Archive for July, 2007
The first ever Web OS
Parakey is a platform for building applications that merge the best of the desktop and the Web. Like desktop applications, these applications work offline, offer more privacy than pure websites, run quickly, and integrate with your computer and its devices. But like Web applications, they are also more creative, visually alluring, accessible from anywhere and potentially accessible by anyone. In short, Parakey apps are designed to be both useful and social, a combination that is too rare today.
Parakey is building not just the platform but also its first set of applications. The folks behind it enjoy programming, but ultimately started this company to make computers better for average people who turn to technology for convenience, not…adventure. When people need to call their “computer friend” in 2007 to install a program, scan a document, burn a CD or show a picture to a friend, there is a problem. Fixing it will take time and the patience to sit down with users and understand them.
Enter Parakey…
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One Giant Leap for Space Fashion
In the 40 years that humans have been traveling into space, the suits they wear have changed very little. The bulky, gas-pressurized outfits give astronauts a bubble of protection, but their significant mass and the pressure itself severely limit mobility.
Dava Newman, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics and engineering systems at MIT, wants to change that.
Newman is working on a sleek, advanced suit designed to allow superior mobility when humans eventually reach Mars or return to the moon. Her spandex and nylon BioSuit is not your grandfather’s spacesuit–think more Spiderman, less John Glenn.
Traditional bulky spacesuits “do not afford the mobility and locomotion capability that astronauts need for partial gravity exploration missions. We really must design for greater mobility and enhanced human and robotic capability,” Newman says.
Newman, her colleague Jeff Hoffman, her students and a local design firm, Trotti and Associates, have been working on the project for about seven years. Their prototypes are not yet ready for space travel, but demonstrate what they’re trying to achieve : a lightweight, skintight suit that will allow astronauts to become truly mobile lunar and Mars explorers.
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Cloning for dollars
Scientists at Seoul National University Korea are seeking to commercially clone dogs this year, which would be the world’s first attempt to create canine clones for money. Senior researcher Kim Min-kyu at the Seoul-based University is spearheading the efforts based on his team’s expertise in cloning dogs. As per Mr. Kim early last month, they signed a memorandum of understanding with the Korea Customs Service to clone its drug-sniffing dogs. They have already obtained somatic cells of the expensive dogs and will attempt to clone them in July or August to get puppies late this year at the earliest.
Demand for drug and explosive sniffing dogs has outstripped supply after the Sept. 11 terrorism attacks in 2001, as countries focus on beefing up security, according to Kim. But he refused to elaborate the terms of the MOU. Kim played a pivotal role in creating the world’s first cloned dog, a male named Snuppy, in 2005 as well as three other female clones last year. Still, no other scientists on the planet have succeeded in cloning a dog except Kim’s team.
here we go, folks…
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History of the Compact Disc
by Joshua Coventry
The inventor of the compact disc, the most popular medium in the world for playing back and storing music, is often disputed as one individual did not invent every part of the compact disc. The most attributed inventor is James Russell, who in 1965 was inspired with a revolutionary idea as he sketched on paper a more ideal music recording system to replace vinyl records; Russell envisioned a system which could record and replay sounds without any physical contact between parts. By the time his invention had been refined and further developed, it was actually a merger and adaptation of many different technologies including the laser (1960), digital recording (1967) and optical disc technology (1970s). Russell struggled to attract interest from investors at first but eventually Sony and other companies realized the potential and purchased licenses of the CD-ROM technology.
Development
With support from large corporations, the technology was further improved and enhanced to ensure it was ready for the market. In 1978, Polygram, a division of Philips, decided polycarbonate as the material of choice for the CD. Many other decisions were made that year, such as the disc diameter (115m) and the type of laser to be used by CD players. It was also decided that data on a CD would start at the center and spiral outwards to the edge. In 1979, a prototype CD system was demonstrated in Europe and Japan; Sony then agreed to join into the collaboration and both Sony and Philips compromised on the standard sampling rate of 44.1 kHz, and the choice to use 16-bit audio. The disc diameter was changed from 115m to 120mm to allow for 74 minutes of playback with the sampling rate and quality chosen.
The compact disc first surfaced the public eye’s scope 15 years after its invention when Philips made an announcement on May 17, 1978. The new standard was proposed by Philips and Sony in 1980 as ‘Red Book’, which was a set of color-bound books containing the technical specifications for all CD and CD-ROM formats. The standard is not free, and a license (known as an IEC 60908 document) must be obtained from Philips for US$210 as a PDF. In 1981, Matsushita accepted the new CD standard, but the collaboration between Sony and Philips ended as the two companies had products ready for 1982.
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RoboCup 2007
RoboCup chose to use soccer as a central topic of research, aiming at innovations to be applied for socially significant problems and industries. The ultimate goal of the RoboCup project is by 2050, develop a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots that can win against the human world champion team in soccer.
In order for a robot team to actually perform a soccer game, various technologies must be incorporated including: design principles of autonomous agents, multi-agent collaboration, strategy acquisition, real-time reasoning, robotics, and sensor-fusion. RoboCup is a task for a team of multiple fast-moving robots in a dynamic environment. RoboCup also offers a simulation platform for research on the software aspects of RoboCup.
One major application of RoboCup technologies is search and rescue in large scale disaster situations. RoboCup initiated RoboCupRescue project to specifically promote research in socially significant issues. RoboCupRescue includes real robot and simulation leagues.
In the Rescue Robot league, robots explore a specially constructed disaster site about the size of a small house. The disaster site includes mannequins with various signs of life, such as waving hands, shouting noises and heat, hidden amongst stairs, platforms and building rubble. The robots, some under human control, must find and approach the victims, identify their signs of life and produce a map of the site showing where the victims are located. The aim is to provide human rescuers with enough information to safely perform a rescue. Each team is scored based on the quality of its maps, the accuracy of the victim information and the number of victims found.
The Virtual Robots competition expands the disaster site to a city block-sized disaster area. To explore such a large area, teams of cooperative robots must now be deployed. These robots will face similar challenges and scoring metrics to those in the physical league. In addition, the simulated environment allows for additional hazards and challenges that would not be possible in a physical competition environment.
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Stung by High Ticket Prices?
At some point concert-going fans are going to have to realize how cheezy it is to buy extra tickets to a show in hopes of making a few bucks off of them on eBay.
It is the biggest, hottest and most expensive rock concert tour of the year.
But fans — and brokers — trying to sell extra tickets to tonight’s sold-out Police reunion concert in St. Paul are getting stung.
“I’ve never seen so many tickets available,” said Mike Nowakowski, co-owner of Ticket King, a Hudson, Wis.-based ticket seller, on Monday. “I’ve never seen it on the day before a show where you can buy tickets for pennies on the dollar.”
Last week, Ticket King listed more than 350 people trying to sell 1,000 tickets to the Xcel Center concert.
On eBay, a $50 ticket was sold for 99 cents on Sunday; someone was asking as little as $26 for a $225 ticket, the top-priced seat, on Monday. (In Minnesota, it is illegal — until the law is repealed Aug. 1 — to sell a ticket above face value.)
hahahahaa – i think these kinds of “entrepreneurs” reap just what they “sow”.
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