The newest Olymic sport, Synchronized Tweeting, envisioned by Dan Piraro of Bizarro
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Gadgets: Smell Printer
Via: Design Taxi
O.k this is pretty crazy, The “Food printer” has a camera, a smell extractor and a printer. When you’re ready to go the camera snaps a shot of the food while the smell extractor gathers the smells and the printer than prints the postcard with aroma ink.
China-based Zhu Jingxuan, a student from Donghua University’s Fashion & Art Design Institute, has created a concept device that captures pictures and aromas of food and prints them on postcards.
The ‘food printer’ is a combination of a camera, a smell extractor and a printer: the camera takes the picture of the food; while the smell extractor collects the aroma of it simultaneously; and the printer prints a postcard with aroma ink.
Short Film: Sight
"Sight" by Daniel Lazo and Eran May-raz
Sight is a short science fiction film by Israeli film students Eran May-raz and Daniel Lazo that envisions a darker take on is a brilliant take on augmented reality (AR) technology. In it, a pair of retinal implants provide their user with an interface capable of not just augmenting, but controlling, reality.
With Google so recently touting its Google Glass, the short film raises some very timely issues, such as whether or not we want to live in a world where everything is constantly connected through such devices? Even as recently as a decade ago, the notion would have seemed absurd, but living in a time where no one leaves the house without a high-powered smart phone, a future where everyone uses devices like Google Glass seems like the next logical step.
Being constantly connected to the larger world has it’s benefits, but as this film demonstrates, things don’t always turn out for the best when we rely so heavily on technology. Sight is as creepy as it is beautiful, but its creators told VentureBeat that they didn’t intend for it to be a commentary on Google Glass. In a strange coincidence, Google released the first video for Google Glass just a few days after production began on Sight.
Monday, July 30, 2012
Science: Strong Partnerships Fuel Curiosity
Strong Partnerships Fuel Curiosity:
Source: Scientific American
“Psychologists know that “secure attachments”—close, positive relationships such as healthy marriages and good friendships—increase our interest in new experiences. Babies who have learned they can count on their moms, for example, tend to try unfamiliar toys in a lab more readily than do babies whose insecure attachment to caregivers makes them anxious and clingy. A recent set of studies published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin reveals a surprising explanation for this attachment-exploration link: feeling alive and full of energy.
Research participants who recalled a close positive relationship from their lives were later more willing to opt for novel activities like foreign travel—and to report heightened vitality—than participants who had thought about a negative relationship or even a sitcom character. “In insecure relationships, people have to resolve negative emotions because their needs haven’t been met, and having to do that can be emotionally draining,” explains lead author Michelle Luke of the University of Southampton in England.
That energy drain leaves you with low vitality; exploring unfamiliar territory feels like it would be overwhelming. Thinking about a good relationship, on the other hand, may give you an energy boost for trying new things.”
Source: Scientific American
Snippet
Nearly 50% of U.K. parents say they now read books to their kids on e-readers or tablets or allow them to read on them, according to a survey carried out by Ipsos Mori…. one-in-four parents polled said they’d also bought their children an e-reader.
Tech-savvy younger children are adapting to e-books even faster than their older siblings, e-publishers say. Children aged 7 to 12 think of e-books like toys and find them “fun and cool,” while teenagers are more interested in print versions, according to a recent survey of 1,000 tweens and 1,000 teenagers by Bowker Market Research. That age group has never known a world without e-books, says A.J. McDonald, a spokesman for e-publisher Lulu. “They are raised in an environment with computers, phones, and iPads,” he says.
— Half of Bedtime Stories Now Read on E-Books
Snippet
Even as this Scandinavian country, like other nations across Europe, bows to pressure from big media concerns to stop file sharing, a Swedish government agency this year registered as a bona fide religion a church whose central dogma is that file sharing is sacred.
“For me it is a kind of believing in deeper values than worldly values,” said Isak Gerson, a philosophy student at Uppsala University who helped found the church in 2010 and bears the title chief missionary. “You have it in your backbone.”
