Archive for August, 2005
U.K. family agrees to RFID monitoring. For science, of course.. “A British family has agreed to have their activities monitored via RFID tags while they occupy a new smart home, in order to provide data to the builder, which will use the info to make future home-building decisions. As family members move from room to room, 26 sensors will track their locations, giving the builder a better idea of whether, say, anyone is actually using the hot tub or playing table tennis in the garage.”
Engadget
BBC TV channels to be put on net. “The BBC’s TV channels will be made available on the internet, BBC Director General Mark Thompson has confirmed. He announced plans for the MyBBCPlayer – which will allow viewers to legally download seven days of programmes [...]. A simulcast of BBC One or BBC Two, letting UK viewers see programmes on the web at the same time as they go out on TV, is also planned as part of MyBBCPlayer . “
BBC NEWS
Booking A Flight Companion. “Peter Shankman has created a system that allows travellers to book the person they’d like to sit next to. He says, “I’ve created match.com meets expedia meets friendster. You register at AirTroductions, and create a profile. Enter in your photo, and various facts about you, depending on whether you’re looking for a business connection or a personal connection or both. Once that’s done, the next time you fly, you enter your itinerary at the site, and AirTroductions shows you who else has registered for your flight, as well.”"
PSFK
Roamin’ Holiday. “Imagine leaving your car at home and networking with other GPS-phone users to form impromptu car pools, or receiving Web pages on your phone about Pickett’s ill-fated charge as you amble up Seminary Ridge in Gettysburg. Geo-aware devices that trigger location-specific services will become as natural as the very idea of wirelessness, and the Web itself will cease to be a placeless cyberspace and will be pinned at millions of points to the physical world we inhabit. “
Tech Review
Cellphones Catapult Rural Africa to 21st Century. “On this dry mountaintop, 36-year-old Bekowe Skhakhane does even the simplest tasks the hard way. Fetching water from the river takes four hours a day. To cook, she gathers sticks and musters a fire. Light comes from candles. But when Ms. Skhakhane wants to talk to her husband, who works in a steel factory 250 miles away in Johannesburg, she does what many in more developed regions do: she takes out her mobile phone.”
New York Times
People raised in Asia perceive more detail than those raised in the USA. “A study that tracked eye motions of subject shown photographs concluded that people raised in Asia took in more detail in the background and more information about the relationship between the foreground and background objects than did people raised in America, who focused largely on foreground objects. The researchers claim that this is the result of a more cooperative culture in Asia that is driven by higher population density and historical communal modes of production (shared irrigation systems for rice paddies), while western culture is more individualized. “
Boing Boing
Unity game engine adds Windows support. “Well, we support anything that makes developing games easier, because that’s going to ultimately mean more diverse games that break the stultifying parade of sequels that plague the industry. There are thousands of guys (and maybe dozens of girls) out there right now that have always dreamed of making a game but have been put off by the ever-escalating costs of doing so.”
Joystiq
Hitachi’s DV-DH1000W, a terabyte hi-def DVR with DVD recorder. “Hitachi’s new DV-DH1000W records up to 68 hours of hi-def video (or 1700 hours of standard def) on its sizable 1000GB array—we’re assuming it’s an array since 1TB drives haven’t hit the street yet—and also features a DVD burner for flushing it all out.”
Engadget
GoogleOS? YahooOS? MozillaOS? WebOS?. “I’m looking at the rest of the most commonly used apps on my Powerbook and there’s not too many of them that absolutely need to be standalone desktop applications. Text editor, IM[3], Word, Excel, FTP, iCal, address book…I could imagine versions of these running in a browser.”
kottke.org
Downloading Disrupted. “PlayLouder have signed a deal with Sony-BMG, one of the biggest record companies in the world, that will allow PlayLouder members to download music and then share it with their peers. The PlayLouder software analyses the sharing and works out what songs are being shared and how frequently. They then pay a fee based on this to the record label that owns the songs rights.
This business model is truly revolutionary. It allows users to continue file sharing and actively encourage this whilst satisfying the record labels by compensating them based on actual figures. “
PSFK
Beastie Boys release vocals-only tracks to encourage remixers. “The Beastie Boys are posting acapella tracks — just the vocals, in other words, along with BPM info — from their songs and encouraging their fans to make noncommercial remixes of them. A new track goes live every Friday. “
Boing Boing
Fly Should Soar with Kids. “What can they do with the Fly pentop computer? Kids can use it as a calculator, keep a calendar, create and record music, and play complex logic and geography games — all features I tried and found fun and educational. The Fly pentop computer is the kid’s PDA, if you will, and the fly-est digital toy I’ve tried lately, for sure.”
