Monday, March 31, 2008

Gearing up for Google Docs.

It's coming, folks. Google Docs is a nice little document suite with word processor, Excel-style spreadsheet, and (admittedly) fairly mundane Power Point visual presentation applications all for free and all based online. There's also Google Gears, which allows users to take online applications offline. Let's say you're on a train and you want to type up a quick paper. You don't have internet access, so log onto your Google account, load up Google Docs and write your paper. Once you get to your destination and your internet access is restored, your paper will then be uploaded onto your Google account and stored on their server. This is the world of taking online apps offline. The problem is, currently only Google Reader (Google's RSS and Atom feed reader app) is the only online Google application that uses Google Gears. That, however, will soon change.

Google said on Monday it is taking the next step to make its Web-based software useful in the real world of spotty Internet access by allowing users to edit word processing documents offline.

The world's top Internet company said it will begin over the next several weeks to allow users of its Google Docs word processing application to edit documents without an active Web connection, on planes, trains and other disconnected spots.

The offline feature of Google Docs temporarily stores documents changes on a user's local computer. Once reconnected to the Internet, any changes the user made will automatically be synchronized and stored on Google-hosted computers.

- Source


For things like visual presentations, I think that Power Point is always going to rule the field. Meanwhile, Google's spreadsheet and word processor both have the basic features down and are very user friendly, but they were only available online, which limited potential availability of use for some, especially if you lost your internet connection. Currently, a few pundits are speculating that being able to take Google Docs offline will cut heavily into Microsoft's MS Office share of the office suite pie. I think that's lofty thinking, as many office personnel are often not wont to changing from their learned applications. Google could easily stand a chance though, as it is incredibly easy to adapt to.

The enticement of being able to use Google Docs to send office memos, collectively work on project-shared spreadsheets, and so on will certainly be noticed amongst management. And the lack of having to install, configure, and troubleshoot software bundles and various programs (not to mention license fees) does make Google's Docs suite (pardon the lameness) a sweet deal.

You could be working on a group-project presentation paper where each individual is assigned a specific section. As you work in the office, this document is periiodically updated, not just for you, but for all other users online that are working on this shared project. As you head home you continue to work on it offline during the subway ride. Then, when you get home and you connect to your home network, it will upload and upddate the files, giving all of your co-workers your updated revisions and you their revisions. If you need to, you can use Google's chat feature to VoiP with your co-workers, all editing their respective different sections, updating the entire document as they work via Google's servers. That's the power of the Google bundle. Interoperability across multiple platforms on a unified and widely available distribution format. This takes the slogan of "work smarter" to entirely dizzying new heights.

I, personally, do use Google Docs. It's easy to use, can be used on any computer, and doesn't require any serious computation on the end-user's computer. Google Calendar has already been shown to have a few notices worked in during various updates, ensuring that Google Gears compatibility isn't far away. However, this is the major step that many have patiently been waiting for, and quite rightly so. The potential impact that this can have on business work-teams is immense, and I know of no single work bundle that can provide anywhere this kind of work-based communication structure. Especially not without a serious tech team and definitely not for free.

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Buy some of D.B. Cooper's cash!

I posted about how some Seattle, Washington natives might have found famed then-terrorist, now folk hero D.B. Cooper's parachute. In the never-ending desire to cash in, the man who found a stack of Cooper's ill-gotten loot is now auctioning off 15 of the infamous $20 bills to the highest bidder.

Brian Ingram was an 8-year-old on a family camping trip when he discovered three bundles of deteriorating $20 bills on the shore of the Columbia River near Portland, Ore., in 1980. The money turned out to be some of the $200,000 ransom D.B. Cooper was carrying when he parachuted from a plane after a 1971 hijacking

"My wife and I have discussed it over a few years, and we just decided we wanted to share it with people," said Ingram, 36, of Mena, Ark.

- Source


"Wanted to share it with people," huh? That's one way to put it. Another would be, "we decided that with the recent news story and renewed interest, now would be a great time to cash in on some serious dough! Show me the money, bitches!" Although, good for them. What the hell else are they going to do with a bunch of partially decomposed $20 bills?

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Remember Campbell Brown?

She used to work for the local Richmond, VA NBC affiliate, WWBT. She later moved on up to NBC's national broadcasting lineup occasionally filling in for Brian Williams. She was even rumored to the replacement for Katie Couric on The Today Show, but was passed over in favor of Meredith Vieira. Campbell has since decided to leave NBC and is currently at CNN getting a good healthy dose of airtime on Election Center. She has plans to launch her own show once Election Center is over with, which will be in the same time slot.

"The things that go into putting a new show together — the staff, the graphics, whatever else — that's not my focus," she told The Associated Press. "That's not the sort of stuff that interested me anyway. What interested me was the story, and this landed in our laps. I couldn't have been happier."

Brown figured there were only so many "organize your closet" segments she could do on "Weekend Today" and remain interested.

"The most fun I ever had was on the campaign trail and covering the White House," said Brown, who followed President Bush's 2000 campaign and began at the White House after he was elected. "I knew that in my bones and I know that's who I am and I needed to find a way to express that more than I was able to express that at NBC."

By mid-November, "Election Center" becomes obsolete; Brown isn't going to avoid forever those meetings about what her show will look like. But that's two conventions and a general election campaign away.

- Source


Movin' on up, baby!

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Tone Loc's a good guy.

Want Tone Loc to perform? Sure thing. $400. Another club wants him? No problem. $1,000. The only problem is, the guy that made these deals wasn't actually Tone Loc's manager.

After Tone Loc heard about these two small Detroit clubs being scammed, he decided to do something to help them out. He decided that he would actually perform at these clubs to help the owners recoup some of that swindled money.

A fraudster managed to get $400 from the Red Dog Saloon, and a further $1,000 from Bumpers after he posed as Loc’s manager, promising that the rapper would play shows at the bars last summer.

When he heard about the scam, Loc, whose real name is Anthony T. Smith, offered to play the shows at the bar to help them recoup their loss, says the Detroit Free Press.

- Source


That's some pretty stand-up shit right there. Loc isn't doing the concerts pro-bono, but he didn't have to do the shows. That's nice of him to want to help out those club owners that got scammed. The scam artist has not been caught.

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George Lucas in love...

Ever wonder where Geroge Lucas came up with all that stuff for Star Wars? It's easy. He just wrote what he knew.



Nothing after the jump.



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Crocs &hearts drunks.

Egads! I can't imagine anything as horrible as enjoying a good beer, chasing a 'roo then, suddenly, being chomped down upon by a croc. "Crikeys!" just doesn't seem to do justice.

