BBC music festival simultaneously in-game and in real-life. “This weekend, the BBC’s Radio 1 is holding its One Big Weekend music festival simultaneously in Dundee and in the virtual world Second Life. Every virtual festival-goer will get a wee digital radio to take away with them, which will broadcast Radio 1 in-game, wherever you are.”
Boing Boing
NEC Blurs Line Between Real and Virtual Robots. “You could talk to your real robot, then take its memory chip and transfer it over to a PC or PDA, then pick up the conversation right where you left off.”
Gizmodo
Soccer Boot From A 3D Printer. “A company in London called Prior 2 Lever has created a bespoke soccer boot called “The Assassin” using the method. The shoe is created by scanning the foot to get exact measurements and then printed off into a real 3D shoe.”
PSFK
An ‘underground’ radio to save lives. “His prototype radio works at depths of 500 feet and is based on very low frequency electromagnetic radiation and digital signal processors. A commercial version is in the works and could be used not only by workers trapped in a mine, but also by firefighters and other emergency workers to communicate with people in collapsed buildings or subways.”
ZDNet.com
The compass coat. “The coat contains magnetic sensors and 24 sections that can light up individually, using Electro Luminescent wires. The section that points north lights up while its surrounding sections glow dimly. As soon as the wearer turns, the light gradually moves onto the new section that points north.”
we make money not art
Wireless network use grows. “One in five broadband users in the US and Europe is hooked up to a wireless network in their home, prompting analysts Strategy Analytics to suggest that Wi-Fi is emerging as a “mass market phenomenon”. The report found that seven per cent of all households now have a wireless network. The US is the leading market with 8.4 per cent penetration, followed by the Nordics with 7.9 per cent.”
The Register
Hitachi introduces Albirey eBook in Japan. “The black-and-white e-ink model, supposedly called the “Albirey” and developed with technology from Bridgestone, seems to sport a WiFi connection with “the possibility to modify making use of radio communication,” whatever that means, and comes in a package with standard A4 paper-size dimensions.”
Engadget
CollectiveX to Launch Thursday. “The focus of CollectiveX is on the group, not the individual. Members of the group can interact via file sharing, messaging, calendaring and exchange of leads/contacts. It frankly answers to question that many social networks pose: Ok, we’re here, now what do we do? With CollectiveX, the entire point is to facilitate interactions among existing groups. As a member, you can be a part of as many groups as you like: boards, company teams, charities, whatever.”
TechCrunch
A Classy Frame for 100 of Your Favorite Camera Phone Pictures. “Camera phones are handy for taking photos, but not so handy for showing them off. Parrot, best known for its car accessories that use Bluetooth wireless technology, has introduced a picture frame that stores and displays photos transmitted from camera phones and other devices via Bluetooth. The Parrot Photo Viewer is a 3.5-inch L.C.D. screen that comes ensconced in your choice of fashionable frames, from leather grain to distressed wood to faux crocodile.”
New York Times
Wearable mobile service to share emotions. “The MoBeeline wearable Bluetooth accessory can receive data from a mobile phone. For example, one mobile phone user can send operative directions to the other’s clothes and share his/her feelings and emotions by sending signals to the other person’s clothes. According to the emotion the user wants to communicate, He or she will be able to modify the colors or patterns of the garment, or send emoticons to LEDs on the garment.”
we make money not art
Group trip planning with TripHub. “TripHub makes it easy to: Invite people to join your trip and keep track of who is coming. Research and discuss hotel options in over 350 cities. Share travel itineraries from any source or supplier. Send e-mails to some or all members of the group. Track who owes money”
Lifehacker
Where to draw line when street ads give you a ring. “Sometime in the next few weeks, French billboards will be able to speak to your mobile phone – but only with your permission. People with certain kinds of phones who download a special software program and say they want to participate will receive digital advertising when the phone is near the billboards. It is the latest twist in the budding niche of mobile marketing, wherein the cellphone becomes a conduit not just for communications but also for commerce.”
International Herald Tribune
Tiny tags trace dragonfly paths. “ach transmitter weighed about a third of a gram and had enough battery life to track an individual for 10 days; but tagging such small creatures is far from easy. “The challenge is first catching the dragonfly,” said Professor Wilcove. Once caught, each transmitter was attached with a couple of drops of superglue and some eye-lash adhesive.”