Business Week
Breath scanner can detect diseases. “The company’s Breathscanner can reportedly check for serious illnesses, including some forms of cancer, pulmonary TB and heart-transplant rejection, all by analyzing organic compounds that surface in a patient’s breath.”
Engadget
Billboards beam adverts to passing cellphones. “Ignoring adverts is about to get a lot tougher with the development of billboards and advertising posters that use Bluetooth to beam video ads direct to passing cellphones. As people walk past the posters they receive a message on their phone asking them if they wish to accept the advert. If they do, they can receive movies, animations, music or still images further promoting the advertised product.”
New Scientist
Japanese teens weigh habits: cellphones or smoking?. “It might be slightly on the ad hoc ergo propter hoc end, but officials have apparently noticed a dramatic decline in the smoking habits of kids in Japan—ranging between 6 to even 50% (depending on demographic) in minors between the ages of 13 and 18—that correllates with patterns in teenage cellphone adoption.”
Engadget
Warner Music readies CD-free ‘e-label’. “Warner Music Group is creating a new music-distribution mechanism that will rely on digital downloads instead of compact discs.
Edgar Bronfman Jr., Warner Music’s chairman and CEO, said Monday that the new mechanism will be called an “e-label,” in which artists will release music in clusters of three songs every few months rather than a CD every few years.”
CNET News.com
Online librarian is ‘overwhelmed’. “The website asks its members to add a list of 10 books they own to its online catalogue. The listed books can then be exchanged between members for the cost of postage and packing. “
BBC NEWS
Daisy has all the digital answers to life on Earth. “Scientists have unveiled plans to create a digital library of all life on Earth. They say that the Digital Automated Identification System (Daisy), which harnesses the latest advances in artificial intelligence and computer vision, will have an enormous impact on research into biodiversity and evolution. Daisy will also give Britain’s army of amateur naturalists unprecedented access to the world’s taxonomic expertise: send Daisy a camera-phone picture of a plant or animal and, within seconds, you will get detailed information about what you are looking at.”
The Guardian
Imaging system quickly identifies gender, age. “When a person stands in front of the video camera of the system, the PC analyzes the image of the face and extracts data such as shading and surface features. The data is compared with the database of some 10,000 human faces to determine the person’s gender and their age group in just two to three seconds. Age is classified into five groups. Tests showed that the prototype system, gender was determined with an accuracy of around 85% and age with an accuracy of around 75%. Yamaha Motor envisions the system being used for such purposes as in marketing to identify the people attending exhibitions of its motorcycles.”
we make money not art
Wireless purchases, in Japan it works. “Mobile commerce over cell phones jumped 25 percent last fiscal year to around 971 billion yen ($8.8 billion) according to a survey on e-business just released by Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry [.pdf in Japanese]. Covering all of fiscal 2004 (which in Japan ended March ’05), the survey showed wireless purchases of books and music had grown by 85 percent from virtually nothing the previous year to 330 million yen ($3 million). Shopping for clothing and accessories over the smallest screen accelerated 79 percent, taking in 150 hundred million yen ($1.3 million).”
All about Mobile Life
File Share and Share Alike. “To publicize its new series “Gilgamesh” and “Goddanar,” it is releasing promotional packages – not in stores, but via the dreaded BitTorrent. “BitTorrent has been used extensively in a kind of underground environment up until now,” said David Williams, a producer at ADV, in a telephone interview from the company’s Houston headquarters. “There’s a large group of people who have it on their systems. Since this core group already exists, we figured why not give them legitimate material to download that would help them learn about some of our products.”"
