Media

New Software Developed at MIT Could Call Your Bluff

by Monica Kelly on March 12, 2013

Photos of a man's face captured before and after a video is run through the EVM software.

Photo: MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory

“You’re lying—I can see it on your face!” How many times have you scoffed at that expression? Thanks to new software developed by researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, the next time you hear that, it might be the truth!

The software, called Eulerian Video Magnification (EVM), identifies temporal changes in color and movement—imperceptible to the human eye—in the individual pixels of videos. EVM then amplifies these changes so they can be seen more easily.

Let’s take a real-life example. Every time your heart beats, blood is pumped through your body. This process causes very subtle changes in your skin’s color as your blood vessels expand and contract. While you may not be able to see the difference in your skin’s color, EVM recognizes these minute changes and exaggerates them. In a manipulated video, your face would flash bright pink with every heartbeat, essentially making your pulse visible.

EVM was originally designed to monitor the vitals of neo-natal infants without physically touching them, but new uses have been suggested for law enforcement, construction management, and even gambling. Just imagine how a game of poker would change if you could easily call your opponent’s bluff.

CSAIL students Michael Rubinstein and Neal Wadhwa and MIT alumni Eugene Shih SM ’01, PhD ’10 and Hao-Yu Wu ’12, MNG ’12, along with Professor Frédo Durand, Professor William T. Freeman PhD ’92, and Professor John Guttag received an honorable mention from the National Science Foundation at the 10th annual International Science & Technology Visualization Challenge for their work on the video Revealing Invisible Changes In The World (below).

Interested in putting EVM to the test yourself? Taiwan-based Quanta Research Cambridge, a laptop computer manufacture and funder of this project, has created a platform that allows you to upload your videos and run them through the software. If you have Matlab, download EVM and try it on your own.

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Alumna Develops Educational Game-Changer

by Amy Marcott on February 13, 2013

in Alumni Life, Learning, Media

Cause & Effect: The Daniel Calwell Story, created by West Virginia high schoolers, is a strategy game that uses video and animation to teach others about bullying.

Idit Harel Caperton PhD ’88 is passionate about improving science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education for tweens and teens, and she’s looking to game design to provide a solution. Her social learning network Globaloria allows students to develop STEM and computing knowledge as well as digital literacies.

Launched in 2006, Globaloria is an online platform that allows students in middle school and high school to design and program their own educational games through a mix of teacher-led instruction, team-based learning, and online networking with experts and peers. Girls at the Young Women’s Leadership School of Astoria in New York, for example, are designing and programming games that teach Spanish vocabulary and grammar. Power Supply, created by high schoolers in West Virginia, teaches players how to build a home computer. View more games created by students.

Globaloria bills itself as the first and largest social learning network and provides a yearlong academic curriculum, game-design and programming tutorials, game-content resources, and support for users. Students use industry-standard technology, like ActionScript and Google Tools, that offer life skills. Teachers are given rigorous professional development (in person and virtual) as part of the program.

So far, the platform has reached some 5,000 students within 80 schools in seven states. Curricula are customizable to align with state standards, and preliminary results show improved cognitive skills and increased achievement in math, science, and social studies.

Globaloria is part of of the nonprofit Harel Caperton founded, World Wide Workshop, which invents digital technology applications to aid learning.

Read Harel Caperton’s Huffington Post article about the importance of engaging girls in STEM subjects.

Watch the video to see how students in San Jose, Calif., are using Globaloria.

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The Origins of Silicon Valley, Through the Eyes of MIT Alumni

by Jay London on February 5, 2013

in Alumni Life, In the News, Media, Remember When...

Because California’s Silicon Valley has become such an important part of the U.S. economy and culture, it’s hard to believe its roots are barely 60 years old. A new PBS documentary chronicles the origins of the valley and, as you might guess, many MIT alumni feature prominently in its story.

“Silicon Valley” highlights the eight men who abruptly left Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in 1957. Shockley Labs was led by William Shockley PhD ’36 and one of the first to work on silicon semiconductor devices. The men, who came to be known as the “Traitorous Eight,” include Jay Last PhD ’56, Robert Noyce PhD ’53, and Sheldon Roberts SM ’49, PhD ’52.

Those eight men formed Fairchild Semiconductor. Fairchild was located in a small building south of San Francisco and surrounded by farm fields with no electricity, phones, running water, or toilet. But within two years, a microchip co-created by Noyce helped put astronauts on the moon, aided the U.S. military, and made Fairchild an enormous success.

