Archive for February, 2007
Wii bowling knocks over retirement home
“At the Sedgebrook retirement community in Lincolnshire, where the average age is 77, something unexpected has been transpiring since Christmas. The residents, most of whom have never picked up a video game controller in their life, suddenly can’t put the things down. “I’ve never been into video games,” said 72-year-old Flora Dierbach last week as her husband took a twirl with the Nintendo Wii’s bowling game. “But this is addictive.”
Chicago Tribune
Download of the Day: It’s All Text! (Firefox)
“t’s All Text! adds a small edit icon to the bottom right corner of any text area in Firefox. The first time you click the icon, you’ll see a dialog that lets you select your default text editor (you can also change this in the extension options). The next time you click the edit button, your chosen text editor will open a new text document. Then you just start typing.”
Lifehacker
Share your life
“A Slifeshare is an online space where you share your digital life activities such as browsing the web and listening to music with your friends, family or anyone you care about. It is a whole new way of staying in touch, finding out which sites, videos and music are popular with your friends, meeting new people and discovering great new stuff online.”
pasta and vinegar
Eleksen’s Double-sided Keyboard Gives Your UMPC Media Controls
“he same guys that brought us the UMPC pouch/keyboard are now bringing us a double-sided keyboard that includes your standard QWERTY keys on one side and a full deck of media controls on the other. The cloth has sensors built in so that when you’re typing on one side, it doesn’t activate the buttons on the other.”
Gizmodo
Crime fighting system converts lip motions into spoken word
“Kicking off a three-year project, the team is setting out to “collect data for lip-reading and use it to create machines that automatically convert videos of lip-motions into text.” By building a vast database of lip movements that can be read and spat out in verbally, the gurus hope to fight crime by being able to pick out potentially threatening phrases that security cameras pick up.”
Engadget
Adtron introduces 160 GB Solid State Flash Disk
“With the price of NAND flash dropping quickly, SSDs are continuing their rise with the news that Adtron is offering immediate availability of its latest and most advanced generation of the Adtron Flashpak Family of products, including the IDE and Serial ATA (SATA) flash disk models, the I25FB and A25FB, respectively. The products include the industry’s highest capacity 2.5 SLC NAND flash disk drives at 160 GBytes.”
gizmag
Microstrain Sensors Measures Fatigue in Both Machines and Your Busted Knees
“A small company in Vermont called Microstrain has developed a wireless sensor system that can monitor strain and fatigue in various hardware components, such as large trucks all the way down to welding joints, accurate to millionths of a meter. This is like a nervous system … By predicting when welds may fail based upon actual severity of usage, our customers are able to streamline the maintenance requirements for each machine.”
Gizmodo
Boundary Functions
“If you participate in this work, you will see a line as a boundary between you and others, which is usually supposed to be invisible, to identify your territory. The boundary changes according to the position of each individual on the floor, but the rule is that the person at the center must always be the closest to the boundary.”
pasta and vinegar
Speakers Disguised as Books
“Some like to show-off their speakers, but if you rather hide your speakers then the “BOOK”-Shelf Speakers are a straight forward way to do it.”
I4U News
CUin5 Cellphone: Design Fiction by branko Lukic
“Imagine grabbing it quickly – from inside your bag, from off a shelf, from under a car seat – and freely interacting with it without needing to turn it over or align it right side up?”
Gizmodo
Self publishing via e-mail
“With Life Trackers, turning life experiences into a published book is as simple as sending an email. While self-publishing is nothing new, Life Trackers makes it easy to pull together travel journals, memory books and other keepsakes from just about anywhere a user has internet access. Best of all, there’s no cost to join, and customers can get a printable PDF of their book for free.”
Springwise
Stray Cinema
“Stray Cinema is an open source film. Here you are able to download and re-edit the raw footage from a film we have shot in London. This will provide people from all over the world with an opportunity to create their own version of the film.”
Stray Cinema
SuperBot Robot Can Construct Itself
“It can be constructed into a variety of different figures to accomplish different tasks, for example as a walking unit, rolling unit, snake unit, etc. Each individual block is a robot that interacts and works together with the other robots.”
Gizmodo
Me-Mo Modular Cellphone Design
“His Me-mo design takes a large cellphone and breaks it into multiple modular parts – meaning the keyboard, screen, phone, MP3 player, GPS, and camera can be taken off if a user doesn’t have use for it.”