New York Times
Balance Booster. “Worn on the belt, the device is aimed at helping people who suffer from damage to the inner ear. Its sensors detect when the person sways outside a vertical “safe zone.” A computer then converts that information into musical tones played through headphones, which get louder the further they sway from vertical and using stereo sound to indicate the direction of the sway.”
we make money not art
Number of mobile/wi-fi handsets to reach 66m in 2009 – report. “Dual-mode mobile/wi-fi handsets will be the key driver to mass consumer adoption of VoIP. By 2009, over 66m mobile/wi-fi handsets will be in operation, according to a report from market research firm In-Stat. “
Digital Media Europe
Try Tacking This to a Wall. “Fuji Xerox plans to start selling these E-Paper Visual Index Cards sometime next year. The e-paper is ultra-thin and does not need electricity for its display, according to CNet.”
Gizmodo
A Language Barrier to Sales. “IT seems impossible to believe, when you realize that just about every call to a toll-free number asks if you want to proceed in English or Spanish, but the vast majority of retail Web sites are English only. That decision – or oversight – is costing merchants tens of billions of dollars in sales a year, according to the current issue of Forrester Magazine, published by the research company of the same name.”
New York Times
Library lends out people. “A library in Holland is lending out people, as well as books, in a new initiative aimed at challenging stereotypes. People can borrow gay people, gipsies and Muslims for an hour and talk to them about their lives, reports Nu.nl. Jan Krol, director of the public library, in Almelo, said one of his assistants came up with the idea. He added: “It’s a good way to challenge stereotypes. Clients can lend out a Muslim woman in a head scarf and ask her the questions they wouldn’t dare to if they met on the street.”
Ananova
A Doll That Can Recognize Voices, Identify Objects and Show Emotion. “the 18-inch-tall doll promises – right on the box it will be sold in – to “listen, speak and show emotion.” Some analysts and buyers who have seen Amanda say it represents an evolutionary leap from earlier talking dolls like Chatty Cathy of the 1960′s, a doll that cycled through a collection of recorded phrases when a child pulled a cord in its back. Radio frequency tags in Amanda’s accessories – including toy food, potty and clothing – wirelessly inform the doll of what it is interacting with. For instance, if the doll asks for a spoon of peas and it is given its plastic cookie, it will gently admonish its caregiver, telling her that a cookie is not peas.”
New York Times
Real World Activities Effect Your Game Character. “This device has currently been prototyped using the RPG Morrowind. In usual circumstances, a player might make an avatar that is a fitter, stronger more attractive version of themselves. The G-Link reverses this and says if you sit in and play games all day, your character will be weaker, yet if you go out for a walk then your character will be stronger. Also if you go out in the sun your character will be light aligned, yet stay indoors and it will go over to the dark side.”
networked_performance
RSS failing to gain audience mindshare. “Nielsen/NetRatings polled 1,000 members of its research panel who read blogs. It found that nearly two-thirds of the respondents either never heard of RSS (Really Simple Syndication) or did not know what the technology is used for. The study found only 11% of Web log readers use RSS to monitor blogs”
ArsTechnica
Computer Recognizes Humans by their Walking Patterns. “a system developed by University of Tokyo’s Center for Spatial Information Science (site) that can identify individuals based on their walk pattern in crowds.
The walk pattern recognizer combines floor-level laser beams with overhead cameras to isolate and track individuals.
Tests showed that monitoring 600m2 of a crowded train station, the system succeeded in isolating 80% of 150 poeple.”
I4U News
Embrace. “Embrace is a concept bracelet that enables the user to be seamlessly connected to their significant other over periods of separation. “
we make money not art
Look, Ma, No Schoolbooks!. “Gypton said he assigns readings based on websites, lists postings to news articles, uses online groups and message boards to keep the students connected on weekends and asks them to comment on each other’s work. “
Wired News
Tiny robot plane flies indoors, transmits data. “Swiss researchers have demonstrated a flying bot with an 31-inch wingspan and a weight of just 1 ounce, that can fly indoors, avoiding walls and other objects via its onboard cameras. The robot plane has gyroscopic stabilizers and a Bluetooth transmitter to send data back to a nearby computer.”
Engadget
Fujitsu to test kid-tracking system using QR codes. “if a child is lost, his QR Code can be read by an Internet-enabled scanner, which can automatically forward the child’s information to a specified server, which will in turn notify the parents. Unlike RFID, of course, there’s no active transmissions being sent by the child, but the QR-based system has the advantage of being cheap to implement.”