Kopimism — the name comes from a Swedish spelling of the words “copy me” — claims more than 8,000 faithful who have signed up on the church’s Web site.
It has applied for the right to perform marriages and to receive subsidies awarded to religious organizations by the state, and it has bid, thus far unsuccessfully, to buy a church building, even though most church activities are conducted online.
— In Sweden, Taking File Sharing to Heart. And to Church.
Snippet
Digital is bringing people into conversations within the museum who would never normally be involved in the care of traditional physical objects. The IT department has never had to think of its servers as an extension of the museum’s photography store or general object store before… The server has become the latest museum site in addition to the physical building.
— How can museums preserve our digital heritage?
Video Distraction: Eye-Level Formula 1 Camera
Join in an installation lap around Spa in wet conditions with Lucas di Grassi - first time ever eye-level camera real driver point of view.
Science: The Super Kamiokande
The Super Kamiokande (Kamioka Neutrino Detection Experiment) is a neutrino observatory located under Mount Kamioka in Japan. It is designed to observe solar and atmospheric neutrinos, neutrinos from supernovae, and aims to search for proton decay. It is a cylindrical structure measuring about 40 m tall and 40 m across, is covered in over 11,000 photomultiplier tubes (PMTs), and filled with 50,000 tons of pure water.
Snippet
That’s the value of the time invested in the average Gmail account, given how many emails the average Gmail user has written (5,768), how long it takes to write the average email (one minute, 43 seconds), and the most recent U.S. Depart of Labor statistics on average annual salary ($45,230). In other words, if the average Gmail user were paid to recreate all the Gmail messages he or she’s ever written, it would cost $3,588.85. It increases by about $1,196 per year .You “spend” as much in Gmail every year as you do on your car. Your Gmail is worth five times as much as your laptop. Your Gmail represents over four weeks of wages. You store one old-school floppy disk (1.44 MB) of Gmail data every day
Health: Does sleeping with a night-light cause depression?
Does sleeping with a night-light cause depression?:
New evidence from Ohio State University found that a dim light at night — whether it comes from a night-light, or staying up late in front of a computer or TV — may be making you depressed.Source: The Week
Artificial light disrupts our natural circadian rhythms, which may in turn alter the body’s hormone levels. “When people spend too little time in darkness, it seems that the body suppresses release of the hormone melatonin,” says Laura Blue at TIME, which is thought to fight a myriad of conditions, including tumor growth and cancers. According to the American Medical Association, interrupting the body’s circadian rhythm could also lead to obesity, diabetes, and reproductive problems.
The team speculates that artificial light may be part of the reason depression rates have soared in recent decades. There is good news, however: When the afflicted hamsters were again allowed to sleep a full eight hours per night in the dark, their depressive symptoms disappeared completely. This offers gloomy night owls some hope, says Bedrosian. “People who stay up late in front of the television and computer may be able to undo some of the harmful effects just by going back to a regular light-dark cycle and minimizing their exposure to artificial light.”
Tech: The world’s first 3D-printed gun
The world’s first 3D-printed gun is a terrifying thing:
“Gun enthusiast “HaveBlue” has documented in a blog post (via the AR15 forums) the process of what appears to be the first test firing of a firearm made with a 3D printer, The Next Web reports. Actually,. the only printed part of the gun was the lower receiver. But, according to the American Gun Control Act, the receiver is what counts as the firearm. HaveBlue reportedly used a Stratasys 3D printer to craft the part, assembled it as a .22 pistol and fired more than 200 rounds with it.”Source: KurzweilAI
Tech: iRobot Puts Telemedicine on Auto Pilot
iRobot Puts Telemedicine on Auto Pilot:
“Called the RP-VITA, the robot uses an iPad as the primary user interface for doctors to remotely diagnose and treat hospital patients. Its makers hope the simpler operation will broaden the use of robots for telemedicine, similar to how the graphical user interface turbo-charged personal computer use.Source: Technology Review
InTouch Health’s specialty is remote-controlled robots for critical care, enabling people to be seen by doctors sooner than if they had to be in the same physical space as the physician. Getting a stroke victim, for example, to a specialist within three hours for diagnosis and treatment can make a huge difference to the patient. Similarly, specialists can provide care in intensive care units without having to physically be present, which should lower health care costs and improve care.”
