Obama Learns to Code

Last year when President Barack Obama delivered a YouTube speech encouraging young kids to learn to code, he hadn’t actually had any coding experience himself. To kick off this year’s Computer Science Education Week, Obama took on the task. While he didn’t complete the entire tutorial, Obama did build a modest program that drew a square on the screen, making him the first president to …

Link About It: This Week’s Picks

NASA launches Orion, Peter Marino gets real about retail, touchable holograms and more in our weekly look at the web

1. Eco-Friendly Air Conditioning A new material developed by Stanford University’s Dr Aaswath Raman is potentially going to revolutionize the way we keep cool. Made from ultra-thin layers of silicon dioxide, hafnium dioxide and silver (for reflectivity), the new material is able to radiate as much as 97% of sunlight back into the frigid vastness of outer-space while still remaining cool itself. When tested, a …

Touchable 3D Holograms

Straight from the laboratory of Tony Stark, a newly developed technology is able to produce 3D holographic shapes that can be felt and touched while floating in mid-air. Using ultrasound and haptics (touch feedback) as its primary technologies, this new method creates concentrated air disturbances that form visible 3D floating shapes. The possible uses seem to be endless; whether it’s to touch a tumor from …