Samsung's Smart Window (CES 2012)

Check out the "Smart Window" technology at the Samsung booth at CES 2012.

Digital Carpet - Interactive Digital Signage

I really like the idea of "Digital Carpet" as a user interface. This video is two years old, and I am surprised the concept has not taken off. I can really see a million applications for this technology, especially for children's learning and game software.

Fotoshop by Adobé (Funny Fake Commercial)

This commercial isn't real, neither are society's standards of beauty.

Why Some Women Stay Single

Does YOUR cat act suspiciously when Valentine's Day comes around?

Mieders Alpine Coaster (with no brakes!!)

This is a single-pipe alpine coaster in Mieders, Austria. You reach the summit via a cablecar and then sit on a small car with a brake lever and off you go.

Cat Plays Fruit Ninja on iPad

How Tower Crane Are Setup

Tower Crane always seem to be part of almost any metropolitan cityscape that I have been too. These cranes are a critical tool in the construction of modern skyscrapers. Although for years I wondered how they were setup. I answered my own question by spending a few minutes to do a YouTube search.

30-story building built in 15 days*** Construction time lapse

From the YouTube Description:" What can you accomplish in 360 hours?

The Chinese sustainable building company, Broad Group, has yet attempted another impossible feat, building a 30-story tall hotel prototype in 360 hours, after building a 15-story building in a week earlier in 2011.

You may ask why in a hurry, and is it safe? The statistics in the video can put you in good faith. Prefabricated modular buildings has many advantages over conventional buildings.

Higher precision in fabrication (+/- 0.2mm).
More coordinated on-site construction management.
Shorter construction time span.
Lower construction waste.
Also many other health and energy features are included in Broad Sustainable Buildings (BSB)

The building was built over last Christmas time and finished before New Years Eve of 2012."

Taking Out GE's Trash

Deals with overcoming the challenges of converting trash from a waste stream back into reusable materials.

Best of Web HD

A compilation of the best HD video in recent months.

Speeding Around The World in Under 5 minutes Time Lapse

17 Countries. 343 Days. 6237 Photographs.

Why Cities Grow, Corporations Die, and Life Gets Faster

Summary: As organisms, cities, and companies scale up, they all gain in efficiency, but then they vary. The bigger an organism, the slower. Yet the bigger a city is, the faster it runs. And cities are structurally immortal, while corporations are structurally doomed. Scaling up always creates new problems; cities can innovate faster than the problems indefinitely, while corporations cannot.

IMHO: Its a long video but has some great information about how cities and corporation grow and die.

Will We Ever Understand the Brain?

Summary: "As neuroscientists are learning more and more about our body's hidden frontier, we have gained fleeting insights into our own intuition, habits and seemingly unexplainable preferences. Can we solve those mysteries by creating a complete computer model of our brain? Or, is the brain an unsolvable puzzle? Two leading neuroscientists discuss these question and more as we look into the neurology of the brain."

African Bull Frog Plays Ant Crusher

The video is of an African Bull Frog playing the Ant Crusher game on a smart phone.

"Firewall" (Don't Let Our Government Ruin The Internets)

Leah Kauffman wrote this song taking aim at the Stop Online Piracy Act (aka SOPA). She is also the singer/songwriter behind the 2007 song "I Got a Crush on Obama".

Kindness Boomerang - "One Day"

Watch as the camera tracks an act of kindness as its passed from one individual to the next and manages to boomerang back to the person who set it into motion.

End of the World Parody (CollegeHumor)

Funniest News Report of all Times

What do you get when you have a 48 Ton Dead Whale, and a half ton of dynamite? Watch the video to find out what happens. Not amazingly, there is a web site dediciated to this event (theexplodingwhale.com)

Yoav Medan: Ultrasound surgery -- healing without cuts

Imagine having a surgery with no knives involved. At TEDMED, surgeon Yoav Medan shares a technique that uses MRI to find trouble spots and focused ultrasound to treat such issues as brain lesions, uterine fibroids and several kinds of cancerous growths.