Friday, July 27, 2012
Tech Links: July 27, 2012
Source: Rock Paper Cynic
Business
How Amazon’s ambitious new push for same-day delivery will destroy local retail.
Secrets at Apple's Core A talk by Adam Lashinsky (Fortune's editor at large) about how Apple has become the most admired (and secretive) company in the world.
That's All Folks: Why the Writing Is on the Wall at Microsoft ... The Terrible Management Technique That Cost Microsoft Its Creativity.
"Thousands of YouTube partners are making over $100,000 a year, according to Google SVP and Chief Business Officer Nikesh Arora."
Internet
Can Tumblr’s David Karp Embrace Ads Without Selling Out?
Is the Web Driving Us Mad? (Newsweek, cover) Evidence wise, the verdict isn't looking good. The proof is starting to pile up.
Not fade away: on living, dying, and the digital afterlife
Offline: Paul Miller, writing for The Verge, is taking a year off from the internet. Among other things, he can't install modern video games and he must figure out how to pay his bills.
Reading & Discussion
Are We Addicted to Gadgets or Indentured to Work?
Resources & Utilities
CoDrops is offering source code for an experimental page layout that lets you navigate pages by swiping or dragging as in a booklet, inspired by Flipboard.
De-Clutter Your Inbox: Boomerang Sends or Returns Your Email at a Later Date
The No Excuse List is a list of resources to learn just about anything: Minute Physics, Udacity (free, University-level courses online) and PetriDish, a Kickstarter for science projects.
Sigma.js is an open-source lightweight JavaScript library to draw graphs, using the HTML canvas element.
Were you among the roughly 400,000 people whose usernames and passwords were stolen from Yahoo? How about the 480,000 exposed in a December 2010 hack of Gawker? Or the 860,000 hit by Anonymous’ hack last year of StratFor? If you don’t know, a website called ShouldIChangeMyPassword.com will tell you.
Science
Science for the people: take a renowned scientist (Nobel Laureate Leon Lederman (Physics), Stephen Benkovik (Chemisty)) and sit them down on a street corner to answer questions.
Was that your phone? Phantom vibrations are something that over two thirds of people experience - the sense that your phone may be vibrating, even when it isn't in your pocket. A few studies have looked into the phenomenon, which might be caused by the conditioning of phone users. And the same sensitivity that allows parents to hear their baby's cry, also makes it easy to think you hear a cell phone ring during a song or commercial.
Tutorials
Build your own Punch Card Reader.
How to use your iPhone GPS for backpacking including reviews on most of the relevant GPS, topo, and navigation related apps available for the iPhone.
How to Replace a Broken/ Cracked iPhone Screen
Tech: Robotic Snakes
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University are developing a modular snake robot that is both incredibly agile and vaguely unsettling. The robot’s snake-like structure allows it to crawl, swim, travel through pipes, and climb up poles.
News: Rare Pixar Computer Selling On eBay
There are less than 2 days left to drop $25,000 on a rare Pixar Image Computer, which cropped up on eBay this weekend. The 'museum-quality historical artifact,' which was originally developed in the 1980s by Lucasfilm's computer division, carries a hefty price tag, but costs $105,000 less than its original sale price.
The tombstone-modeled matching monitor and tower, engraved with the Pixar logo, was made commercially available in 1986, when Steve Jobs bought the company. But regular consumers weren't expected to plunk down $135,000 for the machine - it was intended for high-end visualization markets like medicine, geophysics, and meteorology.
Video Distraction: Fire Breathing
A short film exploring the art of Fire Breathing. A journey at 2,000 frames per second that provides a rare glimpse into a world outside the human perception of time. Shot in Vancouver by local film maker Chris Bolton.