Gizmodo
Tiny Robot Makes Cockroaches Believe it is one of Them
“The robot cockroach moves like a real one and because cockroaches have bad sight, they do not see that the robot is just a box on wheels. For additional efficiency the researches covered the robot with cockroach pheromones. All cockroaches in the test left their preferred dark spot to hang with the robot.”
I4U News
Small world in your head
“In this “small world” architecture of the brain, clusters of cells link to their nearest neighbors with some neurons connecting to distant clusters. It’s the same phenomenon that social networking pioneer Duncan Watts of NYU and Steven Strogatz of Cornell previously showed emerges in the electric-power grid, relationships between professional actors, and the brain cells of worms.”
Boing Boing
Pay-per-use electricity in Dallas/Fort-Worth airport
“Yesterday on a stop-over at Dallas/Fort-Worth airport, I spotted these $2-per-use electrical outlets aimed at business travellers who wanted to get some electricity for their laptops.”
Boing Boing
Microscopic chain mail could embed sensors, electronics into clothing
“Aside from feeling a bit like Sir Lancealot, the chain-like structures could have electronics and sensors built right in, and the flexible fabric could also conduct electricity when not beaming secret messages or being used as one large homing device for the cops to track you down.”
Engadget
Google offers business software via subscription
“Google Apps-Premier Edition costs $50 per employee account per year, which covers telephone technical support, up to 10 gigabytes of data storage per user and guarantees that e-mail services will run at least 99.9 percent of the time.”
Reuters.com
Software That Will This Sentence Fix
“An Israeli software company called WhiteSmoke has devised a software tool that uses artificial intelligence to scan written English text and suggest ways to make it stronger, clearer, and more fluent. Far more than just a spelling and grammar checker, like the ones built into Microsoft (MSFT) Word, WhiteSmoke performs a black art known as “text enrichment.” In effect, the software parses your documents – including e-mails, letters, and even legal contracts – against a vast database of commonly accepted usage patterns to ensure that the writing is as good as possible. “English is the lingua franca of globalization, and our vision is to give everyone a level playing field in making a good first impression,” says Hilla Ovil-Brenner, the 32-year-old chief executive and co-founder of WhiteSmoke.”
Business Week
Taking Your Presentation, and the Projector’s Utility, to a Whole New Level
“The NewSoft WMS100 Image Wireless Projector Adaptor connects to any VGA-compatible projector. With the included software, called Presto, up to three computers can control a presentation and capture and display their own screens at any time.”
New York Times
On the Road, With Abundant Advice at Your Fingertips
“The 680 is a G.P.S.-based car navigation device with an FM receiver that gets traffic updates, weather reports, gas prices and movie showtimes from the MSN Direct network. The network operates in the 120 largest American cities; 78 of them have traffic reports. Using the G.P.S. and MSN data, the 680 can direct drivers to the nearest theater showing “Breach” and determine if they will make it on time.”
New York Times
IPod’s Groovy Factor
“Call it iSilly, a growing number of products in which fun is emphasized over function, and cute or irreverent often trumps wow. All of these items, some costing as little as $10, have been created to plug into an iPod — or, in many cases, any audio source that has a standard 3.5-millimeter headphone jack.”
New York Times
Computerized babies cry, burp at Mexican teens
“High school students in the Mexican state of Chihuahua are being made to care for screaming, hiccuping baby dolls that run on computer chips to try to bring down the state’s soaring teenage pregnancy rate. Pairs of teen-age boys and girls aged 13 to 17 have to spend two or three days tending to the computerized babies, programed to cry for food, burp and wake up screaming at night until they are rocked back to sleep.”
Reuters.com
Download of the Day: Slife (Mac)
“Not only does it keep track of the application you’re using, but it also tracks the interactions – like web pages you visit and emails you’ve read. An application must be supported in order for Slife to track it, but you’ll find that most of the good ones are; unsupported apps can be added to Slife through plug-ins and “scriptlets.”
Lifehacker
Samsung’s 940UX LCD Favors USB Over DVI
“One of the benefits of having a USB-based LCD is that you won’t need a hefty video card to power multiple displays. However, that’s also the downside cause that means the LCD will rely on your CPU to process graphics, potentially giving your overall performance a bit of a hit.”
Gizmodo
UrbanSeeder
“Each of the Seed has a private number that doesn’t reveal who you are but leads the other person to a webpage where he or she can get a series of clues about you. How can you give the Seed to someone you fancy without unvealing who you are? If you know the email address of that person (a co-worker for example), you can send the Seed by email;- or you can print and give away a Seed. Hand it to him or her yourself, ask a friend or the waitress to do it when you’ve left the bar. Each Seed is personalized… Each Seed leads to a private space shared by the new “partner” and you. It’s a kind of exclusive blog for the two of you. You can put there images, videos, music, messages, etc. And list events and places where you’re going to be a week from now.”