Queensland crocodile expert Dr Mark Read yesterday outlined his research into the disturbing trends of "humans doing stupid things" around crocodiles.

Most of the attacks were a combination of alcohol, swimming and the dark.

"People are getting cocky and thinking they know what they are doing, which is bad. It is a case of the number of people who continue to swim in known crocodile habitat; in 80 per cent of the attacks people were swimming or wading in these areas.

"About 40 per cent of these attacks were late afternoon or evening when predators like crocodiles are most active and most dangerous.

"The other outstanding factor was 40 per cent of people attacked were acting under the influence of alcohol."

- Source

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Rummies gettin' tased.

Everyone normally thinks of Canada as a pretty laid back place. The home of Maple Syrup (yum!), hockey (fuck yeah!), and curling... Anyways, it turns out that Canada isn't that great if you're that loud and disorderly kind of drunk. A recently revealed report on taser usage showed that there is a pattern emerging of Canuck cops routinely using tasers as a first line to subdue boisterous rummies.

A Canadian Press analysis last November of 563 cases between 2002 and 2005 found three in four suspects Tasered by the RCMP were unarmed.

Several of those reports suggested a pattern of stun-gun use as a convenient means of keeping drunk or rowdy people in line, rather than to defuse major clashes.

- Source


Now, I understand the need for cops to control people when they're getting out of hand. I've seen my share of out-of-hand drunks. I've even been one of them before. A few times... Ahem. But it seems that tasers have become somewhat of a crutch for many cops. If a subject simply will not comply (such as Andrew Meyer) then the use of a taser is justified, and usually much better in the long run. Numerous subjects have died because they refused to submit causing an escalation of needed force. The taser gives that easy way to force submission without exerting extreme physical pressure. The problem becomes when law enforcement thinks it can be used as an immediate form to create instant compliance. Either way, if you're drunk in Canada, behave yourself.

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Word to scientists: stop paying attention to idiots!

Just fucking quit it, okay! I mean it! Fucking stop! Full on, absolute and utter, STOP! It was bad enough that wacko shit-for-brains nitwits were able to muscle evolution out of science classes in Florida, where teachers had to discuss th theory using "code words" such as "changes over time," yet promote the teachings of Intelligent Design. What part of "Science class" do these idiots not understand? Now some fear-mongering numbnuts are trying to fuck up CERN's Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest atom smasher.

This isn't the first time these particular "what if?" crybabies have tried to shut down various kick-ass scientific experiments. Walter Wagner made claimed that the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider in New York would destroy the world. It went live in 2000. And as far as I can tell, I'm still just as here as a I was in 2000. More or less... Besides, isn't entire annihilation worth the price of trying to find the "God particle"?

It seems that basis of this lawsuit against CERN claims that the LHC could cause black holes that will eat the Earth, or killer strangelets that will slowly devour all matter as we know it. CERN, of course, says that this will not happen, though they do admit that the possibility of tiny black holes forming is a possibility.

A 2003 safety review for the LHC found "no basis for any conceivable threat". It acknowledged that there's a small chance the accelerator could create short-lived, mini black holes or exotic "magnetic monopoles" that destroy protons in ordinary atoms. But it concluded that neither scenario could lead to disaster.
- Source


So, what is this "God particle" and why is it so important that it's worth world-wide annihilation? Higgs boson is a theoretical particle that explains how massless particles are able to construct mass in matter. This particle is also the only undiscovered part of the Standard Model of particle physics. Perhaps a better way of explaining the importance of Higgs boson is this:

Matter is made of molecules; molecules of atoms; atoms of a cloud of electrons about one-hundred-millionth of a centimetre and a nucleus about one-hundred-thousandth the size of the electron cloud. The nucleus is made of protons and neutrons. Each proton (or neutron) has about two thousand times the mass of an electron. We know a good deal about why the nucleus is so small. We do not know, however, how the particles get their masses. Why are the masses what they are? Why are the ratios of masses what they are? We can't be said to understand the constituents of matter if we don't have a satisfactory answer to this question.
- Source


The LHC was set to begin powering up in April and to start experimenting sometime in May. Thanks to some whiny Samoan, a wimpy Spaniard and their limp-wristed lawsuit, that date may be delayed.



Damn is this thing cool...


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Korean brainwashing goggles make happy fun time for everyone.

What are these things? No one is really sure. Egadget was just as intruiged as Gizmodo was. The actual article they linked to didn't provide much information either. Apparently is has different "modes" such as meditation, education, no smoking, etc. By "meditation" I suppose they mean the final minutes of 2001: A Space Odyssey. By "education," they mean re-education. And by "no smoking" they mean turn you into a covert CIA killing machine!

As a brainwave management software utilizing special sound frequency, the Cyber MC supports a variety of modes including education, health, no smoking, meditation and more.
- Source


We'll be honest -- there are quite a few things about the Cyber MC brainwave management solution that remain unclear to us, but it's probably for the best. Korean startup Orange Dreams has apparently concocted some sort of eyewear / software combo that can control your brainwaves and calm your nerves, convince you that you really aren't craving nicotine or make you believe that fruits and vegetables really are more delicious than a Cadbury Cream Egg.
- Source


It's not really clear how the Orange Dream software helps you do things like lose weight, quit smoking or meditate, but the general assumption is that it flashes images in your face Clockwork-Orange style to reprogram your brain to associating delicious, flavorful cigarettes with something unappealing like third degree burns or mining accidents.
- Source


So, if you're unafraid of the possible horrors this device might unleash (and by "horrors" I mean turns you Korean), give it a whirl.

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Johnny Lee and the amazing Wii!

I posted this before on MySpace, but I'm reposting it here. Why? Because Johnny Lee is awesome. How awesome? Really fucking awesome. So awesome that he created a Minority Report-style window rotation and movement program using the Wii-mote. So awesome that he used the Wii-mote to create a head-tracking program to simulate personal movement in a virtual 3D space. So freakin' awesome that he used the Wii-mote to create a virtual whiteboard. Yeah, Johnny Lee is that kind of awesome.

Vids after the jump.

Head tracking.

Minority Report finger tracking.


Virtual whiteboard.

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Blu-ray on the go. HD-DVD seen crying in the corner.

I pity anyone that may have jumped the gun and gone with HD-DVD. Not so much the players, as they were relatively cheap, but the HD-DVD drives for computers. Those things were expensive, and now you have an expensive drive with no more media being made for it. How convenient.