Awesome Projects on KickStarter

Below is a list of my favorite projects that I am watching on KickStarter. If you're not familiar with the KickStarter site, its dedicated to crowd funding small projects that could be the next awesome thing by pooling together money contributed by lots of different people.  If a project gets fully funded the project creator gets the money, if the full funding is not reached then the contributors get their money back.

Printrbot: Your First 3D Printer
Excerpt from the project Kickstarter page: "I designed the Printrbot to be the simplest 3D printer yet. There are some great kits out there - the Makerbot, the Ultimaker, the Prusa Mendel, and others - but none as small and simple as the Printrbot. This all-in-one 3D printer kit can be assembled and printing in a couple of hours. Other kits will not only take you many more hours to build, they will also have hundreds more parts, and they will cost more. My design also does away with the finicky calibration and adjustment from which most 3D printers suffer. This is the printer a kid could put together. We assemble the electronics, we assemble the hotend, and we put the connectors on all the motors and components... no soldering required!" (more information)




Multi-Touch Keyboard and Mouse
Excerpt from the project Kickstarter page: "Multi-Touch keyboards and mice are the next generation in computer peripherals. These elegant well made devices are composed of quality tempered glass, a solid metal base, and the finest components. They are designed using simple existing technology and have no moving parts. They have rechargeable Lithium Polymer batteries and are completely wireless. The tactile sounds and lighting can be turned on or off per the users' preference plus they are coffee and doughnut resistant!" (more information)



Teagueduino: Learn to Make
Excerpt from the project Kickstarter page: "Teagueduino is an open source electronic board and interface that allows you to realize creative ideas without soldering or knowing how to code, while teaching you the ropes of programming and embedded development (like arduino). Teagueduino is designed to help you discover your inner techno-geek and embrace the awesomeness of making things in realtime — even if you’ve only ever programmed your VCR." (more information)



Twine : Listen to your world, talk to the Internet
Excerpt from the project Kickstarter page: "Want to hook up things to the Web? Maybe you want to get a tweet when your laundry's done, or get an email when the basement floods while you're on vacation. Even if you're good with electronics and programming, these are involved projects. Instead of worrying about wiring or networking code, you can focus on your idea." (more information)



BoardX: The Open Source Miniature Motherboard
Excerpt from the project Kickstarter page: "BoardX is a collection of electronic circuit boards that stack on top of one another to share resources, communicate, and extend the functionality of one another. This system is built on the motherboard that acts as both an electrical and structural foundation." (more information)

Google’s Graphing Calculator (new feature)

Google introduced a new feature recently in the search result page which is the ability to plot mathematical functions and display using an interactive graphing calculator functionality. For example, if you type in a function like sin(x) and you’ll see an interactive graph on the top of the search results page.

Cheryl Hayashi: The magnificence of spider silk

Cheryl Hayashi studies spider silk, one of nature's most high-performance materials. Each species of spider can make up to 7 very different kinds of silk. How do they do it? Hayashi explains at the DNA level -- then shows us how this super-strong, super-flexible material can inspire.

Luis von Ahn: Massive-scale online collaboration

After re-purposing CAPTCHA so each human-typed response helps digitize books, Luis von Ahn wondered how else to use small contributions by many on the Internet for greater good. At TEDxCMU, he shares how his ambitious new project, Duolingo, will help millions learn a new language while translating the Web quickly and accurately -- all for free.

Thomas Barnett: The Pentagon's new map for war and peace

In this bracingly honest and funny talk, international security strategist Thomas P.M. Barnett outlines a post-Cold War solution for the foundering US military: Break it in two. He suggests the military re-form into two groups: a Leviathan force, a small group of young and fierce soldiers capable of swift and immediate victories; and an internationally supported network of System Administrators, an older, wiser, more diverse organization that actually has the diplomacy and power it takes to build and maintain peace.

Ben Goldacre: Battling Bad Science

Every day there are news reports of new health advice, but how can you know if they're right? Doctor and epidemiologist Ben Goldacre shows us, at high speed, the ways evidence can be distorted, from the blindingly obvious nutrition claims to the very subtle tricks of the pharmaceutical industry.

