Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

25 Tech links I found interesting in the last week. Backscatter x-rays; malware; nanopixels, gecko feet; dry water; facial recognition; RFID kids; baby bag; hemp car; huge CMOS; iPhone stethoscope; social novels.

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I write a Tech Universe column for the NZ Herald. This is a fun assignment: Tech Universe brings 5 headlines each day about what’s up in the world of technology. Here are the links from last week.

Tech universe: Monday 30 August 2010

• WINDOWBOT: Stanford University’s new robot climbs smooth walls. Like geckos, it uses directional dry adhesion to interact with individual molecules of the climbing surface. Stickybot climbs wood paneling, painted metal and glass. Let’s combine that with window cleaning abilities.
  

  

  www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5lMJtQOKSY

• NANOPIXELS: While image capture leaps to hundreds of megapixels, high res image display is heading into nano territory. University of Michigan cut nano-sized slits in metal to separate white light into red, green and blue. New screens could cram in 10 pixels for every one on a current LCD. Now who’s going to read the 8 pixel size fine print?
• BAD USB: In 2008 the US military suffered its biggest data breach ever. A spy introduced malware from a thumb drive into a military laptop. The US military now bans thumb drives. Spies take note: no USB drives allowed!
• STREET VIEW: Backscatter scanners send out a narrow stream of x-rays. The pattern of what bounces back distinguishes dense material from less dense objects such as explosives or human bodies. In the US law enforcement agencies have these scanners in vans on the streets to detect vehicle-based bombs. Pedestrians: wear your lead vests today.
  

  

  www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGCd0KPJcMs

• BONE SCAN: Each of us has a unique skeletal structure. The Wright State Research Institute is working on a skeletal scanner, linked to a database, to identify terrorists and sex offenders. The scanners will use X-rays or gamma rays. Now what do you think of the roving vans?

Tech universe: Tuesday 31 August 2010

• PEEK A BOO: Some California preschoolers are being dressed in special jerseys to track their movements. The jerseys contain RFID tags so staff can remotely monitor location and attendance. I really doubt any kids will take the jerseys off.
• BRIGHT EYES: The cornea is clear tissue over our eyes. If it’s damaged we may go blind, and donated corneas are hard to come by. Scientists used artificial corneas made from synthetic collagen in 10 patients. Six of them could see well again after 2 years. Grow your own cornea today.
• IS THAT YOU?: Facial recognition is fine, until your face changes, perhaps with age or weight gain. NEC’s recognition system focuses mainly on eyes, nose and mouth, and shows up to 95% accuracy. It took less than half a second to recognise one face from more than 1.6 million. Hah. On CSI it takes minutes not seconds.
• POWDERED WATER: If you encase droplets of water in silicon nanoparticles the water cannot form a liquid. Dry Water acts like a sponge for carbon dioxide and other gases making them safer and easier to store and transport. So I guess those are solid gases. Video:
• HOLOTOUCH: Japan’s Shinoda lab Airborne Ultrasound Tactile Display uses ultrasound to create tactile sensations. Users viewing their interactive 3D display actually feel objects on their hand while looking at holographic images. Game play moves up a level.
  

  

  www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-P1zZAcPuw

Tech universe: Wednesday 01 September 2010

• EMBRACE A BABY: In many parts of the world low birth weight babies face hypothermia and incubators are not available. The Embrace Infant Warmer is a kind of high-tech sleeping bag whose sealed wax pouch is heated with hot water. The Embrace is inexpensive and easy to use. Rock a bye baby, in the heat pouch.
• NUT PHONE: NEC’s new bioplastic made from cashew nut shells and other non-edible plant materials bonds cellulose with cardanol. The plastic is strong, heat resistant and water resistant. That means it’s great for electronics. I hope it doesn’t trigger any allergies.
• HOMEGROWN CAR: The Canadians are developing an electric car, the Kestrel. Not much new there, except the body will be made from an impact-resistant composite material produced from hemp. Hemp grows well in Canada, with a high yield per hectare. That’s a nice agribusiness.
• DUAL MODEM: Telstra Australia’s Ultimate HSPA+ USB modem uses dual-carrier technology. Customers can send and receive wireless data using two channels simultaneously, at up to 42Mbit/s. Actual speeds are more likely 10 to 20 Mbps. Two way sending bodes well for VOIP calls.
  