Since Blu-ray has officially won the "next-gen" optical disc format war, it only makes since that you'd see Blu-ray drives coming to PCs. Especially since the Blu-ray discs are able to hold such large amounts of data. 50GB to be precise. That's the size of 10 dual layer DVDs! All on one disc! I could archive my entire hard drive, actually all 3 of them, on 5 discs! That's awesome for data hogs like me. And HP is bringing to a laptop near you. Well, near you if you live in Europe.

The big news here is the addition of Blu-ray drives across the board, which obviously replaces the HD DVD option previously found on the models they're replacing. That desirable feature finds its way onto the new Pavilion dv2800, dv6800 and dv9800 series models, which boast 14.1, 15.4, and 17-inch displays, respectively, along with your choice of Core 2 Duo or Turion 64 X2 processors, integrated graphics or NVIDIA GeForce 8400M or 8600M (depending on the model) and even a Blu-ray burner on the 17-inch model.
- Source


Yum. Of course, the way data storage is going and the increasing size of media, 50GB will seem like nothing in a few years time. I still remember getting my hands on a 20GB hard drive and thinking, "it'll take years before I can fill this thing up." Yeah... not quite.

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Super Time-Travelling Mario Brothers?

Jeff Gerstmann, former big-time reviewer and editorial director over at GameSpot, has a write up of Braid over at his new site, Giant Bomb. Braid seems pretty lame if you just read the plot and look at the screens. It's a classic "go save the princess" game being released for XBox Live Arcade and for the PC. It looks just like Super Mario Brothers, except for the lack of Italian plumbers with enormous mustaches. But the resurgence of classic game plots and looks isn't what makes Braid interesting. Not by a long shot.

If you really want to strip it all down to its barest surface, Braid is an homage to Super Mario Bros. You jump on top of creatures to kill them, big plants pop in and out of pipes, there’s a castle with a flagpole at the end of the world, and so on. Of course, if that were all the game did, it wouldn’t be anything special. In fact, it’d probably be actionable. Braid’s big difference is that you have control over time itself. That lets you rewind your mistakes to prevent death, its first useful feature. But it only took a few minutes for me to realize that Braid isn’t primarily a platformer. It’s a puzzle game. You’re eased into the time controls, but each world makes changes to how things work. For one example, you’ll eventually encounter certain enemies, keys, doors, or other pieces of the world that are covered in sparkles. This denotes that they don’t move backwards when you rewind time. So you’ll need to account for that. From there, things get much trickier and very entertaining.
- Source


Sounds pretty cool, huh? I really think that these are the types of games that you're going to see many developers really pushing for. How many times can you really play the same shooter over and over? It's nice that many FPS developers are finally coming around to the blindfire mechanic. One has to wonder if that would have happened without Cliffy B using Kill.Switch as an inspiration for Gears of War. Perhaps games such as Braid and Portal will be the inspiration needed for game developers to try and really think outside of the box to come up with new ways to play. New styles to use, and new challenges to keep players interested.

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Penny Arcade, waffles, and Hitler.

The Penny Arcade boys are heading off to Sakura-Con soon. Jerry Holkins was thinking that serving hot waffles smothered in chocolate ice cream would be a grand idea for the Penny Arcade booth. As usual, there was a disagreement. Mike Krahulik thought it to be a bad idea. Why, I'm not quite sure and the Penny Arcade boys didn't elaborate. Perhaps for fear of a massive mess? Which I can understand. I could only imagine that their booth would be even more swamped once word got out that hot waffles smothered in chocolate ice cream were being handed out en mass for free. Jerry went on to declare that taking a stand against waffles amounts to cowardice. Normally, I side with Tycho... er, Jerry, but not this time. I simply cannot.

Sitting at The Breakfast Club, gesturing to Gabriel over the summit of my "Hobo Scramble," I presented a powerful pro-waffle position. Its core assertion was that we should have hot waffles, smothered in chocolate ice cream, available for free at our Sakuracon booth. He's been trying to talk me out of it for a week now, because he has no vision, and I do: I see waffles leaping out of toasters and into smiling mouths. I don't see what the fucking problem is.

I tried to break down the essential position for him. "You're arguing for a universe with fewer waffles in it," I said. "I'm prepared to call that cowardice."

- Source*


A good point. A good argument made. Waffles leaping into happy mouths, what could be wrong with that? Well, I'll tell you just what the fuck is wrong with that. You know who else likes waffles? Hitler likes waffles. He also likes pancakes and French toast, but everyone knows he was partial to waffles. And the Penny Arcade boys should realize that setting up a booth at Sakura-Con, of all places, and serving waffles, ice cream or no, is strongly akin to reviving the Axis of Evil. What the hell, Tycho! Don't believe me that Hitler was gonzo for waffles? I cite historical evidence...



*Penny Arcade is experiencing a lot of traffic right now and is giving lots of Error 500's. This is most likely due to PAX '08 traffic. I'll fix the link later.

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Saturday, March 29, 2008

Google "turns off the lights."

I'm a big fan of Google. Are they perfect? No. No one is and if they try to say they are, then they're probably even more corrupt than you could possibly imagine. Anyways, Google is trying to do something nice. They're "turning the lights out" on Google's homepage, rendering it as white text on a black background. (known as knockout text) This is meant to promote Earth Hour and is also possibly a wink to various criticisms of Google that using a white background for its super popular search engine is wasting tons of electricity. An alternative web front was created in response and named Blackle. Blackle uses Google's search engine, but has black background with grey text. But does this actually help cut down on used electricity? The answer, it seems, is... "well, sort of, but not really."



The Wall Street Journal's The Numbers Guy discusses a bit of Blackle and references a study showing nominal to nearly no energy consumption difference with LCD monitors. Those big, bulky CRT monitors (that I use) on the other hand, do see noted differences.

Blackle is down today (because of high traffic from recent blog links, according to owner Toby Heap of Sydney, Australia). But the Google cache version of the site’s “about” page, which carries some white screen space from Google atop the black page, explains that the site was inspired by a post this past January on the blog ecoIron claiming that if Google went all-black, it could save 750 megawatt-hours a year (a megawatt-hour is one million watt-hours...). But as ecoIron noted, the savings are most likely to accrue from older CRT (cathode-ray tube) monitors, rather than the more-modern, more-compact, more-energy-efficient LCD (liquid crystal display) screens that have come to dominate the market (representing three quarters of all monitors world-wide as of last year, by some estimates).