William Shatner's Steps to Unfriending Recovery

...LIKE THERE IS NO TOMORROW! (Awesome Video Compilation))

Here is the list of videos used to make this compilation.

Justin Hall-Tipping: Freeing energy from the grid

What would happen if we could generate power from our windowpanes? In this moving talk, entrepreneur Justin Hall-Tipping shows the materials that could make that possible, and how questioning our notion of 'normal' can lead to extraordinary breakthroughs.

Cynthia Kenyon: Experiments that hint of longer lives

What controls aging? Biochemist Cynthia Kenyon has found a simple genetic mutation that can double the lifespan of a simple worm, C. Elegans. The lessons from that discovery, and others, are pointing to how we might one day significantly extend youthful human life.

Britta Riley: A garden in my apartment (Window Farms)

Britta Riley wanted to grow her own food (in her tiny apartment). So she and her friends developed a system for growing plants in discarded plastic bottles -- researching, testing and tweaking the system using social media, trying many variations at once and quickly arriving at the optimal system. For more information, check out RNDIY.ORG

Phil Plait: How to defend Earth from asteroids

hat's six miles wide and can end civilization in an instant? An asteroid - and there are lots of them out there.

The US Stop Online Piracy Act: A primer

Computerworld reports: "The Stop Online Piracy Act, the subject of a hearing before the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee Wednesday, has generated heated debate since lawmakers introduced it on Oct. 26.

The bill, called SOPA, would allow the U.S. Department of Justice and copyright holders to seek court orders requiring online advertising networks, payment processors and other organizations to stop payments to websites and Web-based services accused of copyright infringement." (Read the rest of the article)

Advantages of Thorium Reactors

Motherboard TV has created a documentary called The Thorium Dream, that discusses some the great advantages of Thorium based nuclear reactors. The video points out that Thorium is considered more abundant, safer, has less waste, and can't be utilized as weapons grade material vs uranium.

The problem in the US is that our systems for creating nuclear material are built around uranium because it can be used for both generating power and weapons.

(watch the video here)

The Thorium Dream (Trailer)

Adrien Treuille: Crowdsourcing science

Can gaming cure disease? By creating games like EteRNA for protein folding and nano-engineering, Adrien Treuille and his colleagues are outsourcing research, each week scoring and then actually synthesizing top players' work. By studying players' strategies, scientists can improve their computer modeling while also creating new ways to fight disease.

Alexander Tsiaras: Conception to birth -- visualized

Image-maker Alexander Tsiaras shares a powerful medical visualization, showing human development from conception to birth and beyond.

How Much Does The Internet Weigh?

Simon Sinek: How great leaders inspire action

Simon Sinek presents a simple but powerful model for how leaders inspire action, starting with a golden circle and the question "Why?" His examples include Apple, Martin Luther King, and the Wright brothers -- and as a counterpoint Tivo, which (until a recent court victory that tripled its stock price) appeared to be struggling.

Anna Mracek Dietrich: A plane you can drive

A flying car -- it's an iconic image of the future. But after 100 years of flight and automotive engineering, no one has really cracked the problem. Pilot Anna Mracek Dietrich and her team flipped the question, asking: Why not build a plane that you can drive?

Neil Gershenfeld: The beckoning promise of personal fabrication

MIT professor Neil Gershenfeld talks about his Fab Lab -- a low-cost lab that lets people build things they need using digital and analog tools. It's a simple idea with powerful results.

Riley Crane: Crowdsource win

Riley Crane, a postdoctoral fellow at the MIT Media Lab, found out about the DARPA Red Balloon Challenge four days before it started (find ten balloons placed in ten different locations around the country). Four days, eight hours, and 52 minutes later his team had won the competition. Watch him talk about how they did it and the challenges they encountered in the process.

Jay Bradner: Open-source cancer research

How does cancer know it's cancer? At Jay Bradner's lab, they found a molecule that might hold the answer, JQ1 -- and instead of patenting JQ1, they published their findings and mailed samples to 40 other labs to work on. An inspiring look at the open-source future of medical research.