Hacks: DIY Bottle (Crystal) Radio
This simple video will teach you on how you can build a bottle radio, which requires no external power source and will let you hear nearby radio transmissions.
Crystal radio technology has been around for many years. This “bottle radio” take on a crystal radio requires no power source, operates on the power from radio waves, and receives signal from a long wire antenna. As radio stations slowly move away from the AM band, the “window of opportunity” to experience this remarkable technology is dwindling. The “crystal” in question is contained inside a germanium diode, and is used to rectify the radio signal so that our ears can hear it.
Business: The Reason for the iPad Mini
The Reason for the iPad Mini:
On a past Apple conference call, Tim Cook said "one thing we'll make sure is that we don't leave a price umbrella for people". What's that? A price umbrella is when a company with dominant market share maintains high prices, leaving an opening for new competitors to enter at lower price points. In the case of the iPad, the price umbrella until recently was at $499. Someone could enter that market at lower prices and exhibit classic disruption to push them out from the bottom up.Source: iamconcise
Apple has already solved this problem twice, with the iPod and iPhone. So let's look at what they did.
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Daily Links: July 24, 2012
Craigslist Joe is a documentary film produced by Zach Galifianakis that follows filmmaker Joseph Garner for 31 days & nights as he tries to find everything he needs off of Craigslist. Here’s the official trailer. It opens in theaters on August 2, 2012.
Get your Monday started with a little Elemental Balance. Use bombs to propel wood into fiery targets. Your rewards for success include confetti.
If you’re visiting China, you might be able to sample iPhone ice cream, which may or may not run afoul of trademark/copyright laws, depending on who you ask.
Having young kids makes you a little crazy - - the Wikipedia entry on Swiper the Fox from Dora the Explorer is 1,300 words of analysis:
Infographic: How Much Data is Created Every Minute?
Data never sleeps. Every minute massive amounts of it are being generated from every phone, website and application across the Internet. Just how much data is being created and where does it come from?
Monday, July 23, 2012
Video Distraction: Views from the ISS at Night
Knate Myers assembled this video from a series of time-lapse videos taken aboard the ISS. Plus, one of my favorite movie soundtracks! Naturally, go full-screen HD for best experience. The photos and original time-lapse videos are available from NASA-Johnson Space Center's Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth
Science: Learn Science While Playing Video Games
Learn Science While Playing Video Games?:
"Valve recently launched a free initiative called Teach With Portals that aims to help teachers use the game Portal 2 (click here for a review) to engage students in learning STEM and critical thinking. By converting its level-building software, Hammer Editor, into a much easier to use interface called Puzzle Maker, Valve has made it possible for anyone to design challenging Portal rooms. The Teach With Portals website also offers community-submitted lesson plans (here’s an example of a harmonic oscillator) that utilize the game and align with national STEM standards so teachers can directly incorporate them into their curriculum. Teachers can sign up for the ‘Steam for Schools‘ beta program, which offers a limited version of the popular Steam gaming platform that hosts the free version of Portal 2 and the Puzzle Maker.
Photo: IC1318
LB-0005 image in narrowband Hubble palette This is a less often photographed region of the Cygnus nebula that is just south of the popular “butterfly.”
Friday, July 20, 2012
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Infographic: How Cell Phones Are Changing The World
Political and economic analysts alike have been awed by the proliferation of technology and social media to connect people and send ideas across borders that never before been crossed.
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Lecture: Infinite Reality
Jeremy Bailenson shares his research on virtual reality, avatars, transformed social interaction, and related communication and psychological theories, as well as implications for citizens living in the digital age.