On LCD displays, color may confer no benefit at all. In response to my inquiry, Steve Ryan, program manager for Energy Star’s power-management program, asked consulting firm Cadmus Group to run a quick test by loading Blackle, Google and the Web site of the New York Times (which is, like Google, mostly white on-screen) on two monitors — one CRT, one LCD — and connecting a power meter to both. “We found that the color on screen mattered very little to the energy color consumption of the LCD monitor,” said David Korn, principal at Cadmus, which specializes in energy and environment, and does work for the government. The changes were so slight as to be within the margin of error for the power meter. Tweaking brightness and contrast and settings had a bigger effect. The bulkier CRT screen did see savings with Blackle of between 5% and 20%. Mr. Korn emphasized that this was a quick test, not a rigorous study.

- Source


Interestingly enough, many LCD monitors actually use more electricity rendering a black background. Techlogg explains why.

All of our LCD monitor tests showed that Blackle actually causes a rise in monitor power consumption over the standard white Google search engine page. The results also match what is known about LCD design – that the display has to block the passage of light from the backlight getting through to the front of the screen and in order to do that, more power is required.

On average, our four LCD monitors saw a rise of 0.35W by using Blackle instead of Google.

- Source


Techlogg later did another test using a wider array of LCD monitors.

There’s no argument that on CRT monitors, Blackle does reduce the power consumption but it’s not by the 15-watts claimed. We tested the four CRT monitors we could get our hands on and found that only one unit, an older 22-inch Compaq, showed the 15-watts or more power differential.

But with the LCD monitor market penetration worldwide now beyond 75%, it’s the LCD monitor power consumption that’s just as, if not more, important.

The most interesting aspect we found was that of the LCD monitors we tested of size 22-inches or less, all showed an increase in power consumption using Blackle. Beyond the 22-inch mark however, five of the six models showed a fractional decrease in power consumption when using Blackle, except the ViewSonic VX2835wm, which showed a 2.2-watt increase.

- Source


So, it seems that the "Black Google" savior is a myth. Especially considering how prevelant LCDs in today's market are. Add in that the vast majority of those LCDs are under 22 inches and, therefore, actually use more energy to render Blackle and it quickly becomes clear that Blackle will actually boost global energy consumption (albeit, marginally) rather than reduce it. And don't think that Google doesn't know this. Their "Green Czar" even posted a blog entry on it August of last year.

Reducing climate change by saving energy is an important effort we should all join, and that's why we're very glad to see the innovative thinking going into a variety of solutions. One idea, suggested by the site called "Blackle" (which is not related to Google, by the way, though the site does use our custom search engine), is to reduce energy used by monitors by providing search with a black background. We applaud the spirit of the idea, but our own analysis as well as that of others shows that making the Google homepage black will not reduce energy consumption. To the contrary, on flat-panel monitors (already estimated to be 75% of the market), displaying black may actually increase energy usage. Detailed results from a new study confirm this.
- Source


All of this begs the question, "why did Google go black for Earth Hour, then?" Firstly, the didn't go completely black. Just the hompeage did. The move was more about publicity than about hard numbers. The drastic change is a stark contrast to what you normally see, and doing so peaks interest and will help to raise awareness about reducing energy consumption. It is a very effective way to deliver the message. However, unless you use an old-fashioned CRT monitor, you will not actually be saving any power by using Blackle. In fact, it will be the exact opposite. Worry not, energy-consumption-worrisome folk! Techlogg, the same people that initially debunked Blackle's claims, do have a list of five much more noticeable ways to curb your computer's energy use.

  • Turn off your PC after work
  • Drop the screen brightness
  • Switch off your ADSL modem at night
  • Switch everything off at the wall
  • Set your desktop PC power management

- Source

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Friday, March 28, 2008

New GTA IV trailer.



Nothing after the jump.

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Military robots use Wii-mote.

Everyone loves the Wii. Even robotic engineers for the military.

I'm inbetween classes, so this is going to be short.

Engineers at the US Department of Energy's Idaho National Lab in Idaho Falls have been trying out using a Wii Remote to control their bomb disposal robots, reports New Scientist.

David Bruemmer and Douglas Few have modified the military Packbot robot so that it can be controlled using Nintendo's motion-sensitive Wii Remote.

The Packbot, which is made by iRobot, hunts down explosives, disposes of bombs, and checks for land mines to make areas clear for US soldiers.

Packbot can do some tasks autonomously but is generally controlled by a soldier using a joypad, similar to a standard console controller. However, doing things this way requires a lot of concentration, believe the two engineers, and a Wii Remote is much better suited to the task.

Bruemmer said, "Our tests show 90 percent of the operator's workload goes into driving the robot rather than keeping an eye on the sensor data. The Wii Remote is far more intuitive because movements of the hand directly translate into movements of the robot." This would therefore allow the soldiers to be able to pay closer attention to what they're seeing.

iRobot CEO Colin Angle agrees, and said, "Using the Wii Remote to control various aspects of the robot makes a lot of sense."

New Scientist also mentions that the Wii Remote has been used in a variety of other unconventional ways, including manipulating ultrasound images and monitoring movement deficiencies in people suffering from Parkinson's disease.

- Source


Hmm. Who would've thunk.

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Thursday, March 27, 2008

Will Wright sys "um" a lot.

Will Wright's awesome. So is Peter Molyneux, but Petey's awesome in a different way. (yeah, yeah, promised more than he could deliver with Fable) Wil Wright just really seems like that semi-geeky guy next door. Who happens to know an incredible amount about Care Bears. And then you find out he's incredibly geeky. Still, this guy knows entertainment. He built a game around managing cities when everyone else was designing games about keen commanders running along linear levels killing aliens. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

So, have you heard about Spore? Have you seen Spore?

Well, watch Spore.

(btw, this vid is 35 minutes long)




This is the full presentation. A little over 1 hour.




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Safari for Windows == security vulnerability.

Man, I love me some Slashdot. I posted a bulletin on MySpace a few days ago about how Apple was trying to sneak the Safari web browser onto PC users' computers via an update to iTunes. Well, it's a good thing if you stayed away from downloading Safari.

The new Safari 3.1 for Windows has been hit with two 'highly critical'(as rated by Secunia) vulnerabilities that can result in execution of arbitrary code. The first is due to an improper handling of the buffer for long filenames of files being downloaded, and the second can result in successful spoofing of websites and phishing. This comes close on the heels of criticism of Apple for offering Safari as a update for approximately 500 million users of iTunes on Windows by default, and reports of crashes. There are currently no patches or workarounds available except the advice to stay clear of 'untrusted' sites.

The latest version of Safari for Windows makes a mockery of end user licensing agreements by only allowing the installation of Safari for Windows on Apple labeled hardware, thereby excluding most Windows PCs.

- Source

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Screw you, I like Glenn Beck.