From siliconvalley.com:

“The birth of Silicon Valley is the story of pioneers who took a plunge into the unknown hoping to make a better life for themselves and for an untold number of others.”

Fairchild’s success led to more engineers and researchers moving to the region. Within a few years, an entire technology-based industry, now known as Silicon Valley, had developed just south of the San Francisco Bay.

From PBS American Experience:

“Noyce transformed the world with not only his invention, but also his management style, which launched the unique business culture for which Silicon Valley would come to be known—openness over hierarchy, risk over stability, jeans over suits.”

“Silicon Valley” premieres on Tuesday, Feb. 5, 9 p.m. (EST) on your local PBS affiliate (watch a preview). The documentary features appearances by Last and Roger Borovoy ’56, and archival interviews of Roberts, Shockley, and Noyce.

Part of the PBS documentary series American Experience, the program is co-produced by Tracy Heather Strain of MIT’s Music and Theater Arts program.

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Mixing MIT and the Sundance Festival

by Nancy DuVergne Smith on February 4, 2013

in Arts, Media

Katie Edgerton blogged from the Sundance Festival.

Katie Edgerton G blogged from the Sundance Festival.

Is television the “most exciting, most fun cinema”? That’s one proposition that arose in a series of articles about the 2013 Sundance New Frontier festival written by MIT Open Documentary Lab researchers last week. They teamed up with Indiewire and the Sundance Institute to cover the festival and the background discussions incubating new ideas.

Initially, says Katie Edgerton, a Comparative Media Studies (CMS) graduate student, people were surprised that an MIT researcher was there, even though many panels focused on the possibilities of new technology.

“Storytelling isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks about MIT, but the school has a long and often overlooked filmmaking tradition. Cinema vérité pioneer Ricky Leacock was on MIT’s faculty for over a decade. While here, he trained documentarians Robb Moss and Ross McElwee. Leacock’s Film & Video Section was one of several programs that merged to form the MIT Media Lab in 1985. Filmmaker Glorianna Davenport worked closely with Leacock, before founding the Media Lab’s Interactive Cinema division. Her 1989 project “Elastic Charles” let users create a documentary about Boston’s Charles River using an interactive, navigable computer interface.”

In fact there was a panel on the Magic of MIT.

“Assistant Professor Sasha Costanza-Chock of MIT’s Center for Civic Media discussed how technology can enable community-based storytelling, helping people create their own narratives. He profiled SandyStoryline.com, a participatory web documentary about the Hurricane Sandy recovery. Sarah Wolozin, director of the MIT Open Documentary Lab, spoke about digital storytelling projects, while the Media Lab’s Dan Novy—who joined MIT after a long career as a Hollywood visual effects supervisor—showcased some of the MIT technologies under development relevant to filmmaking…”

But back to television at a film festival. Edgerton points out that there are many film-TV crossover points, but screening a television series takes a few adjustments. In one case, “Top of the Lake” was shown as a seven-hour marathon. That wasn’t the only unusual screening. An experimental project, a four-channel film titled “North of South, West of East,” was projected onto four sides of a theater and viewers swiveled around in their chairs as the visual story lines unfolded—to one soundtrack that united the action.

Film was a massive moving 3D projection on the walls of a building.

The film was shown as a massive moving 3D projection on exterior building walls.

Julie Fischer, also a CMS grad student and OpenDocLab research assistant, wrote about “What’s He Building in There?” a film about a neighborhood shut-in shown as a massive moving 3D projection on the outside walls of a building.

Interested in the future of film? Read the blogs and learn more about the OpenDocLab, which is taking a fresh look at documentary filmmaking in light of new technologies and participatory potential.

To re-live some of the Sundance Festival, held Jan. 17-27, 2013: cho0se from the 500+ uploaded videos.

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Innovation Center Lets Teens & Tweens Get Their Hands Dirty

by Amy Marcott on January 10, 2013

in Alumni Life, Arts, Design, Engineering, Learning, Media, Modern Geekhood

For the Fall 2012 theme of flight, students in one studio built heavier-than-air radio controlled airplanes. They learned about different methods of lift, propulsion, construction, and design. One team built a glider with long, thin wings. Another team built a futuristic-looking airplane with tapered wings and a round body. A third team made a plane that could change the angle of its propellers, allowing it to both hover like a helicopter, and glide like an aircraft. Read more about the airplane-design studio.

