A huge European project into car and road safety has developed a system that will read satellite navigation maps and warn the driver of upcoming hazards — sharp bends, dips and accident black spots — which may be invisible to the driver. Even better, the system can update the geographic database. Suddenly, all drivers can become mapmakers.
Source: ICT Results, April 2, 2008
The mobile phone is the new call to action. A Mexican wolf’s eerie howl does double duty as a ringtone and a reminder of habitat destruction. Barack Obama’s campaign offers text message updates, wallpaper, and ringtones with sound bites like “What I do oppose is a dumb war” over a hip-hop beat. A local community support group has turned volunteers with an hour or two between tasks into a network of translators. Often seen as a platform for socializing or time-wasting novelties, cellphones also present a unique opportunity for social good. Portable and personal, the gadgets provide a discreet channel for people to receive information and a broadcast platform to rally like-minded activists around shared interests.
Source: Carolyn Y. Johnson, The Boston Globe, April 3, 2008
Amazon Launches Text-Message Shopping
Amazon.com Inc.’s brick-and-mortar competitors have yet another reason to fear the Web: a new service that lets shoppers compare prices and buy things with a few quick taps on their cell phones. Amazon TextBuyIt, which launched late Tuesday, lets people text the name of a product, its description or its UPC or ISBN to 262966 (that’s “Amazon” on the keypad) from anywhere their cell phones work — including from inside physical stores.
Source: Jessica Mintz, The Associated Press, April 2, 2008
Computers to merge with humans
By 2020 the terms “interface” and “user” will be obsolete as computers merge ever closer with humans. It is one prediction in a Microsoft-backed report drawn from the discussions of 45 academics from the fields of computing, science, sociology and psychology. It predicts fundamental changes in the field of so-called Human-Computer Interaction (HCI).
[Note: The report, "Being Human: Human-Computer Interaction in the year 2020," is available from Microsoft Research. Here is a direct link to this document (PDF format, 51 pages, 3.08 MB).]
Source: BBC News Online, April 2, 2008, 2008
People Who Read This Article Also Read…
The newspaper, that daily chronicle of human events, is undergoing the most momentous transformation in its centuries-old history. The familiar pulp-paper product still shows up on newsstands and porches every morning, but online versions are proliferating, attracting young readers and generally carving out a sizable swath of the news business. In the United States alone, 34 million people have made a daily habit of reading an online newspaper, according to the Newspaper Association of America. It’s just the beginning. Online news will inevitably grow at the expense of its traditional counterpart because the Web not only lowers production and distribution costs, it also opens up newspapers to entirely new formats.
[Note: this very long article is a must-read, even if you need time.]
Source: Greg Linden, for IEEE Spectrum, March 2008, Vol. 45, No. 3, P. 46
Different Views for the Same Virtual World
Virtual worlds come in two forms. Some, like Second Life, are 3-D, requiring users to install programs that run most smoothly on computers equipped with high-end graphics capabilities. Others, like Disney’s Club Penguin, are browser-based environments that can be accessed through older computers–even those that access the Internet using dial-up modems. Each form has its drawbacks: not everyone has the computing power to get into a 3-D virtual world, but the browser-based worlds don’t have the breathtaking, immersive qualities of 3-D. Today, at the Virtual Worlds conference in New York City, Multiverse, a company based in Mountain View, CA, that provides foundations for virtual worlds, will show new technology that allows developers to build virtual worlds that users can access in either a rich, 3-D form or a simpler, browser-based form.
Source: Erica Naone, Technology Review, April 3, 2008
Matrix-style virtual worlds ‘a few years away’
Are supercomputers on the verge of creating Matrix-style simulated realities? Michael McGuigan at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, thinks so. He says that virtual worlds realistic enough to be mistaken for the real thing are just a few years away.
[Note: If you want more information after reading the New Scientist article, you’ll find additional information in this report, “Toward the Graphics Turing Scale on a Blue Gene Supercomputer” (PDF format, 9 pages, 109 KB).
Source: Colin Barras, NewScientist, April 3, 2008
Barcodes on tombs to connect with the dead
What better way to pay your respects to your dearly departed than to use your mobile phone to scan a barcode on their grave and use it to access their pictures and other information about them? Well, the Japanese certainly seem to like the idea. A Japanese tombstone maker, Ishinokoe, has started putting the little square, black and white barcodes behind small, lockable doors on gravestones, allowing relatives of the deceased to access information and pictures about them, and even upload their own contributions. It will supposedly give people a way of staying “in touch” with the dead. Like a sort of gravestone based, family fueled, wiki of the dead.
Source: Sylvie Barak, The Inquirer, April 3, 2008
Map reading for dummies
A huge European project into car and road safety has developed a system that will read satellite navigation maps and warn the driver of upcoming hazards — sharp bends, dips and accident black spots — which may be invisible to the driver. Even better, the system can update the geographic database. Suddenly, [...]
