SkateWing

www.skatwing.com
3.9m² race Sail

The big brother of the Skatewing 2.8 pulls cross-skates through mud and skis through snow. The lightest breeze gets it going. The ideal wing for all winter sports. Designed for maximum speed. Five profiled battens, four of them with cambers, its eliptical outline and the shape create a high aerodynamic efficiency that makes the skates fly...

This frame uses the VARIO SYSTEM, which can fit the smaller 2.8m2 sail.

Rider profile: Intermediate to advanced rider
Height of rider: ± 1.88m (5 ft 9")
Weight of rider: ± 85kg
wind speed: light to medium wind
Size of wing (hxw): 335cm x 155cm
Weight of wing: 6,5kg

The Skatewing is delivered in a Long protective bag. (click to view)

3' to 40' Fiberglass Poles

Wonder Pole® Manufacturing Co. can furnish the right telescoping pole for your application. Email or Fax us at 1-503-585-4294. Please be sure to include your email and contact information. The following questions will help in expediting your request.
http://www.wonderpole.com/custom_telescoping_poles.html

• Describe the intended use of the pole.
• What is the extended size, (fully open)?
• What is the retracted size, (full closed)?
• What is the size of the top mast, (smallest section outside diameter)?
• What is the size of the bottom pole, (outside diameter)?
• Do you need a specific color. White is our stock color. Other colors are available upon request.
  Our Wonder Poles® are used throughout the world for commercial, government, municipal and private use.

Very Low-Cost Sensing and Communication Using Bidirectional LEDs

Very Low-Cost Sensing and Communication Using Bidirectional LEDs
Citation:	Dietz, P.H.; Yerazunis, W.S.; Leigh, D.L., "Very Low Cost Sensing and Communication Using Bidirectional LEDS", International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp), October 2003 (UbiComp 2003)
Date:	July 2003
MERL Contacts:	Paul Dietz, Darren Leigh, William Yerazunis
A novel microprocessor interface circuit is described which can alternately emit and detect light using only an LED, two digital I/O pins and a single current limiting resistor. This technique is first applied to create a smart illumination system that uses a single LED as both light source and sensor. We then present several devices that use an LED as a generic wireless serial data port. An important implication of this work is that every LED connected to a microprocessor can be thought of as a wireless two-way communication port. We present this technology as a solution to the ``last centimeter problem'', because it permits disparate devices to communicate with each other simply and cheaply with minimal design modification. video: http://mrl.nyu.edu/~jhan/ledtouch/ledtouch.mpg

Invention may bring power and clean water to the world's poor...

This guy is a real hero. Read the interview

Invention may bring power and clean water to the world's poor...: "

Business 2.0 has an article about Dean Kamen's latest inventions - "Eighty percent of all the diseases you could name would be wiped out if you just gave people clean water," says Kamen. "The water purifier makes 1,000 liters of clean water a day, and we don't care what goes into it. And the power generator makes a kilowatt off of anything that burns." Link. See our Maker profile of Dean Kamen in MAKE volume 04. [Read More]

Multitouch Interaction Experiments. Must see TV

Multitouch Interaction Experiments. Must see TV


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVI6xw9Zph8

Google map hack + cell phone photos + dumpster diving = awesome

from the Make Blog
Google map hack + cell phone photos + dumpster diving = awesome: "This is a great Google map project - when you're out and about in New York City and spot something cool destined for the dump, take a photo with your phone, send a description and an address! The photo and location will show up on Garbagescout.com, there's also a RSS feed! Dumpster diving just went Web 2.0 ."

ReadyMade Blog!

ReadyMade Blog!: "'ReadyMade is a bimonthly print magazine for people who like to make stuff, who see the flicker of invention in everyday objects -- the perfectly round yolk in the mundane egg'... and now they have a blog! Looks like it's off to a great start! Go check it out - Link."