I listen to a lot of right-wing pundits on the radio. I like talk radio. It beats the musical radio stations, NPR switches to crappy jazz and classical, Radio IQ loses reception the further I get from Blacksburg, and sometimes I actually learn something. I don't always agree with Glenn Beck, but sometimes I do. I'm a weird political animal. If I were to be illustrated as such, I'd probably look like some freakazoid creation from Spore.

But Glenn Beck is definitely correct to be worried about the economy. I think I could do without the whole astro-geological quasi-philosophical sudden-death analogy, but if that works to get his point across, then I can deal with it.

Let's say a giant asteroid was headed toward Earth right now and experts say it has a good chance of ending civilization as we know it. Let's also say that we've known about this asteroid for years but even as it gets closer and closer our leaders do nothing.

Well there may not be a space asteroid heading toward us, but there is an economic one -- and the threat to our future is just as severe.

Let me give you three numbers that will put this economic asteroid into perspective: $200 billion, $14.1 trillion, and $53 trillion.

# $200 billion is the approximate total amount of write-downs announced so far as a result of the current credit crisis.

# $14.1 trillion is the size of the entire U.S. economy

# And $53 trillion is (drum roll please) the approximate size of this country's bill for the Social Security and Medicare promises we've made.

According to the latest Social Security and Medicare Trustees report (and I use that term loosely since it has the word "trust" in it) released earlier this week, the economic asteroid will first make impact in the year 2019 when the Medicaid trust fund becomes insolvent.

Only an immediate 122 percent increase in Medicaid taxes and a 26 percent increase in Social Security taxes can prevent (or more likely, delay) its impact.

- Source

The rest of the article is much of the same-old. That we don't have enough money for all the fancy services (true) and that we need to drastically shrink the size of the government (true) and so on. What I find interesting in these pieces is that no real solutions are ever offered. And it's not just conservatives saying this kind of stuff, either. Paul Krugman has been saying this for quite some time, too. Right, so... we're fucked. How do we fix it?

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My, how the tables have turned. AMD vs Intel.

My, my, my. It used to be that AMD was the "it" thing to have. (well, maybe not amongst vapid Hollywood social elites. I think Prada still prevails in that category) "You got Intel in your box? WTF!? lolz." Yes, it was a bane for many of us that stuck by Intel. What was even more anoying was trying to explain the performance difference between the two. Yeah, AMD had the best benchmarks from Half Life and a slew of other games. But the shorter pipelines were geared towards that kind of rapid-fire code crunching. AMD could hold a close second, but was never that great for video editing and handling complex jobs in Photoshop. That was where our clunky Intel's truly shined.

Nowadays, Intel's looking not just good, but damn near incredible. When I upgraded to my E6400 Core2Duo, I was blown away. Were the readings from Speedfan accurate? Was my processor truly running under 100ºF? On full load!? Yes, it was. (as reference, my old Pentium 4 ran about 160ºF, which was par for the course) And so the Core2 series became Intel's saving grace, competing neck and neck with AMD across the board. By the time the quad core series began unrolling, Intel had thoroughly stomped AMD. And continues to do so.

Over at PC Perspective they ran AMD's brand spanking new Phenom X4 9850 (2.5 GHz) through the tests. The scores don't look so good against Intel's QX 9x series. In fact, the score look pretty damn dismal.

It wouldn't surprise me really to find out that some of you might not even have known that AMD's Phenom processors had been released. Sure, we had a review up of the technology and have actually done a follow up or two, but to be truthful the new processor from the once-worshiped AMD launched with a thud rather than a bang. The initial launch parts were released at 2.2 and 2.3 GHz, a considerable drop from their expected clock rates and thus performance was poor when compared to anything Intel had n their top-of-the-line Core 2 series.

[...]

The new Phenom X4 9850 processor is a very welcome newcomer to the processor segment and it could be responsible for a rebirth of interest in AMD CPUs. It is far from the fastest CPU was have put through the paces but with the B3 stepping AMD was able to fix the TLB erratum, increase the clock speed to 2.50 GHz and raise memory controller clock rate enough to boost performance across nearly all of our benchmarks. Its price should be attractive to a lot of gamers and enthusiasts as should combining an X4 9850 with a complete Spider platform. Though AMD's components aren't winning the top spot in any of their three markets (CPU, GPU, chipset), they are priced well and perform competitively as a complete solution for real-world gaming and computing making the Spider platform a much more attractive option than it was before.

- Source


Ouch... Basically they're saying that AMD's new chip is cheap and "competitive" with Intel. It used to be that AMD would wipe the floor with Intel on short burst-intensive processing. Obvioulsy, not anymore. Now AMD is trying to simply "stay competitive."

You got AMD in your box? WTTF!? lolz...

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Back in my day we had to CRANK our MP3 players. And go to school uphill, both ways, in the snow. Without a Segway...

Where to look for the greatest tech toys the world has to offer? Why those lovable geeks at Engadget, of course. One of their features is something that really is kind of silly. Or perhaps cool. I'll let you be the judge.

Seems that a company named Thanko (yes, Thanko... 0.o) has released an MP3 player that, get this, uses a crank to charge the internal battery. Making it so that you can recharge the MP3 player, literally, anywhere!

You know what kids in developing nations need besides water, vaccines, and schools? MP3 players... and laptops, lots of laptops. Meet the Cranko, at least that's what we're calling it since Thanko's "Cranking MP3 Player" bores us to the point of Wal-marting razor blades. The 1GB capacity player from Thanko features a flashlight and 10 minute charge per minute of cranking. You know, just in case your spelunking adventures take you too far away from a USB port. Yours now for ¥6,000 or about $60.
- Source


Well, that is kind of cool if you're backpacking or trekking out across the wilderness for a long stretch of time. Goofy as the idea may seem to those in modernized civilization, this actually is a fairly neat idea. Since I'm so close to the Appalachian trail, I see numerous backpackers all the time. You know, what with so many people hiking the entire stretch of the Appalachian (it's actually a very popular thing to do in the backpacking community), I could see a few of them definitely being interested in something like this.

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The thrilla in Mozilla.

I've been using Firefox for quite some time. In my opinion, nothing can compares to it. NOTHING, dammit! Seriously though, it's a sleek and concise browser. It does what it's supposed to, can do most of the fancy fluff of other browsers and, yet, keeps a rather tiny resource footprint.

Fans of Firefox have most likely heard of or tried Firefox 3 Beta. I took it for a spin, and it is better in several ways. One of the chief things I noticed is that when you're downloading, you no longer need to open the "Downloads" menu. Your progress will be displayed automatically in the lower right hand corner of your browser. The option to search your browser history is useful and many of the previous quirks, such as being asked to save passwords before logging in, are ironed out.