For the Fall 2012 theme of flight, students built heavier-than-air radio-controlled airplanes, learning about different methods of lift, propulsion, construction, and design. Read more about the airplane-design studio.

Some of the most memorable experiences at MIT happen when students seek to solve real-world problems and navigate the successes and failures inherent in the invention process. Now, alumni are bringing that same sort of experience to middle and high school students with NuVu, an innovation learning center located near campus in Central Square.

Launched in 2010 by Saeed Arida SM ’04, PhD ’11 (chief excitement officer); Saba Ghole SM ’07 (chief creative officer); MIT PhD student David Wang ’05, SM ’10 (in-house rocket scientist); and Sean Stevens (prototyping guru), NuVu uses the architectural studio model and encourages youth aged 11–17 to tackle complex, comprehensive problems with a hands-on approach. Small teams collaborate on multidisciplinary projects centered around a theme (for the winter term, currently underway, the theme is smarter planet). It’s an anything-goes, get-your-hands-dirty, dream big kind of place that offers instruction in robotics, engineering and applied sciences, information technology, design and interaction design, computer programming, alternative energy, social sciences, and digital arts and media.

The summer 2012 theme was superheroes, and in one studio led by Media Lab grad student Jennifer Jacobs, students learned the fundamentals of costume design; examined high-tech, self-healing fabrics and specialty metals imbued with shape memory; then manufactured their own creations. The Superhero Collection walked the runway at the the Emerging Trends Show during Boston Fashion Week. Read more about the fashion show. Above: the Lionfish dress, which takes its inspiration from a venomous fish found in the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea, was designed by Sam Ingersoll.

The summer 2012 theme was superheroes, and in one studio, students learned the fundamentals of costume design, examined high-tech fabrics and metals, then manufactured their own creations. The Superhero Collection walked the runway at the the Emerging Trends Show during Boston Fashion Week. Read more about the fashion show. Above: the Lionfish dress, which takes its inspiration from a venomous fish found in the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea, was designed by Sam Ingersoll.

Guiding students every step of the way are experts, many of whom are MIT alumni and PhD students. These coaches (as they are called) work with groups to address complex scientific, technical, and design questions and help with prototype inventions, which are then evaluated by external reviewers (professors, practitioners, entrepreneurs and designers). Students learn creative problem solving, collaboration, communication and presentation skills, systems thinking, adaptability, risk-taking, and more.

NuVu is a full-time program, 9:00 a.m.–3:00 p.m. weekdays, and the learning is intense. Students enroll in a sequence of four studios, each lasting two weeks. During the academic year, local schools send a select group of learners to NuVu for three to six months of instruction. Special summer programs have been taught elsewhere in the US and there’s now a satellite program in India, the NuVu-Bangalore Studio.

The summer 2013 theme is interactive music and art. Studios include futuristic musical instruments, interactive storybook, brainwave art & music, drawing robots, interactive fashion, and more.

Registration for any or all of three summer sessions (July 8–Aug. 16) is open now through May 8. Enrollments are processed on a first-come, first-served basis.

There’s also a summer professional development session for educators and curriculum developers to learn about studio-based pedagogy. Participants will devise a project they can implement in their own schools and communities. Registration is open through April 19.

check out NuVu’s blog for more project updates.

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Giving Spacewar! Its Props

by Amy Marcott on January 7, 2013

in Alumni Life, Arts, Media, Modern Geekhood, Remember When..., Research

Playing the original Spacewar! game. Click to view the short video “Story of Spacewar!” on the Computer History Museum site.

If you’re living in or planning to visit New York between now and March 3, you might want to check out the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria. Its interactive exhibit Spacewar! Video Games Blast Off celebrates the 50th anniversary of the first digital video game, which was created at MIT, and examines how the game shaped science-fiction shooters and the industry.

View the games on exhibit. The list includes another with MIT ties: the 1980 arcade game Defender, codesigned by Larry Demar ’79.

All the games are playable, and each paid visitor receives four complimentary arcade tokens with the option to buy more.

According to a New York Times article about the exhibit, each game is presented in its original housing, not simply original code decked out in modern machines. (Though any replacement parts, like joysticks, are noted.) The only exception, unfortunately, is Spacewar! itself. Apparently, there is only one working Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-1 (the computer on which the game was designed) and that lives at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif. The Spacewar! game in the exhibit is a commissioned model offering “a reasonable facsimile of the original play experience.”

