Facebook is making, look at Google (always innovating) and Microsoft. They do take chances and I give them credit. In fact, as much negative attention that Windows 8 has gained it was a try. Is it perfect, no, but it has huge promise. To illustrate my point Microsoft built it’s own surface tablet because they couldn’t get anyone to make the device like they would. Sure this upset the PC industry but Microsoft have every right. PC manufacturers have lost their mojo. Yet, when it comes to the PC industry, an industry I love, where is that innovative spark? Where are the new ideas? New hardware that is going to change everything? I don’t see it and the numbers reflect this unimaginative reality.

So, I made a claim that the PC market would rebound in a big way. So what is my basis for that comment, what is going to happen that will make this resurgence and what will this future look like? Well, it’s clear it all starts with advancements in inexpensive high-def screens, and the coming world of totally 3D virtual reality. I envision a future with your home PC becoming your personal cloud, a future where this personal cloud has ultra high graphics capability to deliver games that look real, using full 3D, virtual reality environments. I believe you will have a head worn display or large almost iMax like screen for your home workstation. A place you will go to immerse yourself in the online world. This new “workstation” and “personal cloud” world will be in your home. In fact, research shows that every home has some kind of home-office or place where a workstation lives. My research shows this area will grow and morph as the visual technology and software that drives the visuals greatly improves. It won’t be long before you will be playing games that look realistic, with texture that your eye can’t tell is real or fake and with a seemless experience. As well, I believe that human computer interface will continue to improve with these home workstations and gesture, perhaps even brain controlled interfaces are coming. Kind of a minority report on steroids. Again, this won’t be happening on tablets or phones. Sure there will be a place for all the mobile products but I believe they will all tie into your own personal cloud at home. As people start losing trust in the online providers, it’s clear they will want the same capability but under their own control.

The future looks very bright for the PC and as the hardware / software improves you will see advancements that will totally blow you away. The new ERA of Ultra-High Definition 3D is coming, I have seen it and there is no way that will be playing on a tablet, or Apple device. Again, we need a major player to step up, and own this market. It will happen – its’ a matter of time!

WordPress Brute Force Hacked

WordPress got hacked and it was clearly a coordinated attack! Over 90,000 blogs have been brute-force hacked so far and that number is expected to rise. It appears the hackers sifted through WordPress accounts and attempted to guess passwords via brute-force. Brute-force is a very common form of hacking whereby the attacker will use common passwords (1234, a pets name or child’s name) using a program that can run millions of variations per second. Sometimes if the hackers can get your first / last name they will friend you on social sites like Facebook and LinkedIn to scrape or mine your social data for password clues. The attackers are getting very creative and for the most part have software that can automate most of this process.

For the recent WordPress hack once the attacker gets into a users system, it turns the blog into a botnet, a collection of hacked systems that communicate with one another for the purposes of doing more hacks. Private blogs are not that useful to hackers but blogs housed on web servers are. If you get enough web servers combined into the botnet it can attack a multitude of machines at one time. Then the system can replicate and grow. Typically botnets are very useful in doing denial of service attacks. It’s like recruiting an army of machines that you can point to one server to crash it. In the case of the WordPress hack imagine having 90,000 WordPress web servers flood the bandwidth or resources of a targeted system, usually one or more web servers. This is the result of multiple compromised systems (for example a botnet) flooding the targeted system(s) with traffic. When a server is overloaded with connections, new connections can no longer be accepted thus making any new requests unavailable. Remember the Victoria Secret “streamed” event a few years ago that crashed because too many users hit the site? That’s what a botnet does – overruns a server with requests.

The bigger concern is the hackers could likely keep a record of compromised passwords to use in more malicious forms of hacking on everything from Bank Accounts to Social Networks. The ramifications of this breach and many others have yet to be felt. In time we will see the full impact of this breach. What’s becoming painfully clear is the bad guys are getting smarter and have very good tools.

Again, I think this hack once again brings to light the challenges of the cloud and how better solutions are needed to protect our data. CRAM certainly has one of those solutions.

The physical graph security nightmare

We all knew it was a matter of time before we would connect the Internet to the physical things in our every day life from home security to remotely accessing anything in your home. In fact, I have been doing it for several years. The IT industry calls it the “Internet of Things or the Physical Graph.” Taking physical things and connecting them to the web so you can control them with your mobile or computerized device. Thanks to a bevy of new start-ups like Smart Things, the “physical graph” is a reality and coming to a physical thing near you (unlocking doors, turning on or off coffee pots and managing your thermostat). As promising as this new technology sounds, what are the risks? Have we really thought through the ramifications of attaching things in our physical world to the Internet? I see a security nightmare coming. The downfall of this promising new technology is Internet security and it’s likely not a topic anyone promoting “connected things” wants to discuss. Why on earth would I ever connect anything that could be compromised by hackers and open my “physical graph” to hacking. I don’t know about you but I’m not connecting the front door of my home to the Internet anytime soon.

I see huge potential for this industry but the companies involved need to be very honest about the security challenges and not open it’s customers up to major league security issues. If you think someone hacking your bank account is bad, just wait until they hack your home and the things in it. That challenge is coming. In fact, we just found out this week that it’s possible and actually quite easy to hack into an airplane and take over the entire flight control of the plane. A shocking reality that the airline industry should take very seriously. Just one more thing in the “physical graph” that we need to worry about.

Bracelight – my first failure

My first business failure was a product called BraceLight. The company was built around an idea I had surrounding a digital wrist watch that could connect to your cell phone via Bluetooth. Keep in mind, this was almost 8 years ago and prior to all the talk of the Apple wrist watch and the other ‘connected’ watches in the market. The idea was to give users the ability to answer a call on the wrist, feel your cell phone ring on your wrist by vibration, see texts on the watch face and even check your email. I wanted to solve the problem of being in an important meeting and not wanting to be rude by pulling out a cell phone. A BraceLight user could feel the call on the vibrating wristband or see the lights of the band flicker if a call was incoming. We even had a sensor that once enabled would make the lights change on the wristband to the sound of music or a call. So if you were a teenager or college student in a nightclub it would light up to the sound of the music. I thought this was pretty dang cool, perhaps the kind of cool that’s a little ahead of it’s time.

So after I birthed the idea I knew I couldn’t do it alone. So I reached out to a colleague at work that I felt would be the best salesman ever for this product. So he joined and along with him his brother that was a kindred gadget geek. So the three of us jumped into action without a plan, without structure or investors. We saw an opportunity and decided to take it! Looking back it’s so easy to see the inexperience, unrealistic expectations and the kind of naiveté that most first time entrepreneurs have. We blindly followed the dream. Since we all had full-time jobs our work time was into the late hours of the night. The first month was a lot of fun; long talks on the phone, more ideation of the device and fantasizing about becoming millionaires. The “fantasy” gave way to real work, long hours, and eventually our partnership unraveled because one of the partners wanted the reward without the work. This is where a big lesson was learned (how do you deal with partner conflict or partners not willing to put in equal work). It’s all rosy getting into a business but things can quickly change when struggles come, when hard work comes and when people have very unrealistic expectations of how things really work. So we made the difficult decision to let one of the partners go that wasn’t contributing. Fast forward a few more months and we birthed our first prototype. What a magical moment that was. I will never forget when the idea became real and we were looking at something we created through a lot of hard work. It was one of the best feelings of accomplishments I have ever had – taking an idea and making it a reality. Sadly the elation died quickly and gave way to “what now?” We had no money, the idea although good wasn’t something the market was demanding and without millions we couldn’t execute the business. We soon realized we made fatal errors – no plan, no customers, no money. In all our excitement we didn’t have a business we could bootstrap, we didn’t have a business that solved a big enough market problem to warrant funding and frankly nobody cared. It became very clear, very fast, the idea although cool was dead on arrival! So after all that work and time we decided to shut down the company and move into a new product that a market actually wanted. That led to my first real company Hardcore Computer. So even with the failure of BraceLight there was a silver lining. I learned a lot of lessons and found a valuable business partner that was willing to work like me. So we moved into a better business, a better technology and the rest is shall we say “history.”

On paper you could say BraceLight was a failure but in many ways it wasn’t total failure. We walked away with an experience that taught us a lot about building a business. Did we lose money? Yes, but we didn’t lose investors money. Did we lose time? Yes, but we gained a ton of knowledge and valuable lessons. Did we fail? Yes, we failed at generating revenue (the real measure of a company) but we learned we needed to know more about the market in our next venture. Did we hurt a friendship? Yes, but we all learned nothing comes without work and there are no handouts. Business is business, friends are friends and that’s a valuable lesson. So in many ways what we could certainly call a failure really wasn’t a failure. It was a epic sized experience that helped me start a real company LiquidCool (f/k/a Hardcore Computer) and even my company CRAM.

I still make bad decisions, mistakes but I’m quick to realize them, admit them and move on. I recognize my growth comes out of failure and that mitigation of failure comes from thinking things through to the end. I have also realized there is a process and right way to run a business. There is a reason why local entrepreneurs like Phil Soran have success after success. They know the process and what it takes. That process is finding a huge market problem, talking to customers about the problem, finding out what they will pay for the problem and building the solution to solve the problem at a value the customer will ultimately buy. Throw in a good brand, a fabulous team and good marketing – you are off to the races. Then it comes down to selling because nothing happens until something sells. The key to business.

One of the take-a-ways that I hope you get from this post is if you want to become an entrepreneur you will inevitably fail at some point. Embrace it, don’t kick yourself and never stop trying. Quitting is final and far too many entrepreneurs quit at the first sign of failure. Instead of accepting and owning the failure it’s just easier to quit. When you should just dust yourself off, turn a fresh page and move in a new direction. There is a reason why so many successful entrepreneurs say “FAIL FAST, FAIL OFTEN!” Failing gets you one step closer to success. It’s a fact of life when you are an entrepreneur. Just remember, when you have success enjoy it while you have it. Success can leave just as quickly as it comes. You constantly need to try new things, take chances, fail on your way to finding even more success once you have it.