Archive for August, 2006
San Francisco Bay Area Bus-Fi scheme to dish out free, mobile internet. ‘The service will be free for riders (and freeloading WiFi addicts in following cars), and is due for a full rollout in mid-fall. The bus routes taking part in the test phase travel along three of the longest bridges in the area (the Dumbarton, San Meteo and Bay), which is intentional: having WiFi on longer routes makes it easier for passengers to justify getting out and booting up their laptop.’
Engadget
Flickr Geo Tagging Now Live. ‘Adding location information on Flickr is done through the Organizr, under the Organize tab. In addition to the “Your Sets” and “Your Groups” tabs in that area, they will add a Maps tab where you can drag photos into a Yahoo Map area. A marker will appear that shows the number of photos included with that marker. Once you have a location you can use the Organizr to search your photos and then drag them individually or by sets into the map.’
Techcrunch
Make a difference with Kiva.org. ‘The idea behind Kiva is simple: you’re helping others to help themselves. Just find a business you’d like to help, select a loan amount that you’re comfortable with, and then you’ll start getting updates as things start happenin’.’
Lifehacker
Radius 320 Seamless Display: Look Ma, No Borders. ‘These blokes from Oxford claim to have optically erased those distracting borders between displays by using a specially-designed lens wedged between each panel. It doesn’t require any special drivers, but you’ll need a couple of video cards with a total of three DVI outputs with 1600×1200 resolution to get this baby going. ‘
Gizmodo
Electronic bugs turning up in Britain’s rubbish bins. ‘The official reason for the bugs is to ‘improve efficiency’ and settle disputes between neighbours over wheelie-bin ownership. But experts say the technology is actually intended to enable councils to impose fines on householders who exceed limits on the amount of non-recyclable waste they put out.’
Smart Mobs
London Bus Ads Change as Locations Do. “As a bus travels its route, the advertising message will change. For example, it might suggest “Find a gym in Marble Arch” and later “Discover a restaurant in Charing Cross.”
Smart Mobs
The men who can produce limitless amounts of clean, free energy. “In Steorn’s theory, fixed magnets could act upon a moving magnet in such a way as to make it a virtual perpetual motion generator. In an electrical appliance – a computer, kettle, mobile phone or toy – that would provide all the power for its lifetime. Of course, free-energy cars, power plants and water-pumping systems could follow. A better world indeed.”
Guardian Unlimited
LG Phillips E-book: Flexible Means Flexibility. “Besides 14.1 inches taking the crown as the largest E-paper display yet, it’s completely flexible (though, maybe sticking the prototypes in hard cases isn’t the best way to highlight this feature). The 300ms response time is still pretty far from displaying video, but any content needing a constant refresh will nullify the main power benefits of e-paper anyway.”
Gizmodo
VDO Dayton MS5700 Rear-View-Mirror With Navigation. “Instead of placing the map screen for your navigation in the center console where you have to take your eyes off the road, VDO Dayton’s MS5700 places it right up into the rear view mirror, where you’re “supposed” to be looking anyway when you’re driving.”
Gizmodo
Watch out – cell phones taking over as timepieces. “The proliferation of cell phones, with their list of extra features, has had the knock-on effect of eliminating the need to wear a wristwatch unless it is to make a fashion statement. Weintz, 37, said he recently abandoned his trusty Swiss Army watch and now relies on his phone to tell time.”
Reuters.com
Cornell researchers building video projector on a chip. “The chip design has an tiny 400 x 500 micron mirror supported by two carbon-fiber hinges, an array of which — one for each horizontal line — would be all that’s needed to scan lasers across a screen for a full-fledged video display. Supposedly all this can be squeezed into a form factor small enough to power a cellphone-based projector, and the carbon-fiber springs might even work as a way to harvest energy from user movement for powering small electronic devices”
Engadget
No Suit Required. “Let’s give away the ProTools files on MySpace. Vocals, guitars, drums, and bass. We’ll let the fans make their own mixes.” The room falls quiet. Musicians usually record their instruments and vocals on separate tracks; the producer and mixer combine those tracks into a finished product. McBride wants to make the individual files available so that amateur DJs can use them like Lego bricks to create something all their own. The record industry likes control. McBride is proposing unfettered chaos.”
