Saturday, December 30, 2006

The New Yorker : fact : content

: "“After 9/11, when a lot of people were saying, ‘The problem is Islam,’ I was thinking, It’s something deeper than that. It’s about human social networks and the way that they operate.”

Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Human Computation - Google Video

Human Computation - Google Video:
Simple games, broad implications

"This talk introduces a paradigm for utilizing human processing power to solve problems that computers cannot yet solve. Traditional approaches to solving such problems focus on improving software. I advocate a novel approach: constructively channel human brainpower using computer games. For example, the ESP Game, described in this talk, is an enjoyable online game -- many people play over 40 hours a week -- and when people play, they help label images on the Web with descriptive keywords. These keywords can be used to significantly improve the accuracy of image search. People play the game not because they want to help, but because they enjoy it.

I describe other examples of 'games with a purpose'... "

Sunday, December 24, 2006

Planetarium Project:

Planetarium Project:

Quoth Keith,

Photos of our new test setup including a 6 computer cluster, 6 projectors, and a relocated sphere. The cropped pictures of the spheres can be put directly into blender as angMap environments.

http://picasaweb.google.com/ksimmons/PlanetariumJobContinued

Picasa Web Albums - Keith - Planetarium J...

Picasa Web Albums - Keith - Planetarium J...: "Planetarium Job Continued
Rochester Institute of Technology

Photos: 9
Dec 22, 2006 - 931 KB
Public
Photos of our new test setup including a 6 computer cluster, 6 projectors, and a relocated sphere. The cropped pictures of the spheres can be put directly into blender as angMap environments.


Planetarium Job Continued
Rochester Institute of Technology

Photos: 9
Dec 22, 2006 - 931 KB
Public
Photos of our new test setup including a 6 computer cluster, 6 projectors, and a relocated sphere. The cropped pictures of the spheres can be put directly into blender as angMap environments.

Professor Jonathan Schull looks for space on our cluster cart. Note the flat wheel.

6 new projectors in cases.

Monday, December 18, 2006

NodeBox

Processing without brackets ...
Very beautiful, very powerful.

nodebox.net
NodeBox NodeBox
NodeBox is free open-source software and comes bundled with its source code.


Python Powered Python Powered

In NodeBox, you design with programming code, with language. NodeBox uses Python programming code which is easy to understand even for non-programmers.
Illustrator Import Illustrator Import

NodeBox integrates effortlessly with various document formats. In NodeBox, you can include your vector images from Adobe Illustrator.
  • PDF Export PDF Export
  • The visual output you create in NodeBox exports to a PDF-document. You can automatically export multiple PDF-documents from the same script, and control the layout of each page individually.
  • Quicktime Export QuickTime Export
  • Aside from PDF-documents you can create animation in NodeBox as well. Animations can be exported as QuickTime movies that can be displayed on web pages.

NodeBox comes well documented:

* a reference containing a detailed description of each NodeBox command
* a tutorial with various techniques and examples to get you started
* a library with a wealth of packages to extend NodeBox's capabilities
* a gallery of examples.

codeninja.de - codejutsu by mnt

codeninja.de - codejutsu by mnt

Gesture based control using a Laser pointer and Image Recognition

As my previous experiments were too simple ....

codeninja.de - codejutsu by mnt

codeninja.de - codejutsu by mnt

Gesture based control using a Laser pointer and Image Recognition

As my previous experiments were too simple ....


Potenco


Potenco has developed a patent-pending portable power generator that is always powered wherever you go. Simply pull a cord for a few minutes and generate electric power for up to several hours.

This portable green power keeps electronic devices working all the time. It can be used to power mobile phones, PDAs, lighting products, and digital cameras among many other possibilities

Our technology gives users freedom and independence from traditional power sources. It has been selected as a power provider for the $100 Laptop (One Laptop per Child)

It is the ideal power source for millions in developing countries that do not have access to dependable electricity. Potenco is developing a host of products that will change the way that power is delivered and utilized, both in developing and developed countries.



