Technology Ticks

 

A Mafia boss serving 12 life sentences has 2,900 fans on Facebook. Go figure… or be fan.

Source: NYTimes.com

Adrienne So asks the all important question: “Could someone design an iPod-powering bra* for me?”

Read about the answer at The Independent.

* Talk about alternative energy!!!

 

A phone in a watch is like playing at James Bond. It has a touch-screen dialling system, camera, built-in speaker, 3G capabilities, Bluetooth, MP3, yadda yadda.

But what's cool -- and think about it -- is that it's probably the first practical manifestation of wearable computing/gadgets. Hopefully, I'll be seeing more of it like how Spider Jerusalem's spectacles work. :D

My Grouse: it isn't going to be sold in Asia until much much later. Bleh bleh bleh... :P

Source: LGWatch; Gizmodo

Fucking brilliant and funny folks who take their cooking very seriously and in the only humanly possible way – with science. Think of them as the culinary version of Mythbusters.

They’ve mounted cooking challenges against celebrity chefs like Gordon Ramsey; deconstruct strange cooking like molecular gastronomy; and cook steaks with vacuum cleaners, thermometer and a blowtorch. (I’ve reproduced the video from Youtube below.) Now they’re on a Fife Diet (something to do with getting to a place, eating wrongly and dealing with train conductors).

Without further ado, on to their show lassies and laddies!

Source: Kamikaze Cookery

…And that’s exactly what Multicolr does for you.

The web application searches through Flickr for photos based on a colour palette you choose. In the screenshot above, I chose blue… and got everything related to it.

Great fun for folks who choose things by warm, cool or neutral colours. :D

A more useful application would be their Visual Search Lab where you search for pictures by picking images and entering tags.

Like so…

The guys at Idee aren’t just resting on these image searching techniques.

The feather in their cap would be TinEye (in Beta stage) which takes an uploaded image, compares it to images on the web and tells you where it’s from and been to. Think of it as a visual Google.

 
Marumushi created a novel way of presenting the news. He uses a treemap visualization algorithm to cluster news from Google News into rectangles.

Thus the larger the rectangle, the more it’s being broadcast on the web at that moment. Thus showing what’s really hot and not-so-hot at that moment.

Check back in a couple of days and the rectangles would have changed to reflect new news. 

Lest you start thinking it’s a replacement for Google News, Marumushi has this to say, “Newsmap does not pretend to replace the google news aggregator. Its objective is to simply demonstrate visually the relationships between data and the unseen patterns in news media.”

Source: Marumushi’s Newsmap

 

If you’re up at night wondering whether Santa’s reached your place yet, just log onto Norad Santa to track his movements. Proudly brought to you by the folks from Google Earth & North American Aerospace Defense Command.

Merry Christmas, y’all!

Source: Webware (CNET)

The Elysia Chlorotica looks like leaf and has a leafy-sounding name as well. That’s because well… it lives off the sun and gets energy by photosynthesis, in addition to its normal diet.

And scientists have supposedly cracked the secret on how it “retains ‘stolen’ [from eating algae] chloroplasts and carry out photosynthesis as if it was a plant.”

I’m just wondering if we can use it. We’ll end world hunger (yes, I know it’s a bleeding heart statement) and create a new economic situation ala Walter Jon Williams’ SF Story: “The Green Leopard Plague”.

Thoughts anyone?

Source: Physorg.com

I hate driving lessons. They are hazardous to my health. "Check blind spot... Oi! CHECK BLIND SPOT!!!!" scream driving instructors.

I damn near ran into a car while he was screaming into my ear and making tut-tut noises.

Lousy instructors aside, Fujitsu found a way to make sure that you don't get blind-sided by other cars, motorcycles, bicycles or pedestrians.

They've used 4 mounted video cameras to capture images of the front, sides and back of the car. The images are processed and then converted into a 3D-rendering of traffic around the car. 

Couple it with a “transparent cockpit” and you’re on your way to piloting an EVA!

Source: Fujitsu

 

I love-hate basketball.

