Archive for May, 2008
RFID “virtual walls” could keep tabs on hospital assets
“Simply hailed as RFID “virtual walls,” the creation enables venues to “track tagged mobile medical equipment down to a portion of a single room.” By providing sub-room-level distinction, personnel can locate hardware within a monitored area as tiny as 6- x 8-feet, and although it’ll likely be used to locate cardiac defibrillators and portable ultrasound machines, patients could theoretically be tracked, too.”
Engadget
Novelties – The Magnifying Glass Gets an Electronic Twist
“Sturdy desktop video-based systems that magnify print have long been available, but lightweight, portable devices have become popular only in the past decade, as the size of consumer electronics products in general has shrunk. The new hand-held models typically weigh 9 ounces or less and can enlarge the print on closeby or more distant objects: users can pass the magnifier over a menu in a dimly lit restaurant, for example, or aim it at a grocery display on a store aisle.”
NYTimes.com
Automated recognition of online images
“They found that 256 to 1,024 bits of data were enough to identify the subject of an image. The researchers said this ‘could lead to great advances in the automated identification of online images and, ultimately, provide a basis for computers to see like humans do.’ As an example, they’ve stored about 13 million images picked on the Web and stored them in a searchable database of just 600 megabytes. The researchers added that using such small amounts of data per image makes it possible to search for similar pictures through millions of images on your PC in less than a second.”
Primidi
jive – social networking for your gran.
“jive negates 3 major point of pain, which is currently stopping elderly users getting connected. Getting online one plug router solves this problem by being pre-loaded with ISP setting at POS. So setup is a true plug and play experience. Loading and sharing contact details jive uses friend passes to link a physical persons ID with digital life. A user simply links a friend pass to there friend feed account. This will then seamlessly update all of this data onto betty. No Mouse Needed To operate jive you simply place an avatar onto ‘betty’s’ display. So if you want to send a message you just place betty on the left of the screen, and you can now send a message to that person.”
Ben Arent
Tulane Signs Onto Online Roommate Self-Selection Service
“RoommateClick provides about 10 colleges with customized roommate-choosing networks, where students fill out a questionnaire regarding their living habits (cleanliness, smoking, etc.) and provide profile photos and other open-ended profile information about themselves. Students can then search the closed network to choose roommates if they don’t wish to be assigned matches by the housing department. The cost for universities to use this service is $5 to $10 per student on a sliding scale, according to Bobbi Babitz, CEO of RoommateClick parent company Lifetopia.”
Chronicle.com
TheRarestWords: Intriguing Semantic SEO Project from Russia
“For any given URL, like Microsoft’s or Techcrunch’s
, it shows you the rarest keywords on the homepage (i.e., the ones most likely to give your site some search-engine juice), other sites with related keywords, and a list of categories the site would fit under based on those keywords. For Microsoft, some the rare keywords it identifies are “silverlight,” “biztalk,” “onecare,” “skydrive, “popfly,” “ballmer,” and “ozzie.” You can try your site by going to http://therarestwords.com/YOURSITE.com. TheRarestWords then tries to tap into crowd intelligence by letting anyone add a 100-character definition for each keyword, which could give it a semantic edge in trying to categorize each site.”
TechCrunch
Robots: Haptic Bunny Makes Your Heart go Hippity-Hop
“I had a cat for many years, and what I miss most about interacting with her is touch,” says Steve. So he designed the furry rabbit robot to be laced with pressure sensors so it can sense where and how it’s being touched or stroked. It then responds by making breathing-like motions, purring vibrations, or ear wiggles. And though it sounds like a whacky bit of science, apparently a research study at the University of British Columbia showed that people who stroked the bunny had an emotional response even to this limited feedback, and could identify the bunny’s “emotions” across a range of negative to positive.”
Gizmodo
ProteinDS app enables DJ-style scratching on Nintendo’s DS
“yarglaaaafr’s ProteinDS application is currently in demo mode, but judging by the demonstrative video waiting after the break, it’s remarkably solid as-is. C’mon, it’s a tool that enables users to scratch up tunes via the handheld’s built-in touchscreen — how could Mario not approve?”
Engadget
Web worlds ‘useful’ for children
“At times children were explorers and at others they were social climbers keen to connect with other players. Some were power users looking for more information about how the workings of the virtual space. Prof Gauntlett said online worlds were very useful rehearsal spaces where children could try all kinds of things largely free of the consequences that would follow if they tried them in the real world. For instance, he said, children trying out Adventure Rock learned many useful social skills and played around with their identity in ways that would be much more difficult in real life. “
BBC NEWS
Friday Fun: Tag Galaxy Browses Flickr Photos in Space
“New Flickr photo browser TagGalaxy explores the Flickr tag-o-verse using a planet metaphor. Type in a tag you’re interested in, and TagGalaxy will instantly assemble a system of planets that represent those tags. Click on a planet to browse and zoom photos. Words don’t do TagGalaxy’s beautiful visualization justice, so check out the screencast above for a quick demo if you’re too lazy to head on over there yourself.”
Lifehacker
AudioCubes by Percussa
“Aside from their unique glowing exterior, these cubes are an innovative way to control and even produce audio tracks. Four faces of each cube are equipped with IR sensors to detect distance and communicate with other cubes. The cubes also have USB, a rechargeable battery, and audio in/out. Moving your hands around the sensors changes the MIDI output of the cube. Changing the cubes’ orientation and distance from each other also changes the signal.”