  

  www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wxLGL_CmMg

• SCANNED 101: Northern Arizona University want to boost attendance rates for first-year students, in hopes that more will eventually graduate. That’s why they’re installing attendance scanners outside 20 large lecture halls to keep a tally via student ID cards. You can lead students to lectures, but can you make them learn?

Tech universe: Thursday 02 September 2010

• I HEART MY PHONE: The iStethoscope application uses a smartphone pressed against bare skin to record and analyse your heartbeat. Sound patterns can be emailed to and assessed by professionals. If the phone’s been in a pocket, at least it should be warm.
• BIG PHONE: ViewSonic’s ViewPad 7 is both a phone and a 17 cm Android tablet. It includes twin cameras, Bluetooth, VOIP, and GPS. Now hold that to your ear.
• BIG EYE: Canon’s latest CMOS camera sensor is 20 centimetres square and extremely sensitive to light. Shoot video at 60 frames per second with only 0.3 lux of illumination. The latest spy gadget of choice.
• GRAPHENE ONIONS: And to power the monster camera, perhaps a little onion juice. A new super capacitor uses nanodiamonds between ‘onion’ layers of graphene. An organic electrolyte makes them discharge up to 200 volts every second. The energy could charge a cellphone and be stored in a battery.
• SWIM BUDDY: The Finis Swimsense is a swimming computer. Wear it on your wrist where it captures stroke type and count, laps, calories burned and distance. Upload data after a swim via USB. And remember: don’t be looking at your wrist, just keep swimming.

Tech universe: Friday 03 September 2010

• SOCIAL NOVELS: The PULP platform for creating digital novels provides text, but authors can add other media such as audio or movies, or work as a team. Readers can create profiles, earn badges and connect with other readers. Like.
• CHEAP CHIPS: Rice University’s new computer memory chip uses exclusively silicon. It can be packed much more densely than flash memory and uses hardly any power. The chips are simple to make, scalable and cheap. Supersize it?
• FOLD-UP CAR: Nagoya Institute of Technology prototyped a unique fold-up electric car. The X-Frame changes shape according to the number of passengers and the terrain, then folds up for storage. Short wide parking slots?
• BIOSENSE BABIES: Exmobaby pyjamas monitor baby’s heart rate, emotional state and behaviour and wirelessly transmit data to a nearby computer or cellphone. The software learns and improves over time, in the way voice recognition software does. If you have twins don’t mix up the pyjamas.
• RGB MARS: Google Mars brings us detailed scientific maps of Mars in Visible and Infrared light and by elevation. Locate spacecraft and features such as dunes or canyons. Red, green and blue — they’re all there.

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The pace of innovation is increasing. We can't even imagine today the devices that will be essential in 2015. Our pot of gold is flexibility. We need to be open to the possibilities each new day brings.

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It’s almost 20 years now since I had a job encouraging community organisations to use email. That was even before we started using the Web in New Zealand. In fact, few people had even heard of the Internet then.

The training sessions would start with the words: There’s a thing called the Internet and you can use it to send messages to other people….

The most common responses were along the lines of Why would we want to do that? We can send letters.

The 90s: computers, faxes and the web

 

In those 20 years though, we’ve come a long way. Now many community organisations have not only grown used to using desktop or laptop computers, but also often rely on email, and commonly visit web pages. Many also run their own website.

The upheaval of all we know

But now we’re comfortable with the technology of the 90s it’s all gone and changed. In the last 5 years, little by little, we’ve experienced a total revolution.

The boundaries have all blurred; capabilities and features have all leaked out to smudge things nearby.

In the good old days of black and white, just a few years ago, computers were computers and phones were phones. A camera took photos, and a GPS device used satellite signals to tell you where you were and where you were going.

Each gadget had a clear job to do, and it knew its place.