Interview with Mark Tilden, Robosapien Inventor

Interview with Mark Tilden, Robosapien Inventor: "Great interview on You-review.net...'The only difference between a man and a boy is the price of his toys said a wise person many decades ago – and little did they know about the 21st century addiction with gadgets and toys. One man who has fueled this addiction, and at the same time helped bring uber-expensive technology to consumers has been the robotics rock star Mark Tilden. Mr Tilden, a real life rocket scientist, is the creator of hundreds (if not thousands) of robots, based on the simple principles of BEAM ( Biology, Eletronics, Aesthetics and Mechanics).' [http://www.you-review.net/features/interviews/mark-tilden/] ."
[from the Make Blog]

DIY Projection clock

DIY Projection clock: "Raph writes 'Since the first time I saw a projection clock, I knew one day I would build my own by converting a watch with an LCD display. Last week, I bought a watch in a dollar store and managed to convert it to a projection clock. I can finally project the time on my bedroom ceiling.'"

Sewing machine as output device.

New Brother Innovis Sewing Machine in Japan: "
How fitting that the first personal fabricator deal with fabric!

Pre-order Kyocera's KR1 EV-DO router

Kyocera's KR1 EV-DO router:

(or turn your attention to a Junxion Box or some such other EV-DO router).

Graduation Pledge of Social and Environmental Responsibility.

"I pledge to explore and take into account the social and environmental consequences of any job I consider and will try to improve these aspects of any organizations for which I work."

• Humboldt State University (California) initiated the Graduation Pledge of Social and Environmental Responsibility. Students define for themselves what it means to be socially and environmentally responsible. Students at over a hundred colleges and universities have used the pledge at some level. The schools involved include small liberal arts colleges (Colgate and Macalester); large state universities (Oregon and Utah), and large private research universities (University of Pennsylvania and Duke). The Pledge is also now found at graduate and professional schools, high schools , and schools overseas (Taiwan and Australia).

Living home made of trees

Jan. 20, 2006— Growing a home from living trees instead of building a home from felled timber is the goal of an architect from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20060116/treehouse_tec.html

Gizmo of the Week: the US$44.40 wheelchair

Gizmo of the Week: the US$44.40 wheelchair: "The central seat is a plastic garden chair – the use of existing parts enables the wheelchair to be manufactured in China, shipped in knockdown form via container, assembled and delivered to needy people all over the world for a total factory-to-field price of US$44.40. "

Hearing Aid manufacturer targets iPod owners

Hearing Aid manufacturer targets iPod owners
from The Unoffical Apple Weblog

No, it's not because they think you're going deaf. Hearing aid manufacturer Starkey Laboratories has gotten into the business of creating custom-molded iPod earbud headphones out of either hard plastic or a special, long lasting foam. The company's aim is to not only create highly customized, durable and noise-reducing headphones for the iPod (they make them for bluetooth phones as well), but to also reduce the stigma that often accompanies in-ear hearing aids.

I think it's an interesting idea. Starkey is still considering the marketing strategy, so keep your eyes peeled if you're interested in the ultimate in custom earbuds.

[Via Your Tech Weblog]

Velo-City: Cycle Tracks Will Abound in Utopia

from treehugger, about http://www.velo-city.ca/

Those of us who try to ride bikes in the winter often wonder why cars get their own big right-of-way, transit riders get expensive underground subways, pedestrians get an elaborate network of underground walkways, and we, if lucky, get a white line on pavement marking a so-called bike lane filled with snow or cars.

Toronto Architect Chris Hardwicke wants to do something about it. He proposes "a high speed, all season, pollution free, ultra-quite transit system that makes people healthier. Using an infrastructure of elevated cycle tracks, velo-city creates a network across the City. "

"The elevated bikeways are enclosed in tubes to provide protection for all season cycling. The bikeway tubes are separated by direction of travel to create a dynamic air circulation loop the crates a natural tail-wind for cyclists. The reduction in air resistance increased the efficiency of cycling by about 90% allowing for speeds up to 40 Km/hr. Velo-City promotes exercise as an urban lifestyle."

k3d surf

I hope I find a use for this, 'cause it sure looks pretty!

Robo-roaches give robot armies new reproductive prowess

Robo-roaches give robot armies new reproductive prowess:
Here, but for the grace of god, go we

Persistence of Vision kit

Spoke POV is an easy-to-make electronic kit toy that turns your bicycle wheel into a customized display!

Pandora

Pandora: If you like this song, you'll like these. Here, we've made you a radio station....