Check out the short video “Story of Spacewar!” on the Computer History Museum site and learn more about the development of the game. The video includes interviews with cocreators Steve Russell ’60, SM ’62, EE ’66; Dan Edwards ’59, SM ’66, EE ’67; and Peter Samson ’62 along with documentary footage from Tech and great gems of information, like how inspiration for the game came from Japanese Toho science fiction films, Disney’s Man in Space series, and E. E. Smith’s Lensman novels.

Is This the Future of News?

by Amy Marcott on December 27, 2012

in Classroom, Media

Point a smartphone camera at a digital headline with a VR code embedded within and the NewsFlash app interprets the high-frequency red and green light.

Point a smartphone camera at a digital headline embedded with a VR code and the NewsFlash app interprets the high-frequency red and green light and displays the web page on the phone.

Move over, QR codes. There’s a new player in town: VR (video response) codes. Unlike the clunky, square QR code, VR codes are invisible to the naked eye. They use high-frequency red and green light to transmit data to a smartphone’s camera.

The technology was initiated by Grace Woo SM ’07, PhD ’12 as part of her PhD thesis and work with Andrew Lippman ’71, senior research scientist and head of the Viral Spaces group at the MIT Media Lab.

One potential use for VR codes is an app called NewsFlash. Point a smartphone camera at a digital headline (on an iPad in the demonstration below) and the app sees the high-frequency light, interprets those flashes, and displays either a mobile version of the website with the same content or a translation, if the text is in a foreign language.

See it in action.

VR codes are currently being developed by Pixels.IO as a spinoff of the Viral Spaces group.

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Six Alums Named Among “World’s Most Powerful”

by Jay London on December 20, 2012

in Alumni Life, In the News, Media, Research, Uncategorized

According to Forbes Magazine, there are 7.1 billion people on the planet but only 71 who matter—the World’s Most Powerful People. We disagree with Forbes’ statement but acknowledge that at least five alumni cracked the list.

Ben Bernanke PhD ’79

The annual ranking, which was first introduced in 2009, has one slot for every 100 million people on Earth. (A 7.1 billion population equals a 71-person list.) Recipients are chosen based on the magazine’s four dimensions of power: personal influence, sphere of influence, financial resources, and active use. President Barack Obama tops the list for the second consecutive year.

The definition of power is subjective so we’ll let you decide if the ranking truly constitutes the world’s most powerful people. Let us know your take—and whether any other alumni merit mention—in the comments below or on Facebook.

Ben Bernanke PhD ’79 (number 6), chairman, U.S. Federal Reserve

Bernanke, who has cracked the top 10 each year, is credited for the country’s recent economic growth and a near-record $2.9 trillion on the reserve’s balance sheet.

Mario Draghi PhD ’77 (8), president, European Central Bank

Number 12 in 2011, Draghi is the former governor of the Bank of Italy. As chief banker of the world’s largest currency area, he is working to create financial unity among the 17 countries that use the euro.

Benjamin Netanyahu ’75, SM ’76 (23), prime minister, Israel

According to Forbes, Netanyahu is a key figure in nearly every Middle Eastern crisis. In his second term as prime minister, he oversaw the merger of two competing political parties, Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu.

Charles Koch ’57, SM ’58, SM ’60 (tied, 41), CEO, Koch Industries, Inc.
David Koch ’62, SM ’63 (tied, 41), executive vice president, Koch Industries, Inc.

With $115 billion on sales, Koch Industries is the second-largest private company in the U.S. Their products include asphalt, chemicals, commodities trading, fertilizers, finance, natural gas, plastics, and petroleum.

Earlier this year, Forbes released its list of the world’s 100 Most Powerful Women, which included one MIT alumna.

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala MCP ’78, PhD ’81 (81), minister of finance, Nigeria

Prior to her second stint as minister of finance, Okonjo-Iweala served as vice president and corporate secretary of the World Bank Group. She is credited with helping liberalize the Nigerian economy and building closer relations with the U.S. and Nigerian businesses.

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Alums Demystify Financial Services with Unbiased Analytic Tools

by Amy Marcott on December 18, 2012

in Alumni Life, Economics, Learning, Management, Media, Travel

NerdWallet logo When it comes to financial services, companies use everything from talking babies to Vikings to persuade people to use their products. You practically need a degree from MIT to decide on the best checking account or credit card rewards program. Which is exactly why the friends and family of Jake Gibson ’04, who majored in math and finance at the Institute, sought him out for basic financial advice.