PSFK
Mind blowing video of laser-guided graffiti system
“You hold a laser pointer in the air, and draw whatever you want. A high-powered projection system (hidden in a van) “paints” the image on the surface of a building.”
Boing Boing
Add chat to any site with Yaplet
“Yaplet lets you instantly chat with other people visiting the same web site as you with the click of a bookmarklet.”
Lifehacker
Biologically Inspired Vision Systems
“Neuroscientists at MIT have developed a computer model that mimics the human vision system to accurately detect and recognize objects in a busy street scene, such as cars and motorcycles. Such biologically inspired vision systems could soon be used in surveillance systems, or in smart sensors that can warn drivers of pedestrians and other obstacles.”
Technology Review
Motion Computing unveils RFID-reading C5 medical tablet PC
“The C5 touts a vertically centered design, top-mounted carry handle, handwriting recognition, built-in digital camera for documenting wounds, time-stamp / voice-tag capabilities, and even an optional RFID reader to easily check patients in by scanning their wrist straps.”
Engadget
Arcade Reality: Augmented Reality Gaming for Your Cameraphone
“By placing graphics over what your cameraphone sees, Arcade Reality makes the world your playing field and your phone the controller. Aiming your phone at bad guys that appear in the space around you, it kind of combines the active nature of a Wiimote with a light gun like the one that came with the original NES.”
Gizmodo
3style Adds a Jogwheel to Your Mouse
“The entire top surface can spin, allowing you to scroll through documents or quickly spin through footage with ease. Since the entire top surface rotates, there are no buttons on the front. Instead, pressing on the top is a button and squeezing the sides is a button.”
Gizmodo
UK posts signs to ignore navigation systems, avoid perils
“Odd as it may sound, the “Do Not Follow SAT NAV” cautions have actually quelled accidents on a narrow road in which drivers of wide vehicles were blindly driving themselves into a literal pinch.”
Engadget
Breakthrough VeinViewer Imaging System
“VeinViewer is a vein-contrast enhancement device that uses an infra-red camera to highlight blood (the underlying vasculature) and projects the image in real time onto the skin. With this device, physicians, nurses and other healthcare professionals can find veins easily and avoid multiple needle sticks to patients.”
gizmag
Pocket DNA Barcoder
“magine a hand-held device that naturalists and amateurs could carry out into the field to automatically register the lifeforms they encounter. Such a “Life Barcoder,” as its proponents call it, would instantly make experts out of enthusiasts and more rapidly approach Linnaeus’s goal: cataloguing every species on Earth. life barcoder The back end of this gadget system already works: scientists are methodically working through the DNA barcoding of species, having already covered at least 25,000. Most recently, Paul Hebert–the founder of the barcode of life movement–and his colleagues catalogued most species of North American birds, discovering 15 new ones based only on genetic differences as my recent article notes.”
SciAm
BrowseGoods, BlackDogAir: Two New Ways to View Shopping
“BlackDogAir looks at Amazon’s music, books, and movies like a family tree. The tree starts with the display of Amazon’s browse pages fanned out vertically. Each item can be clicked on for details or bring up another level of the tree displaying the its related items.”
TechCrunch
Magnetic Floating Bed at BED Online Magazine
“A young Dutch architect has created a floating bed which hovers above the ground through magnetic force and comes with a price tag of 1.2 million euros ($1.54 million). [...] Magnets built into the floor and into the bed itself repel each other, pushing the bed up into the air. Thin steel cables tether the bed in place.”
Bedzine.com
Jyte: Spread the Cred
“Claim anything! Yes, anything. If you have something to say, then make a claim and let the community vote on it. Make claims about yourself, friends, and family. Put your stake in the ground and see where the votes go!”
Jyte
Surgeons who play video games more skilled: study
“Video game skills translated into higher scores on a day-and-half-long surgical skills test, and the correlation was much higher than the surgeon’s length of training or prior experience in laparoscopic surgery, the study said. Out of 33 surgeons from Beth Israel Medical Center in New York that participated in the study, the nine doctors who had at some point played video games at least three hours per week made 37 percent fewer errors, performed 27 percent faster, and scored 42 percent better in the test of surgical skills than the 15 surgeons who had never played video games before.”