Kevin Slavin: How algorithms shape our world

Kevin Slavin argues that we're living in a world designed for -- and increasingly controlled by -- algorithms. In this riveting talk from TEDGlobal, he shows how these complex computer programs determine: espionage tactics, stock prices, movie scripts, and architecture. And he warns that we are writing code we can't understand, with implications we can't control.

Quantum Levitation

Video courtesy of the Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC), representing the science center and museum field worldwide. Tel-Aviv University demos quantum superconductors locked in a magnetic field.

Todd Kuiken: A prosthetic arm that "feels"

Surgeon and engineer Todd Kuiken is building a prosthetic arm that connects with the human nervous system -- improving motion, control and even feeling. Onstage, patient Amanda Kitts helps demonstrate this next-gen robotic arm.

Bunker Roy: Learning from a barefoot movement

In Rajasthan, India, an extraordinary school teaches rural women and men -- many of them illiterate -- to become solar engineers, artisans, dentists and doctors in their own villages. It's called the Barefoot College, and its founder, Bunker Roy, explains how it works.

Waste to energy: Green or greenwash?

CNET News reports: "I took a tour of Covanta Energy's waste-to-energy site here yesterday to delve a little deeper into that question. I learned that modern plants like this one are far less polluting than they used to be and that "reduce, reuse, recycle" is clearly the preferred route. For what's left over after recyling, though, waste-to-energy plants can fill a role as an alternative to landfills, assuming air quality standards remain in force." (read the rest of the article)

Bill Gates demonstrates his chair jumping skills in front of Connie Chung

Here is something you don't see too often.

Landscapes: Volume Two

This is the second of a three part series. Every frame of this video is a raw still from a Canon 5D2 DSLR and processed with Adobe software. Best watched in full screen with sound.

"Playa Time: Dust to Dust" - Burning Man 2011 Time Lapse

From dust to dust, this time lapse covers over 5 weeks including the preparation of the event, from before the trash fence erection and after basically everyone except for DPW trickles out. Other than a few occasional pauses, the main event goest by at a rate of 3 hours every second. Burning Man 2011 Home

For those that don't know about Burning Man, I think this video provides a good brief introduction to what you can expect.  Please note this video may not be suitable for young people.

When Returning from the Moon, Don't Forget to Fill Out Your Customs Form

Gizmodo reports: "Despite the fact that every single facet of NASA's moonwalks were government-controlled expeditions, astronauts were not exempt from the annoying processes involved with foreign travel. Case in point, this customs form, signed by Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins." (Read the rest of the article)

IMHO: Please file this under, are you kidding...

Bruce Schneier: The security mirage

The feeling of security and the reality of security don't always match, says computer-security expert Bruce Schneier. At TEDxPSU, he explains why we spend billions addressing news story risks, like the "security theater" now playing at your local airport, while neglecting more probable risks -- and how we can break this pattern.

In summary: Feeling "Secure" is only a perception. If you want to know more watch the video.

Kevin Kelly: What Technology Wants

Most of us have a love/hate relationship with new inventions, such as the "crackberry," for example. Kevin Kelly declares this conflict as inherent to all technology. But he also argues that technology is not anti-nature, but rather the "seventh kingdom" of life; it now shares with life certain biases, urges, needs and tendencies. By adopting the principles of pro-action and engagement, we can steer technologies into their best roles.

Dan Ariely: The Upside of Irrationality

The 2008 economic crisis taught us that irrationality is an influential player in financial markets. But it is often the case that irrationality also makes it way into our daily lives and decision-making -- in slightly different and vastly more subtle ways. In this enthralling follow-up to his New York Times bestseller Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely shows how irrationality is an inherent part of the way we function and think, and how it affects our behavior in all areas of our lives, from our romantic relationships to our experiences in the workplace to our temptations to cheat.

The Gaming of Education

Media commentator Peter Williams argues that gaming can actually help kids learn and engage in their environment more deeply. Williams explains how games as varied as Donkey Kong and Fallout may have shaped his son's education and interests for the better.

