Hasta La Gadget!

Austin, Texas is loaded to the gills with geeks of every shape and size, and we’re here too! We’re parked at the city’s convention center for a day filled with A-list SXSW speakers, including Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX fame, former Vice President Al Gore and the ace team from Leap Motion. We’ll be liveblogging several events today, and bringing you hands-ons and interviews throughout the weekend and early next week. Head over to our event page for a full rundown of our SXSW posts, galleries and videos, and be sure to check out our liveblogs, kicking off with Leap Motion at 1:30PM ET, then followed by Elon Musk at 3:00PM ET and Al Gore at 4:30PM ET. Oh, and if you’re in Austin tonight, don’t forget to drop by our very first Engadget+gdgt Live event. We’ll see you there!

Filed under: Announcements

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When we spoke to Gary Stern way back in January at CES, the pinball exec let it be known that his was the only company currently producing pinball machines — and while that may be accurate so far as actual shipping systems go, there are a handful of startups looking to get into the game. One of the more compelling examples we’ve seen is the offering from Multimorphic, an Austin-based company showcasing a prototype at SXSW Interactive’s Game Expo.

The P3 is interesting for a number of reasons. First, and arguably most importantly, is the modular nature of the machine. If you take a look at the (still-unfinished) sides of the cabinet, you can see a big slit down the center, where the top can be lifted off and replaced — since the machine is targeted toward home users, there’s no concern about vandalism there. The idea is to essentially offer a platform to both developers and at-home hackers to create their own games atop what is essentially a clean slate.

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Source: Multimorphic

The job of kicking off this year’s South By Southwest Interactive conference fell firmly in the hands of none other than MakerBot CEO Bre Pettis — and really a show like this couldn’t ask for a better, more enthusiastic evangelist for emerging technologies. And certainly the fact that Pettis’ company has firm ties to the event doesn’t hurt matters either. Pettis spent much of his talk espousing the “next industrial revolution,” a phenomenon in which he sees desktop 3D printing playing a pivotal role — MakerBot’s 3D printing specifically, if he has his way.

The company took a big step in that direction with the announcement of the Digitizer Desktop 3D Scanner. Still in its early prototype stages, the device is an attempt to do for 3D scanning what the Replicator and its ilk have done for printing — i.e. democratize the process in such a way that makes it affordable and user-friendly enough to make it an appealing prospect for hobbyists and later consumers. It’s hard to say just how realistic that dream is at this point, of course — the device is set to go up for order in the fall, and Pettis is the first to admit that the company still has a long way to go before the Digitizer is consumer-ready. But if anyone’s going to convince us that such a dream is close to coming true, it’s the MakerBot co-founder. Click through after the break to hear him discuss the device.

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Well, that was quick. Bre Pettis just started delivering South By Southwest’s opening remarks and may well have taken the wraps off the biggest news of the show. Of course, we’ll still have to hang out in Austin for a few more days just to, you know, totally make sure, but this really does feel like a doozy. As the MakerBot CEO puts it, “It’s a natural progression for us to create a product that makes 3D printing even easier” — but, let’s be honest, few of those who don’t have a vested interest in moving some 3D printers are running around calling the whole process particularly “easy.” And while consumer-facing devices like the Replicator, CubeX, Solidoodle, et al. have gone a ways toward making the technology more accessible for laypeople, there’s still a fundamental breakdown: the creation of models to be printed.

The maker community has helped on that front, as well, with MakerBot’s Thingiverse serving as an unparalleled resource for 3D images, meaning that, once your printer’s all set up and calibrated, you can download and print to your hearts delight — but what if, say, you want to print up something that some kindly soul hasn’t designed for you? You could learn a CAD program — or you could invest in an industrial 3D scanner. The latter option has lead to something of a land rush of companies and individuals looking to break things wide open with an affordable, consumer-facing offering. And while MakerBot still seems a ways away from the final product, the company used SXSW as a platform to unveil a prototype of its MakerBot Digitizer Desktop 3D Scanner.

Filed under: Peripherals

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Highlight, a location-based people discovery app that made a splash at last year’s SxSW Interactive in Austin, TX, just released a big 1.5 update that adds photo-sharing and event-creation to its set of features. Sharing snapshots has a whiff of the Color app to it: whenever you take a picture of something, that photo will automatically appear on your friends’ Highlight stream as long as they’re in the vicinity. You can add captions, tag it with a name of the place, your friends’ names, and share them to Facebook or Twitter. The pics will automatically be geotagged of course, but if you don’t like sharing that info, you can remove the lat-long information afterward. However, it appears that untagging is not yet available, which is why the tagging is limited to just friends for now.

Creating events, on the other hand, is entirely different from what you might imagine. As opposed to planned invitations that you would create on eVite or Facebook, Highlight’s Events are entirely spontaneous. You can only create an event “here and now” and the only people who are invited are those nearby (within a 250 meter radius or so). There isn’t even a dedicated events tab; instead, you create or attend an event by tapping the map marker in the new post window. After you’re done partying it up, the event will automatically end when people leave and stop posting due to the location and context-aware nature of the app.

At the announcement in San Francisco, CEO Paul Davison said that both photos and event features intend to create a “new way to hangout.” “They’re not for thousands of friends,” he said, “They’re for the people around you in the room.” Yet, all the photos and event information will be available publicly, so he emphasized the entirely opt-in nature of Highlight: “You’re in the service because you want it.” As the next SxSW Interactive is only weeks away, the company is keen to see how users will take to the new features in a high-density environment like the popular Austin conference. To give it a go yourself, you can download both iOS and Android versions right now from the App Store and Google Play.

Filed under: Software, Mobile

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Source: App Store, Google Play, Highlight Blog