Reuters.com
Download of the Day: Dog Ears (Firefox)
“The Dog Ears Firefox extension lets you mark (or “dog ear,” if you will) sections of long web pages so you can easily find an important passage or pick up where you left off.”
Lifehacker
Sony’s 1/1.8-inch high-speed CMOS sensor outputs 60fps
“The 1/1.8-inch IMX017CQE sensor boasts 6.4-megapixels of resolution and the uncanny ability to “output this resolution at 60 frames per second (a data rate of around 384 megapixels per second).” In layman’s terms, this chip has the ability to capture full motion video and grab high-quality stills without dropping a single frame, giving users a seamless transition between the two.”
Engadget
FaceSCAN III Makes 3D Modeling Child’s Play
“t’s a fancy camera that can create lifelike 3D models of people’s faces by taking a series of pictures. Unfortunately, buying talent isn’t cheap, as the faceSCAN II was a hefty $40,000. No word on how much the III will cost, but it’s safe to say it’ll stay around that price range.”
Gizmodo
Nalu Cellphone Concept: When Multiple Interfaces Attack
“The Nalu concept cellphone attempts to address the problem of too many different interfaces getting in the way of functionality. (Since no one has figured that out yet, I suppose.) It combines a phone, media player and text input (for e-mail and text messages), each with their own distinctive interface… which is exactly the problem.”
Gizmodo
Virtual treatment for US troops
“The immersive system combines realistic street scenes, sounds and odours to allow patients to relive traumatic events in a controlled environment. During the “exposure therapy”, a clinician determines the intensity of the events the soldier experiences.”
BBC NEWS
GlobalTop GPS HUD Speed Meter to Debut at CeBit 2007
“The GlobalTop GPS HUD Speed Meter could be really cool. This GPS navigation device displays your speed and other navigational info, like direction, onto your car’s windscreen. This is a feature that you only get in premium cars like 5 or 7 series BMWs right now.”
I4U News
SmartShopper prints out your shopping list using voice recognition
“SmartShopper is a device that can convert a spoken shopping list into a printout to carry around in your wallet or purse. Just mount the SmartShopper on your fridge using the magnet, start waxing lyrical about apples and oranges — don’t worry, your neighbors already think you’re crazy — and the little gray box will neatly print all your choices onto a little piece of paper.”
Engadget
Music production through haptic interface
“The amoeba shaped board has little boxes in its center that when moved to the arms, activate different sounds. My interest in music and design merged to create a haptic interface (based on touch) that allows people to use gesture to mix sounds with their hands.”
pasta and vinegar
New Weapon in Web War Over Piracy
“The new technological weapon is content-recognition software, which makes it possible to identify copyrighted material, even, for example, from blurry video clips. [...] Last week, Vance Ikezoye, the chief executive of Audible Magic in Los Gatos, Calif., demonstrated the technology by downloading a two-minute clip from YouTube and feeding it into his company’s new video-recognition system. The clip - drained of color, with dialogue dubbed in Chinese - appeared to have been recorded with a camcorder in a dark movie theater before it was uploaded to the Web, so the image quality was poor. Still, Mr. Ikezoye’s filtering software quickly identified it as the sword-training scene that begins 49 minutes and 37 seconds into the Miramax film Kill Bill: Vol. 2.”
New York Times
Wireless: GPS software promises hope for the disabled
“While barrier-free guides for the disabled are not uncommon, most are printed in brochures or on CD-ROMs and cover only limited areas or tourist sites. The advantage of Trailblazers, experts say, is that wheelchair users can map their own local routes and feed them into a central server in at the university in Hamburg. As more and more people feed routes into the system, the globe would be mapped anew, so to speak, from the perspective of disabled people.”
International Herald Tribune
NBA Rolls Out 3-D Telecast for All-Star Games
“The games and exhibition events will be shot with an array of five, double-lensed cameras developed by Pace Technologies, a company founded by “Titanic” movie director James Cameron and camera designer Vince Pace. Cameron is now shooting “Avatar,” his next film, in 3D using the Pace Fusion camera. [...] Attendees will wear modern polarized glasses that enable them to see a 3D image. The cameras will be virtually stationary to avoid overwhelming viewers’ senses, and audio will come from courtside instead of the announcers’ booth.”
