The real application for this technology would be to be able to walk around your office at work with a camera, feed the video into a computer, and then sit down to play a Counterstrike game set in your workplace.
-Greg
Augmented-reality machine works in real time
I can see this being handy as a mapping system while walking around in a city. You could ask it where the nearest subway station was and all you would have to do it follow the big arrows floating in the sky or look for the glowing building. Cool. Thanks Greg!
Beagle 2 ‘should never have been built’
On the face of it, this article is just another example of misplaced
bureaucratic criticism based on 20-20 hindsight.
However, the report’s phrase “should have never been built” amuses me.
It sounds like the Beagle II killed all the scientists, took over the
national computing grid and enslaved humanity, rather than merely failed
to survive the landing.
The second amusing point is that a quote regarding the commission report
from the mission’s lead scientist makes it clear that the real reason
for the failure was a math error in the programming: “I refute that
105%,” he says.
Beagle 2 ‘should never have been built’
(thank you agent Greg for this dead on news)
Piracy Rampant at Redmond!
I am so amused about this story, about 80% of people on the Microsoft main campus in Redmond use an iPod to listen to music. That just makes sense, they get paid ungodly amounts of cash for what they do and thus have loads of disposable income. It’s a total no-brainer that they would own iPods. However, I am surprised that there isn’t some sort of rule about hiring pirates. Yes, if you will remember, Steve Ballmer (Microsoft CEO, aka, Gate’s Monster) stated that “… The most common format of music on an iPod is ‘stolen'” So with that logic 80% of employees at the Redmond campus are thieves. Humm… Good thing that the iPods don’t support firewire connections on a PC, if it did you might have people dropping CD images on to them and getting away with real piracy. I wonder if you lose your soda rights if you are caught plugging in your iPod to a USB port while at work.
Wired News: Hide Your IPod, Here Comes Bill
iPod users are music thieves says Ballmer
gp4light
Shortwave radio is kind of dead here in the US. You can pick up some stations if the weather is right but not much to hear without a monster antenna. However, the size, the LED flashlight, and the amazing price ($22) is a knock out. The only gripe I have with it is that there is no external antenna jack.
Here is the dirt on the set:
RUN TIME:
Radio: 150 hrs at 40% Volume
Light: 70 Hrs
FREQUENCY RANGE
FM 76-109 MHz
MW 520-1740Khz
SW 5.20-18.30 MHz (16, 19, 21, 31, 41 meter bands)
POWER REQUIREMENTS
2 each “AA” batteries
DIMENSIONS: 3.4″ X 2.55″ X .83″
WEIGHT: 85 Grams not including batteries
Built in speaker, ear phone jack, clock with alarm.
Its all in the Chips
I think that in the next few years the features on digital and video cameras will become mind numbingly complex. Still image with your video, auto correcting harsh lighting, details from blown out skys… I like my D70 just fine but I can see how handy some of these features will be for a nice little 5MP pocket camera.
Picture this: A new breed of camera
Mega Stick 527 MP3 Player
This is a nifty little item I saw over at Gizmodo today. Its a little flash MP3 player with a built in FM radio and microphone. Wow! If only it had a larger capacity. 256 and 512 are nice, but 1 GB would be, in my opinion, a start on the Apple Shuffle.
The recorder is cool, I want to know if you can use the radio and recorder without a computer. I would like to use it for recording data (in audio) from something like a rocket, or balloon. As long as your data wasn’t too fast or the recorder did not record at such a low bit rate that the highs are all sloshed together it would be pretty nifty.
MSI Launches Mega Stick 527 MP3 Player – Personal Audio/Video News – Designtechnica News