Potenco: "Potenco has developed a patent-pending portable power generator that is always powered wherever you go. Simply pull a cord for a few minutes and generate electric power for up to several hours.

This portable green power keeps electronic devices working all the time. It can be used to power mobile phones, PDAs, lighting products, and digital cameras among many other possibilities

Our technology gives users freedom and independence from traditional power sources. It has been selected as a power provider for the $100 Laptop (One Laptop per Child)

It is the ideal power source for millions in developing countries that do not have access to dependable electricity. Potenco is developing a host of products that will change the way that power is delivered and utilized, both in developing and developed countries.
"

Saturday, December 16, 2006

Ajax DNS

Ajax DNS: DNS tools for real people
lean mean clean fast.
about time

Flash Earth ...satellite and aerial imagery of the Earth in Flash

Flash Earth ...satellite and aerial imagery of the Earth in Flash

Compare, Google, Yahoo, Ask.com, Microsoft Maps
Zoom in to see my house.

Sunday, December 10, 2006

Energy-Harvesting Floors - New York Times

Energy-Harvesting Floors - New York Times: "Energy-Harvesting Floors

The average human being generates about eight watts of energy with each step, most of which is expended as vibration. It may not sound like much, but take the 30,000 or more people who pass through a major-city subway hub at rush hour, and suddenly you’ve got serious power. That’s usually a problem for architects and engineers, who have to design structures to withstand such small but persistent pressure. But the Facility, a London architecture firm, sees it as an opportunity. The company proposes putting small hydraulic generators in floors to capture vibration and convert it into electricity.

The Facility will roll out a prototype energy-harvesting staircase next year and ultimately use the technology, dubbed the Pacesetter, as part of a larger project to revamp London’s South Central subway stations. “For each footstep we can harvest three to five watts of energy,” says Claire Price, the director of the Facility. “In a rush-hour period in this country, some of the larger stations experience 34,000 people walking through it. At three to five watts, you’re generating a lot of kilowatt hours, enough to power all of the lighting and audio equipment within the building and beyond.” Price and her company are also developing a similar unit to be placed in train tunnels — essentially, as Price describes it, “a microgenerator that resonates in tune with passing trains and that will generate power that will then power a series of wire-free L.E.D. light units, such as street lamps.”

The Pacesetter is part of a growing body of devices that capture the diffuse energy emanating from human and natural activity, ranging from enormous ocean-borne floats that make use of wave energy to the devices in some tennis rackets that draw power from the impact with a ball and use it to counteract vibration, thus reducing strain on a player’s wrist. Someday, the Facility team speculates, systems like the Pacesetter will be everywhere — not just in the floor but anywhere small amounts of vibration or other ambient energy can be harvested efficiently: under roadbeds, at gyms, even inside fabric. “It goes on and on,” Price says. “The possibilities are endless.” "

Saturday, December 09, 2006

Wiimote - Wiiki

Wiimote - Wiiki:
"Wiimote From Wiiki
This page is intended to be a technical guide to the Wii Remote. For an excellent high-level overview of the Wii Remote (aka Wiimote), see the Wikipedia entry.
"

Wiimote

From Wiiki

Jump to: navigation, search

This page is intended to be a technical guide to the Wii Remote. For an excellent high-level overview of the Wii Remote (aka Wiimote), see the Wikipedia entry.

Contents

[hide]
o

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Zamzar - Free online file conversion

Zamzar - Free online file conversion

Have you ever wanted to
convert files without the need
to download software ?



Step 1

Select the files to convert
(up to 100MB in size):

Step 2

Choose the format to convert to:

Step 4

Convert (by clicking you agree to our Terms of Service)




Zamzar - Free online file conversion

Zamzar - Free online file conversion

Have you ever wanted to
convert files without the need
to download software ?



