Eye-fi wireless enabled memory card for your camera
If you haven't seen this and you shoot a lot of digital photos, you will love
this product; also seems like a great gift: "Upload photos automatically from
your digital camera to your computer and favorite photo site with the world's
first wireless memory card." See Eye-Fi web site.
Did you know what happened to Seymour Papert?
The
other day I came across this article in the Boston Globe about one of the
greats of Computer Science, Seymour Papert, inventor of the seminal Logo
programming language and many other important accomplishments.
"He was long a jewel of the MIT faculty. Now, after a devastating brain injury, mathematician Seymour Papert is struggling bravely to learn again how to think like, speak like, be like the man of genius he was." (from In Search of a Beautiful Mind, The Boston Globe)
Hard to believe that I hadn't heard of it before. So Sad. Read the whole article, it's worthwhile.
Helpful iPhone tip (even though I don’t have one)
I saw this somewhere and I thought I would share as it seems very useful, yet obscure:
Helpful Tip: To quickly reset your iPhone without wiping anything off it or retethering it to iTunes, hold the volume up button, the home button, and the lock button at the same time. Keep holding it even after the "Slide to Power Off" appears, eventually it will flash totally off and then you'll get the Apple logo. Let go then.
10 Commandments might apply to more than just Facebook!
Check out these 10 Commandments for Facebook Applications. They are pretty good commandments for software in general. I especially like:
"Make it simple. Users DO NOT read.", from FaceReviews
Yup, I have seen that time and time again with BlogBridge. Hard to believe. But true. Of course there's the 1 in a thousand who ask for more documentation, but they are very rare.
[if you are interested in Facebook, take a look at BlogBridge's Guide of Facebook blogs and feeds]
Fun little web goodies
Check out "Forget Photoshop: 15 Online Graphics Generators":
"Shiny edges, reflections, neat 3D effects - you love them and can’t get enough of them. Well, there’s no reason to spend any time in Photoshop creating them since there are so many tools out there that will do the dirty work for you. Without further ado, here’s a roundup of 15 online Web 2.0 graphics generators." (from "Forget Photoshop: 15 Online Graphics Generators")
Useful robots may be here sooner than we think
"The Most Advanced Quadruped Robot on Earth -- BigDog is the alpha male of the Boston Dynamics family of robots. It is a quadruped robot that walks, runs, and climbs on rough terrain and carries heavy loads. BigDog is powered by a gasoline engine that drives a hydraulic actuation system. BigDog's legs are articulated like an animal’s, and have compliant elements that absorb shock and recycle energy from one step to the next."
Check it out and watch the BostonDynamics video. Pretty cool and surprising. Your tax dollars at work!
p.s. But a gasoline engine?
Photoshopping missles
I recently saw a Nova episode about Hany Farid about so called "Digital Forensics", that is how to detect and discover photos manipulated digitally. Here are some useful links if you are interested:
www.cs.dartmouth.edu/farid/research/
www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0802/digital-forensics-an-interview-with-dr- hany-farid.html
www.wired.com/gadgets/digitalcameras/news/2007/03/72883
Check
out this photo which appeared in all the papers yesterday.
When I saw it, I didn't think Photoshop, but I did wonder how we knew that this photo had actually been taken in Iran and recently.
It looked like any number of missile launch photos.
But check this out:
"As news spread across the world of Iran’s provocative missile tests, so did an image of four missiles heading skyward in unison. Unfortunately, it appeared to contain one too many missiles, a point that had not emerged before the photo appeared on the front pages of The Los Angeles Times, The Financial Times, The Chicago Tribune and several other newspapers as well as on BBC News, MSNBC, Yahoo! News, NYTimes.com and many other major news Web sites." (from New York Times Blog)
Ouch. Egg on their face.
Whats the point of setting a goal for 2050?
How lame and do-nothing can you get when the best you can do is to set a goal to be met in 2050, when probably most of the signatories will be dead and gone? Do you think it has any effect on anything real?
"RUSUTSU, Japan - The Group of Eight leading industrial nations on Tuesday endorsed halving world emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050, edging forward in the battle against global warming but stopping short of tough, nearer- term targets." (from Associated Press)
Lame-o?
What it takes to emmigrate to Australia…
Aleksey (my colleague on BlogBridge) is planning to move from the Ukraine to Australia. Here's a fairly fascinating account of the experience of proving that he knows enough English to be permitted to Australia. Check out this post from noizZze to read about his interesting adventure:
"IELTS test is an indispensable part of the process as we have to prove our language abilities along with technical skills and other stuff when applying to the Skilled Immigration Visa. According to the requirements, I need a pretty high score (somewhere around 7 of 10) and Kate’s needs to be at least 5. One interesting fact that puzzles everyone I speak to is that if your spouse (non-primary applicant) fails to get above the threshold, you are to pay approximately USD $2000 for him/her to study the language there in AU upon arrival. Interesting!"