Once upon a time, they built a smart electric bike prototype that John Biggs spotted at Maker Faire a few years ago.
Bo Pollett, a 32-year-old aerospace engineer who is also a member of Nova Labs, described it as a "clubhouse with machine tools", and said that it attracted a variety of people – the sort typically spotted at maker faires around the world.
Diverse communities live cheek by jowl in Brighton, so the police constantly assess the lie of the land, hoping to identify trouble spots and makers before they become a threat to peaceful coexistence.
This can be used by end users and designers: potentially letting a product maker spot an untapped need for impaired users.
Its revenues have more than tripled since 1992, to a likely $4 billion this year, and it has risen to the number three spot as a maker of hard drives behind only Seagate and Quantum.
In case you didn't hear, Acer is almost ready to take away the #2 PC maker spot from Dell, but that doesn't concern Mr. College-Dropout-Dell. Bloomberg, Acer "might have a similar unit volume to Dell, but their gross margin dollars are six to seven times less than Dell, and I wouldn't swap our business with theirs under any circumstance," he said.
Mr. Pritzker's older brother Jay became the Marmon Group's deal maker, spotting undervalued companies to acquire, which Robert, the middle brother, then ran.
The results are a small bright spot for computer makers, which have tried to downplay the extent to which tablet computers, mostly the Apple iPad at this point, have diverted spending from the PC and laptop.
In another bright spot for TV makers, consumers seem willing to upgrade their sets more frequently than they did in the tube era, when it was not uncommon for them to use the same sets for a decade or more.
Sunday 20 January On the plane from New York to the Mormon town of Sundance I play spot the film-maker, scanning the aisles for the hopeful, the savvy or the jaded.