The Future of Social Gaming Looks a Lot Like the Past

Gabe Zichermann, chair of the Gamification Summit, says that today's most successful social games are those built on the social principles of classic games like bridge and mahjong.

Should the U.S. Default on Its Debt?

International economist Dambisa Moyo examines the notion that the United States should deal with its rapidly escalating debt by simply refusing to pay it off. Although Moyo regards default as an option of last resort, she notes that it wouldn't be one without precedent: "The idea that big countries never default... is something that is not true."

Mike Biddle: We can recycle plastic

Less than 10% of plastic trash is recycled -- compared to almost 90% of metals -- because of the massively complicated problem of finding and sorting the different kinds. Frustrated by this waste, Mike Biddle has developed a cheap and incredibly energy efficient plant that can, and does, recycle any kind of plastic.

Social Networks: Is the Novelty Wearing Off?

Panelists at the Churchill Club's annual Top Ten Tech Trends event debate whether or not social networks are beggining to develop an "uncool factor" among early adopters. Futurist Paul Saffo predicts a shift towards "meaningful social networks" and a growing trend towards being disconnected. "The cool thing will be to not be on LinkedIn and to not be on Facebook," says Saffo.

Are You Lurking? The 90-9-1 Principle of Social Media

Social networks like Twitter boast ever-climbing rates of use, but how many account holders are actually participating? A panel of Australian media experts discusses the 90-9-1 principle of social media, which has it that 90 percent of users on any social media platform are lurking, 9 percent are moderate contributors, and 1 percent are super users.

Joshua Foer: Using Memory to Prolong Your (Perceived) Life

"Monotony collapses time. Novelty unfolds it," reads Joshua Foer from his book, Moonwalking With Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything, explaining that creating more worthwhile memories can lengthen our perception of time.

In summary, if you create new "exciting" memories more often the your life will seem longer. For example, go try something new or visit a new place (locally or far away). Although, the more mundane your life the shorter it will be perceived by yourself.

'Inside Job' Director Ferguson's Proposal to Reform Wall Street

Charles Ferguson, director of "Inside Job," proposes a strategy to reform the compensation structure of top players in the financial services industry. He explains that rather than capping the salaries of top executives, he would regulate the compensation of any person capable of taking major risks.

In Screen We Trust? The Dangers of Malleable Data

Future Crimes founder Marc Goodman discusses the inherent danger of malleable data in the digital age. In an era where man and machine coexist, Goodman warns it's not wise to always trust the information displayed on the screen of your digital device.

Multiverse Doppelgangers: Do Many Versions of You Exist?

Theoretical astrophysicist Suketu Bhavsar examines the probability that many versions of you exist in a universe that expands infinitely.

Richard Resnick: Welcome to the genomic revolution

In this accessible talk from TEDxBoston, Richard Resnick shows how cheap and fast genome sequencing is about to turn health care (and insurance, and politics) upside down.

This is a great talk...

Geoff Mulgan: A short intro to the Studio School

Some kids learn by listening; others learn by doing. Geoff Mulgan gives a short introduction to the Studio School, a new kind of school in the UK where small teams of kids learn by working on projects that are, as Mulgan puts it, "for real."

Floppy music DUO - Imperial march

This is pretty cool, its two 3.5 floppy drives playing Imperial march.

NASA Unveils New Space Launch System

NASA has announced a new launch vehicle, the Space Launch System (SLS), designed to carry astronauts past the moon to near-Earth asteroids and eventually Mars.

GoPro 2011 Highlights You in HD

What does it feel like to fly over planet Earth?

A time-lapse taken from the front of the International Space Station as it orbits our planet at night.

