Bre Pettis of MakerBot stopped by our little show today and spent some time on the stage with John Biggs and other notables in the manufacturing space. But afterwards Pettis, co-founder and CEO of MakerBot, joined me on the TCTV couch to geek out a bit over the fantastic MakerBot Replicator. The company also has two MakerBot Replicators printing out random doodads and toys in our first ever Hardware Alley.

As Bre explained, the original MakerBot buyers were geeks and hackers but now it’s moms and dads (like me). With the MakerBot, kids and parents can create and manufacture toys together. The Replicator can make nearly anything. It is essentially a desktop toy factory — or, for anyone else, a prototype printer allowing for rapid manufacturing.

In short MakerBot is changing the world.

Read more : Backstage At Disrupt NYC 2012 With MakerBot’s Bre Pettis

Android-powered smartphones aren’t much of an underdog anymore, but an entire class of less pocketable Android devices isn’t leaping off the shelves so much as dying on the vine. Now that Google’s sealed the deal with Motorola, should we expect a brighter future for Android tablets – or is the iPad just too mighty to take down, even for a streamlined hardware manufacturer/software designer power duo?

Shaker won TechCrunch Disrupt SF last year with its 3-D virtual nightclub built on top of Facebook, and June 8th it will finally launch in North America with the help of the music industry’s Live Nation and BandPage.

Until then you can sign up for Shaker, and when you do, you’ll get a classic album cover of Bob Marley, The Clash, or another legend remixed with your Facebook photos and data. The partnerships, promotion, and landing page all point to a big focus on music as a social lubricant for hanging out with people on Shaker.

It’s been a wild eight months since Shaker won Disrupt. It raised a $15 million Series A led by Menlo Ventures, and joined by CrunchFund, Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, Lady Gaga’s manager Troy Carter, Justin Bieber’s manager Scooter Braun, and Israel’s Pitango Venture Capital. It also scored some more money from Motorola Mobility (now owned by Google), threw some online parties for New Year’s Eve and the NBA All-Star Game, and hosted a peace conference featuring Hillary Clinton.

Shaker’s racked up tens of thousands of requests from people wanting to set up their own place to gather online with friends, fellow activists, and sexy strangers. Many of them will get their first chance to party or mingle on June 8th at 7:53pm PST when Shaker launches its first public meeting place.

A concert may be in store for Shaker’s launch since it’s work working with Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster and one of the world’s biggest musician management firms, and BandPage, who became the de facto musician profile app on Facebook. But Shaker isn’t trying to be Turntable.fm. Instead of everyone just staring at the DJ, music is what will break the ice so Shaker users can meet each other or have something to talk about. That’s good news for the Internet, where those things can get awkward fast.

It’s actually kind of absurd that when we think of “social” online, we think of feeds of text and photos. If you’ve ever jumped on Facebook or Twitter on a Friday night, it can be a little depressing — just a bunch of updates of people doing fun things without you. Video chat services like Google Hangouts are good for small groups, but they devolve into chaos and lag once you get too many people on at once.

Shaker could seem like a gimmick to some, and it’s too silly or filled with gamification, that’s all it might end up being. But if its team can make Shaker feel like a real, natural virtualization of ourselves, it could make it cool to sit home alone on your computer. Because you won’t really be alone.

Read more : Shaker’s 3D Meetup Spot To Rock North America At June 8th Launch With Live Nation, BandPage

This time last year, Brett Martin took the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York to launch Sonar, a mobile app that connects you to friends and other people nearby, based on your existing social networks. Fast forward to today and the Battlefield runner-up is rolling out a major update to its mobile app that will allow Sonar to finally become the “Here-Now” social network.

The app previously focused on providing relevant information to users about others around them based on connections via Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, and Twitter. Extremely useful for conferences like Disrupt, when you’re at a party or maybe even starting a new job.

So what’s new? Aside from the usual under the hood tweaks, Sonar has crammed in Status, Sonar Presence, Notifications and Messaging. The status update serves as a hyperlocal broadcast tool for those within close proximity and even pushes out a notification to your friends when they’re close by.

Sonar Presence runs in the background to let others know what you’re up to or when friends are nearby, pushing a notification to alert you to folks you are already connected to. Sonar says one way they’re set apart from other apps in the space is that they’re most interested in showing you real connections and people you actually care about. Like others in the space, battery issues remain because current devices aren’t optimized to use GPS properly. You can pause Sonar in the background, BTW.

Notifications will only ping you when friends you actually know and are connected to are nearby.

Messaging is pretty straight forward and lets you lob chats back and forth with other Sonar users. So if you’re heading into the office and Sonar notifies you that a co-worker is close by, you can send a message asking them to hold the elevator or ask if they need a coffee. Sonar also offers a replacement to the irritating “Where are you guys” texts that are a staple of meeting up at a concert or park. Brilliant, no?

