DARPA is funding the creation of 1,000 Makerspaces in high schools across the country to get American kids interested in making things again.

“We have to move from an engine of bureaucracy to an engine of innovation,” said Undersecretary of Education Martha Kanter, announcing this week that at least 1,000 high schools around the country will be opening up Makerspaces over the next four years.

What is a Makerspace, you ask? “It’s a place where you get to do things,” Dale Dougherty, founder of O’Reilly Media’s Make magazine and creator of Maker Faire, told Co.Exist. “I think it’s sort of a mashup of a shop class, a computer lab, an art class, and maybe a bio lab.”

It’s sort of a mashup of a shop class, a computer lab, an art class, and maybe a bio lab.

The national Makerspace project is the brainchild of Dougherty and Saul Griffith, many-tentacled inventor and founder of Squid Labs, Instructables, and Howtoons, and is sponsored by a grant from DARPA MENTOR, the defense department’s research arm related to advancing manufacturing and reviving the nation’s strategic interest in making things; the organization is already sponsoring Makerspaces for adults, so this is a logical extension. There’s some pretty heavy national goals riding on this initiative: getting American kids excited about science, math and technology again and fostering a spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship. “I feel we’re at this point in time where people are looking for some substantial change in education,” says Dale. “And I want to be that new thing.”

Last night, I stayed up late to watch the NASA livestream of the Curiosity rover landing. It seems to have been an unmitigated success: each step of the entry and landing process, even that crazy sky-crane maneuver, was performed flawlessly.

As Travis Beacham put it on Twitter:

Although there were tearful hugs and high-fives and all manner of cheering when “Touchdown!” was called, the wonderment built to a real climax when the first thumbnail image came through. It was small, in black and white, and showed the Martian horizon in the background, with the wheel of the rover in the foreground.

Shortly thereafter, a slightly larger version was displayed: still black and white, but with enough resolution to show dust on the glass. A second one followed shortly after, showing the rover’s shadow on the ground. Cue the “pics or it didn’t happen” jokes, as well as the rapid proliferation of Photoshopped spoofs.

One of the first images from the Curiosity rover.

In our micro-culture of the moment, obsessed with photo sharing and images, this tiny thumbnail still seemed like a miracle (albeit a required one). A picture really is worth a whole lot of words. But have you ever stopped to think about what it takes to plan for that from Mars?

We take for granted being able to snap a great-looking picture and send it wirelessly to almost anywhere we want with the tap of a few icons, but transmitting images back from another planet is a complicated process.

Minnesota’s health insurance exchange will be data-driven. As a subcontractor to Maximus, IBM will support the two-year, $41 million project with its Cúram software platform, the company announced Monday, July 23. “This contract is a significant milestone in the design and development of a Minnesota health insurance exchange,” Commerce Commissioner Mike Rothman said in a press release. “We can now move forward on developing the technology backbone of the exchange, a user friendly tool that will help more than 1.2 million Minnesotans choose the quality coverage they need at a price they can afford.” The website, which is expected to launch fall 2013, will help people and businesses in the state choose a health insurance plan, similar to how Expedia or Travelocity help people find plane tickets. The software developer, called Cúram, was acquired by IBM in 2011 and is now used in more than 80 government agency projects internationally, according to IBM.

Our current health care system is in need of a radical reinvention. Traditional approaches have not brought the rapid change required by aging populations and the rising costs of health care, and government efforts too often get bogged down in partisan politics and fail to address systemic issues. Thankfully, there is hope on the horizon. New approaches that embrace game-changing technology — mobile networks, big data, social media and the Internet of things — could completely disrupt the status quo and transform the health care system. In GigaOM’s original ebook, Jody Ranck, DrPH, provides a comprehensive overview of the emerging connected-health ecosystem, including the startups and traditional technology players shaping the future of health care. He also outlines the government’s innovative approaches that demonstrate the need to move beyond the tired rhetoric of big government versus the market.

     Monte Draper/AP

A power pole is bent after severe storms hit the Bemidji, Minn., area on Tuesday, knocking down thousands of trees and causing extensive damage to utility lines. Thousands of customers were left without power.

As hundreds of thousands swelter without power a week after a violent storm pummeled the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic, energy experts say the future will look even worse if the nation’s aging, congested electrical grid isn’t upgraded.

Customers chafe at rising utility bills, but the energy industry warns that the alternative is even scarier: Unless $673 billion is invested in the system, it could break down by 2020, according to an American Society of Civil Engineers reportreleased in April.

The grid’s dependability has become an increasing concern as the system strains to meet increased demand. Bottlenecks in the grid and equipment failures are causing more brownouts and blackouts, energy experts say.

The civil engineers say that if investment in the system isn’t increased by at least $1 billion a year, service interruptions between now and 2020 will cost $197 billion.