Hasta La Gadget!

We are about to embark on amazing adventure and we need your help. In January we are holding our first Hardware Battlefield in Las Vegas, Nevada to coincide with CES. We will bring 15 great hardware startups, a gaggle of amazing judges, and a 3D-printed trophy of your design.

We need 3D designers to build us an amazing, open source trophy that Shapeways will print for us. If your model is chosen you will receive a Makerbot Digitizer and our unending appreciation as well as a link to your work.

How do you enter? Create a 3D model taller than six inches and submit it to Shapeways with the tag “Techcrunch.” Email me, john@techcrunch.com, when you’ve uploaded your model and we will pick a winner at the middle of December. You will receive a print and we will use another copy as our Hardware Battlefield trophy.

What are we looking for? Anything as long as it looks great as a trophy, is sufficiently regal-looking, and is amazing. We want robots, planetoids, and 3D printer nozzles blown up to maximum resolution. We want something that epitomizes the spirit of adventure, fun, and hard work that it takes to make a cool hardware startup.

So enter today. We need you and we want our Hardware Battlefield winner to go home with an amazing trophy of your design.

Taking pictures is fun, frustrating and rewarding. But the right gear helps minimize the frustration and bump up the other two. This guide covers a range of photographers, from amateur mobile shooters to those with the best gear operating at or near the professional level, so there should be something for everyone. And remember: When in doubt, batteries.

Fujifilm X100s ($1,299)

This is a camera lover’s camera, with an extremely pleasing outer design and functionality that will make the biggest rangefinder nerd sing with secret joy inside their heart. The X100s debuted at CES last year, but it’s not showing its age yet – and it improves autofocus greatly over the original X100, which was itself a strong performer save for that one failing. If it’s low light and candid you’re after, in a relatively portable package with extensive manual controls, the X100s is it.

Sony NEX-5T ($599)

The Fujifilm camera listed above is great for advanced users, but the Sony NEX-5T is an affordable mirrorless interchangeable lens camera that fits the needs of much more novice and general photographers. The 5T offers Wi-Fi sharing over the lower cost 3N, which is why it gets my vote, since that’s becoming a much more important convenience factor with the increased mobile editing power built-in to many of today’s best smartphones and tablets.

iPad Air ($499)

Speaking of those devices, Apple’s iPad Air takes the cake as the photographer’s best friend while on the road. That big, beautiful Retina display combined with the thin and light design of Apple’s latest 9.7-inch tablet make it the perfect blend of form and function for use in the field. And that A7 processor promises big improvements for image editing performance on the tablet, especially as software makers like Adobe capitalize on its newfound abilities.

Glif ($30)

Also for the mobile photographer, the Glif from Studio Neat has just undergone a redesign that makes it compatible with virtually any smartphone device. The original was a single piece of ABS plastic, but this one introduces a single moving part to accommodate devices of different thicknesses. You might not think that tripod-mounting your iPhone or Galaxy S4 is going to make a huge difference to your pictures, but with apps that cater to long exposures and for surprisingly sharper results, traditional tools like a tripod can’t be beat.

Incase DSLR Pro Pack ($149.95)

I am constantly rethinking my ideal camera bag, but the Incase DSLR Pro Pack has remained on top of the heap for the longest time now, and I don’t foresee ditching it anytime soon. It lugs everything I need with ease, including laptop, chargers and cables in addition to one or two bodies and a number of lenses. It’ll weigh a ton fully loaded, but the straps distribute the weight evenly to save your back, and it’s so sturdily constructed it’ll last for years even under the heaviest of loads.

You can check out our complete Holiday Gift Guide 2013 right here.

Stratasys, one of the two giants in the 3D printing market (the other is 3DSystems), is on a roll. This summer it bought one of the biggest and beloved home 3D-printer makers, MakerBot, and watched its printers churn out the first 3D-printed gun. Now it’s back in the news for suing printer reseller Afinia for infringing on its patents.

These patents cover some of the most basic aspects of 3D printing, from the process of creating “infill,” the cross-hatched pattern that printers use to support the inside, to the heated plate that keeps objects stuck during printing. MakerBot, in fact, has long infringed on these very same patents and, for most of its existence, has skirted lawsuits, albeit with positive results. Many smaller manufactures haven’t been so lucky.

Even Formlabs, makers of the Form One stereolithographic machine, weren’t immune. They went to market last December while facing down 3D Systems lawyers for daring to use a similar printing technique.

Why is Big 3D finally paying attention to little guys like Formlabs and Afinia aka Microboards Technology, LLC? It’s because they’re finally getting traction in the home market. While it’s usually fine for B2B companies to snipe each other – nobody cares when big CRM smashes some puny competitor – this sniping is actually hurting the industry. By slowing down the adopting of home 3D printing, Stratasys and 3D Systems are cutting into their own bottom line. IBM, in the 1980s, never actively attacked the “clones” that sprung up on the market and we now have a variegated ecosystem of hardware that ranges from mobile devices to mainframes. No one stopped Linux from copying techniques and tricks used by Unix and, eventually, Windows, and the result is a deep and rich vein of open source computing prowess.

