I’m really glad to see stories like this one from Christian Carlberg. His HexBright product is a hackable flashlight and the project got its start at Maker Faire Bay Area. He’s now raised over $170,000 on Kickstarter, which is amazing.

“We are studying the social, technical — the weirdness factor — of me becoming a robot,” said Lisa Mead, a service delivery leader at Steelcase. “How do we apply our 100 years’ worth of knowing how people work effectively and expand it to now include what a person needs to operate a robot, what makes a space friendly for a robot?”

It’s all part of an investment by the world’s largest office furniture manufacturer to anticipate the future of telepresence — the technology and practice of transporting your image and voice across distances — to save companies time and money.

Friend of Make and Grand Rapids resident, Matthew Gryczan writes about Steelcase’s experimentation with robotic telepresence. I particularly like the idea of hiring a robot to go somewhere I don’t have to travel, but I’m not sure why that’s different than Skype.

I’m really happy to see this excellent piece on how the maker movement is offering a new direction for science and technical education. Miles O’Brien does a great job.

“I didn’t know what to expect,” Anita Cockrum said. “We are having a really good time.”

They met a man who is trying to harness energy from the earth so people can “plug in” their homes to the ground. And they spent time talking with another who has created a solar-powered water heater. The Cockrums are going to try to make one of their own.

“There’s a lot of hands-on, practical stuff,” Anita Cockrum said. “A lot of people are willing to share their ideas freely. I like that.”