Software: What The New Microsoft Office Gets Wrong
What The New Microsoft Office Gets Wrong:
Windows 8, the most radical redesign of Microsoft’s flagship operating system, is often said to be schizophrenic. On the one hand, the user interface that first greets users is beautiful: a fun, playful grid of colorful tiles, based on Microsoft’s well-received Metro design language, that offers access to apps and content. On the other hand, hidden beneath this Metro-enhanced surface is the same desktop-based UI we’ve known for decades, still riddled with taskbars, toolbars, and drop-down menus.Source: FastCoDesign
Today, Microsoft unveiled a preview of its latest version of Office, and like Windows 8, the newest iterations of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are just as split-minded. With roughly one billion users worldwide, Microsoft faced the same issues designing Office as it did Windows: How do you re-imagine a ubiquitous piece of software without alienating your global user base? While Microsoft designed this latest release for mobile, engineering the experience for touch-screen devices, and infusing elements of Metro’s design language into the program, Office 15 still feels slightly dated—bogged down by decades of legacy.
Net: On the Ugliness of Wikipedia
On the Ugliness of Wikipedia:
Here is an empirical truth about Wikipedia: Aesthetically, it is remarkably unattractive. The gridded layout! The disregard for mind-calming images! The vaguely Geocities-esque environment! Whether it’s ironic or fitting, it is undeniable: The Sum of All Human Knowledge, when actually summed up, is pretty ugly.Source: The Atlantic
And: no offense intended. Because, on the one hand, the site’s homeliness is a feature rather than a bug. “Wikipedia has always been kind of a homely, awkward, handcrafted-looking site,” says Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation. And that homeliness, she notes, “is part of its awkward charm.” Wikipedia’s just-rolled-out-of-bed-looking interface sends a clear message to users, Gardner said, in a panel at today’s Wikimania conference. And that message is, basically, that the site has better things to do than obsess about its appearance. Wikipedia “is clearly not designed — at all — by marketing people,” Gardner notes. “It is clearly not trying to sell you something.” Which means that Wikipedia’s frank, unpretentious interface serves as a subtle reassurance: The site is not trying to monetize you.
Infographic: Evolution of the Web
Lecture: The Physics of Time Travel
Theoretical physicist Ronald Mallett has put himself on record that time travel will be figured out, despite the fact that most physicists don’t agree. It’s a nice idea, and while I’m skeptical that we will ever be able to accomplish the feat (wouldn’t we have received notification to that end by now?), the physics of how time is malleable is well accepted. It’s all about relativity.
So while you wait for you grandchildren to appear from thin air and tell you that we’ve figured it out, let Dr. Mallett explain Einstein’s time theories as part of the new EPIPHANY video series.
News: Scientists Fire the World’s Most Powerful Laser
![Scientists Fire the World’s Most Powerful Laser
Hidden away at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility is a terrifying 10-story laser. Recently scientists have finally started using it in anger, and now they’ve even smashed previous records to fire the most powerful laser shot ever recorded.
The long-term plan, of course, is to use this incredibly high-powered laser to kick-start nuclear fusion reactions. So, we might even see some of that power make its way back to us at some point. [Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory via Popular Science]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m78wlzfJLR1qe649zo1_500.jpg)
Scientists Fire the World’s Most Powerful Laser:
Hidden away at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility is a terrifying 10-story laser. Recently scientists have finally started using it in anger, and now they’ve even smashed previous records to fire the most powerful laser shot ever recorded.Source: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory via Popular Science
The long-term plan, of course, is to use this incredibly high-powered laser to kick-start nuclear fusion reactions. So, we might even see some of that power make its way back to us at some point.
Humor: "Snake Fight" Portion Of Your Thesis Defense
The “Snake Fight” Portion Of Your Thesis Defense:
Q: Do I have to kill the snake?Source: McSweeney’s Internet Tendency
A: University guidelines state that you have to “defeat” the snake. There are many ways to accomplish this. Lots of students choose to wrestle the snake. Some construct decoys and elaborate traps to confuse and then ensnare the snake. One student brought a flute and played a song to lull the snake to sleep. Then he threw the snake out a window.
Q: Does everyone fight the same snake?
A: No. You will fight one of the many snakes that are kept on campus by the facilities department.
Q: Are the snakes big?
A: We have lots of different snakes. The quality of your work determines which snake you will fight. The better your thesis is, the smaller the snake will be.
Q: Does my thesis adviser pick the snake?
A: No. Your adviser just tells the guy who picks the snakes how good your thesis was.