Hack a Day
Flame is the world’s most advanced — and Dutch — walking robot
“By mimicking the way that humans actually fall forward when walking, this robot comes insanely close to the real thing. Usually, walking robots are energy-hungry propositions, but this is the first that’s both efficient and stable. Inside Flame are seven motors and a balance “organ” loaded with stability algorithms. By measuring each step, the robot adjusts stance width, speed, and gait on the go.”
Engadget
Nagging service for dieters
“WeightNags, which was just launched by Texas-based ConnectWorks Media, needs nothing more than a customer’s email address to get started. In exchange, it will hound that customer once a week for free in the hopes of motivating him or her to exercise and lose some weight. Of course, we all know that emails can easily be ignored and deleted in the blink of an eye. Customers who don’t trust themselves to take WeightNag’s emails seriously can also request weekly nags by phone. All they need to provide is their phone number and first name; the cost is USD 4.95 per month.”
Springwise
ATTIGO TT: The Touch Screen Turntable
“The ATTIGO TT was created by Scott Hobbs, a student at Dundee University studying innovative product design. For his final year project he’s created a touch screen turntable that lets DJ’s loop, sample and scratch wave forms just as you would a record. The size of the touchtable is approximately the same as a standard turntable, making the physical interaction nearly the same. Where this takes off is in the flexibility and features included right at your fingertips, no longer locked up on a computer screen.”
PSFK
LG Display showcases two-sided LCD panels
“2.2-inch (160 x 120) and 15-inch (2,048 x 1,536) versions were reportedly announced, both of which boast reflectivity of 20-percent. Put simply, the panels can display different images on the front and back sides of the glass substrate, and ideally, they’re suited for use in mobile devices where the main and secondary displays could actually be the same device. No word on when these things will actually make their way out to handset / TV manufacturers, but we’re certainly digging the possibilities here.”
Engadget
ScribbleLive: Two Guys In Canada Launch Sweet Liveblogging Platform
“I am just sitting here watching them liveblog and it is definitely an improvement over typing in WordPress and constantly hitting save, and forcing readers to constantly hit the refresh button. For people watching the liveblog, it updates automatically without having to reload the page. Since it is Ajax, you can watch liveblogs on your iPhone and it will just scroll. Another nifty feature: you can e-mail text or photos from your phone (or anywhere) and the content appears directly in the post. Also, readers who are logged in can reverse the order of the entries, so they can read the liveblog from the beginning, or see the most recent additions up top.”
TechCrunch
Swinxs: a toy for active play
“The Swinxs is a unique games system which encourages children to move and run while they’re having fun. Designed for active indoor and outdoor play the Swinxs consists of a games console and four colored wristbands. The lime green, clover-shaped console is just like a talking computer; it communicates, cheers players on, explains games, referees and keeps game scores. It has an RFIDRadio-frequency identification 
reader, long-lasting battery and is light and durable enough to take outdoors to the beach or the park. The funky RFID wristbands (X-S tags) are worn by each player and allow individuals to interact with the console. The X-S tag is embedded with a microchip which enables individuals to start a game, check their performance and store their personal profile.”
Gizmag
Ikea Invades Not Only NYC, but The Sims Game Too
“Last year our friends The Sims got a trendy H&M wardrobe upgrade, but let’s face it, their home decorating style was still a bit on the generic side. Now you can give it a stylish Ikea makeover thanks to a new plug in for Sims2 created by the Swedish home furnishings giant. The Ikea Home Stuff pack includes bookcases, sofas, chairs, beds, wall art, lighting, and a bunch of other goodies that will allow you to endow your Sims house with the trendy, although slightly familiar looking, Ikea style”
PSFK
Handheld thermal imager
“The device combines infrared and visible-light images – now you can simply glance/scan back into a room to see if you left the iron/oven/soldering-iron on.”
MAKE
Displays: Epson Proud of Its 13 Inches of E-paper
“Epson just unveiled their newest flagship demo, a 13.4-inch display with 3104 × 4128 resolution and pixel density as high as 385ppi. Contrast ratio is also quite good at 10:1 (the WSJ is somewhere around half of that) and reflectiveness is 40% (which must be good if they are promoting it, right?).”
Gizmodo
Can a Dead Brand Live Again? – Rebranding – River West Brands
“River West acquires brands when the products themselves are dead, not merely ailing. Aside from Brim, the brands it acquired in the last few years include Underalls, Salon Selectives, Nuprin and the game maker Coleco, among others. “In most cases we’re dealing with a brand that only exists as intellectual property,” says Paul Earle, River West’s founder. “There’s no retail presence, no product, no distribution, no trucks, no plants. Nothing. All that exists is memory. We’re taking consumers’ memories and starting entire businesses.” The other interesting thing is that when Earle talks about consumer memory, he is factoring in something curious: the faultiness of consumer memory. There is opportunity, he says, not just in what we remember but also in what we misremember.”
New York Times
SmallWorlds Brings a Third Dimension to Web 2.0
“SmallWorlds revolves around a characters’s room, which resembles a house one might find in The Sims. Users can furnish their rooms with TV sets that feature YouTube videos, posters of Flickr photos, Twitter messageboards, and stereos blasting tunes from Last.fm and SeeqPod. Then they can invite their friends over to their rooms, where they can view videos, photos, and songs together – a feature that will likely have mass appeal. The site facilitates meeting up with friends by assigning each room with a unique URL that will immediately transport avatars to their destination.”