Wired
MyFabrik: File Sharing and More. “MyFabrik, loosely related to Maxtor, is a new online data storing/sharing/organizing application that lets you manage files remotely with just a web browser. You can upload and download pictures, music, videos and documents privately or publicly, depending on what permissions you set. [...] It’s aiming to be a one-stop shop for media sharing, attacking .Mac and a number of other players with 2GB accounts for $30 a year and seamless interaction with Maxtor’s Fusion line of hard drives.”
Techcrunch
Water Level Battery Indicator. “When you move it around, the motion sensor detects your angle and sloshes the water to the left or right, depending. The actual water level itself is indicative of the amount of battery you have left, so it’s probably more fun to keep your phone charged up.”
Gizmodo
Philips Research shows off dandy Lumalive. “you or your buds score 400 nerd points if you’re brave enough to sport Philips Research’s new Lumalive, a low-power flexible array of colored LEDs meshed into a garment’s fabric, which they’re prepping to show off at IFA Berlin.”
Engadget
Soft communication. “Stitchories, by Katherine Wakid from the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, is a digital quilt—a cotton blanket with a built-in computer that can upload photos and record spoken narratives. The design combines technology and craft to encourage communication between teens and their elders”
We Make Money not Art
Hercules Dualpix HD – High Definition Webcam. “The 1.3 megapixel video sensor gets you 30FPS of high definition goodness, plus 3x digital zoom and even 5 megapixel stills.”
Gizmodo
Militants Ambush Brands In Second Life. “A group called the Second Life Liberation Army have been harassing Second Life inhabitants in the stores of First World brands. Earlier this month, members of the SLLA stopped shoppers buying in American Apparel. Their mission is to get voting rights in the world plus a share in the Second Life company, Linden Labs.”
PSFK
Unable to unplug, tech addicts may sue. “Keeping employees on electronic leashes such as laptops, BlackBerries and other devices that keep them constantly connected to the office could soon lead to lawsuits by those who grow addicted to the technology, a U.S. academic warns. In a follow-up to an earlier paper on employees’ tech addictions, Gayle Porter, associate professor of management at the Rutgers University School of Business in Camden, New Jersey, has written a paper that states workers whose personal lives suffer as a result of tech addictions could turn their sights on their employers.”
Reuters
OLPC gets a name: the CM1, or Children’s Machine. “The 7.5-inch, 1,200 x 900 pixel configurable and mesh-networkable notebook, which runs a Fedora Linux distro powered by a 400MHz AMD Geode processor, is meant to supply kids in developing countries with a super-cheap way to access the Internet and thus bridge the so-called technological divide. Although India has publicly scorned the string-powered lappy as “pedagogically suspect,” several other nations have expressed interest in submitting the minimum required order of one million units; so unless players like Microsoft suddenly swoop in with their own alternatives, it looks like the CM1 is well on its way to seeing widespread distribution.”
Engadget
Moto GP Shotcodes. “Supercharge your phone by snapping the MotoGP ‘06 shotcode. Take a picture of it and your phone will automatically go to the MotoGP ‘06 site where you can pick up action packed wallpapers, screenshots and screensavers.”
Xbox.com
Lego Takes Tech Over the Top. “The NXT controller is the computerized brain of the system. It can receive input from touch, sound, light, and ultrasound sensors (from left at bottom) and can run three servo motors in increments as small as 45 degrees.”
Business Week
Pixsy to monetize visual metasearch. “On a pace to have 5 billion thumbnail images and counting indexed around the first of next year, Pixsy could make a whole lot of money. The images come from places ranging from YouTube to the New York Times. The idea is to license the company’s huge index of thumbnail shots, vertical search and ajax UI to medium and large media companies seeking some spice for their search, news or other text pages.”
Techcrunch
Microsoft puts police link on Messenger. “In an attempt to protect the 11 million users of the service from potential abusers, the software giant has struck up a partnership with the UK government-backed Child Exploitation & Online Protection Centre. Microsoft will add a “report abuse” icon to Messenger that will link any users worried about their anonymous internet buddies directly to online police services.”