EWeek
Robot watches out for woodpecker
“The automated birdwatcher stands in a US wildlife reserve in Arkansas, scanning the skies for a glimpse of the elusive ivory-billed woodpecker. The bird was once thought to be extinct, but potential sightings in the area in 2004 renewed the search. The system uses two video cameras to capture continuous images of the sky that are scrutinized for evidence of bird life by sophisticated software. Any shot that it does not believe contains a bird is discarded. “It’s been running for three months continuously now and it only keeps one image in every 10,000 it collects,” said Dr Ken Goldberg of the University of California, Berkeley, who developed the system.”
BBC NEWS
Pixel-graphic style in a physical display
“SnOil has pixel-like graphic features and is physically implemented using electronic components such as electro magnets, controllers, multiplexors, tilt sensors and so forth. Tiles of electro magnets make the system highly scalable.”
Architectradure
For Sale by Teenager: Lightly Used Gadget. Cheap.
“Part of the reason is that households with teenagers typically have 35 consumer electronic products, on average, compared with 24 products at homes with no teenagers, said Joe Bates, director of research for the Consumer Electronics Association, based in Arlington, Va. In the 1980s, he said, the typical household had four or five such devices. We don’t have hard data on teens buying and selling these products, but it makes perfect sense, Mr. Bates said. Teens just own more electronics today and because they do, they have technology that’s still working and they want to redistribute it.”
New York Times
SoundDrive: The Talking USB Drive
“The SoundDrive is the first thumb drive I’ve seen with speakers built into it, so the moment you plug it in, it starts yapping away.”
Gizmodo
Mini-Z T-ray imaging device takes home the gold
“The doctoral student in physics developed a breakthrough terahertz imaging device, dubbed a T-ray, that has already demonstrated its ability to “detect cracks in space shuttle foam, image tumors in breast tissue, and spot counterfeit watermarks on paper currency.” The Mini-Z marks the first time such a powerful device has become portable in nature, weighing just five pounds and taking up about as much space as your average laptop.”
Engadget
Asahi Kasei unveils singing Rain Sensor flower
“As you might expect, this two-part device consists of a mountable rain sensor that resides outside and connects wirelessly to the indoor monitor in order to alert you when it begins to drizzle. Presumably aimed at those who frequently leave their car windows down or wet clothes on the line, this little fella belts out a friendly jingle whenever its drop-sensing partner feels the water.”
Engadget
Driver’s License Emerges as Crime-Fighting Tool, but Privacy Advocates Worry
“Using computerized biometric technology, they ran a mug shot from the Web site of “America’s Most Wanted,” the Fox Network television show, against the state’s database of nine million digital driver’s license photographs. The computer found a match. A man who looked very much like Robert Howell, the fugitive in the mug shot, had a Massachusetts driver’s license under another name. Mr. Howell was wanted in Massachusetts on rape charges. The analysts passed that tip along to the police, who tracked him down to New York City, where he was receiving welfare benefits under the alias on the driver’s license. Mr. Howell was arrested in October.”
New York Times
Wireless Codependency
“Constantly talking on your cellphone is doing more than annoying the people around you. Calling someone whenever you are in a bad mood, or have a question, may be making you less independent and less able to experience your life as fully as you should.”
New York Times
Dandella handheld GPS devices simplify navigation
“Designers Yong-kai Tan and Priscilla Lui’s invention was spurned by the need to “simply find someone” if you get detached in a busy theme park or office building, and if each stick is programmed to find one another, even a child should be able to walk in the direction that the flexible, LED lit tip points. Additionally, it packs built-in Bluetooth in order to sync with mobile devices or other wireless computers, and gets powered by an integrated Li-ion battery.”
Engadget
Eyeballs are cameras
“Together, they form an installation which communicates with itself until someone appears and disturbs the “conversation”. Then, depending on the movement of the person, the eyeballs might break their contact and focus on him or her - just like at a party where it might be hard to become part of an already existing group and also might lead to unforeseen reactions.”
We Make Money Not Art
Proboscis
“London As We May See It is the city re-imagined through a landscape of 105 StoryCubes. Each one has 5 pictures taken in a particular street or place (as well as an image of the street sign). The StoryCubes can be assembled together - connected - in any way in three dimensions to describe the route of a walk, or the places one has lived or worked in.”
networked_performance
Inflatable exoskeleton
“This prototype “power jacket” from Matsushita Electric Industrial (parent of consumer electronics company Panasonic) is designed to help patients recover from partial paralysis. Sensors at the elbow and wrist allow a healthy arm to control the eight artificial muscles, which are powered by compressed air, on the paralyzed side.”
Boing Boing:
MAKE: Blog: OpenMoko – open source cell phone
“The news event today is that they have put up an extensive website describing the hardware, the software, the look and feel, the APIs, source code, developement invironment, etc. etc. etc.”