TechCrunch
A robotic brain-computer interface
“Our approach consists of implanting a small robotic device (and accompanying control algorithm) with many individually-motorized electrodes that each autonomously locate, isolate, and track a neuron for long periods of time. To further complicate matters, we wish to find signals only from neurons dedicated (‘tuned’) to a particular task, say controlling an ‘arm reach.’ While the primary aim of such technology is for a neural interface for neuroprostheses, such a device may also advance the state-of-the-art experimental techniques for electrophysiology”
Primidi
FakeTV emulates human watching the tube, supposedly discourages thieves
“The FakeTV is a strobe that sets up in an occupied room at night and flashes up beams of light. From the inside, we can imagine it looks fairly curious, but from the outside, it gives prospective burglars the idea that someone is actually awake and watching a television program. It promises to produce the effects of “scene changes, fades, swells, flicks, on-screen motion and color changes,” just like they were generated by a bona fide set.”
Engadget
Regal, RealD in 3-D Partnership
“Movie exhibitor Regal Entertainment Group said on Tuesday it reached a deal with privately held RealD 3D to upgrade 1,500 screens with 3-D technology in what analysts hope is a sign that theater operators’ digital conversions are finally gaining momentum.
The Regal deal is the largest commitment to 3-D by any movie theater chain, the companies said, raising the number of screens running RealD’s 3-D technology to over 3,500.”
I4U News
Braaaaaaaains: Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Lets You Deactivate Selected Parts of Your Brain
“Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation is a process in which you run an electromagnet over parts of the brain, which essentially turns them off. You may have LOL’d at the idea of Kirsten Dunst and Mark Ruffalo erasing Jim Carrey’s brain while dancing around in their underwear, but this brain altering technology is no joke. While effects don’t appear to be permanent or long-standing, doctors and researchers think it could show how the brain recovers from traumas such as stroke.”
Gizmodo
Green Plug tries to replace the worry warts (Part 2)
“The environmental benefits GreenPlug offers are enormous, like the reduction of power caused by keeping energy flowing to a fully charged device, and the great reduction in waste currently caused by the need to keep manufacturing, shipping and disposing of the billions of AC adapters produced every year (many of which are practically wed to a single product).”
Engadget
“Hairy” Solar Could Radically Boost Solar Cell Efficiency
“The first technique, developed by researchers at UC San Diego, creates ‘hairy’ solar cells, only visible at a microscopic level. In fact, the hairs are nanowires, tiny metallic or silicon structures used to complete very small circuits. Researchers were able to grow nanowires directly onto a cheap conductive surface made of indium tin oxide. Nanowires were then coated with an organic polymer. The second team, a consortium between three German universities (Jena, Gottingen and Bremen) and Harvard, has developed a technique to bond nanowires with spun glass. The approach is based on a kind of high-tech ‘sandwich,’ whereby nanowires are placed between a highly conductive bottom layer and a metallic top one, with spun-on glass forming a ‘spacer layer’ to prevent the circuit from shorting. This means that current can run smoothly along the nanowires and could lead to a completely new class of efficient integrated circuits.”
EcoGeek
Sensor-dentures reveal the secret life of tongues
“Knowing the pressure the tongue exerts on the teeth during some speech, for example when making a “T” sound, has been particularly difficult, says Payan. “This closure of the vocal tract allows you to pronounce this consonant,” he explains. “To model this, you have to be able to estimate the level of force applied by the tongue.”"
Boing Boing
Gearing Up for the .Car Era
“ATX is working alongside the Connected Vehicle Trade Association to corral car companies and suppliers at October’s SAE’s Convergence 2008 conference in Detroit to agree on how to adapt the web to the automotive environment. It’s also proposing a .car top-level domain that would support websites designed specifically for vehicular applications. The idea is to create standards everyone can work under.”
Wired.com
BookRabbit sets out to “scrobble” bookcases
“People will find books they’ll like through their social network, but interestingly they will be able to tag up pictures of their bookshelves with a Flash-based application which lets them explore visually instead of via text. A little like Last.FM’s Audio Scrobbler software or Songkick’s artist profiler, BookRabbit’s “Automatic Bookcase” technology scans uploaded photos of bookcases against the ISBN database to populate a user’s profile and allow them to share tastes more easily. Initially the classifications will be monitored and regulated by BookRabbit, with the aim of reaching a ’self monitoring’ Wiki model in due course.”
TechCrunch UK
Pet Urns: Digital Picture Frames Meet Pet Urns
“The urn can handle up to 75 pounds of pet remains—if you have one giant dog or many smaller ones that you mix together—has a 7-inch screen and 256MB of storage for your photos and audio recordings. Yes, we said audio recordings, which can play back your pet’s various noises for you to enjoy from the comfort of your couch.”
Gizmodo
Robot surgeon removes brain tumor from Canadian, will see more patients soon
“Doctors (the human kind) were able to use remote controls, an imaging screen and the neuroArm in order to successfully remove a brain tumor from a 21-year old woman. Hailed as the first procedure of its kind, the team already has a line of patients waiting to receive similar surgeries, and the mechanical hand is being praised for its precise movements and delicate nature.”
Engadget
Security: Samsung OLED Passport Is Perfect for Secret Agents, Plastic Surgery Junkies
“For some reason, Samsung SDI and German company Bundesdruckerei think that their new passport with a 700µm (tiny) polycarbonate data page, which contains an active matrix bendable 300µm (really tiny) OLED display—capable of displaying video or text regarding the passport holder—is the next thing in border security. [...] The display itself won’t use any batteries: it will be activated by a reader that won’t require any contact, which will transmit electricity using induction.”