Chips with everything

In the rainbow of 2010 that world no longer exists. Computer chips have found a place in almost everything, along with cameras, GPS, speech and networking features such as WiFi or 3G cellphone signals.

Smartphones include GPS, Internet and cameras, while cameras may include GPS and use the Internet to automatically send photos to a website.

Computers come in all shapes and sizes, maybe including network games, video cameras and the ability to show TV, or video chat with friends and family.

Game consoles may allow you to check in with friends on Facebook, and to play movies.

GPS receivers may display Google Maps and read travel directions aloud.

MP3 players may record and play movies, along with music.

Ebook readers may read books aloud, and download new works directly from the Internet.

Starwalk.

A device like the iPad may allow you to hold it up in front of a constellation of stars at night then automatically sense where you’re looking and display information about that part of the sky. (See Starwalk.)

The pot of gold

There’s a lot of work going on with robots, artificial intelligence, polymers, 3D and energy. It seems pretty clear that gadgets are going to become even more confusing over the next 5 years. The thing is, the pace of innovation is increasing. We can’t even imagine today the devices that will be essential in 2015.

Our pot of gold is flexibility. We need to be open to the possibilities each new day brings.

Written by Miraz Jordan for, and reproduced from CommunityNet Aotearoa Panui, August 2010. This article has been modified for publication here.

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Services "in the cloud" make it much easier to access our files over the Internet any time we want from wherever we are. It means documents are no longer locked in the prison of a single computer.

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Everybody is talking about The Cloud these days. But apart from those white fluffy things in the sky, what is the cloud?

Files in prison

A few years ago, if we created a word processing document, a spreadsheet, or a photo, we probably saved it on our own computer.

If we wanted to share that document with a friend or colleague we probably put it on a floppy disk. A colleague would put the floppy disk into their computer, cross their fingers that the file format would work and then open up the document.

More recently we might exchange files by putting them on a thumb drive or a CD, or perhaps by sending them by email.

But still the document would originally be locked away on our own computer.

If we were away from our computer for some reason it would be almost impossible to access that file.

For example, we might be visiting a friend and want to show them holiday photos. With the photos locked away on our computer back in the office we’d be out of luck.

Google cloud apps.

Files fly free

That was the old days though. These days we have more options for where to save and store files. There are many many services that let us save and use our files online, or “in the cloud”.

A good example is Flickr. If we upload our photos to Flickr we can share them with certain people or the whole world, and we can look at them from any computer that’s connected to the Internet.

If we make videos we could upload them to You Tube. And just like Flickr we can share them or look at them how ever we like.

It’s not just photos and videos though. We could use Google Docs for word processing, spreadsheets and presentations, or a service such as Xero for our accounts.

Software such as Evernote not only runs as an application on our Mac, Windows PC, Blackberry, iPhone or other devices, but we can also access the notes we create through a web page.

The Dropbox service lets us setup a folder on our computer whose files are automatically synchronised with any other computer we choose. Those same files are also available through a secure web page.

Dropbox also lets us go back to see older versions of our files. That’s very handy if we accidentally save changes we didn’t mean to make.

All of these services are “in the cloud”. All of them make it much easier to access our files over the Internet any time we want from wherever we are.

It means documents are no longer locked in the prison of a single computer.

Take a look at the services I’ve mentioned above, most of them are free, and see if they’d fit with your way of working.

Written by Miraz Jordan for, and reproduced from CommunityNet Aotearoa Panui, August 2010. This article has been modified for publication here.

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In a stiff Wellington breeze the kite surfers were out. I caught a small video of one having fun.

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There was a stiff and chilly breeze at Lyall Bay beach this afternoon when I took the dogs for a walk. The kite surfers were out though — just one to start with, and 4 by the time I left.

Kite Surfer at Lyall Bay.

One surfer sped along towards the airport, then turned back and jumped high and long into the air.

That’s when I found my Flip mino video camera and kept an eye on him. After several recordings I managed to catch him again — first with some small jumps over the waves, and then high into the air again.

It’s not the world’s best video — I fumble in the middle, and there’s wind noise and a playful dog barking — but here it is in all its 30 second glory.

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