Ultrabooks Make Their Appearance at Intel's IDF Show

eWeek.com reports: "Intel's ultrabook concept has been a central theme during this week's Intel Developer Forum here. Intel executives see ultrabooks, which they first introduced at the Computex show in May, as the next step in the evolution of PCs, thin and light devices that marry features found in tablets—such as long battery life, instant-on capabilities and, eventually, touch functionality—with the benefits of traditional notebooks. Ultrabooks, designed to come in at less than 0.8 inches thick and under $1,000 in price, are a key aspect of Intel's larger push in the mobile-computing space, and will help the chip maker bolster a flagging PC market. Several OEMs, including Lenovo, Asus, Acer and Toshiba, are scheduled to roll out the first ultrabooks this fall, with the devices based on the current 2nd Generation "Sandy Bridge" chips." (read the rest of the article)

World's Greatest Drag Race!

With an empty airstrip and eleven of the best driver's cars in the world, we put on the world's greatest drag race.

Skylar Tibbits: Can we make things that make themselves?

MIT researcher Skylar Tibbits works on self-assembly -- the idea that instead of building something (a chair, a skyscraper), we can create materials that build themselves, much the way a strand of DNA zips itself together. It's a big concept at early stages; Tibbits shows us three in-the-lab projects that hint at what a self-assembling future might look like.

Edward Tenner: Unintended consequences

Every new invention changes the world -- in ways both intentional and unexpected. Historian Edward Tenner tells stories that illustrate the under-appreciated gap between our ability to innovate and our ability to foresee the consequences.

Symphony of Science - the Quantum World!

A musical investigation into the nature of atoms and subatomic particles, the jiggly things that make up everything we see. Featuring Morgan Freeman, Stephen Hawking, Michio Kaku, Brian Cox, Richard Feynman, and Frank Close.

"The Quantum World" is the eleventh installment in the ongoing Symphony of Science music video series. For more information, check http://symphonyofscience.com.

Technology's Role In the Arab Spring Protests

Jared Cohen, Director of Google Ideas, elaborates on the role Twitter and other social media tools have played in the Arab Spring demonstrations and protests. "Technology accelerates everything," says Cohen.

Rebecca MacKinnon: Let's take back the Internet!

Rebecca MacKinnon describes the expanding struggle for freedom and control in cyberspace, and asks: How do we design the next phase of the Internet with accountability and freedom at its core, rather than control? She believes the internet is headed for a "Magna Carta" moment when citizens around the world demand that their governments protect free speech and their right to connection.

$25 Incubator Shows Good Design Can Save Lives Affordably (Extreme Affordability)

Stanford's d.school co-founder George Kembel delivers an update on former student projects, including an inexpensive incubator and a solar powered lamp. The Embrace incubator, a low-cost infant warmer, will save an estimated 100,000 lives and improve the quality of life for 800,000 children in the next 3 years.

Philip Zimbardo: The demise of guys?

Psychologist Philip Zimbardo asks, "Why are boys struggling?" He shares some stats (lower graduation rates, greater worries about intimacy and relationships) and suggests a few reasons.

Paul Bloom: The origins of pleasure

Why do we like an original painting better than a forgery? Psychologist Paul Bloom argues that human beings are essentialists -- that our beliefs about the history of an object change how we experience it, not simply as an illusion, but as a deep feature of what pleasure (and pain) is.

Joshua Walters: On being just crazy enough

Comedian Joshua Walters, who's bipolar, walks the line between mental illness and mental "skillness." In this funny, thought-provoking talk, he asks: What's the right balance between medicating craziness away and riding the manic edge of creativity and drive?

Geoengineering Climate Control: Who Gets the Keys?

The title of the video is "Geoengineering Climate Control: Who Gets the Keys?" IMHO: This is a really good question? Personally I think any kind of global geoengineering is very dangerous.

About the video: Jamais Cascio, writer and co-founder of WorldChanging.com, examines various risks involved in the pursuit of mass-scale geoengineering as a response to global warming. Along with unknown scientific considerations, Cascio warns that geoengineering could be fertile ground for international political conflict.