I tore ligaments, muscles and walk funny because of injuries sustained during b-ball games. Yet, I can't stay too long away from the bouncy ball, jump shots and highlight reels.

So when I'm not on court, I trawl the net for NBA information and videos. Stuff like LBJ dunking on heads and Yao Ming swatting shots etc.

But they’re nothing like this website.

You see a game from multiple cameras at the same time. In fact, you can switch on a stalking camera to follow a player at any one time. Even if he’s sitting on the bench. Heh…

I’m so waiting for the 3D version of NBA (apparently scheduled for the Feb 2009 All-Start game)…

Source: TNT OT.com

I saw the duo when I was much smaller… About the size of a super-miniaturised Michelin Man. I was – and still am – blown away by their cheese-hound antics. I had to order them from the local video store (you know those rent-a-video shops).

So it’s cool that Aardman Animations – the guys who made Wallace and super-dog Gromit – are porting their entire portfolio – movies, wallpapers, ringtones, screensavers and sound effects – to mobile devices (Media Bistro). Great marketing move especially when we’re all watching the latest releases on our handhelds.

Oh, and Wallace & Gromit Christmas trailers and wallpapers are available for your phone over at BBC…

Happy holidays everyone!

 

J-Magic launched a mobile image recognition software -- Shoubu Co-de Cheki (literally: Victory Co-ordinate Check) to help women dress up to impress men.

How it works is that you take a headshot, send it in, and Shoubu Co-de Cheki will tell you what kind of outfit best suits your face. In fact, they've tied up Nissen, an online clothing shop, to recommend clothes for you.

Wow... that'll make life a lot easier for a whole lot of people. When will they do something similar for men?

I'd be first in line.

Source: CScout Japan

 
I feel cheated.

I signed up for a 8mbps plan with Singnet. And look at my Speed test results (see below).

Download speed: 1,022 kbps. Upload: 419 kbps.

No wonder, my videos are jerky and scratchy. And my work takes a fucking long time to turn up in my mailbox.

And I wouldn't have found out until I googled "Speed test" after a heads-up chat with my IT guy. Here's a few online speedtests that you can use: Speedtest; Speakeasy.

So on to keeping broadband providers honest!!!

 

New laptops and phones often come with "free" or "trial" software that are unfortunately inefficient, ineffective, space-hogging and unnecessary -- like a bad case of relatives who just won't go away.

Luminaries include: McAfee (which burns memory), MS Office 2007 (which isn't too bad but the UI sucks big time) and Norton Antivirus (the grand-bugger of Memory hoggers).

So why does it happen?

It boils down to marketing new software and convincing owners that they need more expensive hardware to make up for their new toy's "slowness" and other inadequacies. As Afterdawn says, "Space and memory are so cheap and plentiful that developers have seen a way to turn this into a marketing feature and are often put as a priority. (source: Afterdawn)."

Good thing some folks have created an app to de-bloat your PC. The aptly-named PC Decrapifier (free for personal use) "can be used to clean off most of the annoying software that is typically shipped with newer PCs."

Give it a go, spin, twirl and whirl.

Also laptop/phone makers should happily de-bloat your new toy for free/peanuts/gratis. But if they charge you good money to remove Bloatware that they've put inside in the first place... well, raise hell!!!

This little white button on the left zaps you into good posture. It's called the iPosture (is there something that doesn't have an "i" in front of its name now?). It works by memorising your desired posture and sending little vibrations (zaps) if you start to slouch and hunch.

Personally, I think it's a great idea. Especially when I've been "turtle-ised" from staring too long at the computer.

Website: iposture.com - Posture for Life

 

"Sugoi!"

Paying and buying stuff by mobile phones is not a new trend. At least it isn't in Korea and Japan. These countries have been doing it for sometime and they've got the infrastructure and business model all set up and running.

While we languish in wallet hell...

Western countries are trying to replicate these ideas but there are naturally a whole bunch of "issues" -- mostly money and rights related -- that keep the mobile phone as unintegrated as possible.

That is quite strange because we use our mobile phones for everything.