Step 1

Select the files to convert
(up to 100MB in size):

Step 2

Choose the format to convert to:

Step 3

Enter your email address to receive converted files:

Step 4

Convert (by clicking you agree to our Terms of Service)




Make Bluetooth Work for You: Build a Sample Chat Application

Make Bluetooth Work for You: Build a Sample Chat Application/assets/articlefigs/5267.gif /assets/articlefigs/5258.png

Sunday, December 03, 2006

Wii Exposed: Wiinternals, Wii-motes, and a Teardown Wiideo > The Teardown

Wii Exposed: Wiinternals, Wii-motes, and a Teardown Wiideo > The Teardown:

Figures 16—21 show various pieces and parts of the Wii for your amusement.

Figure 16

Figure 16

Broadcom 802.11B/G wireless card

Figure 17

Figure 17

Bluetooth and SD socket

Figure 18

Figure 18

Full motherboard

Figure 19

Figure 19

Hollywood graphic processing unit

Smoother Transistions Between Breadth-First-Spanning-Tree Based Drawings

Smoother Transitions Between Breadth-First-Spanning-Tree Based Drawings
Christopher Homan , Andrew Pavlo, Jonathan Schull
Rochester Institute of Technology and University of Wisconsin-Madison

Abstract
14th International Symposium on Graph Drawing





Friday, December 01, 2006

WiiLi.org Wii Linux - Wiimote

WiiLi.org Wii Linux - Wiimote: "This page is intended to be a technical guide to the Wii Remote. For an excellent high-level overview of the Wii Remote (aka Wiimote), see the Wikipedia entry. New information and status updates should be posted to the Wiimote driver page, and will eventually be digested and summarized here."

Contents

[hide]

Monday, November 27, 2006

squiggle motors



A very very cool piezo electric linear motor from a Rochester company.
see http://www.newscaletech.com/squiggle_overview.html

Saturday, November 25, 2006

Tips on your new 3125 - Cingular/HTC - Cingular Customer Forums

Tips on your new 3125 - Cingular/HTC - Cingular Customer Forums

WHERE CAN I FIND SOFTWARE FOR MY 3125?
Do a search for "Windows Mobile 5 Smartphone software" on Google, and it will bring back several sites. My personal favorite is smartphone.net, but there are many others. Make sure that you download ONLY software that is compatible with WIndows Mobile 5.0 Smartphone version, Pocket PC software will not work, nor will most programs written for Windows Mobile 2003. Before you buy, download the trial version and make sure it works on your 3125. If you had a 2125, all of the software that you had for the 2125 will work on the 3125.

T TAKES FOREVER TO INSTALL MUSIC USING WINDOWS MOBILE MEDIA PLAYER, ISN'T THERE A BETTER WAY?
Don't use it!!
By far the fastest and easiest way to install photos and music to your 3125 is to use Activesync.
1. Sync your phone.
2. While connected open Explore.
3. Open My Device and double click on Storage Card
4. Drag and Drop your photos and music from My Documents on your PC to the open Storage Card window (i.e. don't put it in a folder on the storage card). Everything will copy over in seconds. DO NOT create a separate folder in your Storage card to store any music you want to use as ringtones.
Alternately, you can use your microSD card's SD-adapter and a card reader to copy over files to your storage card.
Do NOT use Windows Mobile Media Player to sync your music -- it will take hours if you have more than one song.

Friday, November 24, 2006

Accreted Wisdom, Etc.

Accreted Wisdom, Etc.
Advice for Graduate Students

IWSAWC 2007 — Multimodal Interactive Systems Group

IWSAWC 2007 — Multimodal Interactive Systems Group

IWSAWC 2007 - The 7th International Workshop

on Smart Appliances and Wearable Computing

In Conjunction with ICDCS 2007

June 29th 2007, Toronto, Canada


Call for Papers

Submission
Program
Venue



Microsoft RoundTable Video (Formerly RingCam)

This is something we should use on several of our projects

Fortnightly Mailing

Fortnightly Mailing: "Evaluation of Open Source repository systems

Here is a well-structured and clear 41 page technical evaluation [250 kB PDF] of 3 major Open Source open access repository systems (DSpace, ePrints, and Fedora), written by Max Maxwell, Jun Yamog, and Richard Wyles. The evaluation was funded by the Tertiary Education Commission of New Zealand. It was published in September 2006, and, in the case of ePrints, covers version 2, rather than the presently available version 3, which has superior work-flow capabilities.