Gizmodo
Medical Scanning with Cellphones
“Bioengineering professor Boris Rubinsky and his team have designed a portable medical scanner that can be plugged into a mobile phone which can gather and transmit X-ray or ultrasound data to an external, remote computer processor. After the processor converts the raw data, it immediately sends the imaging back to the cellphone screen for analysis.”
PSFK
The Sound Index
“Every six hours the Sound Index uses IBM’s Semantic Super Computing to crawl sites like Bebo, MySpace, Last.FM, iTunes, Google and YouTube to find out what people are writing about, listening to, watching, downloading and logging on to. From this, the site works out the most popular 1000 artists and tracks on the web.”
PSFK
Flexible, lightweight, 1-millimeter thick, 125-inch plasma display
“At a low-key unveiling on May 15, Shinoda Plasma announced plans to exhibit the 3 x 1 meter, (9 feet 10-inches x 3 feet 3-inches) plasma tube array (PTA) display, which consists of 3 seamlessly integrated 1 x 1 meter square sub-modules and offers a resolution of 960 x 360 and weighs in at 3.6 kilograms (8 lbs), or about 10 times less than a conventional plasma display. Shinodo Plasma is also reportedly intending to begin small-scale production of a 150-inch (3 x 2 meter) version this autumn.”
Gizmag
Upgrading the Prosthetic Hand
“The Fluidhand prototype [...] has flexible drives located in each of its finger joints, enabling the wearer to move each finger independently. Lightweight miniature hydraulics are connected to elastic chambers that can flex the joints of the fingers. As sensors on the fingers and palm close around objects, nerves in the amputation stump pick up muscular sensations so that the amputee can use a weaker or stronger grip. The prosthetic provides five different strengths of grip. “It is so intuitive that learning to use the device only takes about 15 minutes,” says Schulz.”
Technology Review
Bioscrypt unveils new VisionAccess face reader
“It uses a real-time 3D surface scanner to read the entire facial surface structure of a person’s face, in invisible near-infrared light. The user simply has to glance at the console at a distance of between three to six feet. The system can also be used in conjunction with proximity cards, smart cards and tokens for multi-factor authentication.”
Gizmag
Virtual Reality: Virtual Fitting Room Turns You Into An Online Paper Doll
“Aveilan’s Awesaba is a program that lets you create an online mannequin of yourself. To use it, you upload a photograph of yourself in a specific pose – face forward, standing straight, with your arms at your sides a little out from your body. You then have a virtual you to click and drag clothes onto.”
Gizmodo
Startups: Rifflet, Like Twitter For Music
“a social networking site in which users can share 1-minute clips of music they’ve had bouncing around in their heads, just to get it out there. Others can then download these tracks, respond to them or even incorporate them into songs of their own.”
Gizmodo
Design: Cubescape Makes Isometric Art Easy
“Cubescape, a free design tool from code wizards The Man in Blue, is a refreshingly easy way to design a great-looking logo, send a memorable message, or just doodle with the simplicity of stacked blocks. The controls are super-simple, consisting of colored and clear blocks you drop and arrange into patterns and a tool to destroy your errors.”
Lifehacker
Blabnote: The Voice-Only Social Network. Say What?
“To login to the network, you simply call Blabnote from your phone, which uses caller ID to match you to your profile. From there, you can vocally enter any number of commands. For example, if I wanted to create a group for TechCrunch fans, I might say, “Create Group called ‘Team TechCrunch’”. Members can be added by saying, “add Mike and Mark”, and you can send messages to group members in a similar fashion. Blabnote has no shortage of obstacles to overcome, to put it mildly. For one, the entire system is going to rely on voice recognition, which isn’t exactly a perfected technology. Imagine creating a very personal voice message and sending it to an ex-girlfriend on accident – the setup is ripe for disaster.”
TechCrunch
Xo Laptop 2.0: OLPC XO Laptop 2.0 Has Dual Touchscreens, Looks Amazing and Future-y
“About half the XO 1.0′s size and more like a foldable book, it does away with the keyboard and trackpad to go totally touchscreen—that’s right, dual touchscreens, straight out of the future, like a kid’s book in Minority Report. Folded all the way out, the displays work like a single continuous one, for say, a sweet game of Pong. Like XO 1.0, the display by Pixel-Qi will look fine indoors or in bright sunlight. Unfortunately, it really is from the future: Due in 2010, they’re aiming for $75 and one-watt power consumption.”
Gizmodo
Round LCD Displays unveiled by LG Display
“LG Display unveils the world’s largest 6-inch elliptical and 1.4-inch circular-shaped LCD displays. The 6-inch elliptical LCD measures 78.8 mm in height and is 131.4 mm wide, while the 1.4-inch circular LCD measures 35.5 mm in diameter. Both LCD displays are capable of displaying up to 262,000 colors and have a near 160 degree viewing angle.”
I4U News
Spotigo promises Wi-Fi mapping within 5 metres
“German Wi-Fi specialist Spotigo has managed to compile a Wi-Fi radio map of London and other major European cities, enabling it to locate any Wi-Fi device within five metres – and it promises to have the rest of Europe mapped within a year. Using the Spotigo database any Wi-Fi device can compare the locally-available Wi-Fi hotspots with known locations and work out where it is, offering location information within seconds rather than the minutes it can take to get a GPS fix.”