Engadget
Artificial Life announces First Massive Multi Player 3G Game. “Players of the game can select a virtual persona for themselves and inhabit and live in a simulated virtual city. When navigating through the virtual city, users can contact and interact directly with other players in real time, have live real time chats with other human players or chatter bots, enter and explore virtual buildings, use interactive objects and co-operate with others to solve certain tasks or to avoid certain threats.”
gizmag
QR Code Gets Active for Lost Children. “Fujitsu developed a new technology that embeds IDs, IP (Internet Protocol) addresses, IP packets (both IPv4 and IPv6), and a “pulse signal” that can be directly sent out to the Internet into non-digital media including printed QR Codes. The technology for example allows for easily sending out notification messages by attaching QR Codes to things, people, etc. Using this technology, in a few days, the compay will test a system for notifying parents about their lost children at Shima Spanish Village in Mie Prefecture. QR Codes are attached to children — if they are lost, someone can use a scanner to read their QR codes. The information encoded in the QR Codes includes the email address of a server machine. When it is scanned, the system automatically send email to the server, then the server notifies their parents using SMS.”
RFID in Japan
Laser-scanner for 3D human-machine interface. “The team’s tracking system is currently using a laser diode (visible or invisible light), steering mirrors, and a non-imaging photodetector, which is capable of acquiring 3D coordinates in real time without the need of any image processing at all. Essentially, it is a smart rangefinder scanner that instead of continuously scanning over the full field of view, restricts its scanning area, on the basis of a real-time analysis of the backscattered signal, to a very narrow window precisely the size of the target.”
we make money not art
Heliodisplay projects into thin air. “A California-based firm today unveiled a futuristic projector that projects video onto thin air. The Heliodisplay, developed by IO2 Technology, is designed to display any video source in high-resolution without the need for a screen.”
vnunet.com
Wondering how to remember that wine?. “…researchers at the Univeristy of Tokyo have developed a flexible scanner made up of a polymer matrix containing thousands of photodiodes. You say that you can think of thousands of better ideas for using this concept than scanning a wine bottle label?”
Innovation Blog
Bluetooth scanner ‘stroke hope’. “Scientists hope a portable brain scanner that uses Bluetooth radio technology could lead to stroke victims receiving treatment much more quickly. The University College London team hope the device could be used onboard ambulances to diagnose people thought to have had a stroke. Currently stroke patients have to wait until they arrive at hospital to have a scan before receiving treatment.”
BBC NEWS
In case of emergency, put your cell on ICE. “A British paramedic came up with the idea of asking cell phone users to input an entry into their cellular phonebook called ICE for “in case of emergency.” Accompanying that acronym would be the name and phone numbers of the person who should be called if something has happened to the owner of the phone.
The ICE campaign was launched in Britain in April, but people really started paying attention after the July terrorist bombings in London that killed 56 and injured hundreds.”
USATODAY
Gov’t to push for virtual reality TV by 2020 – Japan’s Leading International News Network. “The Japanese Communications Ministry is to establish a research group that will work to commercialize virtual reality television by 2020. VR TV will enable images to be seen in 3D from any angle at a quality equivalent to that offered by high-definition TVs, and allow viewers to feel and smell the objects they are watching.”
We make money not art
Etsy — place to sell handmade goods. “Etsy is a website where people can sell anything they want, as long as it’s handmade.”
Boing Boing
Networking From the Rooftop. “From a computer in the living room of his Cambridge, MA, apartment, a few blocks from the MIT campus, a cable goes into the fireplace up to the roof, where it is attached to an antenna. From there, data packets hop to another roof-mounted antenna at a nearby student’s apartment. That way, from roof to roof in multiple hops, Sinha’s data packets finally reach a gateway-a computer connected to the fixed Internet-at MIT’s computer science building.”
Techreview
Lloyds of London to offer insurance for corporate open source users. “Venerable, rock-ribbed insurer Lloyd’s of London is planning on offering liability insurance to users of Open Source software who are worried about getting slapped with patent and copyright suits.”
Boing Boing
Total recall boosts PDA writing. “The idea of remembering word patterns and connecting the dots might not sound like an easy way to write an e-mail. But IBM researchers are betting that tracing letters on a touch screen will become the way to write on a handheld device like a PDA or mobile phone.”
BBC NEWS
Cheques ‘extinct by 2025′. “Paper cheques could be extinct within the next 20 years as consumers and businesses switch to more convenient forms of payment, a new study reveals. The rise of electronic payments, debit cards and telephone and internet banking are sounding the death knell for the cheque, which research from Halifax, the UK bank, shows has dropped in use in the UK over the last year by seven per cent to 2.1 billion.”