Turning toys into cheap, effective medical gear

CNET reports: Jose Gomez-Marquez is like the MacGyver of medical devices, hacking toys and turning them into gadgets that can be used to diagnose conditions such as diabetes and dengue fever. By taking everyday items like Legos and bike pumps and turning them into replacements for expensive medical devices, he's attempting to save lives on the cheap.
"Most of the devices that get donated to developing countries fail because they were not designed to be used in these environments," Gomez-Marquez said during a visit to CNET this week to show some of his creations. "We need to make the Land Rover version of medical devices for these countries. Right now we are sending the Ferrari versions and they fail." (read the rest of the article)

AES proved vulnerable by Microsoft researchers

ComputerWorld reports: Researchers from Microsoft and Belgian Katholieke Universiteit Leuven have discovered a way to break the widely used Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), the encryption algorithm used to secure most all online transactions and wireless communications.

Their attack can recover an AES secret key from three to five times faster than previously thought possible, reported the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, a research university based in Belgium. (read the rest of the article)

LEGO 3D Milling Machine - "3D Printer"

This model was developed by Arthur Sacek for ZOOM Education for Life.

Fora.TV: Flash Mobs

Learn about and see demos of:

• Kickstarter
• Helps you get starter funding for small and medium size projects
• Makerbot
• An inexpensive printer that allows you print 3D objects
• Onlive
• Play Windows-based video games, use 3D animation tools, and more from any device.

Watch the full program.

Kittywood Studios: Cat Videos Incorporated

Where all the cat video come from...

Food Fashion - Clothes Made Out of Food

Delish.com reports: "Fans of food and fashion will be intrigued by these outrageous clothes, accessories, and shoes made out of food! If you like all things outrageous, check out the weirdest restaurants in the world." (Read the rest of the article.)

Internet Backup Solutions

Below is an excerpt from an article on another one of my sites called The Jason Chronicles: "Backing up data on your computer has always been critical. A long time ago floppies were used to backup your data, later it was CDs and then DVDs. Today there is no affordable external removable media capable of keeping up with modern multi-terabyte drives." (read the rest of the article to learn about the various services that are available and the Pro and Cons of using them).

State Of The Internet 2011

Online Schools reports: "The Internet is a strange, huge beast. It is getting bigger, faster and more mobile each day. Ferocious social networks fight each other to be on top and gain more of our attention and personal information. An entire economy is generated from our browsing habits. This is the face of the Internet now."

Face Recognition Software, Social Media Sites Increase Privacy Risks, Says New Carnegie Mellon Study (Press Release)

In a Carnegie Mellon press release entitled "Face Recognition Software, Social Media Sites Increase Privacy Risks, Says New Carnegie Mellon Study". Researchers demonstrated the ability for computers to find public information on the web about people using facial recognition software.

I think the press release over-hypes the ability of this technology, because this software should not be able to find anymore information then someone doing the same search for that person by using their name.

The main advantage that a computer will have is its ability process a lot of information quickly, but unless a computer is programmed on how to interpreted the data properly it would still need a human to make sense of the data.

The idea of maybe pointing your phone's camera at someone face to identify them would be a cool technology. Although, it could be creepy at the same time.

You can already play with some of the basic concepts of this type of technology with your iPhone or Android smartphone using Google's picture search technology.

Press Release
PITTSBURGH—It is possible to identify strangers and gain their personal information — perhaps even their social security numbers — by using face recognition software and social media profiles, according to a new study by Carnegie Mellon University's Alessandro Acquisti and his research team. The results of the study will be presented Aug. 4 at Black Hat, a security conference in Las Vegas.

"A person's face is the veritable link between her offline and online identities," said Acquisti, associate professor of information technology and public policy at the Heinz College and a Carnegie Mellon CyLab researcher. "When we share tagged photos of ourselves online, it becomes possible for others to link our face to our names in situations where we would normally expect anonymity."

Acquisti said his research team, which included CMU postdoctoral fellows Ralph Gross and Fred Stutzman, combined three technologies — an off-the-shelf face recognizer, cloud computing and publicly available information from social network sites — to identify individuals online and offline in the physical world. Since these technologies are also accessible by end-users, the results foreshadow a future when we all may be recognizable on the street — not just by friends or government agencies using sophisticated devices, but by anyone with a smartphone and Internet connection.