The Register
Ikan Wireless Scanner
“The system consists of a small kitchen appliance about the size of a toaster (shown at right). Once registered, the unit scans barcodes on empty products as you finish them which automatically adds them to a virtual shopping list accessible online. When you’re ready to buy new groceries, simply submit the digital list and everything is delivered within three hours. The Ikan also promotes a cleaner environment by listing the most effective method of recycling each spent container.”
Cool Hunting
Samsung Develops World’s First 240Hz LCD Panel
“Samsung has announced that it has developed the world’s first Blue Phase technology that allows it to achieve a 240Hz driving speed for high-speed video. The Blue Phase LCD panel will provides viewers with more natural on screen motion. Samsung says that it will unveil its first panel sized at 15-inches at the SID 2008 International Symposium later this month in LA. The design of the Blue Phase panel is called extremely cost efficient and Samsung says that the Blue Phase panels don’t require liquid crystal alignment layers like today’s most widely used LCD modes.”
I4U News
London supermarket secretly photographs alcohol/cigarette buyers, wants national database
“The system alerts a cashier if it ‘recognises’ someone who has previously been unable to prove they are 18. It is believed to be the first time a British retailer has used the technology in this way. The software takes measurements between key points on the face to make a template of a person’s features that is stored as a “token”. Customers’ images are monitored and relayed to a control centre to be compared with under-18s already on record. Future options include other retailers linking the scheme to their shops to create a giant database. “
Boing Boing
Virtual schools see strong growth, calls for more oversight
“Enrollment in online classes last year reached the 1 million mark, growing 22 times the level seen in 2000, according to the North American Council for Online Learning. That’s just the start, says a new paper by the Hoover Institute, a conservative think tank at Stanford University. Its authors predict that by 2019 half of courses in Grades 9 to 12 will be delivered online. The efficiency of online learning accounts for this growth. But there’s little research assessing the quality of these programs, which some experts say don’t have enough official oversight.”
csmonitor.com
Epafi touch communicator
“Epafi is a pair of bracelets built to simulate the common and playful exchange of touch amongst mates, loved ones, or even close friends. Whenever either of the wearers touch the bracelet worn on their wrist, the location, pressure, and movement of the touch is replicated on other wearer’s wrist. The bracelets connect each wearer via wireless radio and allow for a form of communication that could be whimsical and fun, as touch often is, or it could grow to be a more intricate form of bodily communication.”
MAKE
Superpowerful small wind turbines light up the night
“Developed by an inventor named Doug Selsam, the new turbines have rotors just 14-18 inches in diameter, but can produce 200 watts in a 20MPH wind, and much more than that at higher wind speeds. The trick is using high-strength carbon-fiber materials that allow several rotors to be hooked up as one — in strong winds a thirteen-rotor system can produce enough juice to blow out a bank of car headlights “like flashbulbs.” That’s pretty impressive — especially since the system is light and balanced enough to be held up with one hand.”
Engadget
Wikipedia: Google Maps Integrates Wikipedia, Geotagged Photos
“Once turned on, Wikipedia points of interest show up on the map as a “W” and images show up as small thumbnails. Clicking either will give you a closer look at the object. Both tools promise to bring an excellent layer of information to the already impressive Google Maps, and who knows—soon Street View may be overshadowed by a wealth of geotagged pics.”
LifeHacker
Picky Traveler? TripKick Rates Individual Hotel Rooms
“The site’s founders have spent the last year analyzing the individual rooms of over 250 hotels, mainly located in major metropolitan areas. This impressive feat was made possible by a trend in hotel architecture: hotel rooms typically vary within a floor, but are consistent moving vertically up a building (for example, room 105 and 205 would be the same, but 102 would differ). Many rooms have been documented with an extreme level of detail, listing the size of the room, any possible noise concerns, and even the view a guest can expect from the balcony. Users can ask the site to recommend a room based on this criteria. Each hotel also receives an overall review, along with a listing of information such as the availability of WiFi. Visitors to the site are encouraged to leave their own reviews, and they can request for a hotel to be added to the database if it isn’t there already.”
TechCrunch
Instopix – Visualising chat as you type
“While you are having an IM conversation with a fiend on MSN Messenger, if your contact talks about something like a film, the Instopix plugin will bring up information about the film with links, even video. Here’s a demo. The program is a part of a viral strategy for ThoughtTrail, a Semantic Desktop and Semantic Web platform. ThoughtTrail is a reusable libary with functions like the ability to quickly do phrase-finding and web searches, achieved with a plugin. The main code is cross-platform, Python coded.”
TechCrunch UK
Welcome to MapTube from CASA: A Place to Put Maps
“The main principle of MapTube is that shared maps can be overlayed to compare data visually. For example, to see a map of the London Underground overlayed on top of a map of population you simply go to the search page and enter the keywords “tube” and “population”. Then click on the two relevant maps to add them.”
Digital Urban
Geolocate Comments in Panoramas: Street View in China by City 8
“Systems such as Google’s Street View provide a blanket coverage of the road system but in reality are little more than ‘eye candy’. City 8 on the other hand allows users to tag information inside the panorama – creating a simple yet effective way to geolocate comments and info on the urban environment.”
Digital Urban
Giant Missile Command: The Best Use of Multitouch to Date
“So, multitouch has some interesting applications, but all pale in comparison to playing a two-player version of Missile Command. The clone was installed by Steve Mason at the Obscura Digital production studios’ massive 8′X4′ multitouch wall—and as you can see in the video after the break, It looks like a good time, not to mention a decent workout.”