Apart from the traditional calling and sms-ing (and now ubiquitous phone cameras), we grab info off the web, mix tracks like a DJ (RjDj), check for the cheapest stuff by scanning bar codes (ShopSavvy), and get up-to-date tourist info via Google Earth.

Perhaps they should learn to work together -- just like the Japanese.

Source: Cell phone shopping makes wallets redundant in Japan | Technology | Reuters

Several years ago, I attended a seminar on future technology hosted by Bruce Sterling.

To him, it's all about information communication, RFIDs and things talking to things -- for example, a bottle of whiskey could communicate via RFID to a handheld reader its contents, history, tags etc. 

Now they're trying to do the same with cars. Hari Balakrishnan at MIT is equipping cars with mobile sensors to send data to a central computer and predict road conditions.  

There's another professor at Boston University who's experimenting with using car signals to communicate with other cars -- sort of like the telephone game where a message is passed down along a chain of people.

Food for Thought: would the message will be corrupted when it's passed down the car chain?

Source: http://dvice.com/archives/2008/11/outfitting_cars.php

This MP3 player, designed by Kang Min-Kyung, Kim Tae-Seung and Og Jeong-Min, uses a tap-and-water metaphor to represent the music player and music.

The metaphor works as you can see from the photo.

But what's really really cool is that the designers took the tap-and-water thing further. You can start/stop/pause the music by "kinking" the line.

From Yanko, "The supply of water stops whether the hose are pressed. If pressure is applied by hand to the earphone line as capacitance technology, the music temporarily stops. And when you relinquish your hold of the earphone line, the music starts again."

Crazy, funky, sexy music player. But how does capacitance technology work in this case? All I know is that if I kink my wires too much, it'll just die on me.

Source: "Music Flow" MP3 by Min-Kyung Kang, Tae-Seung Kim, & Jeong-Min Og (Yanko Design)

This news from Business Week (read it here) is a bit outdated but worth a gander on how Japan's cracking down on smokers.

In addition to non-smoking areas or banned smoking in restaurants, making it illegal to walk around Tokyo with a lit cigarette -- kind of like not walking around in London with an open bottle of booze -- the Japanese have installed "cigarette vending machines have been programmed to sell only to people carrying an age-verification smart card with an integrated-circuit chip inside".

Of course, people will exploit loopholes in the system (a kid used his mom's card and these cards are not required in regular shops) but I think it might just work.

Mostly because of Japan's propensity to obedience.

American President Barack Obama certainly does things differently.

According to Gizmodo, he will be filming his weekly address and putting it up on Youtube (The Washington Post also ran a story on it here).

No doubt, it'll be full of propaganda by his PR staff but damnit, I'm very impressed by his technological savvy and how clued-in he is on Internetizens' behaviours.

At least he knows how to reach out to the people, and because everyone watches Youtube, to everyone else in the world.

PS: Unfortunately White House bureaucracy is forcing him to give up email. Hopefully, he'll find some way to circumvent it.

PPS: Here's a funny Onion video on after-elections Obama supporters... Try not to laugh too loud.

What do you do if someone hogs/interrupts/hijacks conversation but you're too polite to tell him to bug off?

Well, there's help.

Dr Alex Pentland of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has created software programs "that tell speakers whether they tend to interrupt others, for example, or whether they dominate meetings with monologues, or appear inattentive when others are talking."

In order to create a database for his programs, Alex Pentland uses "Reality Mining" where he equipped "people in banks, universities and other places with customised smartphones or thin badges packed with sensors to pick up data on the timing, energy and variability of their speech."

Perhaps -- I cross my fingers and toes -- we'll see these programs soon.

Read the full article at New York Times.
(Damn good newspaper!!!)

 

Putting Google Earth on the iPhone is brilliant!

For one thing, it's more useful than your Lonely Planet guidebook -- as the restaurant, bars, what-to-do and where-to-do information are constantly updated by Google Earth fanatics in real-time; not print-time  (CNET's informative wonderful review) .

I wonder how would travel publishers respond? Would they put out their own Google maps where users pay for updates? Or would they simply fold up en-mass?