Tech: Glasses-free 3-D TV at MIT
Like everyone said when 3d tv’s come out, “a true glasses-less version will be out in a few years.”
Well MIT has proved that it can be done with today’s tech and with a few iterations it should rival the 3d TV’s of today.
MIT’s Tensor Display creates glasses-free holovids from 3 LCDs:
As striking as it is, the illusion of depth now routinely offered by 3-D movies is a paltry facsimile of a true three-dimensional visual experience. In the real world, as you move around an object, your perspective on it changes. But in a movie theater showing a 3-D movie, everyone in the audience has the same, fixed perspective — and has to wear cumbersome glasses, to boot.Source: MIT
Despite impressive recent advances, holographic television, which would present images that vary with varying perspectives, probably remains some distance in the future. But in a new paper featured as a research highlight at this summer's Siggraph computer-graphics conference, the MIT Media Lab's Camera Culture group offers a new approach to multiple-perspective, glasses-free 3-D that could prove much more practical in the short term.
Instead of the complex hardware required to produce holograms, the Media Lab system uses several layers of liquid-crystal displays (LCDs), the technology currently found in most flat-panel TVs. To produce a convincing 3-D illusion, the displays would need to refresh at a rate of about 360 times a second, or 360 hertz. Such displays may not be far off: LCD TVs that boast 240-hertz refresh rates have already appeared on the market, just a few years after 120-hertz TVs made their debut.
Photo: Night and Day
If photographer Stephen Wilkes couldn’t decide what time of day NYC was most beautiful, we understand. See his photographic series capturing the magic of Manhattan days and nights combined into one.
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Video Distaction: Stopped Clock Illusion
Chronostasis is the illusion in which the first impression following a saccade (quick eye movement) appears to be extended in time. The most well-known version of this illusion is the stopped-clock illusion, where the first movement of the second hand of an analog clock, following the viewer’s directing attention to the clock, appears to take longer than the next movement.
When eyes execute a saccade, perception of time stretches slightly backward. The viewer’s brain registers that they have been looking at the clock for slightly longer than they really have, producing the illusion that the second-hand is frozen for more than a second. Although this happens every time the eyes move from one fixation point to the next, it is rarely noticed. One explanation is that the brain is filling in the gap while the eyes move from looking at one thing to the next.
Science: A Tour of the Moon
Although the moon has remained largely unchanged during human history, our understanding of it and how it has evolved over time has evolved dramatically. Thanks to new measurements, we have new and unprecedented views of its surface, along with new insight into how it and other rocky planets in our solar system came to look the way they do. See some of the sights and learn more about the moon here!
Source: NASAexplorer
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
Music: Song of the Higgs Boson
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Tech Links: July 10, 2012
This portrait is only made with "flat circles" on a black background. Every circle has a single color, a single tone and a single size. I placed each circle one by one. It's a time consuming method. Please see some details, the work in progress and other portraits here below. If you wish, you can also view this making of my portrait of Elvis Presley (video) to understand how I'm exploiting this technique with circles. The above portrait was featured on "Cult Of Mac" in March 2012.
Entertainment
Happy 100th birthday, Alan Turing! 2012 is the Alan Turing Year, with celebratory academic events around the world all year. BBC News has a set of (brief) appreciations, including one in which two of Turing's colleagues share memories. Google has an interactive Doodle of a Turing Machine today (that article has some explanation and links to a useful video if the doodle's confusing). Alan Turing.net has original documents from Turing's life and other figures in the early development of computing. Turing.org is by a biographer of AT and has a timeline/bio and other secondary resources.
Infographic: A Look Back at 40 Years of Atari
The perfume that smells like a Macbook Pro
Minecraft Diamond Ore Server
Gadgets
The Phi is a PCIe card which turns your computer into a software-defined radio which "could record FM radio and digital television signals, read RFID chips, track ship locations, or do radio astronomy. In principle it could perform all of these functions simultaneously." While the Phi isn't the first such device available for purchase, it is the first to target hobbyists and eventually consumers, but how will the FCC handle software-defined radio?
