Manufacturing workers looking at the Orb.
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The picturesque center of Nuremberg, Germany, doesn’t usually have much going in the way of high-tech flair. It has a castle as well as cathedrals, placards celebrating bratwurst and seemingly endless rows of ice cream shops for tourists. On a weekday in mid-May, however, the city hosted some serious geek peacocking for those who were paying close attention.
Visitors to a future-themed retail store called Josephs, just off the main drag, found a mysterious-looking metallic orb the size of a cantaloupe. The Orb, with its shiny chrome finish, sat atop a black pole, which poked out of a large, rectangular wooden base, and this whole arrangement had been placed near one of the windows at the edge of Josephs’ main show floor. Not far from this odd object was Alex Blania, the Orb’s co-creator. He sat in a chair at the head of the room, where an interviewer peppered him with questions in front of dozens of German computer science and engineering students, who were celebrating Blania as the local boy made good.