Technology
drorzel | June 20, 2012In which we look at how the Brave New Publishing World makes it really hard to find something good to read.
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In a recent links dump, I included a link to this post about the current state of publishing, which is a follow-up to an earlier post about the current state of publishing. Elsewhere in my social media universe, this has come in for a lot of derision from anti-publishing friends, particularly the bit where the author complains that there are too many books published. "How can there be such a thing?" is the basic thrust of the thing. "The more books, the better!"…
gregladen | June 7, 2012Here we have a handful of great technological marvels depicted in small videos.
Raspberry Pi Enclosure
ASUS Taichi dual screen
It seems to be running Windows but hopefully that can be fixed:
New Parking Concept
Well ... new 60 years ago, but still:
New Droid Looks Like Budgie
gregladen | June 4, 2012Orville the cat was named after Orville Wright, and when he died, Bart Jansen, the cant's "owner" taxidermied him and, in collaboration with Radio Controlled Flying Objects expert Arjen Beltman, they converted Orville the cat into a working helicopter.
From the daily mail:
Jansen said the Orvillecopter is 'half cat, half machine', and part of a visual art project to pay tribute to his cat Orville.
Jansen, part of the art cooperative Generaal Pardon, said: 'After a period of mourning he received his propellers posthumously.'
Click through to see more photos, and here's the video:
Are these…
gregladen | June 3, 2012The big new of the day in the OpenSource world is that FreeDOS's web site, revised and updated, is out of Beta and fully up and running, here. If you click through you'll find an update on a number of recent changes and updates to the operating system.
Just in case you need to know how to figure out what day of the week it is using only bash scripting (including some awk) click here.
Apparently Windows users have something Linux users don't. But there's a fix, so it no longer matters:
It is done. Almost. As predicted here on this blog but denied by many, it is probably true that with…
jtoney | May 30, 2012
Robots are now commonplace for cleaning carpets (random walk), remote sensing, even swarming. But robot boogie? Fun for some, profound for others. Thanks, MIT!
At the beginning all the robots are waiting for my signal to start. While dancing, they are constantly synchronizing with each other, so if a robot lags behind they will wait for him and the late robot will accelerate. When I remove a robot from the choreography, the others continue dancing. When he stands up again and resumes his dance, he asks the others for a starting position. Then he goes to this position, and starts dancing…
gregladen | May 30, 2012Perhaps.
The project is a collective effort funded by the European Commission, and led by British company Ricardo which develops engines, transmissions, and vehicles systems among other things. Chief among the consortium’s participants is Swedish auto manufacturer Volvo.
Utilizing Volvo’s own automobiles, the project works by stringing together a group of cars in order to form a road train. This train (or caravan if you prefer) allows a group of cars to follow one another along any road autonomously. Guided by a lead truck driven by a professional driver, the group of autonomous autos can…
jtoney | May 29, 2012
Dr. Jim Walsh
The imagination reels. Five dinners with Iran's President Ahmadinejad. What would you discuss? What would be your top questions?
MIT alumnus Dr. Jim Walsh did just that, and will report to us via an interview on Monday, June 4 via a live chat. From the announcement:
My Five Dinners with Ahmadinejad: Discussions on Iran, North Korea, and the Nuclear Age
Jim Walsh PhD ’00 is an international security expert and a research associate at MIT’s Security Studies Program. He is one of a small number of Americans who has traveled to North Korea and Iran for talks with…
gregladen | May 25, 2012I know of a couple of cases where high schools are switching to the use of iPads or other tablets, replacing existing computer infrastructure with the handy and very cool computing device. When it comes to technology, I've never been particularly impressed with school administrations, and K-12 technology departments tend to be a little under-resourced as well, so it does not surprise me that this decision is being made. It is, of course, the wrong thing to do.
I'm not talking about using iPads, I'm taking about canceling funding for future hardware cycles of laptops and desktops so the…
jtoney | May 18, 2012
So it's official. I now own a portion of Facebook, even if it's a very tiny fraction of the some 240 million shares now on the market today, the initial public offering.
The opening price this morning was at $42 per share, but even before they went on the market, some wealthy investors were already jockeying for their own piece. In one extraordinary case:
From the Wall Street Journal:
Knight Capital Group, one of the biggest aggregators of US retail share trading, is seeing orders for Facebook come in from brokerage firm clients -- including one from an investor willing to buy the stock…
kbonham | May 12, 2012No technology is inherently good or evil, it's the use of that technology that determines its value. A blade can be used in surgery to save a life, or as a weapon to take one. The ballistics that enable missiles to destroy enemies also enables the launch of communication satellites and exploration of other worlds. For quite a while, I've been reading +Jeff Jarvis' commentary on these issues in the realm of the internet. His principal argument is that regulation that aims to block technology in order to keep people safe will also block the innovation and potential benefits of that technology…
cevans | May 7, 2012Last week, I wrote a piece for Motherboard about an android version of the science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. The story of the android is truly surreal, stranger than even Dick's flipped-out fiction, and I recommend you pop over to Motherboard and mainline it for yourselves. For the piece, I interviewed the lead programmer on the first version of the PKD Android, Dr. Andrew Olney. Aside from bringing science fiction legends back from the dead, Olney is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Memphis and Associate Director of the same university's…
jtoney | May 3, 2012
With 3D videoconferencing now a reality, teleportation - "Beam me up, Scotty" may be in our future!