Obviously, I'm not the only one with a hard-on for Mozilla. Wired's Michael Calore sat in on a Mozilla meeting and provides some interesting info about the company that produces the #1 most used browser. (if you lump all of the internet explorer versions together, they beat it. Firefox still commands a heavy ranking with over 35% of the user share)

Mozilla CEO John Lilly... began by citing some stats:

* Firefox currently has 160 million users, according to Mozilla.
* Russia and China are the two fastest growing locales. China has seen 6x growth since one year ago.
* 40% to 50% of the code for Firefox is written by people who don't work at Mozilla Corporation. This was surprising to me.
* The company employs about 150 people in 20 countries around the world. There are major offices in Paris and Tokyo, as well as smaller offices in China, Denmark and elsewhere.
* The Mozilla Corporation's last posted revenue 2006 was $5 million per month. That's mostly, but not all, from Google search revenue.

Lilly says the company is not trying to maximize revenue, just trying to "keep the internet open and participatory." Mozilla is actually making some changes in Firefox 3 that will end up being "revenue negative," he notes. Lilly is referring to the new address bar that searches the browser's history to find cached or recently visited pages. He expects this feature will cause users to search the web less.


I found the massive boom of Chinese users to be rather interesting. As China's user base grows it seems that Firefox could easily beat out the entire Internet Explorer series for worldwide use. That'd be pretty amazing, but could also be rather daunting for Mozilla.

All of this popularity comes with a price. Updates have to come from somewhere and, to help facilitate security, the browser is instructed to check for and automatically update itself. This keeps users from having to do it manually, many of whom will either forget or simply not care to do so. That can lead to very unsafe conditions, allowing viruses to spread and infect millions of users.

They had a recurring incident in 2005 that came to be known as "The hour of terror." Due to a programming misstep, all of the Firefox clients on the internet would check for updates at the same time. The first few times this happened, the millions of simultaneous requests would threaten to crash their servers. Everyone would wait for the event with bated breath, praying for their servers' survival.


Some might remember that firefox 3 was due to be released in summer of 2007. Well, seems that it wasn't just delayed for shits and giggles. The Mozilla team was rewriting the code and working on the backend. John Lilly, Mozilla's CEO, said that final release should occur in June of this year. Much of what makes Firefox 3 so great won't be able to be seen or realized on the surface. The article mentions that Firefox 3 beta 5 is five times faster than Internet Explorer and about 3 times faster than the latest version of Firefox 2.

As for going mobile,
The two execs also spoke about Firefox's future on mobile devices.

Everyone wanted to know: Will Firefox be coming to the iPhone anytime soon? According to the two men at the head of the table, no -- Apple's software requirements for the device are too restrictive.

Lilly: "Apple has not written a license which allows Firefox to run on the iPhone."

Schroepfer: "Android and iPhone are closed platforms. There are carriers and device manufacturers who are more open with their platform, and we'll do well there -- the Nokia N810 internet tablet, for example."

Schroepfer: "People can just take the (Firefox) code and run with it, so there's a lot happening that we don't even see until it shows up... XUL (the language in which Firefox's user interface is written) makes it easy to experiment on mobile devices. That's our main advantage on mobile platforms."

- Source


Since, it seems, that someone always manages to hack apart Apple's security schemes (unlocking the iPhone and Apple TV, anyone?), I'm sure that someone will figure out a way to get Firefox onto the iPhone. I'm also sure that Google will be interested in getting Firefox 3 onto Android. Especially as the Asian market and connection numbers continue to skyrocket. (much of Asia predominantly uses their mobile phones to access the internet) Much like Google, Mozilla seems to be the underdog that is taking over the competition.

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Wired.com nighttime photo contest.

Wanna show off your photo chops? Have a friend that's handy with the focal lens? Submit it to Wired's night time photo contest! Even if you suck with a camera you can still participate by voting which ones you think are the best, and which suck balls.

Some of my favorites:









And even though it gives me vertigo,

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D.B. Cooper's parachute found or not, the guy's still awesome.

D.B. Cooper. What a man! What a legend! D.B. Cooper, for those that don't know, hijacked a plane in 1971. Claiming to have a bomb in his briefcase, he demanded that he be provided with several sets of parachutes and $200,000 in unmarked $20 bills. All of this was to be delivered when the plane he had hijacked landed in Seattle. And it all was. FBI agents took microfilm pictures of each and every one of the 100,000 $20 bills and got the parachutes from a nearby skydiving school. Cooper sat in the plane drinking bourbon and soda while waiting for the police to deliver him his items. He also demanded that meals be brought to the airplane's crew. Shortly upon taking off, en route to Reno, Nevada, D.B. "Dan" Cooper opened the rear air stairs door of the aircraft and jumped out into the night somewhere over Oregon's wilderness. No trace of his parachute or even a single $20 was found until 1980 when a $5,000 bundle of $20's was found along the banks of the Columbia river.

It's possible that another piece of the mystery may have been found.

A tattered, half-buried parachute unearthed by kids had D.B. Cooper country chattering Wednesday over the fate of the skyjacker, who leapt from a plane 36 years ago and into the lore of the Pacific Northwest.

While the FBI investigates whether the fabric came from the world's only unsolved skyjacking, the discovery re-energized a legend in the southwestern Washington woods where Cooper may have landed, and where time has helped turn him into a folk hero.

[...]

Retired FBI agent Ralph Himmelsbach, of Woodburn, Ore., who worked the Cooper case, said Wednesday he doubts the remnant found near Amboy could be the nylon parachute Cooper carried when he jumped into poor conditions over rough terrain.

"Lying in the mud, mostly wet, would not be the kind of environment that would be good for a parachute," he said.

A parachute expert, however, said the nylon could have lasted.

"A parachute that was buried could last a very long time," said Gary Peek of the Missouri-based Parks College Parachute Research Group, which does parachute research on contract for the military.

Like cars, parachutes have serial numbers, and identification that includes dates of production and names of the manufacturers. And the man who supplied the parachute Cooper is believed to have used says he would be able to identify it.

"It was my parachute," said Earl Cossey of Woodinville, Wash. "So, yes, I'd be able to identify it to this day."

Cossey was a pilot and ran a skydiving school at the time in Issaquah, Wash. When Cooper demanded parachutes, the FBI got in touch with him.

"Maybe I owe him if he didn't get that parachute out and working," Cossey said Wednesday.