The Register
Ethiopia leaps into the information age. “Good news often seems to be an endangered species in Africa, even if many parts of the continent are making quiet progress while others occupy the headlines with stories of conflict and disaster. Still, it is surprising to learn that one of its poorer countries is spending 10 per cent of its annual GDP on a broadband, satellite-based internet system.”
Times Online
Ripple. “Ripple cuts the banks right out of the picture by allowing anyone to act as a bank and grant credit within the Ripple system to anyone they know. The system keeps track of the source of all IOUs, so that debts that are not repaid are automatically borne by the issuer.”
Project Homepage
Tiny device combines Wi-Fi Hotspot Finder with access point. “The AG-225H is the first to combine an 802.11a and 802.11b/g USB 2.0 adapter with a fully functional stand-alone hotspot detector that can also turn your laptop into an access point to allow users to instantly share wireless access with others.”
gizmag
Digital Lip Reader. “Now groups at Intel, IBM, and other institutions are modifying language-processing programs to link each vocal sound to several possible mouth movements, allowing the software to make a best guess about what’s being uttered. In tests in noisy environments, adding visual information boosted speech recognition accuracy from 20 percent to 75 percent, says Ara Nefian, a senior researcher at Intel Research in Santa Clara, CA.”
Tech Review
Auto door. “This new design entails strips equipped with infrared sensors that open to the approximate shape of the person or object passing through, minimizing entry of dust, pollen, and bugs while keeping precious air-conditioning in.”
Gizmodo
BurnLounge Makes Anyone a Music Download Retailer. “The Web-based service provides the music library, e-commerce tools and business management software for virtually anyone to own and operate their own digital download store. The company’s founders hope to recruit everyday music fans, allowing each to decide which acts they want to feature and promote, as a sort of digital guerrilla marketing play.”
Realtech News
Speech-Slowing Phone. “NTT DoCoMo out of Japan are releasing a new phone later this month that is a small step in getting those chatty people of the world to shut up. The phone has the ability to slow down rapid speech of the callers. With the simple tap of a button mid-call the speech on the other end is slowed to almost two times its normal rate.”
Gizmodo
NTT 3D SpaceBrowser. “Japanese NTT is works on a 3D information browser that is scheduled to be released in October. The NTT SpaceBrowser shows web pages arranged in 3D. This is not a new concept, and I am still not convinced it makes sense to navigate information in 3D without having solved the 3D navigation user interface in general. The SpaceBrowser is nice to look at, but in my opinion just a toy.”
I4U News
Jerk-O-Meter calls out your boredom on the phone. “Researchers at MIT are developing software for cellphones that analyzes speech patterns and voice tones and rates how engaged you are in the conversation. It measures the levels of stress and empathy in a person’s voice and, when your attention starts to drift, pops up warning messages to the effect of “Don’t be a jerk!” or “Be a little nicer now.””
Engadget
CCTV video mixes maps and images. “Smart software is taking CCTV into the domain of 3D gaming by combining graphics, map data, and different camera views in one composite image. The system automatically tracks and stitches 3D images with CCTV video, maps and other real-time information. It automatically alerts operators to intruders, unusual behaviour, left objects or anything it is told to spot.”
BBC NEWS
Cellphone-based pollution sensor being developed at Berkeley. “The idea is to develop a standard for chip-based sensors that can integrate with GPS-equipped phones, allowing them to send location-specific data on anything from air pollution to radiation back to a central database. Eventually, they see the chips adding about $1 to the manufacturing cost of phones.”
Engadget
Panel Junction. “Panel Junction combines the graphic novel with forms of shared authorship, merging spontaneous drawing with scripting and direction from online visitors. Participants from around the world can contribute dialog, graphics, caricatures, fonts, narrative ideas, internal monologues, jokes, backgrounds, puns, story-boards, coloring, anecdotes, and sketches.”
we make money not art
A Digital Locket to Love for Its Lovely Little Tricks. “Wearable MP3 players are nothing new, but the Digital Locket EMP-Z II Plus from BeatSounds tries to be more than just a memory chip on a string. This tiny music player has a small, oval color screen that can display a photo, bringing a 21st-century touch to the sentimental jewelry favored by romantics in the Victorian era and later.”