BBC NEWS
100 million pixels of virtual reality. “The new version of this six-sided VR room will use 96 graphics processing units from Hewlett-Packard. And with its 24 Sony digital projectors, the researchers at ISU will immerse themselves into images of about 100 million pixels in the most realistic VR room in the world.”
Primidi
Upload video to YouTube from your mobile. “Video-sharing service YouTube rolls out mobile upload, which lets you post a video via email from your video cameraphone.”
Lifehacker
100% interface-free media player. “The first table is audio only and can be used by kids to play: as they put on the table small plastic toy animal tagged with RFID transponders, the sound made by the animal can be heard (sometimes quite loudly as in the case of the elephant!). The second version of the table has a beamer built-in and can be used for projections. Put something on the table, then the table will play the video that goes with that object. In both cases, the object is a symbol for sound or image. If you take the object off, the video will pause or the sound will stop. If you put something else on the table, something else will play.”
we make money not art
We Feel Fine. “Since August 2005, We Feel Fine has been harvesting human feelings from a large number of weblogs. Every few minutes, the system searches the world’s newly posted blog entries for occurrences of the phrases “I feel” and “I am feeling”. When it finds such a phrase, it records the full sentence, up to the period, and identifies the “feeling” expressed in that sentence (e.g. sad, happy, depressed, etc.). Because blogs are structured in largely standard ways, the age, gender, and geographical location of the author can often be extracted and saved along with the sentence, as can the local weather conditions at the time the sentence was written.”
“We Feel Fine
Robo-roach could betray real cockroaches. “A matchbox-sized robot that can infiltrate a pack of cockroaches and influence their collective behaviour has been developed by European scientists. The tiny robot smells and acts just like a roach, fooling the real insects into accepting it as one of their own. Through its behaviour, the robot can persuade a group of cockroaches to venture out into the light despite their normal preference for the dark, for example.”
New Scientist
Tokyo Bars With Standing Room Only. “IN Tokyo, where cafe floor space is at a premium, some bars are abolishing tables and chairs altogether and stacking customers vertically along a bar. They are known as tachinomiya, or standing bars, and they are sweeping Tokyo. Their popularity is fueled by low prices and the opportunities they offer many young, shy Japanese to mix and mingle with whoever is standing next to them.”
New York Times
BitTorrent Gets a Seller’s Permit. “Starting this summer, Warner Bros. will make more than 200 films available at BitTorrent.com, including blockbusters such as Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and TV shows like Babylon 5. The pact marks a big step for Hollywood as it increasingly makes digital files of movies and TV shows available on the web because until last year, BitTorrent’s software and website were considered to be aiding piracy of major studio films.”
Wired News
Broadcast your podcast. “BYP units are handmade FM transmitters, following the circuit design of Tetsuo Kogawa. By connecting a BYP unit to your computer or mp3 player podcasts can be transmitted on FM in a radius of about 100 meters. The idea is to allow people to hear podcasts without the need for expensive equipment or fast internet connections. BYPs strategy is to distribute these units for free to podcasters so they can extend their practice, reaching beyond the net and into local radio space.”
we make money not art
Finger Writing Recognition Phone to be demonstrated at SVIAZ. “Consumers can either push individual keys or write letters with their fingers on the keypad when looking up words in the electronic dictionary or sending text messages. The ‘finger writing recognition’ avails faster, more convenient communication and is especially useful for inputting text in Russian and Chinese characters.”
gizmag
The ingenious Keyholding Company. “UK-based Keyholding Company believes this market for time will become increasingly valuable in the future and is offering a range of services so people no longer need to use up valuable free time to take care of emergency or mundane tasks at home. The company has a database of fully-vetted tradespeople and keeps a set of your keys. This means that as well as sourcing a reliable trade’s person, they can wait for them to arrive and ensure the works are completed satisfactorily. They can also deliver goods into your home and leave the property secure.”
gizmag
Cellular Love Detector. “First the user calls the system, then conferences in the unsuspecting party and starts a normal conversation. The love analysis system calculates the “Love Level” and notifies you whether that person loves you or not.”
Gizmodo
. contemplace .. “contemplace is an exploration of possible interactions between people and the spaces they inhabit. typically, built spaces are passive shells that rely on their inhabitants to provide them with character. what would our spaces be like if they could receive their visitors like a human host?”
transmote
Hitachi Maxell SVOD Disks. “Talk about floppy! These new “blue-violet laser” disks is actually made of a very thin film and hold about 9.4 GB on each side. The really draw is that they’ve figured out a way to put 100 of these in a cartridge for almost a terabyte of storage.”