Guardian Unlimited
Pantech/Lunar Design Pivot Cellphone Concept. “Although this looks more like an alarm clock or a desk phone rather than a cellphone, the concept phone is really supposed to fold up and fit into your pocket. The device has a swiveling screen that allows you to prop it up to angle it at your face when you’re making a speakerphone call. The screen will also be used for video-conferencing, which again is made easier thanks to the prop-up-pivot”
Gizmodo
As access improves worldwide, online volunteering on the rise. “Online volunteering is growing as Internet access improves worldwide, particularly among African and Latin American organizations needing assistance. VolunteerMatch, a San Francisco group that helps volunteers learn about onsite and online projects, said 14 percent of its volunteer opportunities last year were virtual, compared with 1 percent in 1998.”
Technology Review
Wablet’s going to rock web IM. “A Wablet chat box can be embedded or linked to as a pop-up. Visitors seeking to chat with you must request permission first and you can view the person’s profile and reputation built up via chats with other users of the system before accepting an IM. So far that’s the case only for users of Wablet’s IM service, but reputation tied to usernames of other major IM vendors may be available in the future (I hope so). User profiles are set up to include badges to profile pages across a long list of other systems, so when a person seeks to initiate a chat with you there are links available to their pages on Flickr or MySpace for example.”
Techcrunch
Prototype Odor Recorder Creates and Tests Smells. “This prototype odor recorder creates smells from 8 components, then analyzes the results to make sure that it’s producing the appropriate stench. The developers are hoping to use the odor recorder in fields such as e-commerce and games. “
Gizmodo
BT says women make the best bosses. “Women over 50 will be the best bosses in the future because they understand the importance of flexible working, according to research from BT. A YouGov survey of employers and employees across the UK found that women are more comfortable managing a workforce that works flexible hours, or from home. They were 50 per cent more likely than men to say they trusted their staff. Since staff said that being trusted was the most important thing they could ask for in a work environment, BT concludes that women are thus better suited to being in charge.”
The Register
South Koreans make hydrogen solid for a brighter fuel cell future. “Apparently the new method being unveiled by the team from the Korea Institute of Science and Technology not only manages to bind hydrogen with titanium into the form of a stable solid that has much less requirements for pressure or temperature regulation, but it takes “absolutely no energy input” to store as such, and “relatively small amounts of energy” to extract.”
Engadget
Nimbuzz releases full featured mobile communication software. “Users can IM with MSN and GoogleTalk users in individual and group chats, send SMS around the world for ten cents, leave and retrieve messages and call anywhere in the world for the price of a local call. Users can also send quick buzzes, or single rings, to each other for notification of something important. Nimbuzz communication between mobile devices and PCs is possible as well.”
Techcrunch
Snap character judgements. “Fitting into the Blink! realm, new research from Princeton University suggests that our brains determine whether we think someone is attract and trustworthy within one tenth of a second. That’s so fast that our rational minds don’t have much, if any, sway in the snap judgement.”
Boing Boing
wildlife. “At night projections from moving cars are shone on the buildings downtown. Each car projects a video of a wild animal. The animal’s movements are programmed to correspond to the speed of the car: as the car moves, the animal runs along it speeding up and slowing down with the car, as the car stops, the animal stops also.”
Fkightphase
Widescreen Notebooks to Spread. “having begun out-shipping notebooks with standard screens for the first time in the first half of 2006, widescreen portables are set to take over nearly 100 percent of the market by 2008, said a new forecast by market researcher IDC, based in Framingham, Mass.”
EWeek
Project to link genes, lifestyle and health gets go-ahead. “Organisers of the UK’s “Biobank” project will now begin recruiting the half a million citizens aged between 40 and 69 they need for the project – about 1% of the UK population. [...] By following all participants until their death, researchers hope to identify the genetic and lifestyle factors which may have contributed to any illnesses they suffered. If genes linked to disease can be identified, it might be possible to prevent illness in carriers of the gene by altering their lifestyles, for example.”
New Scientist
3-D TV That Actually Works. “where old-fashioned 3-D movies rely on the special glasses to block images meant for the other eye, Philips’ WOWvx technology places tiny lenses over each of the millions of red, green and blue sub pixels that make up an LCD or plasma screen. The lenses cause each sub pixel to project light at one of nine angles fanning out in front of the display. A processor in the TV generates nine slightly different views corresponding to the different angles. From almost any location, a viewer catches a different image in each eye.”