Posted on 20/11/2006 in Resources | Permalink | Comments (0)"

Saturday, November 18, 2006

ASPN : Python Cookbook : Standard Error Redirector

ASPN : Python Cookbook : Standard Error Redirector:
Submitter: Stephen Chappell (other recipes)
Last Updated: 2006/03/20

This recipe was designed for remotely receiving bug reports. It was written after participating in a programming contest where feedback was not helpful. The concept presented here is a step towards working with Python remotely. As sys.stderr is replaced in this recipe, so sys.stdin and sys.stdout can also be redirect to an alternate source (such as sockets connected to another computer).

"

Jepp - Usage

Jepp

Jepp embeds CPython in Java. It is safe to use in a heavily threaded environment, it is quite fast and its stability is a main feature and goal. "

Friday, November 17, 2006

Google Calendar

For the second time, my Entourage calendar disappeared.
ITServices restored it.
Meanwhile Gmail and Gcal get better by the day.

An auto-synch of Entourage/Exchange to GCal is clearly needed, but meanwhile

The easiest way to back up my entourage calendar was simply to import it into ical.

And then to put the backup on GCal, I exported from ical and from GCal. No problem.

Of course new events will come to Entourage...and I'll want them in gmail. But since all my email is routed through gmail and maybe I can keep Gcal fresh.

When I'm disconnected from the net....well back to entourage unfortunately. Until google's next move.

Thursday, November 16, 2006

TED Blog: Wired Editor-at-Large Kevin Kelly on TEDTalks

TED Blog: Wired Editor-at-Large Kevin Kelly on TEDTalks: "technology the '7th kingdom of life.' "Kevin Kelly

TED Blog: Wired Editor-at-Large Kevin Kelly on TEDTalks

Kevin Kelly on TEDTalks
technology is the "7th kingdom of life."
Kevin Kelly

TED Blog: Wired Editor-at-Large Kevin Kelly on TEDTalks

TED Blog: Wired Editor-at-Large Kevin Kelly on TEDTalks


reactable software

reactable software
flashlights modded to project these fudicial symbols would be another way of allowing 90 people to mouse around on a screen...
" T-shirts, buttons and other products featuring the reacTIVision fiducial symbols are now available for purchase! All designs on these products can be recognized and tracked by the actual reacTIVision software. "

projects based on reacTIVision

  • reacTable*: a novel electro acoustic instrument with a tangible user interfaces where tangible objects represent the components of a classic modular synthesizer.
  • recipe-table: an installation by students from the Interface Culture Lab in Linz, Austria, where recipes can be browsed by placing the desired ingredients on an interactive kitchen surface.
  • Between Blinks & Buttons by Sascha Pohflepp.

Clear foam glues/coatings

Sculpt-or-Coat®1 and Mod Podge®2, used alone or more usually in combination, are the solution. These products are similar to white glue. They are both water soluble and dry completely clear. They can be thinned with water if necessary. The main difference between the two products that I have found is that Sculpt-or-Coat® has a thicker consistency and retains brush strokes when it dries. Even when thinned with water it still retains a textural finish when dry. However, it tends to produce a more rigid finish. Mod Podge® on the other hand is thinner and self-leveling as it dries. This makes for a very smooth surface. By using these two products together you can have the best properties of both.
products
1 Sculpt-or-Coat® is a trade mark of Sculptural Arts Coating, Inc.
www.sculpturalarts.com
2 Mod Podge® is a trade mark of Plaid Enterprises, Inc., Norcross, GA 30019

Ideas: Intro/Geometry/Nature

Ideas: Intro/Geometry/Nature

By experimentation it can be demonstrated that the tetrahedron is the minimum shape or structure that energy can take.