drorzel | April 12, 2012The big publishing news this week is the US Department of Justice bringing an anti-trust suit against the major book publishers and Apple for allegedly colluding to force the "agency model" of ebook pricing on Amazon and other retailers, resulting in higher prices for consumers. I already links dumped an article about the detailed charges, and three of the six companies involved have agreed to a settlement that will change the way their books get priced. A couple of the publishers, particularly Macmillan, whose nasty public spat with Amazon kicked this whole thing off, have decided to fight…
jtoney | March 21, 2012
Chester Bennington from Linkin Park performing at Sonisphere Festival in Kirjurinluoto, Pori, Finland. {Kallerna}
Ring tones that are felt, not heard, could be on their way.
From The Wall Street Journal TechEurope blog:
According to the patent application, Nokia is proposing "a material attachable to skin, the material capable of detecting a magnetic field and transferring a perceivable stimulus to the skin, wherein the perceivable stimulus relates to the magnetic field."
Or to put it another way, a vibrating tattoo.
That magnetic field would interact with the tattoo, causing it to…
jtoney | March 21, 2012
Six years ago today, Jack Dorsey sent the first Tweet. Twitter records events in real time. It can also bring history back to life, in a clever way.
What a wonderful way to learn, and remember, history! Join me on the venture - Titanic begins its maiden voyage on April 10, 1912 - I mean, 2012.
Some of my favorite Titanic Tweets:
#captain Titanic is getting a lot of media attention, we must ensure that she is seen in the best possible light.
#crew Jumping into those waters even in a lifebelt will still result in death. Still, it won't happen...
#engineering Titanic is fitted with four…
jtoney | March 13, 2012
This is a 285 micrometer racecar, printed at the Vienna University of Technology. Credit: Vienna University of Technology
Imagine a car small enough for a dust mite. Crazy, right?
Well, with new printing technology, this just might be possible.
The 3D printer uses a liquid resin, which is hardened at precisely the correct spots by a focused laser beam. The focal point of the laser beam is guided through the resin by movable mirrors and leaves behind a polymerized line of solid polymer, just a few hundred nanometers wide. This high resolution enables the creation of intricately structured…
jtoney | March 12, 2012
You might ask yourself, "What in the world is this guy in the white lab coat talking about?"
Something potentially very cool, and possibly beautiful - although mostly fictional -, but it is lost in translation. This is a startling example of why we as scientists must be better communicators!
This scientist is about as effective a communicator as Charlie Brown's teacher:
Thanks, Cara Santa Maria, for sharing!
drorzel | March 5, 2012My timekeeping course this term is a "Scholars Research Seminar," which means it's supposed to emphasize research and writing skills. Lots of these will include some sort of poster session at the end of the term, but I decided I preferred the idea of doing in-class oral presentations. Having assigned that, of course, I felt I ought to give them a class with advice on how to give an oral presentation. I went looking for advice on this, and found that I wrote a guide to giving good PowerPoint lectures back in 2006 (God, I'm a blogging dinosaur...), which holds up pretty well. So, I dusted that…
jtoney | February 29, 2012
"Air guitar" has taken on almost cult status in some circles. How about "couch guitar"?
This video is a clever application of robots, engineering and music.
From the University of Pennsylvania:
Quadrotors designed and built at the University of Pennsylvania perform the James Bond Theme by playing various instruments including the keyboard, drums and maracas, a cymbal, and the debut of an adapted guitar built from a couch frame. The quadrotors play this "couch guitar" by flying over guitar strings stretched across a couch frame; plucking the strings with a stiff wire attached to the base of…
jtoney | February 21, 2012
Brookesia micra sp. n. from Nosy Hara, northern Madagascar.
Imagine a supercomputer suitable for this cute little guy, the recently discovered Brookesia micra.
Developing computers and transistors at smaller and smaller scales is happening at a stunning rate. The most recent discovery, just published February 19 in Nature Nanotechnology takes the prize: a single atom transistor!
From their Abstract {excerpted for clarity}:
The ability to control matter at the atomic scale and build devices with atomic precision is central to nanotechnology. The scanning tunnelling microscope can…