SIMILE | Java Firefox Extension

SIMILE | Java Firefox Extension: Has anyone used this to put a javabased webserver into browser? see TwoWayWeb

SleepWatcher - 2.0.2

SleepWatcher - 2.0.2: "execute shell scripts upon sleep, wakeup, idleness"

Amazon Credits You.com

After you make an Amazon purchase, drop by this site and enter it into our database. We do the rest. We'll check everyday and send you an email if the price has dropped. In the email will be a link right to the place where you claim your credit.

AjaxTrans

Camera phone + bluetooth + geolocation => emergent knowledge

Camera phone helps label snaps: "The emerging technology will allow people and places to be automatically identified and labeled within each picture, as it is taken.

based on a central server that registers details sent by the phone when the photo is taken. These include the nearest cellphone mast, the strength of the call signal and the time the photo was taken.

The system also identifies the other Bluetooth-enabled cellphones within range of the photographer and combines this with the time and place information to create a shortlist of people who might be in the picture. This can then be combined with facial-recognition algorithms to identify the subjects from the shortlist.

Facial recognition software on its own can only identify people with 43 per cent accuracy from the grainy shots taken by camera phones, but in tests Davis and his team found that by combining it with context information the system could correctly identify people 60 per cent of the time. The context information can also be combined with image-recognition software to identify places within photos.
"

My new phone. But how to get Salling Clicker installed?

Use the Verizon Nokia 6256i phone with OS X: "The Nokia 6256i is the only plain phone in Verizon's arsenal, besides the Motorola e815, which supports Bluetooth.

unwrapped

Duh: lighter-than-air electricity-generating windturbine

Good luck Iraq

Zero footprint POE thin client $299

The Jack-PC brings to life the unique concept of “Computer in-the-wall” fulfilling important promises to enterprise IT managers and decision makers:

• Highest Applications Security
• Full Protection from Damage & Theft
• Integration with Existing Standard Enterprise Infrastructures
• Power-Over-Ethernet for the World’s lowest Power Desktop

What is Power over Ethernet? Power over Ethernet (PoE) integrates power and data onto once single cabling infrastructure, eliminating the need to have AC power available at all locations. Power and Data is integrated onto the same cable, supporting category 5/5e up to 100 meters. During power failures, PoE ensures continuous operation of remotely connected devices, such as Chip PC Flex Jacks, IP telephones, wireless LAN access points and IP security cameras, when used in conjunction with a centralized uninterrupted power supply (UPS). PoE is already widely adopted in the market, saving up to 50% of overall installation costs by eliminating the need to install separate electrical wiring and power outlets.

• Complete Remote Management

The Jack-PC thin client computers o perate in a Server-Based-Computing environment and quickly convert existing enterprise LAN jacks into fully-operatable computers without installing additional cabling.
Catching ZERO desk space, the computer mounts unobtrusively inside a standard wall socket. The computer module is secured inside the wall and behind the faceplate, lessening exposure to damage, disconnection, or theft.
Chip PC provides the Jack-PC thin client computers with a fully managed Windows XP-compatible desktop interface.

ebeam

Turn your existing whiteboard into an interactive classroom workspace.

My Bio

Jon Schull, Ph.D.
--Associate Professor of Information Technology
--Rochester Insitute of Technology

Interface/Interaction Design

• TwoWayWeb (poster) (applied to face to face Deaf/Hearing chat )

Digital Intellectual Property: Practice and Theory.

• SoftLock.com, Digital Goods
• Framework for an EPublishing Ecology
• Method for Encouraging Purchase of Executable and non-Executable Software
• Method for Tracking Software Lineage
• Predicting the evolution of digital rights, digital objects and DRM languages. (Poster) (Paper)
  

Social Engineering

• QuakeHelp
• Rochester Digital Ripple

Information visualization and collaborative digital art

• Fanfare for the Uncommon Manta
  
• Macroscope Manifesto
• Eight Bit Ant Farm
• Visualizations of Blogspace

Biological psychology

• Are Species Intelligent?

QuakeHelp.net in the news

RIT Leads Online National Campaign to Help Earthquake Victims in Pakistan: As nation marks Thanksgiving, RIT professors and students urge communities to give back

QuakeHelp.net

I've decided to save lives rather than grade papers.

This is a rare opportunity to save lives and establish personal relationships in a region where we desperately need friends.

Spread the meme!

Children are Freezing

Are there Sleeping Bags in Your Attic?

Problem: Millions of displaced earthquake victims in Pakistan and Kashmir are in danger of freezing to death. Snow will soon fall on shelterless people.

Solution: Emergency airlift of life-saving camping gear.

Your Mission: Organize friends and family to gather good quality tents, sleeping bags and blankets and send them, with goodwill messages, to emergency collection points.

• Rally people you know. Forward this message (PDF) and direct people to QuakeHelp.net for updates.
• Send your camping gear! (Used goods are fine; but clean, warm, and good quality is essential.)
  • Between now and Nov 23, you can deliver them to North Face Retail stores around the country..
  • You can also ship directly to Kashmir Earthquake Relief, 1835 Apex Avenue, Los Angeles, CA. 90026 USA Phone: (323) 660 5400 Fax Number: (323) 660 5447.
    www.kashmirrelief.org/geardrop.html

  We are making arrangements for post-Thanksgiving dispatch solutions, and will post them here at QuakeHelp.net. For now, the most important thing is that you help us get the ball rolling. If six of your friends recruit six of their friends...

  ...by Thanksgiving, every family in America should be counting their blessings and their blankets!

  Help us organize the groundswell!
  Email QuakeHelp.net@gmail.com

  ---

  ---

"A Wave of Aid That Doesn't Match the Disaster"

...as I lay shivering on the hard earth, too cold to sleep and cursing myself for not having brought a better sleeping bag, I could not imagine how the villagers would cope with the imminent arrival of winter and its heavy snows.

Soon we are likely to know. In the aftermath of the earthquake, which killed at least 73,000 people and left an estimated 3 million without homes, United Nations officials have warned that the death toll could rise sharply from hunger, disease and exposure.

--John Lancaster, Washington Post, Nov 13, 2005

---

"Earthquake Relief: If we don't help Pakistan, al-Qaeda's friends will"

"...radical Islamic groups have vigorously opposed U.S. and international aid because they know this will weaken their propaganda efforts. In a speech last week, Jamaat's leader, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, said, "The Americans are [providing relief in Pakistan] to damage the solidarity of the country, and will work for materializing their ulterior motives."

The United States and the world community must now do nothing less than spearhead a response similar to that following the tsunami, not only for self-evident and overwhelming humanitarian needs but also for long-term national security.

--Hussein Haqqani, Globe and Mail, November 17, 2005

The End of an Alliance Between Whaler and Whale - New York Times

Just a great picture:

"ABC Natural History Unit
Killer whales attack a huge humpback in a scene from 'Killers in Eden.'
Readers
"

Researchers Look to Create a Synthesis of Art and Science for the 21st Century - New York Times

Researchers Look to Create a Synthesis of Art and Science for the 21st Century - New York Times: "The six-story Calit2 laboratory, which overlooks the Pacific Ocean, is designed for 900 faculty and student researchers. Two separate wings extend from the main building. On one side is an ultrasterile set of nanotechnology clean rooms designed for making devices like sensors for detecting pollutants, biological warfare agents and cancer cells. On the other side is a new digital media arts center composed of auditoriums and computer visualization laboratories, where the Calit2 scientists, engineers and artists can display their projects.

For Mr. Smarr - who as director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications in the 1990's oversaw the development of Mosaic, the first World Wide Web browser - this synthesis of art and science is vital in light of the role he expects artists to play in designing the future.

'Part of the artist's insight is to be able to interpret the future earlier than anybody,' he said during an interview in the small hideaway conference room adjacent to his office. 'We regard the artist as fully equal with any scientist at Calit2.'

"

natural foot-based guidance system

the right tool for the job, and a great example of the new physical computing

Electromechanic parts in the sole of the shoes are able to generate the angle of the shoe as well of the feet artificial. The artificial bevel is not distinguishable from a real one. Individual and virtual trails can be communicated by the shoe. Tests with the prototype demonstrate taht the principle of "walking in a trail" also works with th evitual produces topography.

The Trails can be created by different application syenarios: Assistance to avoid hitting a obstacle on certain situations, target-orientated guide from point A to point B, reference to nearby "Points-of-Interests"... even a virtual borderline of a accessible area is imaginable.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Examples from the same site

People

Projects

Information

Search

Winter 2005/06 Summer 2005 Main Course Free Project Jogarton Moving Canvas Sonderzüge Applekey k-e-y-b-o-a-r-d Echo - audible Network Mirrr - Identity and Flickr CabBoots scrub The Digital Keyboard

gizmag Article: Siemens develops printable, low-cost, disposable video display

View all images for this article (3 total)

Siemens develops printable, low-cost, disposable video display

(link to this article)

November 7, 2005 Siemens has announced a new colour display screen that can be printed onto paper or cardboard and is thin, flexible, and affordable enough to be included in books, magazines, labels, tickets, instructions, multimedia games embedded in the breakfast cereal box and a host of other traditionally “dumb” media where clarity of the message is vital – such as the dosage instructions on drugs, installation instructions for people who normally don’t RTFM ad infinitum – when the new technology reaches market in 2007, the convergence of media types will further accelerate with the possibility of video instructions incorporated into packaging, video-enabled print adverts, and printed magazines and books with multimedia

Visualizing the transparent sea of cyberspace

iSpots wireless technology at MIT: If I may quote myself,

We live in a transparent, sea of cyberspace, and for the first time in history the flow of information through that sea is trackable and accessible over a global, growing Internet. This is a major development in the multi-billion year history of life and mind, and it is happening in our lifetimes. It is a big story, and a big scientific opportunity.

This project, and this image, looks like a significant step in the right direction.
ispots.mit.edu

High-Tech Door Better than Star Trek

High-Tech Door Better than Star Trek: "You may be wondering what is so great about a door that opens only just enough to let a person come in or out; it minimizes the amount of heating or air conditioning let out of a building, as well as minimizing the entry of pollen or other pollutants from the outside."

WebORB Message Server Chat (with Google Maps)

Wonderfully done chat superimposed on a map.

A standard transcript (above the map, not shown) fills line by line.

Each bubble erases all other bubbles
I wouldn't do that. One wants (I want) text-as-you-type chat in the bubbles.

The changeID field is too subtle. Needs a little highlighting.

Still a huge bang in a simple interface

Community Wireless Emergency Response -- Updates on Our Work & the Lessons Learned. | saschameinrath.com

saschameinrath.com Katrina: lessons learned

A volunteer community wireless brigade reports from New Orleans

# The rigidity of the 'official' disaster response continues to hamper core mission objectives -- even today. For example, the only supported browser disaster survivors can use to apply for FEMA assistance is IE 6.0 (in violation of the government's own Section 508 accessibility rules)-- you can check out this out for yourself at: https://www.disasteraid.fema.gov/famsVuWeb/integration). FEMA was aware of this problem by September 8th, but has still not fixed the problem -- meaning that Mac users as well as Linux and other OS users will have trouble even gaining access to disaster aid.

# Ad-hoc (wireless) networks were often the first telecommunications infrastructure made available to evacuees, beating out the major providers by days (and often weeks).

# Had a diverse array of telecommunications infrastructures been in place, the cataclysmic failure may have been avoided. In addition, networks that are set up to 'phone home' to central locations/servers are prone to failure when most needed.

# The telecom incumbents are spending a ton of time & energy to obfuscate these issues and are conducting extensive lobbying efforts to spin this tragedy to their own advantage. Especially important to them are preventing the growth of unlicensed spectrum, ad-hoc networking technologies, and bandwidth-sharing infrastructures."

more at saschameinrath.com

visual complexity collection (information aesthetics weblog)

visual complexity collection

14 October 2005

a very beautiful collection of networked data visualizations, meant as a unified online resource space for anyone interested in the visualization of complex networks. the collection contains many examples retrieved online as well as from literature (with many new ones, & most online projects similar to those in the infosthetics aesthetics or infovis category).
according to the author: 'the project main goal is to leverage a critical understanding of different visualization methods, across a series of disciplines as diverse as biology, social networks or the world wide web. the website truly hopes it can inspire, motivate & enlighten any person doing research on this field'. sounds somehow familiar. [visualcomplexity.com|thnkx Andrew]

aesthetic & collection & infovis . comments (0)

Pigeon Rank

Somehow I missed this a few years ago

The technology behind Google's great results

As a Google user, you're familiar with the speed and accuracy of a Google search. How exactly does Google manage to find the right results for every query as quickly as it does? The heart of Google's search technology is PigeonRank™, a system for ranking web pages developed by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University.

Building upon the breakthrough work of B. F. Skinner, Page and Brin reasoned that low cost pigeon clusters (PCs) could be used to compute the relative value of web pages faster than human editors or machine-based algorithms. And while Google has dozens of engineers working to improve every aspect of our service on a daily basis, PigeonRank continues to provide the basis for all of our web search tools.

It gets better...

BlogMarks is cool

Blogmarks.net : Enlarge your bookmarks

PUBLIC MARKS
from user JonSchull

Tue 11 Oct 2005

BlogMarks.net : Last public marks from user JonSchull

BlogMarks is cool!
by JonSchull edit delete

Hot Links - Level 2

Information Visualization Gallery
by JonSchull (via) edit delete

Wow, the Baby Name Wizard's NameVoyager is a great info visualization to...

by JonSchull and 10 others (via) edit delete

© 2004-2005 - the blogmarks.net team

The Complexity and Artificial Life Research Concept for Self-Organizing Systems

A huge compendium by a well-grounded space cadet. (Which is meant as high praise.)

Self-Organizing Systems FAQ for Usenet newsgroup comp.theory.self-org-sys

Self-Organizing Systems FAQ for Usenet newsgroup comp.theory.self-org-sys

ORIENTALIA - Buddhist Ecology of Mind

"Buddhist Steps to an Ecology of Mind
Thinking about "Thoughts without a Thinker"
I went to Naropa institute one summer because I felt this essay was waiting to be written.
I wasn't the guy. Looks like Waldrop is.
I look forward to reading this sometime.

Scientific American: Drowning New Orleans

Scientific American October 2001:

Drowning New Orleans

A major hurricane could swamp New Orleans under 20 feet of water, killing thousands. Human activities along the Mississippi River have dramatically increased the risk, and now only massive reengineering of southeastern Louisiana can save the city

By Mark Fischetti

New Orleans is a disaster waiting to happen. The city lies below sea level, in a bowl bordered by levees that fend off Lake Pontchartrain to the north and the Mississippi River to the south and west. And because of a damning confluence of factors, the city is sinking further, putting it at increasing flood risk after even minor storms. The low-lying Mississippi Delta, which buffers the city from the gulf, is also rapidly disappearing. A year from now another 25 to 30 square miles of delta marsh-an area the size of Manhattan-will have vanished. An acre disappears every 24 minutes. Each loss gives a storm surge a clearer path to wash over the delta and pour into the bowl, trapping one million people inside and another million in surrounding communities. Extensive evacuation would be impossible because the surging water would cut off the few escape routes. Scientists at Louisiana State University (L.S.U.), who have modeled hundreds of possible storm tracks on advanced computers, predict that more than 100,000 people could die. The body bags wouldn�t go very far....continued at Scientific American Digital ...

WikiHome - mmsn - JotSpot

I'm organizing a tiger team to explore what I think is a very timely, interesting, and important idea. Right now, the biggest challenge seems to relate to issues of authentication. Your insights would be most welcome.

"MobileMesh SafetyNet:

An emergency mesh network for today's mobile phones"

The problem: the existing telephone infrastructure can go down when it is needed most.

The opportunity: cell phones are a huge resource. A user-friendly
widely-distributed pre-installed radio-enabled supercomputer is a
terrible thing to waste.

The proposed solution: The cellMesher would be a robust
self-configuring battery operated 'cell tower in a barrel' that coud
be dropped or floated into a disaster zone to replace the central
mobile phone infrastructure, allowing today's off-the-shelf mobile
phones to communicate with each other.

Basically, cellMeshers would spoof cell phones, convincing them that
they were normal cell towers. cellMeshers would exchange messages
with each other (or with satellites) to allow people to communicate
beyond their own local cellMesher, foregoing billing, authentication,
and other non-essential services in the service of emergency relief.

There is probably more aggregated computational and broadcast power in personal cellphones than in all the rest of the cell phone infrastructure.

A latent, distributed radio-enabled supercomputer is a terrible thing to waste.

from being the main source of society’s ever-shortening attention span to becoming a reliable guarantor of long-term perpective

How can we invest in a future we know is structurally incapable of keeping faith with its past? The digital industries must shift from being the main source of society’s ever-shortening attention span to becoming a reliable guarantor of long-term perspective. We’ll know that shift has happened when programmers begin to anticipate the Year 10,000 Problem, and assign five digits instead of four to year dates. “01998” they’ll write, at first frivolously, then seriously.

--Stewart Brand http://www.longnow.org/10klibrary/library.htm

Usable Security

Many people believe that you cannot have both security and ease of use. This simply is not true. The goal of the Whisper Project, organized by members of the Security Research Group in PARC's Computer Science Laboratory, is to build new technologies that allow users to easily manage their own security. These technologies are based on the following key concepts:

• Infer security requirements from user actions.
• Provide useful and convenient interaction primitives for users to control their security environment.

Xerox Parc: Usable Security

There is almost one mobile phone for every person in much of the developed world

There is almost one mobile phone for every person in much of the developed world, according to new figures from the OECD. In Luxembourg, phones outnumber people, since many people who live in neighbouring countries have a second handset for use within its borders. Despite their enthusiasm for PCs and broadband links, Canada and the United States have been slower to adopt mobile phones than other rich countries.

RFID in Japan

The future is here. It's just not widely distributed yet. --William Gibson

Mesh networking cellphones in New Orleans.

Mesh networking cellphones in New Orleans.

Why aren't there ad-hoc battery-powered "cell towers in a barrel" that could be "bombed" or floated into disaster zones to turn the thousands of useless cell phones in people's pockets into a crisis mesh network.

(Answer this question, and we can deal with the problem of recharging the cellphones next. But look: today's cellphones are powerful receivers and transmitters and computers. In crisis they should be re-purporseable, whether the telcos like it or not.)

This is not a rhetorical question. Phone Phreaks, this is your moment to shine.

RSVP ASAP http://jonschull.blogspot.com/2005/09/mesh-networking-cellphones-in-new.html

---

I've posted something like this at recovery2.org http://www.4setup.com/index.php/Possible_Projects
and at http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2005/09/etel_announcing_the_emerging_t.html#comments

Wired News: Linux Distribution Tames Chaos

Chaos, a Linux distribution developed by Australian Ian Latter, harnesses the unused processing power of networked PCs, creating a distributed supercomputer that can crack passwords at lightning speed.

The program remotely boots Linux on a PC without touching the hard drive, leaving the "slave" PC's operating system and data secure and untouched. Thirty PCs connected as a cluster create enough processing power to complete complex mathematical equations or high-level security tasks like password cracking that no individual PC could handle alone.
-- http://wired-vig.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,67220,00.html

New Backpack Generates Its Own Electricity

The suspended-load backpack generates electricity from the motion of
the person carrying it. The pack creates enough energy to run seven
portable electronic devices, such as cell phones, at once.

Image copyright Science

information aesthetics - photonic textiles

http://infosthetics.com/archives/2005/09/photonic_textil_1.html

Steve Jobs (found art)

QuickTime, network congestion, and I collaborate on an accidental portrait of Steve Jobs, soul of Apple, during today's "Special Event" webcast.

Boxes and Arrows: Expanding the Approaches to User Experience

Boxes and Arrows: Expanding the Approaches to User Experience

Jesse James Garrett’s “The Elements of User Experience”
diagram (17kb PDF) has become rightly famous as a clear and simple
model for the sorts of things that user experience professionals do.
But as a model of user experience it presents an incomplete picture
with some serious omissions—omissions I’ll try address with a more
holistic model.

Boxes and Arrows: The Sociobiology of Information Architecture

Boxes and Arrows: The Sociobiology of Information Architecture

What evolution teaches us is this: in order to understand the deeper roots of our need to generate and manage information, we need to look beyond the individual organism, towards the social groups that drive the mechanisms of evolution and adaptation for all species.

The definitive collection of idea generation methods

The definitive collection of idea generation methods

6-3-5 Method:

This method is suited to groups of around six people.

Each group member receives three cards and writes one idea on each.

The three cards are then passed to the neighbouring group member, who writes a further idea on each card, triggered by the idea already provided.

The process is repeated until each of the 18 cards has six ideas on it, giving a total of 108 ideas.

Operation Everything

Operations Research Emerges

In World War II, scientists from a wide range of fields attacked military problems with a potent combination of empiricism and mathematical models. When airplanes came back riddled with holes from enemy attacks, for instance, the intuitive response was to reinforce the armor where the holes were. But, noted the scientists, those were the planes that made it back. They didn't need more armor where they were hit. The real challenge was to figure out the places that had been hit in the planes that went down.

"It was a lively, informal, paradoxical exchange of ideas between amateur and professional war makers and it produced some brilliant successes," wrote James R. Newman in "The World of Mathematics," published in 1956, which cited O.R.'s role in simplifying supply lines, providing a quantitative basis for weapons evaluation, and so on.

...

In the 1990s, the data became available. Now corporate information technology systems collect unprecedented amounts of data -- on costs, sales, and inventories, in itemized detail and real time. Wal-Mart and Procter & Gamble, for instance, know exactly how many 200-ounce bottles of liquid Tide Free have sold in which stores today. That information in turn determines how many new bottles are shipped from which warehouse tomorrow.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Tall grasses set to power Europe

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Tall grasses set to power Europe: "Burning biomass is broadly neutral in terms of its emissions of carbon dioxide, the major gas thought responsible for warming the planet.

'As the plant grows it is drawing carbon dioxide out of the air,' explained Professor Steve Long, from the University of Illinois. 'When you burn it, you put that carbon dioxide back, so the net effect on atmospheric CO2 is zero.

'Whereas, if you take coal out of the ground and burn it, you are adding a net gain of carbon to the atmosphere.'"

"t could actually make a major contribution and it doesn't require big technological breakthroughs to do that."

DNA Printing

I read two books this summer that have sensitized me (further) to bio-it convergences.
Radical Evolution by Jarreau
Fab by Gershenfeld.

Here's one such convergence, from NASAtechbriefs.

DNA PRINTING

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have
developed a nanoscale printing technique that could make DNA analysis
as common as a blood test.

The technique - called supramolecular nano-stamping -- prints DNA from
one substrate, such as glass, gold, or silicon, onto another. Using a
print template, mirror-image copies can be produced in a few steps,
offering the rapid transfer of a large amount of information.

The technique could be used to produce other types of nanodevices
including organic and inorganic materials. DNA could be used as a
starting material to produce a transistor or a semiconductor,
according to MIT materials scientist Francesco Stellacci.

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Blogger Help : What is BlogThis! ?

Blogger Help : What is BlogThis! ?: "BlogThis! is an easy way to make a blog post without visiting blogger.com. Once you add the BlogThis! link to your browser's toolbar, blogging will be a snap. "

Head-Tracking Pointer?

What is the Head-Tracking Pointer?

The Head-Tracking Pointer provides an inexpensive and easily-used mouse replacement for those unable to use traditional pointing devices. Using only software and any Web-cam, this application allows users to point and click with character-level accuracy by simply aiming their face. [windows]
--http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/headpointer

Singularity will be here by September 28....

The 9th Annual Gilder/Forbes Telecosm Conference
TELECOSM 2005: The Singularity Is Here
September 26 - September 28, 2005
The Resort at Squaw Creek, Lake Tahoe

All attendees will receive FREE COPIES of:
- Ray Kurzweil's transcendent new book, The Singularity is Near
- Rich Karlgaard's horizon-widening work, Life 2.0
- Andy Kessler's must-read , How We Got Here

Back in the saddle again

Classes started on labor day (why?)!

Here we go again... Its been a very productive summer. I'll be updating my blog...