Patents served Stratasys and 3D Systems well when 3D printing was hard. To compete with them, competitors had to have deep pockets and be ready to pay licensing fees. Now that literally anyone can build an MakerBot-like FDM machine out of a few simple parts – this guy made one for $100 – the impetus for protection is far more mercenary. They are, in short, threatened.

The EFF has been trying to swat down fake patents, for better or worse, but the problem will continue to plague small makers until the patents expire. It does not benefit Stratasys to troll the small guy (unless it’s to protect its MakerBot investment, which would be a delightful bit of irony) and, in the end, it hurts the industry as a whole. The more people who know how to do home 3D printing, the more people who will be interested in professional products. That said, perhaps Stratasys is concerned that the home 3D printers will supplant its professional business. If this is the case, it’s a baseless fear akin to Ford being afraid of go-kart hobbyists.

Patents are fine when they truly protect the filers from predators. When the filers themselves, become the predators, however, the issue clouds the market, destroys innovation, and makes the big guys look mean. That’s not good for anyone.

Our long worldwide nightmare is almost over. The next USB plug will finally be reversible just like Apple’s Lightning connector. No more blindly jamming the connector towards the receptacle, just knowing that it’s not going to work. In the near future, the plug will always be the right side up.

The upcoming connector, called Type-C, is designed for the USB 3.1 specification and scheduled to be finalized by the middle of 2014. The plug is said to be the size of the MicroUSB plug and sport an array of new features including scalable power charging and support data rates nearing 10 Gbit/s.

“While USB technology is well established as the favored choice for connecting and powering devices, we recognize the need to develop a new connector to meet evolving design trends in terms of size and usability,” said Brad Saunders, USB 3.0 Promoter Group Chairman, in a released statement today (PDF). “The new Type-C connector will fit well with the market’s direction and affords an opportunity to lay a foundation for future versions of USB.”

The USB 3.0 Promoter Group didn’t release a picture of the upcoming connector.

This plug will not mate with existing USB plugs and receptacles. This means, sadly, one day, the dozens of MicroUSB cables accumulating in a junk drawer will be obsolete. Your collection will be a relic. But, I for one, welcome the march of innovation with open arms just so I don’t have to do the little dance flip-flopping dance every time I need to plug in a gadget.

Remember the YotaPhone? The delightfully kooky Russian smartphone that pairs a bog-standard LCD screen with an eInk display on its rump? It’s been teased for a launch for months now, but the company behind it has just spilled the beans at a press event in Moscow: the YotaPhone will launch in Russian and Europe today complete with a confirmed €499/19,990 RUB price tag, right in line with rumors that flew around earlier this year.

Smartphone aficionados in Russia, Austria, France, Spain and Germany who are itching for a device that’s a bit off the beaten path can lay claim to their YotaPhones now, and Yota Devices is pushing to sell the devices in a total of 20 markets in Europe and the Middle East by the time Q1 2014 rolls around.

Bummer alert: the Americas didn’t make the cut for that first round of rollouts, and there’s no official word on when (if ever) that split-personality smartphone will ever find its way state-side.

Bear in mind that Yota Devices has been plugging away on the YotaPhone concept for over a year now, so the components ticking away inside of the thing aren’t exactly the newest you’ll ever come across. There’s a 1.7GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 chip in there (though the company hasn’t specified exactly which variant), along with 2GB of RAM, a 4.3-inch 720p front display, and a surprisingly small 1800mAh battery to keep things humming away. If you were to just read those specs off a sheet of paper, it would sound like you were describing a flagship smartphone from (surprise surprise) last year, though as a whole the device still has enough oomph to keep up with users’ daily grinds.

But really, I don’t know anyone who’s been eyeing up the YotaPhone based on the strength of its spec sheet; the real star of the show though is the 4.3-inch eInk display mounted on the YotaPhone’s rear end in lieu of a more traditional backplate. Getting content onto the second screen seems simple enough — a two-finger swipe down on the front screen sends a screenshot of whatever you’re looking at to the paper-like rear display — but only a handful of apps are really optimized for the task from the get-go. That early list includes an organizer, a social feed/RSS reader, and a language learning tool to name a new, and we’re getting word that Yota Devices is going to open up the necessary APIs to curious devs in short order.

These days nearly every OEM is clamoring to deliver the sleekest, fastest, highest-def smartphones possible, and it’s sort of refreshing to see a company stop for a moment to ponder a smarter way to add value to the smartphone formula. Naturally, that’s not to say the YotaPhone is poised to be an overnight success. The limited scope of its launch means that the company behind the phone is missing out on traction in the crucial Asian and American markets, and it’s hard to deny the incredibly niche vibe this thing gives off. As much as I like it, the YotaPhone formula almost assuredly won’t click with a majority of potential smartphone shoppers, and there’s no way Yota Devices doesn’t realize that. If nothing else though, the path the company has chosen is an interesting one, and in a sea of smartphone sameness you can’t completely discount the value of a wild-eyed notion.

Want a little more? Check out the live stream of the event (courtesy of CNET) below: