How to get funding for projects

Here's the situation: You have the most massive idea ever. You just drank 3 red bulls and you're convinced that your laser sunglasses will sell like one of Apple's computers that come out every other day. The problem: you have $3 in your Paypal account after buying some nun chucks and X-Ray vision goggles. So, how do you get funding for prototyping?

1) Get an investor!

Easier said than done, the investor's security blanket is a fat packet of Excel spreadsheets, so you will be expected to have every cost calculated and scrutinized.


What do you mean you're not funding my Star Trek PEZ collection?! They're crucial to marketing. Duh.

Or if you're a student, you could always make a family member an "investor".

Hey dad, I have a really cool EDUCATIONAL idea that is crucial to my future success...

2) Ebay.

It may sound dumb, but ebay is my favorite way to pay for projects. I get to trade that really ugly messenger bag I have for a prototype. I'm serious, I'm actually selling a really ugly messenger bag on ebay, and someone is bidding on it!

I'm not a fan of long get-rich-quick ideas that litter the web like old socks, so I'll stop here. Get an investor, sell some stuff on ebay, and that's all you should need to build your laser sunglasses.

Technology and its Effects on Young People

A little while ago, I was contacted by a book publisher who was interested in my work. He asked me to write a short essay on technology from the perspective of a 15 year old. The essay will be published in a book hopefully sometime this year.

Here's what I wrote:

"Technology is anything released after you are born." - I first heard something like this a few years ago. At the time the Apple computer was obese, PCs were in style, and kids spent their days playing dodge ball instead of Call of Duty 4. What is technology to my parents is nothing like what technology is to me. When my dad was a kid he and his friends immersed themselves in sports, arguing over who could throw a baseball faster. When I was in Kindergarten, we spent our recesses playing a Dr. Zeus adventure game, arguing over who could finish the maze faster while gaining the most points.
My first real experience with a computer was when I was in third grade. As usual, the teacher aid was freaking out over a non-obedient computer that locked her out. I can remember sitting in front of the monitor, staring up at the glowing screen while the aid was panting, taking a break from ripping the hair from her scalp and throwing an I-hate-technology tantrum. I slowly tapped out the word “admin”, key by key, in the password box. I confidently pushed enter, and the computer sprang to life. The teacher aid swayed back in fourth in shock, and stared down at me with a look of terror streaked across her face. Before that moment she knew me only as the loud, somewhat obnoxious yet innocent third grader who cowered in power shortages and wailed uncontrollably at knee scrapes. From that point on, in her eyes I was a malicious computer hacker, unbound by library pass codes and login prompts. I was unknown, and I was horrifying.
Six years later computers are small, sleek, and powerful. Instead of kids pretending to play Army with sticks, they chase each other with the iPhone Gun application. Html is a markup language taught to many along with their ABCs, in between snack time and recess. A couple years ago, I showed my 8 year old cousin some Python code I had written, and he nodded along as I explained if… else statements and for loops. Now, he’s building complete videogames with MIT’s Scratch program and knows more about computers than his parents ever will.
Technology has transformed the lives of every child in America. Each and every kid who owns a computer has access to literally everything they could ever want to know. Quantum Physics, English literature, World Economics, it’s all a click away and yet my generation’s thirst for knowledge seems to have been lost. This endless sea of information is littered with distractions and can snatch away what precious time we have. When I walk into a library, I’ve grown accustomed to seeing students on the computers playing “Buffy the Boy Scout Slayer” and “Zombie Wars.” If you ask the average American teen what his passion is, chances are he’ll shrug and say “videogames”.
Technology is neither good nor evil, it is just a tool. The key is how we use it and if we use it to better our lives or just to fill our time.

Has America Lost It's Creativity?

Masking mistakes can be terrifying, and Sir Ken Robinson says its destroying our young peoples' creativity.


[or watch this video here]

Robinson makes a lot of really good points, and it makes me wonder, is American education really extinguishing creativity?

I love school, its a place to learn from people who are smarter than you. However, it seems that all young people do at school is have information shoved into their minds. Even now at the best schools, there is less creativity and more facts, not because anyone really wants it to be this way, its just that we don't have much of a choice. To get that SAT score, that M.D. or PhD from that college, we go through a system that penalizes failure and has little value for creativity.

Now I wonder how we fix it...

Theoretical Thursday: Software- The end, or the beginning?

A couple years ago I met a college student who was creating an autonomous Unmanned Ariel Vehicle. The little plane would fly over a field and scan the ground using color sensors. Black lines drawn in the field told the plane not to fly past them, grey lines were landing strips, and so on. He told me not to waste my time with software, and that hardware was the future of innovation. He explained that soon our computers would have "hardware updates" instead of software updates where the computer would reconfigure a computer's transistors to better fit the needs of the computer. Soon, he claimed, this new hardware would be everywhere. That was three years ago.