MAKE
Data Center Power Consumption on the Rise, Report Shows
“The amount of electricity used to power the world’s data center servers doubled in a five-year span due mainly to an increase in demand for Internet services, such as music and video downloads, and telephony, according to a new report. ADVERTISEMENT If current trends continue, the amount of power to run the world’s data center servers could increase by an additional 40 percent by 2010, said Jonathan Koomey, a staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif., and a consulting professor at Stanford University.”
EWeek
FreeYourID: Personalized OpenID
“FreeYourID is a new web service that allows users to register a personal .Name domain name which in turn can be used as an OpenID identifier, website URL and email host. Your domain name will be in the format of first.last.name and the domain can then be directed to a website, host email aliases or more interestingly, be used as login credentials for services that support OpenID.”
Tech Crunch
Technology Review: Self-Assembling Batteries
“Researchers at MIT have designed a rechargeable lithium-ion battery that assembles itself out of microscopic materials. This could lead to ultrasmall power sources for sensors and micromachines the size of the head of a pin. It could also make it possible to pack battery materials in unused space inside electronic devices.”
Technology Review
Cellphone users complain about ‘function fatigue’
“Manufacturers have become so enamored of cool features - including cameras, recording devices and video-streaming capabilities - that they have lost sight of the fact that many consumers just want good voice reception, according to a survey by the Forum to Advance the Mobile Experience (FAME). “Function fatigue” was the No. 1 complaint of mobile phone users, according to the survey of 15,000 consumers in 37 countries. It was conducted in late 2006 and was partially funded by Palm, a maker of mobile devices.”
USATODAY.com
Hiding messages in plain sight
“Japanese firm Fujitsu is pushing a technology that can encode data into a picture that is invisible to the human eye but can be decoded by a mobile phone with a camera. The company believes the technology will have spin off implications for the publishing industry. “The concept is to be able to link the printed page into the digital domain,” said Mike Nelson, general manager for sales operations at Fujitsu Europe.”
BBC NEWS
Cellphone Ads May Take Off Soon
“A recent report from Informa forecast that the market for mobile advertising will rise to $11.3 billion in 2011 from almost nothing just two years ago. It is too early to tell whether one type of advertising will be dominant in developed countries because the market is still in its nascent phase, though banner ads and short video spots are sure to be big, Mr. Lane said. Text-message ads will dominate in developing countries, he said.”
New York Times
Locca Access – Keyless Remote for Your Home
“The Locca Access remote key entry allows you to open your house’s front door from up to 50 meters away – super convenient for those times when you are laden with shopping bags, when it’s dark, when the weather is bad or when you’re just too damn lazy to use your complicated keys. You can even let guests into your house remotely from up to 20 interior meters away, so there’s really no need to put on clothes or get up from that sofa to answer the door.”
Gizmodo
CPR Glove could save lives, looks kind of dorky
“While it just looks like a particularly lame-looking and ill-fitting glove on the outside, the one-size-fits-all glove houses sensors that can measure if you’re administering CPR compressions at the right rate and depth.”
Engadget
SmartSink is always the right height
“Height is detected by a video camera which lines up with your line of sight and then automatically raises or lowers the sink to match up with your stature. Another camera watches for what you put under the faucet, be it a metallic pot or green vegetable, and turns on the water and adjusts the temperature accordingly.”
Engadget
New MySpace-Focused Browser Launched
“BuddyWave has built in two main tools: an instant messenger-like friends list manager as well as an Ajax tool for editing your MySpace profile.”
Tech Crunch
Technology Review: Type 911.gov
“In this week’s Science, two researchers at the University of Maryland suggest that local, state, and federal governments develop 911.gov, a social network that would allow residents to report disasters, request assistance from neighbors, and check for emergency updates and relief information.”
Technology Review
BubblePly Upgrades Fun Video Annotation
“Launched in December, the service now allows live links, full control over fonts and extensive use of images. It’s a much more useful service now than it was before.”
Tech Crunch
RFID “Powder” Developed; Time to Buy Lead Pants.
“Hitachi has made RFID chips so small they’re calling them “powder,” as they measure 0.05mm x 0.05mm. That’s a bunch of them up there on the right next to a human hair.”
Gizmodo
Detection algorithms to enable sign language on-the-go
“Developed at the University of Washington, the specialized skin detection algorithms are able to key in on critical moving parts (read: hands and fingers) and utilize the limited bandwidth to broadcast the most important vectors first.”