Gizmodo
Fold-Up DVD Player Concept. “Of course, this is not real; it’s a design concept from Inventables, a concept studio just north of Chicago. But it’s a nice, fanciful graphic and we thought it might give you a peek into what technology could be like a few years from now. That e-paper screen itself is actually being developed by Mag-Ink in Israel (among others), but no one is saying when we might see a product like this in the real world.”
Gizmodo
Foresight 2020 Economic, Industry and Corporate Trends Report. “The Economist Intelligence Unit has released a fascinating 96-page trends report that covers the period till 2020. The key trends identified are: 1. Globalization 2. Demographics 3. Atomization 4. Personalization 5. Knowledge Management”
PSFK
Share Your OPML. “Share Your OPML, a new project founded by Dave Winer, is launching officially on Monday. It is a self-described “commons for sharing outlines, feeds, and taxonomy.” It will gather a community of subscription lists and aggregate them in interesting and useful ways.”
TechCrunch
Welcome to the New Dollhouse. “As far as we know, children have always played with dolls of one sort or another to act out variations on their own lives, or lives they observe or imagine. Today, a vast and growing number of kids are doing the same thing — but with a very new tool. Instead of dolls, they are using video games. And perhaps most of all, they’re using The Sims.”
New York Times
Waxxi is a New Kind of Podcast. “I think Tracy Sheridan’s Waxxi is a great idea: a scheduled podcast where people can call in and participate (Frank Gruber has more). The kickoff podcast is with Naked Converstions authors Shel Israel and Robert Scoble, on May 20, 2006 at 10:30 AM PST. If you would like to participate, register on the Waxxi homepage and you will receive a toll free number to call and a participation code.”
TechCrunch
The RFID Hacking Underground. “The coil in Westhues’ hand is the antenna for the wallet-sized device he calls a cloner, which is currently shoved up his sleeve. The cloner can elicit, record, and mimic signals from smartcard RFID chips. Westhues takes out the device and, using a USB cable, connects it to his laptop and downloads the data from Van Bokkelen’s card for processing. Then, satisfied that he has retrieved the code, Westhues switches the cloner from Record mode to Emit. We head to the locked door.”
Wired
The Combimouse. “Their concept is quite simple: reduce the repetitive and arduous task of moving your hand from keyboard to mouse and back again a few thousand times a day. They accomplish that by splitting the keyboard and making the right half into a full fledged mouse.”
Engadget
Crank Calls: Motorola PVOT. “Designer Andre Minoli has created the hand-cranked Motorola PVOT phone, aimed at developing countries. It gives up a minute of talk time for every 25 turns of the crank, giving new meaning to the term “crank calls.””
Gizmodo
RFID tag implant for humans DIY kit. “He now has two RFID implants – a 3mm by 13mm EM4102 glass RFID tag in his left hand and a 2mm by 12mm Philips HITAG 2048 S implant with crypto-security features and 255 bytes of read/write memory storage space in his right hand. Getting implants meant there was no need to carry an RFID access card around and he could implement his own RFID access control systems instead of buying expensive off-the-shelf products. Amal has now built systems that enable him to access his front door, car door, and log into his computer using his implants”
gizmag
Different Drums, But in EHarmony. “EHarmony Marriage is an interactive system that takes detailed assessments of each of you, compiles them into a “marriage profile,” and assigns you personalized lessons and homework that will help strengthen your relationship.”
Wired News
kollabor8. “An online environment that allows artists, designers, photoshop junkies, pixel pushers, collage artists & photographers to collaboratively design & edit a single image.”
networked_performance
eveR-1 Female Android Robot. “The eveR-1 (you know, Eve and Robot…) is 160cm tall and weighs 50kg. eveR-1 understands 400 words, make eye contact, move lips while talking and make facial expressions. “
I4U News
OpenStreetMap To Free The Isle of Wight (Map). “OpenStreetMap, an organisation that is using consumer technology to create copyright-free maps, is meeting this weekend (5-7 May) on the Isle of Wight – to map the whole Island and give the data away under a Creative Commons license.”