- Source


Whether the found parachute was used by D.B. doesn't really matter. It won't really crack the case, nor does it really muddy it even more. Conditions when D.B. jumped were "unfavorable" to say the least. High winds, cold weather, and parachuting into the remote winlderness aren't very conducive to an effective getaway. The finding of the parachute doesn't confirm his survival, nor does it confirm his death.

So, it looks like the legend of D.B. Cooper will simply continue, despite ownership of the parachute being confirmed or not. Personally, I hope he did make it. D.B., I tip my glass to you. Cheers!

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Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Not quite a super trooper.

Remember Super Troopers? Pretty damn funny movie. Remember when they all got drunk and drove around smashing mailboxes, harassing people, and urinating in public? Funny stuff. Would it ever happen in real life? Perhaps. Except, at least in the movie, they managed to not crash the damn squad car.

Andrew Jefferson Page, 33, drove into a guardrail Feb. 16 on northbound Interstate 81, totaling the marked cruiser. He was immediately suspended without pay from the Roanoke Police Department and is no longer employed there as of March 6. [...] "He's very remorseful for what happened," Lawrence said after Tuesday's hearing.


Well, yeah, I'd hope so. I wouldn't think he'd put up a big attitude about it. "Yeah, that's right... I totaled that police cruiser. Y'know what I gotta say about it? 'FUCK YOU!' That's what I gotta say about it. You losers can go fuck yourselves, I'm out of here. And I'm taking one of you shitheads' cruiser, too."

So, not only was Page drunk and driving around in his cruiser (at least he wasn't in uniform), but he was also driving way out in Pulaski county, some 60 miles outside of Roanoke City. Police officers aren't allowed to take their patrol vehicles outside of their jurisdiction. Especially not 60 miles outside for a drunken joyride. Several minutes before Page had crashed, a motorist called 911 to report an erratic driver on I-81. No word on whether the caller mentioned a "drunken fuck in a cop car." The real kicker is that he might not have to pay for the cruiser he totaled. You're not even liable if you break numerous laws, as well as company policy in the process of destroying your your loaned company car? Now that's some job.

Perkins would not say if Page would be responsible for the value of the 2005 Ford Crown Victoria, and Lawrence said he didn't know. [...] According to court documents, a breathalyzer test shortly after the crash showed Page's blood alcohol content to be 0.16 percent, double the legal definition of intoxicated. [...] Page also was charged with a traffic infraction for not wearing his seat belt.

General District Court Judge Glenwood Lookabill suspended a 90-day jail sentence, but restricted Page's driver's license for a year. During that time, Page will be on probation and must attend Virginia Alcohol Safety Action Program classes. He also must pay a $250 fine. Lawrence said he thought Pulaski County prosecutors were fair, treating Page no differently than anyone else charged with DUI.


Um... As someone who has been convicted of a DUI, I call shenanigans. He didn't get the usual, he got the bare mandatory minimum. The usual, as any attorney will tell you, is for the suspect to serve 1 to 5 days in jail. Especially if you were so drunk that you totaled your car. The fact that this man was a police officer, driving around drunk in a fucking cop car , in my opinion, warrants that he be treated a bit more harshly than a typical person. And not wearing a seat belt? Tsk, tsk. Click it or ticket, man.

"It's been very hard on him," Lawrence said. "From the minute that he came to see me, he had all this remorse and regret."
- Source


"From the minute he came to see me he felt all bad and shit about getting all blotto and smashing the shit out of some really expensive publicly owned company property. He was all, 'aw, dude, I'm sorry.' And I was all like, 'hey, man. Hey, man... shit happens, okay? Who's my tiger? That's right, buddy. You is.' Then we had snuggle time and it was all good."


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Ye olde video games of yore. 2D vs 3D.

Gamespot.com recently put up a fun video of editors and writers discussing what old game franchises they would like to see come back. A lot of good names were batted around: Blaster Master, Fire Shark, and Earthbound. Some more obvious ones as well: Chrono Trigger, Mike Tyson's Punch Out!!, Panzer Dragoon, and the Baldur's Gate series. Gamespot's Associate Hardware Editor, Sarju Shah, mentioned one of my more favorite games: River City Ransom. I was surprised that no one dug up Ikari Warriors. Man, that was a fun game back in the day.

But all of this gaming nostalgia got me thinking. There have been some old and long revered franchises that have been resurrected. Final Fight: Streetwise is a goods example. Well, not "good" as in a good game, but as an example of old franchises being born again. Unfortunately, FF: Streetwise was regarded as horrible and was largely panned by nearly everyone. Metroid is another example. This franchise was kind of buried aways. Once Nintendo decided to blow off the dust and make a few new titles, everyone went nuts for it. However, Shanker Srinivasan (Sports Editor), asks for a new 2D Metroid.


I know the trend is to go to 3D with all these new games. In the new series you've got the Metroid Prime's that are now a first person shooter and stuff like that. But, frankly, I think that some games in some series should always stay 2D.
- Source


Which is an interesting point. Fans of the Street Fighter series nearly hemorrhaged when they heard that Street Fighter IV was going 3D. Later, more details were released that it's fighting was to be kept linear. Though the background may shift, you cannot actually move freely throughout the environment. This is often referred to as 2.5D. Still, some hardcore fans are drastically pissed off about the use of 3D models instead of sprites. Meanwhile, King of Fighters XII has gone the completely opposite, using 100% hand drawn sprites. Everything is hand drawn, given to a color illustrator that colors it in Photoshop and then the sprite is handed off to the animation team. Wow! Now that's laborious! Even though Street Fighter has gone to 3D models, the "hand drawn sprite" look and feel has been kept in place with some very excellent cell and specular shading. The animation is also extremely fluid and terrifically well done.

Street Fighter IV


King of Fighters XII


Watching the two different videos is like night and day. Yes, KoF XII looks absolutely amazing for a hand drawn game. (XII footage does not begin until 0:26, all the previous was former KoF games) And maybe this has to do with recording devices that were used (I doubt it, though), but Street Fighter IV still looks much, much more fluid. The visuals also seem to "pop" much more than KoF XII.

All of this boils down to this weird thing of nostalgia. Some of the old NES, Super NES, Genesis, Saturn, etc. games were good. Some are, even to this day, incredibly well-made and really tons of fun. That is called excellent game mechanics and well designed gameplay. A lot of games nowadays seem to rely of a lot of flash with very little substance. But I think there resides this place in our minds where we are still 12, or 8, or 16, or whatever, and we remember the fun we had with those games. Most of those games, if we were to play them today, probably wouldn't even come close to comparing how much better some of the games of today are. Which is exactly what has killed 2D.