Engadget
P.Guerra’s FLeX 4.2 HTPC packs B&O and Core 2 Duo
“On one side of the folding chassis, we’ve got 400W RMS ICEpower audio amplifiers from Bang & Olufsen which work just fine without turning the PC-side of this HTCP on. A special IR receiver and software developed by P.Guerra allows the Flex 4.2 to be integrated into other B&O A/V systems. On the other side of the chassis then, we’ve got an Intel Core 2 Duo Mini-ITX motherboard”
Engadget
Raleigh officials envision “world’s first” LED lit city
“Reportedly envisioned by the mayor, officials are teaming up with RTP-based Cree, Inc. in order to “save money and help the environment,” and in a pilot program completed late last year, a LED-equipped parking deck purportedly burned “40-percent less energy” than those with “standard lighting systems.” Additionally, the quality and brightness of the lighting was said to have improved, which paved the way for LEDs to hit up street lights, architectural and accent lighting, and pedestrian and walkway lights over the next 18 months.”
Engadget
Japanese cabbies take mobile drink drive test | The Register
“Japanese transport firms are using mobile phone technology to prevent drunk drivers from starting their shifts. The system from NTT DoCoMo uses an alcohol breath analyser that sends data to a service centre rather than one that can immobolise a vehicle by connecting directly to its ignition system. Drivers starting their shifts make a video call to their firm’s service centre before taking a test. A software package that forms part of the system confirms a driver’s identity before a test is made. Altogether the technology costs around $2,000 per seat.”
The Register
Is Radio Still Radio if There’s Video?
“Across the country, radio stations are putting up video fare on their Web sites, ranging from a simple camera in the broadcast booth to exclusive coverage of events like the Super Bowl to music videos, news clips and Web-only musical performances. “This is no longer the age of ‘having a face for radio,’ ” said Dianna Jason, the senior director of marketing and promotions at Power 106, a Los Angeles hip-hop radio station. “This is a visual medium now.”
New York Times
D-Wave qubits in the era of Quantum Computing
“An essential, core concept here is that the properties of that information - what you can store and what you can compute – depend on the laws of physics. So that if you write a zero and a one on something that is inherently classical like a transistor or magnetic memory, the information behaves in a certain way. If you are smart enough to be able to find a way to write information on a quantum mechanical object, the information behaves in a different way. And you can use that to accelerate computation significantly. So, in some cases, the acceleration is exponential on some previously intractable problems – things that you simply cannot do even in principle. With a computer of this sort that you can solve those problems easily.”
The Register
Altobridge conjures up instant GSM networking
“The Remote Contiguous Communications Unit is designed for emergency deployment in disaster areas. It’s a suitcase-sized base station that can be powered from a vehicle or small generator, and connect up to 7 simultaneous users for voice and GPRS; multiple units can be deployed for greater connectivity or coverage. The coverage area is not extensive, stretching a hundred yards at best. A folding tripod antenna can be added to increase the range to a kilometre or two, and careful placement could increase that further. But this is intended as a first-responder emergency system: providing connectivity using standard GSM handsets in situations where good civilian communications might be a matter of life and death.”
The Register
Haptic interfaces
“ERGOS is a top-of-the-range technology, designed to provide you a crisp sensation of your virtual models, and to enact them at best. The electromagnetic technology is currently the best for haptic devices requiring high spatial resolution, high dynamics, and a very large force amplitude vs. maximum force ratio. It provides a powerful solution to applications requiring dexterous gesture skills, high precision, and a crisp sensation of the manipulated model.”
pasta and vinegar »
Big brother will be watching you fly
“Scientists from Britain and Germany are spending £25 million (about R360-million) to develop a system they hope will make it virtually impossible to hijack an airliner by providing pilots and cabin crew with an early warning system. They say rapid eye movements, blinking excessively, licking lips or ways of stroking hair or ears are classic symptoms of somebody trying to conceal something. A separate microphone will record speech, including whispers; Islamic suicide bombers whisper texts from the Koran in the moments before they explode bombs.”
IOL
Internet plan for MTV video clips
“US media company Viacom is to begin letting people take videos from a number of its websites to post on their own blogs and sites. The move will mean that clips of MTV-owned shows such as Pimp My Ride will become available.”
BBC NEWS
Estari 2-VU Dual Touch Screen Laptop
“The 2-VU folds like a Laptop but lacks an integrated keyboard. Estari provides a desktop stand that allows you to use the 2-VU like a dual-screen PC monitor. The Estari 2-VU runs Windows XP on a Intel Dual Core Processor 1.83ghz with 1GB RAM, 60GB HDD. Each touch screen is 15 inch in size.”