Digital-Lifestyles.info
More cities using personal parking meters. “The card reader can hang from a car’s rearview mirror, and can be programmed with a city’s parking rules. When a driver parks, he inserts the card into the meter, sets it for his location, and the meter starts ticking away. Enforcement officers with handheld receivers spot-check cars, and issue tickets based on data they download via an IR link. “
Engadget
Sensatex SmartShirt Goes Beta. “The Sensatex SmartShirt enables to remotely monitor a wearer’s movement, heart rate, and respiration rate in real-time through a patented nanotechnology conductive fiber grid that is seamlessly knit into the material of the fully washable shirt. “
I4U News
Helio: Phones for the MySpace Generation. “Helio aims to woo the 18- to 34-year-old set with a package of services that includes everything from on-the-go access to the social-networking site MySpace — a first for any carrier — to a so-called “gifting” function that lets users buy games and other content that can be delivered straight to a fellow user.”
Business week
The Interactive Lightsign. “The A-170 Video Lightsign airship marks a new era of outdoor advertising, one that has been long heralded by scifi writers – flying electronic billboards. It has a high quality colour LED screen measuring 30′ X 70′ that can be used to broadcast live TV, Internet sites, stock tickers, slide shows or any other media. “
gizmag
The Future of the Internet. “If Mr. Cerf and about two dozen other pundits Red Herring interviewed about the future of the Internet are right, in 10 years’ time the barriers between our bodies and the Internet will blur as will those between the real world and virtual reality.”
RED HERRING
Japanese researchers invent completely transparent material. “Unlike normal glass, which reflects some of the incoming light, the new so-called metamaterial –composed of a grid of gold or silver nanocoils embedded in a prism-shaped, glass-like material — uses its unique structural properties to achieve a negative refractive index, or complete transparency.”
Engadget
PDA popularity triggering eyestrain. “For decades, optometrists have recognized that spending long hours in front of a desktop computer can lead to a range of eye-related problems, including headaches, burning sensations and temporarily blurred vision. Now, hand-helds are triggering a fresh round of complaints. Many of the factors known to cause eyestrain on larger computers — such as low-contrast screens and fonts smaller than 11 points — are especially common on mobile devices. Moreover, to conserve battery life, hand-helds usually have dimmer displays than do desktop computers.”
baltimoresun.com
Britons put work and fun before babies. “Britain’s low birthrate is being driven by a generation of potential parents who would rather get rich and have fun than start a family, according to a Guardian/ICM poll published today. It also shows that while people still think it is best to have children while young, they are being forced to delay family life by career pressures and the growing difficulty of finding a partner.”
SocietyGuardian.co.uk
Wearing Tactile Space. “Palpable City is a location aware garment that allows walkers to feel the spatial form of the urban grid as vibro-tactile rhythms on their body. The rhythms of the city space are parameterized by local conditions as the walker encounters them, reflecting the influence of time, light, temperature and humidity on the experience of space.”
we make money not art
RFID Paravision: Dynamic sign using transparent screen and RFID. “Paravision, developed at Keio University, uses RFID and transparent screen to provide useful information to event participants.”
RFID in Japan
Entropia Universe Players Can Cash Their Online Earnings at the A.T.M.. “today the makers of Entropia Universe, a popular online science-fiction game, plan to introduce a real-world A.T.M. card that will allow players instantly to withdraw hard cash automatically converted from their virtual game treasury. So a player with, say, 2,000 spare P.E.D.’s (Project Entropia Dollars) left over after purchasing a new laser rifle in the game could withdraw $200 and take a date to a real-life ballgame.”
New York Times
Pupils to sit first online exams. “The first exams to be sat this year will be Standard Grades in administration and Italian. A total of 575 different exams will be taken at Standard Grade, Intermediate 1 and Intermediate 2, Higher and Advanced Higher levels between now and 9 June. SQA national qualification exams will also be sat in 11 other countries, stretching from Argentina to Hong Kong. “
BBC NEWS
YouTube Idol. “YouTube is creating an instant medium for aspiring singers and musicians to showcase their work. With a webcam aimed at them, they can instantly broadcast their latest tune to hundreds of thousands of YouTube users. And those users can vote for you. Where are the Judges, you say? Oh – the comments section gives enough drama in the ‘praise and criticism’ section to compete with Paula and Simon.”
