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Buyers hit the brakes on purchasing hobbyist 3-D printers in the past year, even as industrial-grade printers are playing a larger role in manufacturing finished parts rather than prototypes. 

Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz plays the investing game different from much of its VC cohort. Rather than scattering its money around a relatively large number of startups, the Silicon Valley firm places big bets on a handful of companies and industries. Today, Andreessen Horowitz is placing a very big bet, $30 million, on Shapeways and 3-D printing.

Widdowson is a specialist. He's one of 10 reverse-engineers working full time for a stealthy company funded by some of the biggest names in technology: Apple, Microsoft, Research In Motion, Sony, and Ericsson. Called the Rockstar Consortium, the 32-person outfit has a single-minded mission: It examines successful products, like routers and smartphones, and it tries to find proof that these products infringe on a portfolio of over 4,000 technology patents once owned by one of the world's largest telecommunications companies.

Industruino is great in any situation where you want to give your Arduino based project a permanent home, which is rugged (no more dangly wires) and affordable. Industruino aims to give tinkerers/makers the means to quickly install an Arduino based solution anywhere they previously thought of doing so, but had resisted to sacrifice a precious development board.

The light bulbs I tested in my home are made by GreenWave Reality, a company with offices in Denmark, southern California and Singapore. The bulbs use energy-efficient LEDs for illumination, but they're also armed with an internet-enabled chip that can be controlled wirelessly. To change the mood around the house, you can use GreenWave's apps for iPhones and Android phones as well as a familiar remote control that's included.