The team ran three experiments and developed one mobile phone application.

In one experiment, Acquisti's team identified individuals on a popular online dating site where members protect their privacy through pseudonyms. In a second experiment, they identified students walking on campus — based on their profile photos on Facebook. In a third experiment, the research team predicted personal interests and, in some cases, even the Social Security numbers of the students, beginning with only a photo of their faces.

Carnegie Mellon researchers also built a smartphone application to demonstrate the ability of making the same sensitive inferences in real-time. In an example of "augmented reality," the application uses offline and online data to overlay personal and private information over the target's face on the device's screen.

"The seamless merging of online and offline data that face recognition and social media make possible raises the issue of what privacy will mean in an augmented reality world," Acquisti said.

Cloud computing will continue to improve performance times at cheaper prices, and online people-tagging and face recognition software will continue to provide more means of identification.

"Ultimately, all this access is going to force us to reconsider our notions of privacy," Acquisti said. "It may also affect how we interact with each other. Through natural evolution, human beings have evolved mechanisms to assign and manage trust in face-to-face interactions. Will we rely on our instincts or on our devices, when mobile phones can predict personal and sensitive information about a person?"

Unlimited Detail Real-Time Rendering Technology Preview 2011

I saw the the initial update for the "Unlimited Detail Technology" last year and found it pretty impressive. After their first update, the company Euclideon seem to disappeared from the news for a year. Now they're offering a one year update on how they're doing.

Euclideon claims that their Unlimited Detail Technology (which they say 'floating atoms' to draw object) can offer up 100,000x better graphics display quality over traditional polygon based graphic engines.

Know Your Rights!

The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) has published a document called Know Your Rights!.  This web page explains what you should know about your personal rights as a citizen when it comes to the electronic privacy of your information, and who is allowed to view it.

'Lab-on-a-chip' offers new hope in disease detection

telegraph Reports: "A cheap, highly portable blood test has proven as accurate as expensive hospital-based analyses in detecting HIV, syphilis and other infectious diseases, according to a study released on Sunday."

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Microsoft Shares Video Tour of its Cloud Datacenters

Excerpt from the article: "Today our team is releasing a video tour of four of Microsoft’s global datacenters. The video provides an inside look at how the company has invested heavily to rapidly evolve its datacenter IT infrastructure and best practices to deliver greater scalability, reliability, efficiency, security, and sustainability." (Read the rest of the article)

7 Harry Potter Movies In 7 Minutes

Future of Grocery Shopping?

Tesco/Homeplus a Korean grocery store chain created a clever marketing campaign by creating a virtual store in the subway so that people can shop with their smart-phones while waiting for the train.

Savulescu: Are We Morally Obligated to Breed Healthier Children?

Excerpt from the video: "Bioethicist Julian Savulescu makes an argument for procreative beneficence, his conviction that parents are morally obligated to breed the healthiest children possible. "Nature has no mind to equality, no mind to health, no mind to happiness in terms of the children that it produces," he explains."

In the movie Gattaca, parents were able to selectively choose their children through gene manipulation. Children that were born without this gene manipulation were known as "God Children". A two class society was created, if you were a God's Child, you were lower class.

I don't believe that modifying the human genome is going to bring the end of humanity. I know that mistakes will be made and damage will be done, but eventually we might get it right. Technology always advances this way.

What worries me, is genetic discrimination. DNA sequencing is getting faster, better, cheaper all the time. What use to cost millions dollars and take a long time, now costs a few thousand and can be completed in a few hours.

Overview of Google+

Rocketboom explains Googles newest entry into the social networking sphere: Google Plus (G+)

Animals That Can't Die

These organisms are pretty amazing...

• Turritopsis nutricula species of jellyfish
• Storm-petrel
• Tortoises
• Tardigrade (Water Bear)

Barry Schwartz: The Paradox of Choice

Psychologist Barry Schwartz takes aim at a central tenet of western societies: freedom of choice. In Schwartz's estimation, choice has made us not freer but more paralyzed, not happier but more dissatisfied.