PSFK
Biometric Barman. “Sit on the chair, insert two euros, and in just 30 seconds the AUTOMEET will measure your physical condition (according to data such as your pulse, body temperature, blood alcohol level, etc.) The artificial barman then tells you which consumption is most suitable for you at that moment.”
we make money not art
MicroNav 360: World’s Tiniest Mouse. “With electronics manufacturers constantly striving to make everything smaller, here’s the latest shrinkage, a pointing device destined for handheld devices, cellphones and such, called MicroNav 360. This OEM pointing device is 10mm square and scarcely thicker than 1mm, which makes it about the size of your pinky fingertip.”
Gizmodo
State of the Blogosphere, April 2006 Part 2: On Language and Tagging. “Something that may come as a surprise (at least to the English-speaking world) is that English isn’t the biggest language of the blogosphere. In fact, English isn’t even the primary language of one third of all posts that Technorati tracks anymore. Another interesting finding is that the Chinese blogosphere, which grew significantly in 2004 and 2005 (launches of MSN Spaces in Chinese, Bokee.com saw a peak of 25% of all posts in Chinese in November 2005) seems to be slowing down somewhat this year.”
Sifry’s Alerts
Stickers to turn “anything” into wallets. “Toppan Printing has developed a FeliCa sticker (called SMARTICS-sFe) that can be pasted on any appropriate physical objects including (non-wallet-phone) phones. FeliCa is the RFID technology that are widely used in Japan, in particular, for payment and transportation applications. For example, SUICA, Wallet phones, and Edy use the FeliCa technology.”
RFID in Japan
Spark Parking. “Welcome to Spark Parking! We are a leader in monitoring and managing parking with wireless communication technology.”
Spark Parking
Online Store Trying On New Model to Fit Women. “MyShape gathers information from participating brands and designers regarding the measurements and design of their clothes, including factors such as cut, fabric and patterns. The information is plugged into a computer, creating a database of prospective styles for a wide range of women. Online shoppers are queried about their body measurements and how they like their clothes to fit, as well as their preferences in style, brands, fabrics and colors. These results also are plugged into the computer, allowing the company to play matchmaker.”
Los Angeles Times
Eye-Fi to Combine Wifi, Flash Memory. “Their first product will be a 1GB SD card with built in Wifi. For about the same price as a 1 GB flash card sells for today – $100. You’ll be able to upload photos, or whatever, directly from your device to a computer using the built in storage wifi capabilities.”
TechCrunch
WebIC — Complete Web Recommender System. “Our goal, WebIC, is a client-side Web recommender system that predicts the user’s information need based on his browsing patterns, then points him to webpages, from essentially anywhere on the Web, that contain information useful to that user.”
WebIC
Software lets neighbors securely share WiFi bandwidth. “Assistant computer science professor Haiyun Luo and graduate student Nathanael Thompson of the school’s Systems, Wireless, and Networking Group have released a free download that analyzes local airwaves and exploits unused bandwidth from one network to complement ones experiencing heavy usage, but always gives users priority access to their own signal. Part of the two-year-old PERM project, the application uses flow-scheduling algorithms to determine bandwidth allocation, and has so-far undergone testing on Linux clients and with Linksys routers. Security is obviously a key concern in such a sharing setup, so PERM developed the software to both “preserve a user’s privacy and security, and mitigate the free-riding problem.”"
Engadget
Nanowires and water are a memorable mix. “Jonathan Spanier, a team member from Drexel University, estimates that the wires could theoretically be used to make computer memory drives with a density of 10,000 terabits (1016 bits) of data per cubic centimetre. By contrast, current flash memory drives store about five gigabits (5 x 109) of data per cubic centimetre.”
New Scientist
What is BloodSpell?. “BloodSpell is Strange Company`s first feature-length Machinima animated film. It is a story of a world where men and women carry magic in their blood, and spilling it can unleash terrible power. [...] It is made using the game Neverwinter Nights, and is written and directed by Machinima pioneer Hugh Hancock.”
Strange Company
Flight over the Sahara. “This is my first webcam game. To control the plane, you must move in front of your web cam. Make noise to fire the rocket. Fly over petrol station to refill fuel. The further from your web camera you will be, the more accurate movements you’ll get.”
Motion games
Wallet Phone Users Feeling Shy about Recharging. “Somewhat surprising is that many wallet phone users seem to be feeling shy about recharging money values (at convenience stores.) Someone said “I feel sorry if I only recharge.” Another said “I can never ask [for recharge] if other customers are waiting behind me.” People tend to buy something inexpensive when they recharge, even when they don’t really want to buy anything.”
