Robot Bartender Would Not Be Complete Without LEDs

By Keith Dawson – Rob Kaye and Pierre Michael, the two principals at Party Robotics, have been developing Bartendro for nearly three years.

As it turns out, dispensing liquids precisely and automatically is not easy. There were no suitable pumps available at hobbyists’ prices when Rob and Pierre started — they were all precision manufactured for medical or industrial markets, and cost hundreds of dollars each. So Pierre ended up procuring a CNC milling machine and designing and manufacturing pumps, valves, flow meters, and other parts for Bartendro in his garage. The partners claim that the current iteration of the Bartendro design can dispense liquids to within milliliter tolerance. more> http://tinyurl.com/d9gj79m

Related>

• Bartendro – A Cocktail Dispensing Robot, Party Robotics, kickstarter.com

Sour on Europe

By Robert Kahn – Today’s (May 15) Eurozone GDP numbers remind us that Europe remains in a grinding recession; a second-half recovery now looks to be a long shot at best.  The only bright spot comes elsewhere, with news of  a German labor deal that will raise engineering wages by nearly 6 percent over the next 20 months (rebalancing European demand and stimulating German consumption needs more of this).

Notably, the need for jobs dominates other issues on the economic agenda. The mood is particularly bleak in the periphery, reflecting those countries’ economic troubles. more> http://tinyurl.com/bsglppy

Related>

• Eurozone now in its longest recession, Graeme Wearden, guardian.co.uk
• What the euro has meant, Economist
• Europe’s irrelevant austerity debate, Daniel Gros, europeanvoice.com

Updates from WordPress

Five Minutes with Philip Arthur Moore
By Lauren Orsini – My favorite ongoing project is _s, or Underscores. It’s a starter theme on which every single Automattic premium theme is built and it was created to both help us do our jobs better and educate the WordPress community on theming best practices. I actively contribute to the project primarily because I strongly believe in developer education and Open Source. It also doesn’t hurt that I get to play with git and GitHub, which is one of my favorite companies in existence.

It’s hard to understand the power of _s unless you see what’s built with it. Further, Ryu, A Simpler Time, and Untitled were all created using _s. more> http://tinyurl.com/d6swnm3

Respect For Trial & Error, & Success

By Alan Nicol – I’m working on a project with a friend of mine and it strikes me how differently we approach the development of our vision. He finds it simpler and quicker to run calculations and probabilities. I prefer to lie out a scenario and try it to see what happens.

It seems that many prefer to find ways to model the problem or the solution and run simulations to arrive at an answer; the minority will prototype, test, and experiment.

Trial-and-error, experimentation, and testing are important tools for developing new solutions and for innovation or product development. more> http://tinyurl.com/cv4yrso

France Approves Major Labor Reform Package

By Sarah DiLorenzo – France’s parliament has passed a package of significant labor reforms Tuesday (may 14) that the government hopes will help halt rising unemployment and jumpstart the country’s stagnant economy.

One of the main measures of the bill allows companies to temporarily cut workers’ salaries or hours during times of economic difficulty. This measure takes its inspiration from Germany, where furloughs have been credited with allowing companies to weather difficult times without resorting to massive layoffs.

Several measures are also aimed at making it less daunting for employees to change jobs. French contracts are known for the tremendous protections they afford workers and as those benefits increase, the longer an employee stays with a company. While it is frequently noted that these contracts make employers reluctant to hire, they can also make employees more likely to stay put in stable jobs. When no one moves, it becomes harder for the unemployed to find work. more> http://tinyurl.com/a2r6w5d

Related>

• France passes reform to ease hire-and-fire rules, Mark John and Nicholas Vinocur, Reuters/Yahoo