New York Times (may require free subscription)
NerdTV. “PBS Launches NerdTV, the First Downloadable Web-Exclusive Series From a Major Broadcaster. A Whole New Kind Of Television For Niche Audiences. Beginning Sept. 6, PBS will make available – exclusively over the Internet – broadcast television’s first entirely downloadable series, featuring PBS technology columnist and industry insider Robert X. Cringely’s interviews with personalities from the ever-changing world of technology”
PBS
Remember when mom’s hug made you feel better?. “Researchers at the University of North Carolina have found that a hug from your significant other can reduce blood pressure and cut the risk of heart attacks. This is especially true for women. So the effect of human interaction is much stronger than anyone ever thought. So how you enhance those contacts to improve people’s life experience?”
Innovation Blog
Innovative new traffic visualisation tool to debut in Northern California. “Beat the Traffic” is cutting edge 3-D traffic displays that offer the viewer a look at traffic from a completely different angle. One of the most exciting things “Beat the Traffic” will provide is travel forecasting. The system computes historical traffic information and will predict how long it will take to arrive at a destination. Travel forecasting can tell you what time on a Friday before a major holiday that traffic will start backing up! This will help viewers save time when planning events and trips.”
gizmag
System for Tagging Messages, Post-Inferential Semantics. “STAMPS is a little program that allows you to see a map of the place where you are, visualised on the screen of your mobile. There, you can write a kind of SMS and attach it to the map so that other friends can see your message appearing on their map.”
Smart Mobs
IBM’s SoulPad portable virtual computing environment. “With SoulPad, not only would your user environment be persistent, but so would be your session. Imagine suspending said user session—open windows, multimedia, active (and inactive) data, etc.—to a portable drive-enabled device (the demo video uses an iPod photo as an example) and booting back to this session independently another machine. When you’re done you resave your session to your device and the host machine returns to normal.”
Engadget
Socially responsible online shopping | CNET News.com. “Alonovo.com lets people define the social and environmental values they feel are important and see how different merchants perform in those areas using data from KLD Research and Analytics. The areas include labor relations, animal rights, fair trade, charitable giving, clean-energy use and recycling, among others.”
CNet News
The Human-Techno Future: How Weird? How Soon?. “Already you see what Viagra does, not to mention Botox, and serotonin reuptake inhibitors in personality [for depression]. Well that is just the primitive form. This is increasing on an exponential curve. You’re talking about being given enhancements that will allow you to think faster, to have better memory, to be physically ripped and beautiful without having to put in a lot of effort.”
National Geographic
Navizon’s P2P positioning system. “Navizon, a GPS, WiFi, and cellular peer-to-peer based mobile positioning system for Pocket PC devices. Of course, this system (like all other peer-based mobile software systems) only works well when you actually have a lot of people running the software, but they also claim to have the cellular/WiFi triangulation thing down by having those users who do have GPS sync to their servers with varying coordinates.”
Engadget
Camera Shoot. “In the near future, a soldier who needs a quick look over the next hill will be able to aim his rifle skyward, fire a grenade-sized reconnaissance device and instantly receive imagery on his pocket computer,” writes Defense News’ Barbara Opall-Rome.”
Defense Tech
Coming to campus: E-books with expiration dates. “Alongside the new and used versions of Dante’s “Inferno” and “Essentials of Psychology” will be little cards offering 33 percent off if students decide to download a digital version of a text instead of buying a hard copy. That’s not a bad deal for a cash-strapped student facing book bills in the hundreds of dollars. But there are trade-offs. The new digital textbook program imposes strict guidelines on how the books can be used, including locking the downloaded books to a single computer and setting a five-month expiration date, after which the book can’t be read.”
CNET News.com
The Learning Shoe. “Designed by Yves Behar, the Learning Shoe uses data collection to create personalized footwear. Chips on the sole of the shoe gather data on the shape of your foot and the way you walk. Once you’ve been around the block a few times in the yellow trainer shoes, return to the shoe store, where the chips are removed and used to design a new pair of shoes in another color, form, or material — ergonomically customized using your personal walking data.”