Oh, you think you’ve heard this before, have you? How useful is Highlight outside of the San Francisco tech circle? Because it’s pretty worthless in New York. There are folks working in every industry imaginable, not just tech. The connections that I’ve personally made with folks in fashion, entertainment and countless other industries are innumerable thanks to Sonar. And what about getting results anywhere outside of a tech hub? Sonar says they had users in 35 countries just within a week of their launch last year, and have seen usage in more than 65 countries total. If you don’t see the value in a service like Sonar, then you’re totally missing the point and drinking the kool-aid.

Oddly enough, I’d heard this pitch before but it came at a time before the App Store was even a thing. Back in 2008, Mike declared that he’d seen the “Future Of Social Networking.” He described it as such:

A few years from now we’ll use our mobile devices to help us remember details of people we know, but not well. And it will help us meet new people for dating, business and friendship. Imagine walking into a meeting, classroom, party, bar, subway station, airplane, etc. and seeing profile information about other people in the area, depending on privacy settings. Picture, name, dating status, resume information, etc. The information that is available would be relevant to the setting – quick LinkedIn-type information for a business meeting v. Facebook dating status for a bar.

Given the intimate connection we have with our mobile devices, who wouldn’t want this type of service at our fingertips? It’s not like we don’t immediately Google someone we’ve just met anyway.

Mike never disclosed the name of the company and we never heard from them again. But it doesn’t matter. Sonar does just that and more.

Sonar [App Store]

Read more : Sonar Rolls Out “Here-Now” Mobile Social Network, Adds Status, Messaging, Notifications

Just over a week ago, the jury began deliberations on the ongoing patent infringement case between Google and Oracle. After waiting in the wings, with bated breath, the verdict is finally in, as Judge William Alsup of the U.S. District Court of Northern California dismissed the jury this afternoon after a unanimous decision that ruled in favor of Google’s mobile OS — declaring that Android did not in fact infringe on the Oracle patents in question.

The decision follows an opposing verdict earlier this month, in which the jury in the long-running infringement case found that certain components of Android APIs had too close of a resemblance to code used in Oracle’s Java programming tools. However, the jury ended up splitting on the notion of whether or not Google could in fact claim fair use in its defense (which could have then led to a mistrial.)

The jury’s decision was obviously a laborious one, following two years of a legal back-and-forth between the two tech giants. Oracle had initially filed the lawsuit back in August 2010, in which the company asserted that Android infringed on Java patents that Oracle acquired as a result of its purchase of Sun Microsystems. Google responded by saying that, at the time of development, it was not aware of Sun’s patents and that Android was in fact free to use.

Of course, that decision was only the first act in the three-part deliberations, in which the copyright infringement issues were to be followed by consideration of Oracle’s patent infringement claims (the focus of today’s hearing) and, finally, the damages Google might be liable for were it found guilty.

However, much of that speculation was rendered moot today, as a week of deliberation came to a close today at the U.S. District Court of Northern California, with the jury unanimously declaring that Google did not in fact infringe on the six claims set forth by Oracle in regard to U.S. Patent RE 38,104 as well as the two claims regarding U.S. Patent 6,061,520.

Of course, this does not mean that the whole case has been decided; instead, the decision marks the end of the trial’s second phase, which, again, focused solely on Oracle’s claims of patent infringement.

While the jury had previously found that Google was in violation of Oracle’s copyrights, as stated above, it could not come to a unanimous decision on the issue of fair use. Meaning that, although Oracle ostensibly “won” its copyright case, it effectively has a hold on its ability to collect on any of the $1 billion in copyright damages it is seeking from Google — a conclusion that was supported by the tweets of legal reporter Ginny LaRoe, who attended today’s hearing.

And #Googacle The Trial is over. Judge Alsup dismissing jury. Since Oracle won virtually nothing, no damages phase at this point.

— Ginny LaRoe (@GinnyLaRoe) May 23, 2012

On top of that, there are a number of other legal questions surrounding the copyright case on which Judge Aslup has yet to issue a final ruling, although he is expected to come to a decision next week.

Updating

Read more : The Verdict Is In: Google Did NOT Infringe On Oracle’s Patents

Last month, Marketo announced that it was acquiring social marketing startup Crowd Factory to add a social component to its marketing automation tools. Today the company is releasing its first products to come out of the deal.

Marketo CEO Phil Fernandez says this represents the two companies’ technology “all put together into a single hybridized product.” Actually, Marketo is releasing two products, Marketo Social Boost and Marketo Social Promotions, as part of a new Marketo Social Marketing suite.

“I think there’s a tremendous pent-up hunger to take social marketing out of the silo and to bring it into the mainstream,” Fernandez says.

And by that, he means that these aren’t just tools for marketing on Facebook, but rather for adding a social element to a broad range of online campaigns.