“I realized that there was no trusted resource for them to find answers,” Gibson says. So he left his job at JPMorgan Chase and cofounded San Francisco-based NerdWallet, a website that helps consumers make informed choices about their personal finances by creating free, simple tools and resources using a numbers-based, analytic approach. Users can do personalized searches based on their spending habits and receive unbiased results—the company’s tagline is “We do the homework for you.”

Here are just some of the comparison tools on the NerdWallet site:

Credit cards based on the best balance-transfer offers, lowest interest rates, or most cash back
Brokerage firms broken down by best data-analysis tools or research reports or lowest fees
Checking accounts filtered by age and stage (teens, college students, seniors, or everyone else) as well as by type of financial institution (big, community, or Internet bank or credit union)
Student loans based on estimated repayments
Online shopping deals organized by cash back, points, or miles for purchases as well as those offering coupon codes and promos (there were nearly 46,000 deals and promos at press time, and you can sort by independent retailers and Etsy coupons as well)

One of numerous tools NerdWallet offers to compare financial services, like checking accounts, brokerage firms, and student loans.

Articles on the NerdWallet site provide advice on everything from investing to food stamps. NerdWallet Education offers a scholarship search and compares colleges based on highest employment rates and salaries for grads as well as schools with the most students volunteering or traveling after graduation. The education section of the site is completely free of ads and commercial referrals.

NerdWallet also provides advice on travel with a feature called TravelNerd. There’s an online tool to compare various airline fees, and a newly launched smartphone app helps at the airport by recommending parking and transportation (including any taxi-sharing offers and phone numbers for car/shuttle services), amenities, and terminal maps.

The site has been getting great buzz this year, with its services and tools recommended by and mentioned in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Forbes, Time, Money, Huffington Post, and more.

NerdWallet is a labor of love for Gibson and his employees, many of whom took pay cuts and gave up successful corporate trajectories to help people and further the company’s mission of transparency in the realms of financial, travel, and educational services.

So, has it been worth it?

Joseph Audette ’05, VP of education and financial literacy, says it has. “My cousin just emailed me saying she used our site to know which bank was the best on her campus,” he says. “You don’t get those emails when you are working at a hedge fund.” A site like NerdWallet would have helped him with his own finances. “After MIT, I consolidated my loans privately and ended up paying much more than if I had consolidated using the federal system,” he says. “I just didn’t know that was an option for me. That is why we created NerdWallet Education as a pro bono resource.”

In the coming year, NerdWallet plans to release additional resources that focus on financial literacy and college affordability. It’s also expanding nonprofit partnerships by working with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on a new grant to help first-generation students and parents complete the FAFSA.

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NOW You Can Start Your Holiday Shopping

by Amy Marcott on December 6, 2012

in Alumni Life, Arts, Design, Engineering, Media, Modern Geekhood, Science

A needle-felted sculpture of NASA’s “Mohawk guy.”

It’s time once again for our annual roundup of holiday gift ideas created by members of the MIT community. Check out the 2011, 2010, and 2009 lists for more inspiration.

For those of you who live in Cambridge, the MIT Museum store is offering 20% off everything this Friday, Dec. 7, 1:00-6:00 p.m. In-store only.

Entertainment & Learning

Bobak Ferdowsi needle-felted soft sculpture
This nearly five-inch wool and acrylic figure honors Bobak Ferdowsi SM ’03 a.k.a. the NASA “Mohawk guy” who helped land the Curiosity rover on Mars. Warning! There was only one left at press time, so don’t blame me if this is sold out. It was made by Lety R-Z, who runs the Etsy storefront CreturFetur. Needle felting, says her site, “consists of poking wool repeatedly with a barbed needle, making the fibers lock together.”

MIT Press book.

10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10 (MIT Press 2012)
This book takes a single line of code–the extremely concise BASIC program for the Commodore 64 inscribed in the title–and uses it as a lens through which to consider the phenomenon of creative computing and the way computer programs exist in culture. It was cowritten by 10 authors, including Associate Professor Nick Montfort SM ’98; Patsy Baudoin, the MIT Libraries’ liaison to the MIT Media Lab; Casey Reas SM ’01; and Noah Vawter SM ’06, PhD ’11.

Roominate, the wired building toy for girls.