I4U News
Mobile networks powered by wind
“The world’s first mobile phone base station powered by wind and the sun’s rays will soon open in Namibia. The trial follows a pilot held in Swindon, UK, led by Motorola. Mobile firm MTC Namibia will run the cell. “We firmly believe we need a solution to go into rural areas and the key is speed – we need a quick roll out,” said MTC executive Joachen Traut. “Namibia is a huge country with only two million people – to get power to rural areas is very expensive. “You are paying US $8,000 per kilometre to get a grid power line. And to get on the grid you can wait a year or two to get a power line.”
BBC NEWS
Teenagers Misbehaving, for All Online to Watch
“On Feb. 2, Deer Park officers announced that five teenagers had been arrested for fence-plowing - a recent fad that involves youths taking a running start and hurling themselves into a fence, sending slats flying. The authorities said the teenagers may have been imitating a popular YouTube video posted last year that received three and a half stars and had nearly 70,000 viewers.”
New York Times
Cell phones mobilized to fight AIDS in Africa
“The “Phones-for-Health” project will use software loaded on to a standard Motorola handset to allow care workers in the field to enter critical health information into a central database in real time. It will be transmitted using a standard GPRS mobile connection or, where this is not available, via an SMS channel.”
Reuters.com
Social-Networking Sites Open Up
“Social-networking sites are realizing that if they want to grow their user base – and build a sustainable business model – they need to attract third-party developers. “Social networks have reached a point of maturity, and opening APIs will help them grow,” explains Adam Trachtenberg, a senior manager for eBay (EBAY). The auction powerhouse made its software available so others could easily link to its site. Today, some 40% of its listings are actually posted on other Web sites, providing eBay with billions in revenue from fees.”
Business Week
Comverse demos Second Life on mobile phones
“Software firm Comverse Technology has created an application that runs Second Life on Java-enabled mobile phones, along with other software that allows integrated SMS and instant messaging and the streaming of mobile video directly in-world.”
Reuters/Second Life
Mini heli-bot with insect brain could improve UAV flight
“The bot is a three ounce miniature helicopter with a 200 milligram electronic brain and a visual sensor that’s pointed downward. The helicopter mimics the insect processing of visual cues to figure out how far above the ground it is and how fast it’s going, and according to Franceschini “it never crashes.”
Engadget
In a virtual world, an actual job may be waiting
“Interactive advertising agency TMP Worldwide, which specializes in recruitment, said on Monday it will allow corporate recruiters to hold job fairs and interview potential employees via TMP’s space on the Second Life virtual world.”
Reuters.com
Robotic arm lends a hand after stroke
“In the UCI study, each patient, average age 63, received 15 two-hour therapy sessions, spread over three weeks, designed to improve their ability to grasp and release objects. All worked with HOWARD for the 15 sessions. For seven patients, HOWARD shaped and helped complete movements across all sessions, while six had complete support from HOWARD for only the second half of the sessions.”
Primidi
Intel Prototype May Herald a New Age of Processing
“Intel will demonstrate on Monday an experimental computer chip with 80 separate processing engines, or cores, that company executives say provides a model for commercial chips that will be used widely in standard desktop, laptop and server computers within five years.”
New York Times
Possio introduces GRETA, the GSM fax / printer
“GRETA’s got a 50-foot roll of fax machine paper and an illuminated keyboard to make on the go paper-to-paper transmissions easy as possible. Faxes are sent via tri-band GSM in a 35 ounce, 11.4 x 5.9 x 2-inch housing that has its own independent, internal NiMH battery power supply.”
Engadget
Unlimited mobile music for £1.99 a week
“The service gives mobile phone users access to the big four labels’ music catalogs on-demand for £1.99 (¬2.99) a week, using a player that runs on mid-range feature phones and GPRS or EDGE networks, as well as high-end 3G phones – which Omnifone reckons gives it access to 70 per cent of the world’s phone users. Indie content will follow, it’s expected, as the indies are in the process of setting up their one-stop licensing arm Merlin, announced earlier this month.”
The Register
Fake bloggers soon to be ‘named and shamed’
“Businesses which write fake blog entries or create whole wesbites purporting to be from customers will fall foul of a European directive banning them from “falsely representing oneself as a consumer”. From December 31, when the change becomes law in the UK, they can be named and shamed by trading standards or taken to court.”
The Times