Gizmodo
DTV Beta: Internet TV. “DTV is a new, free and open-source platform for internet television and video. An intuitive interface lets users subscribe to channels, watch video, and build a video library. Our publishing software lets you broadcast full-screen video to thousands of people at virtually no cost. The project is non-profit, free and open source, and built on open standards.”
Lifehacker
Citizens do media for themselves. “D Lasica’s ourmedia is a place online where anyone can publish their own digital home movie, music, photos, or even plain old blog for free. [...] Since its inception in March 2005, not-for-profit Ourmedia has attracted more than 31,000 international members, and now plays host to 22,000 separate pieces of media, from travelogs to tastes of family life.”
Smart Mobs
Visiting the blogs. “A new report out by a leading Internet research company has revealed that fully 30 percent of American Internet users visited blogs during the first quarter of 2005″,this CNET news article says.According to it “almost 50 million–or one in six–Americans spent at least some time on blogs during that time frame.That’s a 45 percent rise over the year before”.
Smart Mobs
The First Solar-Powered Wi-Fi Network. “This solar-powered network is composed of four dual units and needed only $10,000 to be deployed. And the company which developed this new kind of wireless access points, Lumin, is thinking to make portable and secure wireless networks in developing countries.”
Primidi
Convert RSS to PDF. “RSS 2 PDF is a free online service that lets you turn an RSS or OPML newsfeed into a PDF. It’s lightning fast and creates a very readable and nicely formated PDF for your offline reading pleasure. [...] I can think of a few reasons to dig this. For example, linking type blogs that don’t utilize permalinks could use this to create a nice permanent content archive.”
Lifehacker
Brits to get RFID-chipped license plates. “Unlike passive RFID which only transmits over short distances, the e-Plate licenses use active RFID technology to transmit vehicle identification numbers and other data to readers over 300 feet away. Not surprisingly, US officials will be monitoring the trial closely with an eye toward bringing mandatory RFID-tagged plates to the States.”
Engadget
Mood News. “Mood News started as an idea to represent the day’s news as a sad or happy face. The current version provides a fresh view of the news with a dynamic interface. The ratings are based on keyword scoring from a vocabulary of 160 words and phrases.”
backstage.bbc.co.uk
Giving Machines the Gift of Gab. “As raw material heads down the line, each production machine connects to a central server via an Ethernet cable and automatically downloads a specific program for the job, then cuts the metal as specified. Once finished, the machine then downloads another program for a new job, letting the production line build many different models without a hiccup. It’s part of a manufacturing trend growing as both wireless and wired network technology drops in price: Machines on the assembly line are becoming more interconnected, giving manufacturers tight control over every part of their shop floors.”
Business Week
Interactions within a personal network of devices. “Exploring the Content Network, Thomas Stovicek’s thesis project, is a a set of screen-based software and hardware interactions between devices that looks at new ways to access, view and filter this growing store of information. Devices are physically manipulated and keywords used to make a more intuitive way to access content- text, photos, videos etc.”
we make money not art
Vienna net.art community to distribute its own grants using social software. “The Commissioner For The Arts, a member of Vienna’s Social Democratic Party, is supporting a consortium of more than 100 net.art groups, called Netznetz, in the development of a reputation-based software system that the group will then use to help decide how to distribute the grant money it receives from the government.”
Boing Boing
Computers learn a new language. “Conventional translation software programs have all the rules of grammar coded into them. But the ADIOS (automatic distillation of structure) program, developed by researchers at Cornell University in New York and Tel Aviv University in Israel, infers the building blocks of a language using statistical and algebraic processes. The software learns the grammar of a new language by searching text for patterns. The researchers think the program will be useful in cognitive science and bioinformatics, as well as in applications such as voice recognition.”
New Scientist
Koreans Find Secret Cybersauce. “There’s more to online social networks than matchmaking, and South Korea’s Cyworld is showing the way.
The online service blends homepage building and social networking with a host of other online activities, including Sims-like role-playing.”
Wired News
Optoelectronics in our Broadband Future?. “IST Results writes that Spanish researchers have developed prototypes of optical Internet Protocol (IP) routers. In preliminary tests, which were using the existing fiber-optic infrastructure, they’ve already reached transfer rates of 20 Gbps with these IP routers and hope to reach 40 Gbps soon. If all goes well, this technology will be in your homes within five years.”