Sanjay Dholakia, formerly CEO of Crowd Factory and now Market’s senior vice president of product marketing and corporate development, says there are two big pieces to the suite. First, it helps you “put this word-of-mouth lift on everything you’re doing” by adding a social element to relatively traditional marketing and advertising. For example, he says you could direct your AdWords campaign to a Marketo landing page (that includes social sharing, so that each paid click that you get through the ad can multiply into many more visitors. Second, he says this will help companies reach their audience in new ways, like sweepstakes and flash deals. And of course there’s analytics data to help you see the measure of your campaigns.

Fernandez announced the new suite today as part of the Marketo Summit 2012.

Read more : Marketo Wants To Add A Social Boost To Every Marketing Campaign

Today’s theme is self-evolution. Many futurists and science-fiction writers think that genomics are the next great frontier in technology. We’ve sequenced the entire human genome, but we still don’t know what to do with that knowledge.

We’re getting closer, though.

We’re just starting to learn the finer points of the nervous system. A new study shows that intense thinking can block pain receptors.

Emotions are still mysterious, but recent research shows some strange side effects of happiness.

There’s a quiet epidemic of tapeworms in the brain! Where’s modern medicine when we need it?

We’ve had access to our whole genome for years, but we still don’t know what to do with it.

An oldie but a goodie: Juan Enriquez’s TED talk about the importance of genomics and future medicine.

And just this week, some Stanford bioengineers demonstrated the ability to write

iOS and Android aren’t leaving much room for Firefox to burrow into mobile. “We knew there was going to be a transition from desktop being primary to mobile and tablet being primary” said Mozilla’s former CEO and current board member John Lilly today at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC. “What I worry about, the scary part is that for the first time the platforms and distribution are tightly controlled before innovation has really started”

Lilly explained that Internet Explorer once dominated web browsing and people said “How the hell do you break that?” But Firefox and Chrome came along and now the market is almost evenly split. But Lilly says “mobile’s not like that. Mobile is these tied-down vertical stacks that are controlled by Google and Apple, so we have a new impossible problem to become relevant on mobile.”

As the world spends more and more of its time on mobile, Mozilla will have to figure out how to inject itself there. Firefox for Android is a good start, but tests against Chrome in February saw Mozilla’s version loading pages much slower. There just might not be enough value for Firefox to add in order to pull Android users from their default browser. And thanks to Apple’s draconian SDK agreement, Mozilla isn’t even allowed to release a full-version of Firefox for iOS.

Lilly is optimistic about Mozilla’s desktop browser, ”I think Firefox is about as good as it’s ever been right now. But unfortunately, the Google juggernaut is there too. ”I know a lot of people probably moved to Chrome” Lilly said.

Read more : Due To The Apple / Google Deathgrip, Former CEO John Lilly Says For Mozilla, “Mobile Is A Little Scarier”

David Lawee, Google’s VP of Corporate Development, sat down for an informative chat with MG Siegler at Disrupt NYC this morning, and it wasn’t long before the conversation turned to Google’s track record with mergers and acquisitions.

“We’ve done 120 acquisitions since 2003, maybe one in 2002,” Lawee said. “And two-thirds of them have been successful.”

Doing the math, that works out to roughly 40 deals that didn’t quite pan out the way the folks in Mountain View had hoped. Of course, some them are more pronounced than others. When asked about Slide — the social gaming company that Google picked up for a cool $228 million only to shutter their services a year later — Lawee noted that Slide was “definitely” in that bottom third.

But what does it actually mean for an acquisition to fail (or succeed) for Google?

When pressed on the issue, Lawee pointed out that each deal has its own particular metrics that Google weighed before they chalked it up as a success or failure. Widevine, the streaming video DRM solution that Google acquired in late 2010 is measured for instance in how many devices it’s reached (and Lawee noted that number has doubled in a year, firmly ensconcing it that top tier of wins for them).

The teams attached to these acquisitions moved on to different roles within Google (and often very fruitful ones), but they ultimately didn’t meet the “four or five” key goals that Google had in mind when they inked their deal. Aardvark was a prominent example — Lawee mentioned that M&A team felt very strongly about the role social Q&A would play in search, but Google’s search organization felt differently. Though the Aardvark team (including co-founder Max Ventilla) found a new home working on Google’s Knowledge Graph, the acquisition is still considered a failure because those original goals were never met.

The pair also tackled Google’s recently-completed Motorola Mobility acquisition, and Lawee was quick to shoot down the notion that it was a spur of the moment deal. He was, though, a bit more hesitant to tackle the notion that the Motorola deal was put together because of their bid to nab Nortel’s patents.

“It’s a complicated area, and it’s not an area that one can just dabble in.” Lawee said.

Oh, and just in case you were wondering, he says Google still doesn’t want to buy Twitter.

Read more : Google’s David Lawee: One-Third Of Google’s Acquisitions Are Failures (And Slide Is “Definitely” One Of Them)