I agree that there is a future for hardware, however we still have a long way to go coding-wise with what we've currently got. For instance, the UAV I mentioned above has some things that code needs to fix. When the plane is flying over a green field, wouldn't the sunlight reflect off of the grass and get picked up by the color sensor as a different color? I don't know of any color sensors that can correct this, though it is possible to fix through coding.

Another example, Artificial Intelligence. Let's face it, our AI coding needs work, making robots and software "smart" is one of the hardest things to do, because the coder has to teach the program to learn. There is far too much logic to code to be done in one fellow swoop (in fact, one such software company did try to code every piece of logic a child has, like water is wet, fire is hot, and so on. Many of their coders quit, one claimed that they were "working day and night to create a shadow of what we originally promised".). I won't be satisfied with our AI until we've got a working HAL 9000, complete with the drive to take us over.


AI is something I really want to work on, as there's still a lot of progress to make. I'm sure I'll be happy I chose to go into AI programming until the day I ask my computer:
Me: "Open the bay doors!"
Computer: "I'm afraid I can't do that, Brennon."

Theoretical Thursday: My Thoughts On Free Software

Imagine this:

Radio frequencies are scattered with the ever popular band Survivor, suspenders are still in style, and computer code is just waiting to be written. You explore the world of code and watch the debut of the internet as a way for scientists to share data and evolve from there. You consider a new way to communicate from computer to computer, like writing digital letters. What will you call it? Amail? Qmail? How about... Email? You figure your career is set, and millions will pay to use your low cost communication service. Then, 1996 rolls around and some guy from Stanford named Larry Page has an idea to create something called Google. You think "no big deal" and publish your Email program to the world.


It's no big deal.

However, soon Google creates their Email service, Gmail, and gives it away to everyone for free.

13 years later you're teaching hordes of rowdy high school gamers Java, reminiscing about the "good ol' days" as you tighten your suspenders and select "Eye of the Tiger" on your Walkman.


While this scenario is purely fictional, there is some truth to the idea behind it. Software is becoming completely free, namely thanks to Google. While the goals of the Free Software Foundation are noble, they tend to make life a bit harder for independent developers. As free software becomes more available, people expect everything to be free. Just look at the iTunes App store, reviewers seem angry and any developer who dares charge more than $0.99 for his months of coding. Worse yet, consumers become critical of free software. Look at the reviews on my first game ever with ActionScript 3.0. The user is getting the software for literally nothing, and yet yet they often are angry at the developer if it does not meet their standards.

While free software makes it nearly impossible for developers to take advantage of the consumer (no, only big companies are allowed to charge their users $999.99 for software. *cough* *cough* Adobe) it also makes it hard for the developer to earn enough to support himself.

I fear the day when everything is free, and the only money circulating through software is via advertising or worse, only goes to Microsoft, Apple, or Adobe.*


Footnotes:


*: Don't get me wrong, these are three great companies, they just make the indie developer's life a bit more interesting.

Theoretical Thursday: My Idea Formula

BW Science Labs has been a great place, and a lot has been done throughout the past ~16 months, however there was a problem. Posts were diminishing as if all the good "scientificy" (a phrase I coined long ago) articles had been used up. I was often nervous to post an article that was not completely perfect, and as a result many great posts never saw the light of day. Should I post about something if its only an idea? What if the experiment failed miserably?

I believe I have solved this problem. Theoretical Thursdays are relaxed, and hopefully fun, articles on ideas and thoughts I've had over the past week that will be published every* Thursday.

Late the other night I was thinking of what new articles to write on BW Science Labs and what I was going to have for breakfast the next day when an idea storm** hit me. I got 6 new solid article ideas along with the idea for Theoretical Thursdays and perhaps a second type of post which you'll see on Sunday.

I have a weird way of coming up with ideas. My peak for brainstorming is at about 10:00 to 12:00 pm, which is about the time I'm supposed to be dreaming about a flying spanish tests or yet another oh-so-tempting Apple iTouch update that cleans out my wallet. However, with my totally accurate not at all made up Idea Formula*** I can utilize this time to figure out how to build my next robot or use RFID tags to track my brother****.


(Number of Awesome Ideas) = [(Hours Past Bedtime)² x (Liters of Caffeine)] / [(Homework) x (Number of Tests Tomorrow)²]


The original idea of BW Science Labs, Science Quarterly, and Sliced Bread***** was formulated through this equation.

On a more serious note I would like to say that Theoretical Thursdays are simply something to look forward to once a week, and I'll be sure to keep up the normal articles, hopefully at an accelerated rate.



Footnotes:


*: unless zombies are at my front door or I'm stuck in the middle of the wilderness hundreds of miles away from the nearest wi-fi hotspot.

**: Yeah, I coined that phrase too.

***: Use Einstein's Special Relativity equation E = mc² to find out how relatively accurate my equation is and then Émile Borel's probability equation to figure out if the above answer is probably true.

****: Currently under development.

*****: Did they have caffeine back then?



If you think Theoretical Thursdays are a good idea or a bad one please let me know by commenting below or emailing me.