The minimum "thing" or system in the universe has to be a tetrahedron.

Anything less is not a system and does not have the properties of a system.

Systems can be made out of triangles, but how many?

By experimentation it can be demonstrated that only 3 basic systems can be constructed out of equilateral triangles: tetrahedra, octahedra, & icosahedra.

Therefore, all of nature must be built up from some combination or multiple of only those three basic systems!

Tuesday, November 07, 2006


If you're not willing to be wrong, you'll never do anything creative.

(he's also VERY funny)

Sir Ken Robinson (Ted Talk)

Sir Ken Robinson is author of Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative, and a leading expert on innovation and human resources. In this talk, he makes an entertaining (and profoundly moving) case for creating an education system that nurtures creativity, rather than undermining it. (Recorded February, 2006 in Monterey, CA.)

Hans Rosling's Ted Talk

Hans Rosling Information Visualization and the dawn of the macroscope

Hans Rosling

Hans Rosling is professor of international health at Sweden's world-renowned Karolinska Institute, and founder of Gapminder, a non-profit that brings vital global data to life. (Recorded February, 2006 in Monterey, CA.)
Jeff Han's Multi-Touch Sensing

Terrific presentation of terrific technology.
Microsoft Touchlight - Prototype Demo

A multitouch system with built in cameras. Very cool

ars electronica

Gotta catch up on the work of Zachary Lieberman
http://www.thesystemis.com/ in particular

and ars electronica in general
http://www.aec.at/en/festival2006/webcasts/index.asp

Sunday, November 05, 2006


Click here to see the movie

Motion Capture is a technique that translates motions into 3D-files. Motion capture is mostly used for animations in movies and computer games. Front have used the technique to simply record the tip of a pen when they draw pieces of furniture in the air.

Rapid Prototyping is a technique that materialises 3D-files. A laser beam builds the 3D-file layer by layer within a liquid plastic material. Every 0.1mm the liquid harden by a laser beam. After a few hours, the 3D-files come out as materialised pieces.

The Sketch Furniture project in Japan is made in collaboration with Barry Friedman Ltd. Tokyo Wonder Site Aoyama and Crescent.

www.frontdesign.se

Thursday, November 02, 2006


"My guess is the U.S. will have one of the fastest growth rates over next five years. One of the interesting things about the U.S. when compared to other industrialized countries is that it has more sun per capita," Bradford said in an interview with Reuters.

Saturday, October 28, 2006

StrandBeest

Totally Wonderful:

strandbeest









Since about ten years Theo Jansen is occupied with the making of a new nature. Not pollen or seeds but plastic yellow tubes are used as the basic matierial of this new nature. He makes skeletons which are able to walk on the wind. Eventualy he wants to put these animals out in herds on the beaches, so they will live their own lives.

webcam fast/ slow
film
photography

Design and Prototyping Sources around Rochester

http://www.rit.edu/~idesign/materials.html

Monday, October 16, 2006

Simple Stirling Engine


Could you do one of these in glass so it was all apparent, I'm wondering?
http://www.makezine.com/07/stirlingengine/

Saturday, October 14, 2006

Leonel Moura: robotic art

Leonel Moura
A New Kind of Art | Robotic Art | Artbots | Artificial Life | Complexity | Non-human art

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Soap Mouse on You Tube


http://www.patrickbaudisch.com/projects/soap/applications/index.html

Monday, October 02, 2006

MoGoMouse

Looks good to me.
$69, no cord because it charges while being stored in the pcmcia slot.
Newton Peripherals bluetooth mouseNewton Peripherals bluetooth mouse
Newton Peripherals bluetooth mouseNewton Peripherals bluetooth mouse
Reviews sugggest its comfortable too.