Gizmodo
TuneUp Brings Order To Your iTunes Library (For a Fee)
“In practice the cleaning functionality works well. Even after stripping all ID3 data embedded in MP3s from a portion of my music library, TuneUp was able to correctly identify songs at least 90% of the time. The system that is used to compare potential data and album art was especially useful, as it allowed me to choose which album each song belonged to (I no longer have Led Zeppelin’s “IV” scattered across four different Greatest Hits albums).”
TechCrunch
User Generated Subtitling in China
“User generated subtitling has already become a worldwide phenomenon as passionate fans add local language subtitles to their favorite movies and TV shows almost as soon as the media is released. In China, virtually every American TV show can easily be found on the major video sharing sites with a simple search. Videos are on-demand and available without ever having to download or even go to the local pirated DVD store. To create the subtitled videos, media is typically downloaded via Bit Torrent and subtitles are crowdsourced online via BBS forums. It can take as short as 6 hours for movies to be subtitlted and put online.”
PSFK
Lumeta’s “peel & stick” solar panels can blanket a roof in under 35 minutes
“The panels use traditional roofing adhesives, that’ll be familiar to regular ol’ roofers, and save the process from drilling holes and bolts associated with the regular rack systems required to mount solar panels. Right now this process is targeted at commercial projects — you can watch a pair of guys install 2.25 kilowatts of solar modules onto a California roof after the break — but hopefully residential applications won’t be far behind.”
Engadget
Powerset Launches Showcase For User Search Experience
“But what user can see is how effective a way it is to gather information quickly. For someone doing research, Powerset effectively removes a number of steps towards getting to the final information. It is particularly effective when the information needed is on many different web pages. For example, a query on Powerset of “when did earthquakes hit tokyo” yields stunning results. Try this query at Google or even wikipedia to compare – instead of just picking out keywords that are in your query and on a web page, Powerset is actually making some sense of the content included in the wikipedia pages”
TechCrunch
E-Ink: Ultra-Shapable E-Ink Becomes Reality This Fall
“New “ultra-moldable” E-Ink cells are 40% thinner, can be cut into unique shapes, and even curved.”
Gizmodo
Jdome: JDome Gives First-Person Gamers 180-Degree Vision, Gives Me Headaches
“John Nilsson is the man behind the jDome, an invention that will give gamers a massive 180-degree field of vision instead of the usual 15 to 20 degrees they get from their monitors. All you do is put the jDome in front of a projector, mirror the image in the projector, change the Field of View and you’re good to go.”
Gizmodo
TimeTube: The Timeline That YouTube Should Build
“Links to each video are situated across a horizontal timeline, with emphasis placed on the most popular videos (they appear bigger). Users can expand or contract the timeline to isolate a particular time period, and the viewing window features a handy “next event” button.”
TechCrunch
embrace-me
“A fitted dark-blue canvas hoodie sports the collection’s abstracted logo in a pattern made of a futuristic silver conductive fabric. When two people wearing the hoodies embrace they actually power each other up through that pattern. The symbolic energy transfer becomes fully actualized and the embrace is instantly translated into an explosion of light and sound.”
Studio 5050
Cellphones: HandTalk Glove Turns Sign Language Into Words via Cellphone
“…it translates sign messages through a cellphone as opposed to a bulky computer. And the best part is that the device uses fairly inexpensive materials to work its magic. Basically, the glove operates using flexor strips in the fingers that send signals to a chip regarding their position. The chip interprets that data then sends it wirelessly to a cellphone configured with a vocabulary that corresponds with the gestures. The cellphone converts that information into a text message and then into speech using an off-the-shelf program. So far, HandTalk has been able to learn 15 of the 26 letters in the American Sign Language alphabet, and the team plans on adding pressure sensors and accelerometers to account for more complex gestures that make up the difference.”
Gizmodo
Tag the World With GeoGraffiti
“Now in public beta, GeoGraffiti
is a free “Verbal Bulletin Board” that allows you to record and share location-specific voice notes, or “Voice Marks”, whether you’re on the go or in front of your computer. Find a new coffee shop that you love? Call up GeoGraffiti, and leave a Voice Mark to let the world know. The uses are pretty interesting: traffic cam warnings, cool restaurants, and public restrooms are a few that come to mind without even thinking.”
TechCrunch
Biometrics: New Biometric Face Scanner Can Tell the Difference Between Identical Twins
“It does this by using an infrared scanner to analyze a whopping 40,000 data points on your face. This is a good thing, because Sagawa Advance’s scanner is used as access to high-security areas such as power plants and medical factories where they’ve got to make sure that it’s really the plant supervisor entering and not his evil twin bent on the destruction of the human race.”
Gizmodo
Portable wireless backpack takes pictues and keeps you stylish
“The PORTA2030 from 2006 is a mobile data sensing storage transmission unit that consists of a wireless hard drive (the WL-HDD2.5), a 1 GB flashcard and an open source backend. The device functions as a portable data sensing storage transmission system that can stream images to function as a simple communications device.”