RFID in Japan
Add common events to your calendar with Mark This Date. “You can search for a specific calendar or browse by category or country. There are a lot of sports calendars, like important Major League Baseball dates, and an official US holiday calendar looks pretty useful.”
Lifehacker
Using Pictochat as a Backchannel in conference. “Yesterday at the student presentation (Interactive Media Program at the Annenberg), there was a guy who briefly talked about the use of Nintendo DS’ pictochat as a backchannel device during conferences.”
pasta and vinegar
LED Wallpaper. “Ingo Maurer presented two very large lighting objects at Spazio Krizia 2006 in Milan earlier this month: LED wallpaper (above with a luminous table in the foreground) and a magic carpet of green circuit boards and LEDs suspended from the ceiling, both with adjustable colored LEDs.”
MoCo Loco
“Shrug-detecting” software recognizes your disinterest. “a group of computer vision researchers at the University of Illinois have invented “shrug-detecting” software that allows a webcam-equipped computer to pick up on the subtle shoulder movements indicative of confusion or disinterest.”
Engadget
Rituals of Grief Go Online. “Like many other 23-year-olds, Deborah Lee Walker loved the beach, discovering bands, making new friends and keeping up with old ones, often through the social networking site MySpace.com, where she listed her heroes as “my family, and anyone serving in the military — thank you!” So only hours after she died in an automobile accident near Valdosta, Ga., early on the morning of Feb. 27, her father, John Walker, logged onto her MySpace page with the intention of alerting her many friends to the news. To his surprise, there were already 20 to 30 comments on the page lamenting his daughter’s death. Eight weeks later, the comments are still coming.”
New York Times
A Cellphone in Park, Even More Powerful. “Connect a cellphone to the device — with a docking station or in some cases wirelessly — and all of its incoming calls now ring through to a cordless landline phone often included as part of the package. That same cordless instrument can be used to dial out over the cellular network, saving money by using the cell plan’s available minutes.”
New York Times
Software lets programmers code hands-free. “VoiceCode lets a programmer dictate code in a more natural way, D�silets says, rapidly translating their utterances into awkward programming syntax. For example, in order to write “if (currRecNum < maxOffSet)" a VoiceCode user only needs to say: "if current record number is less than max offset then". Traditional voice-recognition programs could require nearly 50 individual words to be dictated."
New Scientist
Webguard Parental Internet Timer. “This system allows timed settings for any day of the week and trying to hax0r it will result in a lock-out. Supposedly the jacks are even tamper-proof so even the really smart kids won’t be able to get around it.”
Gizmodo
RFID tags used to teach English. “Their Merlin’s Magic Castle (MMC) software uses RFID tags technology that the students embedded in toys. For example, when a child holds a toy firetruck with an embedded tag, MMC computer screen displays “fire*ruck” and asks the child to supply the missing letter. The MMC software is currently compatible with several games including Trivia Game or Scavenger Hunt. And now the two students plan to sell licenses to big game companies.”
Primidi
Beeplet RSS reminders. “Enter a reminder – like “Mom’s birthday” – and tag it how you like (say “birthday,” “buygift,” “tocall”). Beeplet creates a feed you can subscribe to in your newsreader or publish to your Web site.”
Lifehacker
Commercial Kodak scanner digitizes, tags old photos. “According to Kodak, the scanners use software which is able to identify different photographic paper for estimating the decade in which the picture was shot, and can even group pictures featuring like individuals through facial recognition. Future versions of the application will also incorporate OCR capabilities for reading watermarks or handwritten notes on the back of photos, further improving the accuracy of the tagging engine.”
Engadget
PQI’s U510 squeezes 16GB into a 3mm thick drive. “it’s hard to begrudge the title of “world’s thinnest flash drive” to a 3mm thick unit that features a whopping 16GB of storage. The new U510 from PQI in Taiwan takes its credit card form factor seriously at 3.3 x 2.12 x 0.1-inches, and the USB 2.0 device features a thin retractable USB jack.”
Engadget
World’s digital divide is narrowing. “The digital divide is narrowing as citizens in emerging markets get online via computers and mobile phones, with some regions now on a par with developed nations, a ranking of Web-savvy nations showed on Wednesday. [...] “This is particularly evident in basic connectivity: emerging markets are providing the vast majority of the world’s new phone and Internet connections,” the study found.”