My theory is that many developers shy away from 2D thinking that it will be like a bad trip down memory lane. (kind of like remembering Marble Madness as lots of fun, only to replay it and and go, "good god, this sucks!") Have developers forsaken 2D as some sort of "nostalgia" methodology of gameplay, suitable for cheap XBox Live! Arcade, PS Network, Wii Play, and handhelds, but not to ever be applied to new console franchises? While many games do benefit greatly from 3D, what ever happened to fun game genres like the side-scrolling beat-em up? Streets of Rage was hugely popular. Could we ever see a resurgence of 2D games? I seriously doubt it. Some games will probably stay within the faux-2D realm: some fighting games, shooters, and many traditional RPGs work well in 2.5D, but will we ever see a bring back of hand done sprites for major console and arcade releases? I have a feeling KoF XII will be the last of its kind.

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Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Italian George Clooney explains QR Codes.

QR Codes are pretty damn cool. What are QR Codes? Well, they're kind of like barcodes, but better. They can store a lot more data than barcodes and create a very effortless and easy way to transmit small amounts of data. QR Codes are able to be read by simply taking a picture with your mobile phone, assuming your phone has a barcode reader. Many of the phones in Japan and Europe do and this technology is soon coming to the US. Another great benefit of QR Codes is that even when damaged they can still be read through error correction procedures

The application for these codes is immense. You are walking down the street and see a bus sign. You wonder what bus line that particular stop is for. Snap a pic and you'll know. You see a flyer for a band. You stop and snap a pic of the band's QR Code. You now have their webpage, a blurb about them, the title of their latest album and maybe even info on another show that they'll be playing soon. Go into a bar and you wonder what's on draft. Snap the QR Code and you'll know. The great thing is that these simple codes can provide small amounts of pertinent information in an incredibly efficient manner.


Over at CenterNetworks Allen Stern writes,

I could also see QR codes as a potential business card replacement. You are at a business meeting, you whip out your mobile and the other party does as well. You "scan" her barcode displayed on the mobile and now you have all of her contact information and not only is it stored in your mobile, but it's now on your desktop in your contact manager.

[...]

I am very much looking forward to seeing the codes invade the U.S. as they are overseas. As a marketer, I see endless possibilities for connecting brands with consumers. On the business side, there are clear ways that the codes could become time savers. Mobile technology is changing the way we interact, QR codes will take interactions to another level.

- Source


And over at David Harper's Blog he jots down a few quick things that QR Codes can and are used for.


  • linking print articles to RSS feeds and blogs
  • delivering product or tourist information
  • linking “lost pet” flyers to contact forms
  • dating - use your imagination on that one
  • “find me” maps
  • promoting an event or concert on flyers/postcards
  • connecting geocachers to mobile logbooks
  • creating museum exhibits and street tours
  • building scavenger hunts or “collect-them-all” games
  • downloading ringtones, music, wallpapers or video (think indie artists)
  • ticket sales for clubs
  • directing people to your mobile site and/or storefront
  • enabling mobile sales from catalogs or flyers
  • distributing coupons
  • conference badges connected to profiles
  • business cards connected to company sites
  • signing up to text alert services
  • running competitions
  • connecting mix tapes to podcasts or vidcasts
  • connecting posters to podcasts or vidcasts
  • enabling community interaction at public locations
- Source


Italian George Clooney on QR Codes.




Another example of how QR Codes work.




So, if you're turned onto the idea of QR Codes, you yourself can go ahead and get started. Since most mobiles in the US don't have QR Code readers installed on them, you will most likely have to install it yourself. Robert Peloschek has a great blog entry all bout installing QR Code readers onto your mobile. He also provides links where you can generate your own QR Code.

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DARPA &hearts's cyborg spy moths.

And really, truly, who doesn't? Actually, this is pretty creepy. They cut off part of the moth's thorax while still in the larval stage. They then install MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) components. As the insect grows, its body grows around the MEMS, thus securing the components inside the insect's body. The end-goal is to have these parts be able to run off the insects natural body heat and/or kinetic energy to act as a power source for the components.

Insects with modified body structures and embedded micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) have survived to adulthood in a US Defense Advanced Reseach Projects Agency (DARPA) programme.

DARPA wants to develop inexpensive micro air vehicles to find weapons and explosives inside buildings or caves. Mechanical and fluidic microsystems would allow remote control, could extend insect life, and provide for gas, audio and even imaging sensors.

In the latest work a Manduca moth had its thorax truncated to reduce its mass and had a MEMS component added where abdominal segments would have been, during the larval stage.

Images taken by x-ray of insects with these changes and others found that tissue growth around the inserted probes was good. One DARPA goal is to show that during locomotion the heat and mechanical power generated by the thorax could be harnessed to power the MEMS.


To give you an idea as to how small MEMS components can be:
A mite less than 1 mm on a MEMS device.image

There are, however, a few drawbacks. Insects have notoriously short life spans, meaning that a single bug's use would be rather limited. Insects are also prevalent prey for many birds and other animals. I could easily see a sting operation foiled by a cat eating the surveillance moth. Also, the process is rather laborious and, I would imagine, rather costly. Irregardless, as the technology and process become more refined I'm sure the whole ordeal will be very mundane and expedient.

Giving the presentation on behalf of DARPA at the 1st US-Asian assessment and demonstration of micro aerial and unmannned ground vehicle technology, Georgia Institute of Technology Research Institute's aerospace, transportation and advanced systems laboratory's principal research engineer, emeritus, Robert Michelson said: "You'd like this [cyborg insect] to be created out where you need it rather than in a lab in California."

He added that drawbacks included the short life-span of insects, which means they could be dead before they are needed, and the fact that MEMS insertion was labour-intensive.

One of DARPA's goals is to remote-pilot a cyborg insect to within 100m (327ft) of a target. Control could be maintained using pheromones or mechano-sensor activation and direct muscle or neural interfaces using the embedded MEMS.

- Source


For shits and giggles, here's a vid of some other cyborg insects.

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Am I Alive?

Hello, world.

The American Analog Set
She's Half





lyrics after the jump



She's half

And her mom's from Indiana and she
She married an Asian man and they
They brought her from Japan to be
Happily suburban and I
I met her one summer when I was
I was just visiting ten days
Her wrists were island thin but she
She smiled like her Indy kin
And she's half

She's into strictly rich and
Overworked businessmen
She don't remember when
She used to hold my hands
After the Rollerland
After she closed the stand
Now it's supply and demand
And it just comes down to the math
And she's half

And she's half


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