MAKE:
Doko: Tween Social Networking With A Twist
“The game revolves around metal discs about the size of poker chips that are emblazoned with unique identifying tags. Friends are encouraged to trade discs with each other, which accrue virtual points on the Doko website (these in turn can be exchanged for real-world prizes). Dokodiscs will be available for purchase at retail stores including Toys R Us. Kids are encouraged to register on a family-friendly social networking site, where they are assigned overly innocuous screen-names based on their favorite number and animal (I was given musmus13, a real keeper). From there, they can enter the codes found on each coin to receive their Doko Points, which can be traded in for prizes. “
TechCrunch
Fujitsu develops world’s first hi-def train simulator
“Because the simulator uses HD video of real-world train tracks, potential drivers of the 08.40 to Bristol Temple Meads can catch realistic glimpses of signs, buildings and other landmarks along the route. Footage can even be updated through a PC, allowing users to swap at whim between views of lots of exciting train lines.”
Register Hardware
Each frame a 35-megapixel photo: JVC develops next-gen Super Hi-Vision
“The new ultra-high res standard would now appear to be set with Super Hi-Vision: 7,680 pixels across by 4,320 pixels high (approximately 32-megapixel images) – and JVC have now released a video projector capable of showing 35 megapixels at once. The 8K4K JVC D-ILA (Direct-Drive Image Light Amplifier) has a resolution more than 17 times the level of standard HDTV, and is now the highest-resolution projection display device on the planet.”
Gizmag
Keep in touch: a tactile-vision intimate interface
“Keep in Touch designed by Nima Motamedi at Simon Fraser University, Canada, is a networked fabric touchscreen designed to support and maintain intimacy for couples in long distance relationships. To achieve this she created a novel sensorial interface by combining the visual and tactile senses together. Each partner is presented with a blurred digital projection of their lover. When they touch their partner’s body, the image comes into focus revealing their features.”
Architectradure
Phone charger incorporates automatic data back-up
“The aptly named “Data-backup mobile phone charger” automatically performs the task of backing-up your contacts whilst your phone is charging, and not only that, the multi-talented device also acts as a portable power supply in case you run out of juice away from mains power, as well as a SD/MMC card reader.”
Gizmag
busting out
“Active Disassembly is a promising technique for recycling electronics that relies on shape-memory connectors inside devices to pop apart under heat, separating valuable components without any manual labor required. Screws have been prototyped that lose their threads, as well as screen housings for laptops that pop apart to separate glass from LCD substrate. A typical cell phone can be broken down in seconds without any need to handle the toxic components”
hyperexperience
Last.fm + YouTube = music tv goodness
“Just enter a last.fm username or music artist you like at the top of this page and hit the ‘Ok’ button. A few seconds and some funky coding later you will be watching your own personalized music channel. Now ain’t that sweet?”
Last.fm + YouTube
Researchers develop copper nanowires for field-emission displays
“the copper nanowires developed by Kyekyoon Kim and Hyungsoo Choi are between 70 nanometers and 250 nanometers wide, and can be “grown” on various surfaces including silicon, glass, metal, and plastic. As Technology Review reports, in the case of field-emission displays, the nanowires would be used to fire electrons at phosphor particles on a screen to light them up. That process would result in displays that are not only thinner than traditional flat-panel displays, but brighter and more energy-efficient as well — assuming they ever find their way out of the lab, that is.”
Engadget
Multitouch Crayon Physics: An Interactive Drawing Board
“Multitouch Crayon Physics”, a table which users can ‘draw’ on with their fingers, creating multi-colored, movable objects. MERB reports that an open-source beta version will be released on May 18.”
PSFK
Verb For Shoe “smart shoe” finally goes on sale for $700
“an embedded computer automatically adjusts the shoe to your feet, syncs with your PC, and communicates with the shoes of others to exchange contact information. We’re not sure why you’d want to drop seven Bens on this functionality (we’d rather carry a cell phone and laptop and wear non-ridiculous shoes, you know?) but hey, if you’re going to be a fashion disaster, you might as well do it with wireless capabilities.”
Engadget
Better Reading on the Small Screen
“In a recent demonstration, researchers showed how the technology, called Seamless Documents, could store a scanned document in a database and analyze its structure and content. The analysis identifies sections and paragraphs, and automatically extracts key phrases that summarize the sections. So when a person pulls up the document on a phone, she can jump to a section labeled with a keyword, or just skip to the last paragraph on a page. In addition, as the user scrolls through the document, software on the phone automatically resizes images, section headers, and plain text, as different elements of the layout come into view.”
Technology Review
Xerox shows off “erasable paper,” hopes to make it available next year
“The text can then be erased on command by feeding it through a special printer, or left to disappear on its own over a period of 24 hours. On the downside, the paper is apparently useless if it’s been folded or wrinkled, or written on with a pen. No word on an expected price for the paper or printer just yet, unfortunately, but Xerox seems to be betting that the savings in paper (and consequential environmental benefits) will be enough to offset whatever premium they’ll likely cost.”
Engadget
average American consumer spending
“an interactive infographic treemap representing how much the average American citizen spends on 84,000 products in about 200 categories, including fast food, car insurance, rent, electricity, garbage collection & so on. larger shapes make up a larger part of spending. individual shapes can be selected & the treemap can be zoomed in & out.”
information aesthetics
Predicting the Trends of ‘American Idol’
“Last month, TiVo said it would predict the loser on “American Idol” by using its own product, StopWatch, which monitors the fast-forwarding and rewinding patterns of 20,000 anonymous subscribers to gauge viewers’ preferences. The announcement signified yet another attempt to flout efforts by “American Idol” to keep its voting results secret. Predictive Web sites already exist, like DialIdol, which calculates the frequency of busy signals on the show’s phone lines, and ZabaSearch, which tracks how often contestants’ names are entered into search engines.”