Reuters.co.uk
Park and write. “homeless woman in London has been living in a car since last summer. But by writing a blog she has put herself in touch with an international audience. It’s a tale of our time – about being cut off from everything around you but still connected to people thousands of miles away.”
BBC NEWS
The Brain Port, neural tongue interface of the future. “Their Brain Port machine / sensory interface uses 144 microelectrodes to transmit information through sensitive nerve fibers in your lingua, enabling devices to supplement your own sensory perception. The system, which is getting shown off to Navy and Marine Corps divers next month will supposedly have sonar integration for sub-aqueous orientation, but has already apparently given some landlubber blind people the ability to catch balls, “notice” others walking in front of them, and find doors. With IR, radar, sonar, and other forms of detection, the researchers believe this device will obsolete night vision — even our own eyes — sooner than later.”
Engadget
Rapleaf to Challenge Ebay Feedback. “Rapleaf will allow anyone to leave feedback for anyone they’ve transacted with. Others can use this feedback to help them determine if they are doing business with someone who’d likely to engage in fraud. Rapleaf is eBay feedback for the rest of the web, and the offline world.”
TechCrunch
One Day Soon, Straphangers May Turn Pages With a Button. “This month, De Tijd, a Belgian financial newspaper, started testing versions of electronic paper, a device with low-power digital screens embedded with digital ink — millions of microscopic capsules the width of a human hair made with organic material that display light or dark images in response to electrical charges. This is only one test of new e-paper devices competing to become the iPod of the newspaper business. Other e-paper trials are being undertaken by the paper Les Echos, which is based here, by the newspaper trade group IFRA in Germany and, in the United States, by The New York Times.”
New York Times
Dark side of computing. “the dark side of computing may lead to new fossils in the future. See this atrocious dump in Lagos, Nigeria.”
pasta and vinegar
RFID Enabled Purse. “The purse works by having an RFID reader inside that knows when each item is inserted by its RFID tag. If something’s not there, the light on the outside shows an outline of the item.”
Gizmodo
Mologogo DIY Cellphone GPS Tracking. “Using the $100 kit from Mologogo and a $6 a month data plan, a java enabled phone will upload its GPS coordinates to the Mologogo server every few minutes. You can then view the up to 100 of the last reported spots the victim has been on a google map.”
Gizmodo
BallFinder SCOUT tracks down golf balls with scanning camera. “The BallFinder SCOUT works with ordinary white golf balls, and uses a scanning digital camera to track them down as long as at least 1% of the ball is exposed. The device can apparently scan 600 square feet per second, and works in almost any terrain.”
Engadget
A Look at Plum. “One key way that Plum is different than other bookmarking site is that it allows users to bookmark items on their computer, not just on the web. A file that is open in certain desktop applications (things like photos, power point presentations, iTunes playlists, address book entries, email, etc) can be added to Plum by clicking a button on the Plummer, a small downloadable application for Windows or Mac”
TechCrunch
The Doffing Headphone. “Synnove noticed that social protocols had evolved so people could signify if they wished to remain inside their musical experience or wished to chat. “I noticed they would take one earpiece off if they were greeting someone but didn’t want to stop, and both if they were stopping for conversation. This is similar to the tradition of hat doffing where a gentleman raises his hat is raised off the head in acknowledging someone in the street, or taken off and placed under the arm when stopping for conversation, particularly with a lady. So Synnove hatched an idea to “show how accessories can be used to communicate with strangers in a similar way to historical props, walking sticks, umbrellas, glasses etc.” Ladies and gentlemen, The Doffing Headphone”
gizmag
Scrapbooking meets blogging. “The only site that merges the creativity and storytelling capabilities of scrapbooking with the publishing and sharing functionality of blogs.”
Lifehacker
Mom, can you power-level my avatar for me?. “In Korea, the latest fad is Maple Story, an MMO played predominantly by children ages 6 to 13. If you do not play Maple Story, you may be considered uncool (sounds familiar). Of course, school children have hours and hours upon homework (I never did, but of course I went to public school), so how can one keep their online avatars in top condition? Simple, they get their parents to power-level! According to an article translated by GameStudy.org, some parents are spending upwards of 3 or 4 hours each day building their son or daughter’s character up.”
Joystiq
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