Roominate
Dubbed “the wired building toy for girls,” Roominate was cocreated by mechanical engineering alumna Alice Brooks ’10 as a way to get young girls excited about STEM subjects. Kits contain modular, laser-cut wooden parts for walls and furniture as well as circuit components to wire and decorate the room. It’s recommended for ages 6–10, and girls can share their creations online.

Makey Makey
Turn ordinary objects, even yourself, into touchpads and keyboard keys using the invention kit Makey Makey. No programming or software required. It’s the brainchild of Jay Silver SM ’08 and Eric Rosenbaum SM ’09, both PhD students in the Media Lab. Read a previous Slice post about it and view a video of Makey Makey in action.

Cast Me if You Can (DVD)
Atsushi Ogata SM ’88 cowrote and directed this independent film, a romantic comedy set in Tokyo. In Japanese with English subtitles, it was theatrically released in 16 cities in Japan and traveled through the international festival circuit before being released in the US earlier this year. CNN.com calls it “a comedy of oddballs,” which includes “a pantie thief, a poker-faced jailer, and a dwarf-like agent” involved in wacky situations. Watch the trailer.

Turn-signal-equipped cycling wear made using a LilyPad Arduino kit.

Fashion & Beauty

LilyPad Arduino wearable electronics
For the do-it-yourselfers, there’s LilyPad Arduino, a set of sewable electronic components with which you can create soft, interactive fashion, like fortune-telling tees or turn-signal-equipped cycling wear. Creator Leah Buechley, associate professor of media arts and sciences and director of the Media Lab’s High-Low Tech Group, offers a LilyPad starter kit in addition to other components via the LilyPad category on SparkFun. Tutorials explain how to build various products.

Living Proof hair-car products
Developed by Institute Professor Robert Langer ScD ’74 and wholeheartedly endorsed by Jennifer Aniston (who recently became a co-owner of the company), Living Proof invents and patents “new molecules that completely change how hair behaves.” This one I can personally vouch for. At least it works on my hair. Read all about the science and Aniston’s new role.

Stages of Beauty skincare.

Stages of Beauty skincare
Jasmina Aganovic ’09, who earned her degree in chemical engineering and previously worked at Living Proof, began Stages of Beauty to address the changing skincare needs of women as they age. Her lines of anti-aging cleansers, scrubs, creams, toners, and serums are made specifically for women in their 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50+. Read a Q&A with Aganovic.

Beaver golf-club head cover wearing an MIT Sloan T-shirt.

Beaver golf-club cover wearing an MIT Sloan T-shirt.

SloanGear
Owned and operated entirely by students, SloanGear is an established tradition in the management school. At the end of each academic year, SloanGear gets bought by a team of first years who take over the company the following year. The company was originally called the Sloan Sweatshirt Company before the Class of 2002 rebranded it as SloanGear. Find men’s and women’s apparel, a cute onesie for babies, and other gifts (who doesn’t need a beaver golf-club head cover wearing an MIT Sloan T-shirt?). MIT students, alumni, faculty, and administrators can even get Tumi luggage at 25% off.

JYOTI custom-designed hidden scroll ring.

JYOTI New York jewelry
If luxury, custom-designed jewelry is your thing, check out designs by Sloanie Jyoti Singhvi MBA ’07. Singhvi, who has previously worked for Cartier, crafts pieces that tell stories about the owners. Read about her in Bloomberg Businessweek.

Electronic Gifts

Delightfully
Want to hand-wrap an online gift card, subscription, or e-book? Consider sending it via Delightfully, cofounded by two MITers. The service allows you to pair an electronic gift with a meaningful experience, like “wrapping” it with a collage of personal photos or requiring a recipient to travel along a virtual map toward a prize at the end. Learn all about it in this Slice post.

A still of a MakeSweet animation.

MakeSweet animations
When it’s the thought that counts, consider creating a special animation using MakeSweet, developed by roboticist Paul Fitzpatrick PhD ’03. Your special message could appear on any number of billboards or in an opening locket. Or, a Rubik’s Cube could solve itself into photos you place onto it.

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Media

New Software Developed at MIT Could Call Your Bluff

Alumna Develops Educational Game-Changer

The Origins of Silicon Valley, Through the Eyes of MIT Alumni

Mixing MIT and the Sundance Festival

Innovation Center Lets Teens & Tweens Get Their Hands Dirty

Giving Spacewar! Its Props

Related Slice Posts

Is This the Future of News?

Six Alums Named Among “World’s Most Powerful”

Alums Demystify Financial Services with Unbiased Analytic Tools