New York Times
FrameByFrame Makes Stop-Motion Videos a Breeze
“Make your own stop-motion animation videos using your iSight webcam or connected video camera with freeware application FrameByFrame.”
Lifehacker
Brain waves used for faster image sorting
“it takes humans about 300 milliseconds to consciously recognize specific information in a picture — an adult face among children, for example. It takes another 200 ms for the person to react physically, say, by pushing a button as an analyst would do. But even before a person is conscious of what he or she is seeing — about 150 ms after being shown an image — the electrical activity in the brain’s visual cortex has already spiked. The activity is called an event related potential, or ERP.”
Primidi
Sony creates micro-sized fuel cell system
“The tiny power-pack uses methanol as a fuel and controls supply with a hybrid pump, which allows it to regulate the amount of power used based on a system’s needs. The company claims that just 10ml of methanol can power a mobile device through 14 hours of 1seg movie watching. Sure, it sounds good on paper, but does this mean soon we’ll have to visit tiny, methanol refilling stations manned by a team of mice in jumpsuits? Probably not.”
Engadget
AllRise Presents A Civilized Way To Settle Disputes
“I like what I’ve seen so far of Israeli startup AllRise
– a website that allows users to file complaints against anyone or anything, argue their case, have the community choose sides, and ultimately vote on who should prevail.”
TechCrunch
Times: A new RSS application
“Starting with a blank slate separated into three sections you have the freedom to customize your reader into a form that works best for you. Dividing your feeds into sections and making different pages for separate subjects allows one to organize according to their own logic. Headlines and photos from your sources make it easier to identify articles from feeds making for even more efficient browsing. Another useful feature is Shelf, which allows you to save and sort articles for your next coffee break. Just click and drag to your Shelf to read later.”
Cool Hunting
NOVA 3D LED light display runs at 25fps
“Each of the 25,000 suspended lights contains 12 LEDs, and it’s capable of pumping out 16M colors at 25fps.”
Engadget
A Widget That Does Background Checks On Plumbers, Painters, Products, And More.
“A local listings site could install the widget and then anytime someone looked up a contractor, the widget would pop up and show them if the contractor’s license is expired, how much they are bonded for, and whether they have any liens or judgments against them, as well as their credit and bankruptcy history. “In other words,” says Loux, “all of the information that a bank uses to judge you, the consumer—the consumer can now use to judge a business, prior to clicking through.””
TechCrunch
XSketch: Play Pictionary Online With Random People
“XSketch
is a new Ajax/javascript game that lets up to seven users play pictionary with each other. One person gets a word and starts drawing, the other users guess. If someone gets it right, both the drawer and the guesser get points.”
TechCrunch
Hobnox – quality audio and video tools
“the Hobnox Audio Teaser audio engine is a pretty complex Flash tool for sound, mimicking some real-life products, like effects pedals. Users get access to a digital media library and can collaborate with like minded creators and consumers. The lucky few get filtered into some editorial-led Web TV channels, which are quite high quality. Hobnox plans for the Audiotool to be scaled into a full browser-based audio production studio and the Livetool will become a fully functional broadcasting studio for live shows.”
TechCrunch UK
Displays: Fujitsu’s “Zero-Watt” Monitor Uses Zero Power in Standby Mode
“This money-saving monitor miracle is made possible thanks to a built-in switch that shuts down the monitor completely when a signal from the computer is absent—and then abruptly brings it back to life when the signal reappears. This sort of technology will prove especially useful for businesses, which is why Fujitsu is aiming squarely at this market when the monitor is released this summer.”
Gizmodo
Home Tweet Home: Energy-Savvy House Broadcasts on Twitter
“One house twitters about its energy usage, another posts every item in its refrigerator and dozens more provide live data on how much electricity their solar panels are generating. An increasing number of nerdy homeowners are installing monitors on their houses that broadcast information on the Internet about the physical environment in and around where the houses sit.”
Wired.com
RC-12 wireless mini video camera can record itself getting lost
“you may want to consider this so-called RC-12 camera now available from Japan Trend Shop, which is not only smaller than most, but able to be used underwater as well. Apparently, the 2.7 megapixel camera will work up to 30 meters away with the included 1.2GHz Morse typeS receiver, and last for about 45 minutes on a single charge, which is likely more than you’ll ever want to shoot in one go, unless of course you happen to be recording some first-person footage from your next robot laser battle, which we could never possibly get enough of.”
Engadget
H.P. Unveils New Memory Technology
“The memristor, an electrical resistor with memory properties, may also make it possible to fashion advanced logic circuits, like a class of reprogrammable chips known as field programmable gate arrays, that are today widely used for rapid prototyping of new circuits and for custom-made chips that need to be manufactured quickly. Potentially even more tantalizing is the memristors’ ability to store and retrieve a vast array of intermediate values, not just the binary 1s and 0s as conventional chips do. This makes them function like biological synapses, which would be ideal for many artificial intelligence applications ranging from machine vision to understanding speech.”
New York Times
Multitouch surface made out of box, webcam, and glass
“Have a webcam, cardboard box, and photo frame? The folks at Hacknmod MacGyvered their own with just those materials. By simply pairing a fixed camera and controlled light surface, they were able to mimic what others have paid hundreds for, albeit in a decidedly less attractive package.”
Engadget