Wired News
DeLighTable: Quite Possibly the Coolest Coffee Table Ever. “There’s a neon green light that illuminates in real-time to whenever you place a glass, your hand, or whatever, on the table. It’s actually powered by an electrical outlet, making it the first coffee table I’ve ever seen that could rake up your electricity bill. It is quite the conversation piece.”
I4U News
Textable iBall, the Big Ball That Displays Text Messages. “Once you’ve inserted the proper SIM card, the 11-inch iBall can display text messages, images and animations on its surface in a variety of groovy colors, including green, red, blue, turquoise, mauve, yellow and black. It comes with 64Mb of memory to store plenty of your friends’ adorable drunk texts messages.”
Gizmodo
FeedCrier, another way to act fast with RSS and IM. “Adam Kalsey, a founder and former CTO of RSS vendor Pheedo, released a new service last night called FeedCrier that makes it easy to receive rapid notification of new items in an RSS feed by IM.”
Techcrunch
Cell Phones of the Future. “Visionaries from design firm Pilotfish and sensor maker Synaptics have created a phone that has no buttons. It’s operated with gestures. Designer Manon Maneenawa has built a phone that can be converted into an alarm clock or a wrist watch. Sweden’s GoldVish just began selling a phone for $1.26 million that features diamonds and a secret compartment. Read on for a glimpse at the future of cell phone design.”
Business Week
Guests to watch wedding via webcam. “Nick Read, marketing director of Hand Picked Hotels, said: “Couples are increasingly marrying away from home at venues such as our country hotels, but for various reasons not everyone can attend. “The benefit of the webcam service is that it allows couples to share their special day with everyone they would want to be there in person.”"
Guardian
T-Qualizer Music T-Shirt. “The T-Qualizer is a shirt with a built in sound sensitive graphic equalizer. As the music beats, the equalizer moves to the beat of the music. Each frequency of music will activate a different equalizer bar. The wearable equalizer has a sound sensor and a 4x AAA battery pack.”
I4U News
Google launches free, kick-ass word-processor. “It features collaborative editing — multiple editors on the same doc at once — and can be used as the editor for writing your blog, saving out to a post instead of a file on your machine. This is a great-looking program for people who have always-on Internet, and for so long as you don’t worry about the NSA demanding that Google turn over its Writely files as part of some “security” procedure.”
Boing Boing
NOAA in Second Life. “The NOAA’s arrival may be a great sign of things to come. United States government agencies aren’t exactly what you call flamboyant, trendy, or fashionable. Their interest in Second Life as a solid educational tool may give other companies a greater sense of comfort in the stability of the platform.”
Boing Boing
Japan planning intelligent road systems. “The Driving Safety Support System (DSSS) is being developed by the Universal Traffic Management Society of Japan (UTMS), and aside from creating a maze of acronyms to keep track of, it plans on utilizing two-way infrared beacons — installed about 5.5 meters above the street — to analyze real-time information about street conditions, hazards, and pedestrians who aren’t paying attention. The beacons will reportedly beam the data to your in-car navigation system, and depending on your specific location, will be tailored to address intersections and crossroads that you are actually approaching.”
Engadget
Employers, Beware: “Techno Addicts” May Be More Liability Than Boon. “There are costs attached to excessive work due to technology,” says Porter. “Information and communication technology (ICT) addiction has been treated by policy makers as a kind of elephant in the room – everyone sees it, but no one wants to acknowledge it directly. Owing to vested interests of the employers and the ICT industry, signs of possible addiction – excess use of ICT and related stress illnesses – are often ignored.”
Lockergnome
Polymer ‘muscles’ add colour to visual displays. “Researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology have made prototype display pixels that change colour as an underlying polymer is activated. This lets different wavelengths of light escape from the screen and means the display can generate the full spectrum of colours within white light. Existing screens cannot produce every colour that is visible to the human eye. “
New Scientist
TABLEPORTATION. “TABLEPORTATION is a local media system designed to fuse mediated and physical space, to experiment and play with social boundaries, to encourage and allow new forms of interplay between people at different tables in the cafe. Video cameras monitor the table surfaces, transforming the originally semi-private space into a stage upon which are played out performances of shifting proximities. This unobstusive system ab/uses the technology of surveillance to allow patrons from different tables observe each other, be observed and get in touch. Interactive light table surfaces enhance, stimulate and provoke self-expression, collective creations and playful communication.”