Internet
CEO Of Internet Provider Sonic.net: We Delete User Logs After Two Weeks. Your Internet Provider Should, Too.
Reading & Discussion
5 signs that Apple is a cult
"Now we have three former NSA officials confirming the basic facts. Neither the Constitution nor federal law allow the government to collect massive amounts of communications and data of innocent Americans and fish around in it in case it might find something interesting. This kind of power is too easily abused. We're extremely pleased that more whistleblowers have come forward to help end this massive spying program." - the EFF announces that three former employees of the NSA have come forward to testify in their lawsuit against the NSA over the domestic spying program.
Resources & Utilities
Brackets: The Open Source Code Editor for the Web
on{X} is an automation framework that allows you to program and customize various aspects of your Android Smartphone using JavaScript. The developers at Microsoft have also provided a set of customizable pre-baked recipes for the JavaScriptially-challenged.
Want to take it a bit further? The on{X} Market contains a growing list of scripts created by other users, while SetOn{X} adds a few extra functions and commands to the default API.
Satellite Eyes is a free OS X app that automatically updates your desktop wallpaper with satellite imagery of your current location.
Software
John Goerzen, an IT development manager in Kansas and a developer for Debian, has been teaching his two sons, ages five and two, respectively, how to use Linux. Goerzen began with his older son, Jacob, at the age of three, building with him a computer out of spare parts and installing a command-line-only version of Debian. Surprisingly, Jacob took to the Bash shell with enthusiasm, particularly the word "bash". Since then, Jacob has learned how to use power cycling as a troubleshooting mechanism, how to make a steam locomotive with
sl, how to do text-to-speech with cw and some shell scripts, and how to IM with mcabber. Most recently, Goerzen introduced a GUI to Jacob, now five, and his other son, Oliver, now two, opting for tiling window manager xmonad as being most familiar to kids used to running a computer with a keyboard instead of a mouse. His reasoning? "It has not escaped my attention that children that used Commodores
or TRS-80s or DOS knew a lot more about how their computers worked, on
average, than those of the same age that use Windows or MacOS. I didn’t
want our boys to skip an entire phase of learning how their technology
works. I am pleased with this solution; they still run commands to
launch things, yet get to play with more than text-based programs."The Next Microsoft - A 3 day experiment in rebranding Microsoft by art student Andrew Kim.
Sci-fi policing: predicting crime before it occurs
Winamp's woes: how the greatest MP3 player undid itself
Technology
"Maintaining this level of surveillance is very burdensome for companies. According to the letters, AT&T has more than 100 full time employees assigned just to handle law enforcement requests, Verizon has 70, and Sprint has a whopping 226. That’s a lot of people power devoted solely to surveillance." Mobile Phone Surveillance by the Numbers.
Time To Apply The First Law Of Robotics To Our Smartphones
Tutorials
How To Turn Old Car Parts Into A Video Game Controller
Friday, July 6, 2012
Hacks: DIY Doppler Radar
This doppler (speed) radar is built on the Cypress PSoC 3 platform using the MIT Lincoln Lab radar as the RF frontend. The project uses an FFT to analyze the doppler shift of the reflected S-band RF signal. As a MIT 6.115 microcontroller project lab final project, the control algorithm was written in C51 assembly.
Read the design report or watch the MIT OCW class.
Humor: Sonnet on a Higgs-Like Particle
Sonnet on a Higgs-Like Particle (it's Higgsdependence Day!)
We now have found a Higgs-like particle.
It is a Boson, we're 5-sigma sure.
I read about it in an article,
Along with facts a little more obscure.
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Documentary: Social Robots
We have seen it so many times in the movies – Computers getting smarter than humans and ultimately trying to exterminate us so they can roam free in the world and in our universe. But can it actually happen? Could a computer gain so much self-awareness that it would start making decisions against what it was programmed to do? It’s a hard question to answer since we don’t yet know just how powerful we can really make a computer.
