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Finding your place in the World with What3words

I have in the last few days started using https://what3words.com/ . I think this is a great idea, mapping the World to a minute level of detail so that a combination of 3 words can become a unique identifier for every 3m x 3m square in our planet. If you read their executive summary or high level statement, they mention the often found difficulty in properly describing addresses in many cities in the World, for example Tokyo. This is true, and in fact I have that problem even with my own home address, as people often mix up or get confused my address and a similar one up the road. However, I think there are some other applications where this idea is even more powerful, and where I would describe it as massively useful. The first one is breakdown recovery services. If you have ever broken down with your car, you probably were asked for your location, and, if on a road (hopefully a main road, even worse if it was a back road) you were expected to be pretty precise, something lik
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Printing the machines of the future

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I think I am not alone when I tell you that I am fascinated by 3D printing. The concept that you can use a printer to make a product that before required skilled and labour intensive methods such as machining, fabrication, welding, etc, really is incredible. Clearly, 3D printers don’t solve every issue or manufacturing need, but it is remarkable to see the range of applications they already have. As they grow as an industry, they also give rise to a series of related business and technical opportunities. This week, at a meeting in Brussels, I have come across a company called Innomaq21, which is based in Spain, in Terrassa (Catalonia). These guys have developed an atomising technology which allows them to make a metal powder with exceptional properties for 3D printing. As a result, one can now print extremely complex metal products, by using a metal 3D printer and these powders, much faster and with much greater detail and quality than before. One of their principal current app
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I am a big fan of Fanfood

My last few articles in this blog have had a space theme, and frankly, one could be writing about space all the time at the moment, for the first time in many years, since finally there are a whole bunch of exciting things going on with space. Today, I am writing about something much more mundane, but an idea that I absolutely love. What these guys are doing is to allow you to order your food or drinks, when you are at sporting events, for delivery to your seat, or for pick up from a special location, avoiding the queues which often prevent me from having anything when I am at these events. There is nothing worse than going to the bars at Wimbledon, Millennium Stadium or Wembley, when there is a break in the action, to find a few other thousand people have done the same, and you have to miss good part of the event if you want to eat or drink. So, with Fanfood, you order from your mobile and they either deliver to you (does not get any better), or at least you can pick up with
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University graduates that make rockets

I am for now still continuing on the theme of space exploration, following on from my previous article, and the theme is still the incredible accessibility of space exploration as an activity. If a few days ago I was amazed by having met someone who actually had a satellite in space, the accessibility of space travel is even better illustrated by a Spanish company called PLD Space. These guys are making commercial, reusable rockets, and selling their services as a transport company that transports things to space. This, apparently, is set to become a $20Billion business within the next 10 years. The more high profile private space rocket projects are SpaceX, Elon Musk’s LA company, and BlueOrigin, founded by Amazon’s Dave Bezos. But, for me, what makes PLD Space extra special is the fact that it was started by 2 Spanish students, Raul Torres and Raul Verdu. These 2 engineers had no money, unlike Musk and Bezos, but even then, they could found a company with an aspiration as am
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Mini satellites... Could you have your own?

A couple of days ago I happened to be talking to Dr, Elias Aboutanios , who was visiting us at Mestrelab . In amongst many other things, Elias was telling me about the Cubesats project. For me this was amazingly cool, as I am pretty sure it was the first time I have spoken directly to someone who has put a satellite into space. The thing that amazes me most about this is how doable it is nowadays. A few years ago, the cost of developing, making and launching a satellite would have been completely prohibitive to anyone except a few national agencies. Nowadays, however, this is very tractable, at least for Universities and other research organisations. We are getting to a point in which the economics of space research can even allow ingenious individuals to have their own space research projects. That, for me, is pretty amazing. Elias' satellite was 3D printed, it was sent up to the ISS in a container with a number of other things as part of a commercial space launch and it was
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Intro: A Life In Tech

As a result of both my chosen profession and my interests, I am finding myself continuously open-eyed in wonderment at the amount of opportunities I come across, at the incredible ingenuity and creativity displayed by people in all walks of life, and by the wonderful life changing endeavours continuously sprouting everywhere in the global technology economy. I come from Galicia , the North-western corner of Spain. Galicia is what you could consider a backwater. The way of life is amazing, and it is full of hard working people, but it is nowhere near any information or new technology highway. When I was growing up, I had no aspirations of getting close to, never mind participating, in any paradigm changing technologies, at large or small scales. I probably aspired to working for a bank, or to be employed as a manager in some traditional business. However, in the last few years, since cofounding MestrelabResearch with my friend Carlos Cobas, I have been getting more and more i
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