Playful
Get in shape at Traineo. “Aside from the bevy of graphs and tables for tracking your exercise and diet habits, Traineo has a really interesting concept wherein you choose up to 4 motivators (friends, family – whomever) to receive weekly progress reports from Traineo. I sort of love this idea, since I’m big on the notion that announcing your goals is a terrific motivator. “
Lifehacker
First Sony mylo Screenshots. “Sony Mylo, the new wifi communicator we broke the news on a week or so ago, has a home page that lists your buddies by icons. Since the phone has Skype, Google Talk, Yahoo IM, and Email, you can just select a friend’s icon, and then click on which service you want to use to ping them.”
Gizmodo
Track popular videos with the Internet TV Charts. “You can keep track of the Internet’s most viral videos with the Internet TV Charts.”
Lifehacker
PlinkPlonk. “Plink Plonk used mechanical music boxes as playful delicate input devices, producing their own sound output (the tune ‘You are my sunshine’). A visual narrative responded to the turn of each music box, with each scene containing different reactives.”
Playful
Soundgarten. “Soundgarten by Michael Wolf is a tangible interface that enables children to record, modify and arrange sound samples in a playful way. Designed as a toy, the garden has 19 plug holes that can fit sounds in the form of mushroom objects. Children can use the pre-defined environmental or musical sounds, or use a wireless microphone to record their own.”
Playful
Interactive Walkways. “This project features two glass pedestrian bridges designed as “Interactive Walkways,” each with a field of LED lights embedded in resilient walking surfaces. Sensors detect the presence of people and the system triggers interactive light patterns on the walkway floor.”
Playful
Thomson hires computers to write news. “Thomson has built some computer programs at $150k-$200k a pop to deliver automated articles on US market news. The programs can publish a news story on, say, company financials, within 0.3 seconds of their release to the NYSE or NASDAQ. This is purportedly helpful to hedge traders and others of their ilk.”
The Register
Create an API for any site with Dapper. “Dapper provides a point and click GUI to extract data from any web site that can then be worked with and displayed via XML, HTML, RSS, email alerts, Google Maps, Google Gadgets, a javascript image loop or JSON. The site could use a UI overhaul to make it easier for nontechnical users and copyright issues will have to be dealt with. That said, Dapper is pretty awesome.”
Techcrunch
Optimus Mini Three Keyboard: First Unboxing, Hands All Over. “Remeber this guy? Supposedly vapor? Well it’s not. In case you forgot, this is a little 3 Button Keyboard that uses programmable OLED screens as buttons. So you can put icons of your favorite apps on their faces, and launch them by punching down. The USB keyboard’s little screens can even show dynamic images like live webcam feeds, CPU usage, and the time.”
Gizmodo
Speedy silicon sets world record. “To achieve the speed gain, researchers at the University of Southampton added fluorine to the silicon devices. The technique uses existing silicon manufacturing technology meaning it should be quick and easy to deploy.”
BBC NEWS
Hear About PopSugar Yet?. “They are a blog network, and more recently a social network, targeting young, hip women (as well as a few guys that want to hang out with young, hip women). PopSugar was founded by husband-and-wife team Lisa and Brian Sugar. Lisa began blogging PopSugar for fun last fall. By February page views were growing so rapidly that they abandoned WordPress and set up a custom Drupal infrastructure, and in April they officially launched the network. The company is self-funded to date.”
Techcrunch
Wireless Works Wonders in Tibet. “Across the border from Chinese-occupied Tibet, the tech infrastructure in this high mountain village is a mess. But a former Silicon Valley dot-commer and members of the underground security group Cult of the Dead Cow are working with local Tibetan exiles to change that using recycled hardware, solar power, open-source software and nerd ingenuity.”
Wired News
Old Records Go In, CD’s Come Out. “ARE you over 30? Sorry to hear it. That makes you part of the Transition Generation, those who have witnessed the world’s shift from analog to digital recordings. You therefore probably have a collection of phonograph records, audiocassettes and videotapes sitting in a closet somewhere at this very moment.”