Primidi
Anti-Tremor Mouse Software. “MouseCage features a dual-cursor. The special guide cursor provides visual feedback by showing the user’s actual hand movements, while the normal Windows cursor takes an average of these movements and predicts where the user intends to click.”
we make money not art
‘Thoughts read’ via brain scans. “The US study used electrodes placed inside the skull to monitor the responses of brain cells in the auditory cortex of patients as they watched a clip of “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”. The study’s findings proved that fMRI scans could “read thoughts”. Pr. Itzhak Fried, who led the research, said: “We were able to tell one part of a scene from another, and we could tell one type of sound from another.”
we make money not art
Heaven Seed. “Heaven Seed is a smart plastic ball that senses its movement and generates various sound effects in real time thereby enhances the game people play with it. The motion data sensed by the ball are wirelessly transmitted to a host computer to provide rich auditory experiences.”
we make money not art
Preserving the value of a good reputation online. “By acting as a trusted third party recorder of customer feedback for all kinds of services, www.iKarma.com hopes to provide a go-to resource for online consumers before they make a purchase.”
gizmag
HumanML, the Human Markup Language. “HumanML wants to represent human characteristics (cultural, physical, psychological, etc.) in such a formal way it can be delivered as machine readable subtext via the use of extensible markup language (XML).”
Tech Trends
Geominder. “Geominder allows you to create location-based reminders that stay attached to physical locations.”
Ludimate
Remote-controlled humans. “The researchers outfit their subject with two electrodes behind the ears that “pull” her in one direction or another.”
Boing Boing
Cam Detector wards off spycams. “The $50 keychain Cam Detector, the latest from the creative minds at Ajoka (the folks who brought you the net-shooting gun), is designed to detect the presence of wireless spy cameras and alert you via an audio or visual signal “
Engadget
SMS Controlled Spy-Mirror. “The messages appear as luminous text, running on the mirrors’ surface when one gets close to the mirror.”
networked_performance
MYSQ: Video Purikura. “MYSQ (My Style So Qute) is an interactive “video booth” for shooting 30-second movies that can be viewed on mobile phones. [...] The booth can accommodate up to three people so you can shoot Prikura style video clips with your friends. Inside the booth is a fluffy thing called a MYSQ ring – you wear it on your hand. A camera detects the movement of your MYSQ ring. Also, floor sensors detect your foot movement. So, the system can control video effects based on your (and your friends’) hand/foot movement.”
we make money not art
Shapeshifter. “Shapeshifter is an installation for busy streets. People interact by standing in front of the large screen. A camera records the user one slice at a time enabling the user to compose strange bodies. The various slices are recorded and stored for other people to play with.”
we make money not art
Super tiny with anti-collision. “ASTAR’s IME (Institute of Microelectronics) in Singapore developed a very small RFID tag (1mmx0.5mm) with on-chip antenna. Hitachi’s mu-chip is smaller (0.4mmx0.4mm), however, it doesn’t have anti-collision functionality, which means multiple tags can’t be read “at the same time.”
RFID in Japan
Del.icio.us Visualization with Vox Delicii. “Vox Delicii is a really cool Web application that lets you view a “heat mapped” visualization of the current week’s popular content on Del.icio.us. As you can see in the small shot above, you can mouse over different nodes and it’ll highlight and tell you the name of the post that node represents.”
Lifehacker
Bookmark shops with Town Pocket RFID. “… Japan’s new Town Pocket system, which is currently being deployed at 153 local shops in Harajuku, where you’ll be able to whip out your RFID-enabled cellphone (or QR-code reader, depending on what you’ve got), and bookmark various stores.”
Engadget
AI to help intensive care doctors. “The system monitors patients’ vital signs and it can learn, adapt, and make informed decisions and decide on the types and quantities of drugs to give to patients in a matter of seconds. “This new system not only monitors and treats critical patients, but it can also learn from the experiences of medical staff, who can override the machine at any time,” explains Dr Mahdi Mahfouf. “If overridden, the system assimilates the doctor’s input and uses the new information to make decisions about similar cases in the future.”
we make money not art
Robot catcher grabs high speed projectiles. “The robotic catcher, developed by scientists at the University of Tokyo, Japan, can comfortably grab a ball careering through the air at 300 kilometres per hour, or 83 metres per second, its creators say. And, of course, the robot never gets tired of doing so.”
New Scientist