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
Lecture: The Chemistry of Fireworks
Fireworks expert John Conkling discusses the chemistry of fireworks by Bytesize Science
From the sizzle of the fuse to the boom and burst of colors, this video brings you all of the exciting sights and sounds of Fourth of July fireworks, plus a little chemical knowhow. The video features John A. Conkling, Ph.D., who literally wrote the book on fireworks — he is the author of The Chemistry of Pyrotechnics, Basic Principles and Theory. Conkling shows how the familiar rockets and other neat products that light up the night sky all represent chemistry in action.
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Daily Links: July 3, 2012
Curiosity's Seven Minutes of Terror is a YouTube video guaranteed to get you excited about NASA again. It shows the elaborate process that will get the Curiosity rover onto the Martian surface on August 5. It involves the largest supersonic parachute ever built, multiple vehicles, 76 explosive devices, and a skycrane.
Here are some of the tricks being used in London to avoid building a bunch of facilities that will never be used after the Olympics.
Nissan's Batmobilelike DeltaWing in collaboration with Dan Gurney's All American Racers and others is car initially made to be the new IndyCar but ultimately made to contest the 24 Hours of Le Mans and possibly American Le Mans using half the amount of tyres and fuel as any car. It managed to run for 6 of the 24 hours before being taken out in the race. For clarity prior to clicking on the last link, "taken out" refers to another car bumping it and causing it to crash. Or, as the Sun puts it, "BAM! Pow! Holy Jeepers, the Batmobile has hit the wall!"
Scientists test out the legend that the Easter Island statues “walked” to where they are by making one go for a stroll.
Net: The Declaration of Internet Freedom
Today a coalition of public interest groups announced the Declaration of Internet Freedom—a statement that outlines the rights and principles necessary for an open Internet. Coalition members including the EFF, Access, and others, wrote the declaration as a starting point and are now inviting the public to join the discussion. A great start and a great discussion. Pitch in and learn more by clicking here. For more on the declaration, see this post by the EFF.
We believe that a free and open Internet can bring about a better world. But to keep the Internet free and open, we must promote these principles in every country, every industry and every community. And we believe that these freedoms will bring about more creativity, more innovation and a better society.
Monday, July 2, 2012
Snippet: Your E-Book Is Reading You
Your E-Book Is Reading You:
Source: WSJ.com
For centuries, reading has largely been a solitary and private act, an intimate exchange between the reader and the words on the page. But the rise of digital books has prompted a profound shift in the way we read, transforming the activity into something measurable and quasi-public. The major new players in e-book publishing—Amazon, Apple and Google—can easily track how far readers are getting in books, how long they spend reading them and which search terms they use to find books. Book apps for tablets like the iPad, Kindle Fire and Nook record how many times readers open the app and how much time they spend reading. Retailers and some publishers are beginning to sift through the data, gaining unprecedented insight into how people engage with books.
Barnes & Noble has determined, through analyzing Nook data, that nonfiction books tend to be read in fits and starts, while novels are generally read straight through, and that nonfiction books, particularly long ones, tend to get dropped earlier. Science-fiction, romance and crime-fiction fans often read more books more quickly than readers of literary fiction do, and finish most of the books they start. Readers of literary fiction quit books more often and tend skip around between books.
Pinpointing the moment when readers get bored could also help publishers create splashier digital editions by adding a video, a Web link or other multimedia features, Mr. Hilt says. Publishers might be able to determine when interest in a fiction series is flagging if readers who bought and finished the first two books quickly suddenly slow down or quit reading later books in the series.
“The bigger trend we’re trying to unearth is where are those drop-offs in certain kinds of books, and what can we do with publishers to prevent that?” Mr. Hilt says. “If we can help authors create even better books than they create today, it’s a win for everybody.”
Infographic: OMG Space
"OMG SPACE" by Margot Trudell
OMG SPACE is a project by designer Margot Trudell "to communicate to people what we’ve managed to accomplish in space exploration in simple terms." These infographics were intended for print, and the copy on most of
them isn't easily legible when reduced in size and resolution for the
web. So, make sure to check out the website.
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