New York Times
Videos Games that Comfort. “Designers at Boston’s Continuum observed kids using portable players like Nintendo’s Game Boy while in doctors’ waiting rooms or when undergoing uncomfortable or scary medical tests or procedures. They designed this device, which delivers anesthesia and monitors respiratory functions, to hook up to a Nintendo Game Boy.”
Business Week
File-sharing ‘darknet’ unveiled. “Relakks, as the service is known, allows users to send and receive files through a heavily-encrypted connection. It is the first commercial example of a darknet, a virtual network set up to share files between trusted users.”
BBC NEWS
Street Use. “This site features the ways in which people modify and re-create technology. Herein a collection of personal modifications, folk innovations, street customization, ad hoc alterations, wear-patterns, home-made versions and indigenous ingenuity. In short — stuff as it is actually used, and not how its creators planned on it being used. As William Gibson said, “The street finds its own uses for things.”"
Kevin Kelly
One-Seg TV Watch. “In addition to picking up One-Seg terrestrial digital broadcasts, the TV Watch (available in three stylish colors) also doubles as a completely impractical cellphone once you pop in a Willcom W-SIM card. And, yes, the watch is as big as it looks, with its 2.4-inch screen pushing the dimensions to a beefy 2.3 x 3.5 x 0.88-inches, weighing in at just over four ounces.”
Engadget
A SWAN to guide blind people. “The current prototype is composed of a laptop (or soon a PDA) carried in a backpack, several GPS trackers, four cameras and various sensors. But the most important component consists of special headphones called ‘bone phones,’ which send ‘auditory signals via vibrations through the skull without plugging the user’s ears, an especially important feature for the blind.’ This system might also be used by firefighters or soldiers in situations where their vision is impaired.”
Primidi
The inconspicuous cell phone ring. “Afraid of your phone going off during class, a meeting or in the middle of a movie? Instead of setting your ring tone to Honkey Tonk Badonkadonk, record the sound of someone sneezing and set it as your ring tone. This way, instead of annoying glares or interruptions you’ll know your phone still has its ringer on in a discreet manner.”
Lifehacker
BBC Wap use flourishing in Africa. “According to July’s statistics, 61% of the BBC’s international Wap users came from Nigeria and 19% from South Africa. “Wap is the one platform where African countries continue to appear in the top five in our statistics,” said BBC developer Gareth Owen.”
BBC NEWS
Hitachi sez: 1TB drives by end of year. “And with drive capacities effectively doubling every two years, it comes as little surprise to hear a product VP from Hitachi predicting a 3.5-inch drive sporting 1TB (1,000GB) before the year is up. “
Engadget
Finally (Almost): AllPeers. “UK/Prague-based AllPeers is a Firefox extension that will allow for group P2P file sharing using the browser. A persistent buddy list in a sidebar is created. Files can be shared with those buddies by dragging a file, folder or URL into their name. It’s just as easy to share the file with multiple people. The core technology is based on bittorent.”
Techcrunch
Mission Eternity. “The basic notion is to use the power of networked digital technology and inexpensive storage to keep aspects of us alive after we’re dead. “
We Make Money not Art
New at Google: Local Coupons. “Starting today, Google will let any business offer discount coupons to people who use its Google Maps service, which also acts as an online yellow pages. A business will be able to upload information for coupons, including images, and Google will display a link to those coupons when the business name is displayed. Users can then print the coupons and take them to the merchant.”
New York Times
Smartmobby responses to Blackboard patent. “The online learning community has responded to the Blackboard patent by organizing a claim-by-claim community-based analysis of the patent, and organizing a history of virtual learning environments on Wikipedia to provide a resource for prior-art defenses.”
Smart Mobs
Technology News Article. “A substantial minority of American adults would rather spend their free time playing casual games — such online diversions as “Bejeweled” and “TextTwist” — than watch television. A study by Harris Interactive set for release Monday (August 14) found that 31 percent of the over-18 set preferred the games to TV for whiling away a spare hour. Watching movies at home fared better, with 21 percent choosing games instead, but going to the movie theater did slightly worse with 35 percent.”
Reuters.com
The Wireless PHONEJack – now any telecom device can go wireless. “The Wireless PHONEJack can wirelessly connect up to 4 separate phones within a 50 meter radius of the ATA, making VoIP calls a reality not just from near the ATA but elsewhere in the home or office. “
gizmag
Village uploads itself to internet. “Visitors to Hansdehar village’s Web site (www.smartvillages.org) can see the names, jobs and other details of its 1753 residents, browse photographs of their shops and read detailed specifications about their drainage and electricity facilities. Most of the residents can’t yet surf the Hansdehar Web site as the village is not yet connected to the Internet. But the villagers hope the site – and their imminent first Internet connection – will put them in touch with the world beyond the flooded rice fields surrounding Hansdehar, located in a rich agricultural belt in the northern state of Haryana.”
The Australian
B.O.S.S. shopping cart follows you around. “Gregory Garcia, a graduate student in mechanical engineering, developed a shopping cart that not only follows you around the store, but keeps a steady pace while cruising and throws on the brakes before clipping someone’s heels.”
Engadget
Huckabuck search tuner “saves time and New Orleans”. “Run a search on Huckabuck, and using their search tuner (that looks a lot like a graphics equalizer), choose the engines and frequency of results you want to see, from biggies like Google/MSN/Yahoo to the more specialized digg and Technorati. Huckabuck’s got some useful custom search presets too, tuned for social search, shopping or technology research.”
Lifehacker
Download of the Day: BlockSite. “Firefox extension BlockSite is a distraction-killer that blocks time-wasting web sites from your browser.”
Lifehacker
Find images of words with the Visual Dictionary. “The Visual Dictionary web site catalogs photographs of words (from signs to graffiti to tattoos) and makes them searchable by the word they contain.”
Lifehacker
The Mobile Phone As Musical Instrument. “miniMIXA is smartphone, Pocket PC / PDA and Windows XP desktop music mixer application. You can grab sounds with your device’s mirophones, then mix it with your own contnet, or pre-loaded content from miniMIXA. This software shrinks the capabilities of traditional DJ loop based music creation hardware down to a protable mobile tool.”
Smart Mobs
Kangaroo TV: Jump Around to Many Places at Once. “Now you can go to a car race and see and hear just about everything that’s going on with Kangaroo TV, a handheld device that can stream 10 live MPEG4 video channels along with audio feeds and data. It’s being rolled out first at racetracks, where fans like to hear the radio chatter between pit crews and drivers, as well as keep tabs on the leader board and see sections of the track that aren’t visible from the grandstand. Using Kangaroo TV, they can receive multiple streams of data while choosing between various camera angles, including in-car views.”
Gizmodo
Ball-balancing robot refuses to roll over. “The tall, thin robot, called Ballbot, sits on top of a ball, which it controls using a pair of rollers. Balance sensors feed information to an onboard computer. This continually moves the ball to make sure it is always under the robot’s centre of gravity. Ballbot can also move in any direction, and regain its balance after a push, by making minor adjustments to the ball beneath it.”
New Scientist
IBM’s future molecular switch. “Researchers at IBM’s Zurich Laboratory said Friday they’ve discovered a new way to manipulate molecules within semiconductor chips to help scale down their size while increasing their function. Heike Riel and Emanuel L�rtscher said they found an individual molecule within semiconductor chips that can be turned ‘on’ and ‘off.’ The discovery is part of their goal to explore molecules that could lead to better memory and logic applications.”
ZDNet.com
Goggles – A Google Map Flight Sim. “Goggles is a Flight Simulator using images loaded in from Google Maps. Running in Flash it is a technical achievement to overlay the plane (which is controlled via the arrow keys) onto the air photographs – a concept which opens up any array of possible applications.”
Digitally Distributed Environments
What are you a fan of?. “Fanpop is a network of “social portals” called spots that are created for fans by fans. Share your favorite links and meet fellow fanatics. Find out what other fans are surfing on the web with “social browsing”. We think that it should be easier to get to stuff you care about. Because the web should revolve around you. Go pop in and out of a few spots!”
Fanpop
Hertz to try RFID Rather Than Keys for Rentals. “The users will no longer have to deal with customer service agents. They will go up to a display board, find the location of their car and simply go get it. When their RFID card is close to the display screen it will configure the card to be linked to the specific car. Sounds like a pretty damn cool system, but the question remains: how secure is it?”
Gizmodo
TV Shopping Cart Entertains Kids, Kills Dad’s Integrity. “It is equipped with a small LCD television that can play Barney, Bob the Builder or The Wiggles for the kiddos while the parents shop.”
Gizmodo
From snapshot to cover model in a single click. “an algorithm has been developed that morphs photographs of human faces into subtly more attractive versions of themselves. By making tiny adjustments to the distances between hundreds of different facial features, the “digital beautification” algorithm is designed to make a face more attractive in just a few minutes without significantly altering the person’s appearance.”
New Scientist
EnterActive. “A luminous field of red LED lights embedded into the entry walkway respond to the moves of visitors. When the walkway interactivity is triggered the impact is mirrored on a eight-story grid of LED panels on the building facade. When completed, a video camera facing the building will transmit images to a plasma screen in the lobby, so visitors inside can see the effect their footwork is having outside.”
We Make Money Not Art
Air Flight Tracking. “AirportMonitor is a dynamic, interactive display of air traffic and flight information available on many airport Web sites. AirportMonitor tracks flights from approximately 100 miles from the terminal right down to the runway. View information such as flight origin, destination, aircraft type, altitude, and flight ID.”
Java.com
Design Concept: Comfort Sphere for Captive Audiences. “The Comfort Sphere was designed by Volkswagen for trade shows, but might be a great idea to enhance the work and concentration required of writers, think-tankers, and hey, maybe even a blogger or two.”
Gizmodo
Localize Bookmarklet – Map Your Flickr Photos. “I just spend some time to create a slim bookmarklet that enables mapping, geocoding and geotagging directly in your Flickr photo page. It works with all common browsers without the need for any extension.”
Sumaato Labs
Homebrew Coffee Table PC. “The coffee table houses a computer with a 160GB hard drive, TV tuner and an LCD for weather forecasts. It’s water-cooled, too, which is the international symbol of a computer nerd. Built-in Wi-Fi rounds out the package, so streaming downloaded TV shows syphoned off the Dark Net is entirely possible. Looks like Johnson found a clever way to integrate a computer into the home theater.”
Gizmodo
Polo Ralph Lauren adds twist to window shopping. “Polo Ralph Lauren Corp. is taking impulse shopping one step farther with technology that allows passersby to purchase clothing they see in the windows of one of its New York stores by tapping on the glass.”
Agenda Inc.
A Face Is Exposed for AOL Searcher No. 4417749. “Buried in a list of 20 million Web search queries collected by AOL and recently released on the Internet is user No. 4417749. The number was assigned by the company to protect the searcher’s anonymity, but it was not much of a shield. No. 4417749 conducted hundreds of searches over a three-month period on topics ranging from “numb fingers” to “60 single men” to “dog that urinates on everything.””
New York Times
The Captain Has Lit Up The No Mobile Sign. “No mobile” signs are to replace the outdated “no smoking” signs above airline seats with the introduction of in-flight mobile phone services in Europe next year. Air France will be the first airline to try out the satellite-based technology early next year, followed by the U.K.’s BMI and Portugal’s TAP.”
Real Tech News
MyTobii P10 Eye-Tracking PC. “Swedish company Tobii is about to release its MyTobii P10, a PC that can be controlled by tracking your eye movements using its own proprietary hardware and software. Follow a calibrating dot on the screen with your eyes for 30 seconds, and that’s all it’s necessary to make it so you can control this PC without touching it at all. The remarkable thing is, the company has figured out how to make this work in almost any lighting conditions, and even if you wear glasses.”
Gizmodo
First Pics of Levi’s iPod Jeans. “Those ridiculous Levi’s iPod Jeans have finally shown their denim faces—or asses, I guess. There’s a big red cable sticking out of the jeans to connect your iPod to, and loads and loads of pockets to hold all your iPod accessories.”
Gizmodo
EarMecca EP Series: Earphones and Earrings in One. “The quest for de-uglification of earphones continues, and here’s a pair cleverly disguised as earrings. From EarMecca of Korea, the EP Series Earphones might even appeal to persnickety types. The earrings are available in 10 different designs, are crafted in either gold or silver, and are adjustable even for those ears that hang low and wobble to and fro.”
Gizmodo
