Creative New

Exploiting social and mobile ad hoc networking to achieve ubiquitous connectivity.

Via developer.symbian

Via brockport.edu

This essay examines a particular example of what is known as a ‘Mobile Ad hoc Network’ (MANET) involving smartphones. This MANET would address the following problem:

‘A million and a half people annually ride the New York City subway system, which comprises 468 stations to form the largest subway complex in the world. The diverse human conglomerate of cultures and lifestyles that inhabit NYC’s subway though, share at least one common trend: a lack of mobile coverage - a rather serious, both economical and social, issue. Thus, a daily influx of 5,042,263 potential customers is practically lost for mobile companies. Not to mention the irritating circumstance that in a world of otherwise global communications one is forced to spend significant periods of time without a connection signal.’

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Via zeitgeistmovie

Via cnn

The “semantic Web” does not sound like it’s fun and easy to use, but it could make surfing Web 3.0 a more rewarding and interactive experience. Some believe it could even lead to a new form of artificial intelligence.

The idea behind the semantic Web, very broadly, is that things on the Internet will be described with descriptor languages so that computers can “understand” what they are.

An object might be a marked as a car part or a person, for instance. If objects were thus identified, an enormous network of linked data would emerge and machines, with their vast processing speeds, could suggest surprising and useful links that the human mind could never come up with, posing the possibility of a new sort of artificial intelligence.

The semantic Web is considered a key part of the upcoming “Web 3.0.” It’s starting to occur here and there, but widespread adoption is still a long way off.

A pair of German researchers have created an experimental kiosk that lets you easily use semantic Web capabilities — even if you have no idea what they are. All that is needed is an iPhone and a finger with which to drag icons around on the kiosk’s touch screen.

The kiosk takes advantage of the fact that MP3 files are “things” that have already been described in ways that machines can understand. That’s because they have ID3 tags, which supply information on the artist and album.

see also : Microsoft surface computer

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Via digitalurban

We have always been big fans of augmented reality here at digital urban, simply because it is so easy to set up yet a very impressive and powerful visualisation technique. As such the ability to export direct from sketchup.google via the new plugin ARplug-in from the Development Lab of Inglobe Technologies, into a physical space has huge potential - see the movie below:

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Via physorg

This undated photo provided by the Onassis Cultural Center shows a 2nd century A.D. marble statuette of Athena, sometime worshiped as a goddess of war, wearing a breastplate made up of coiled snakes. A woman’s place has never been just in the home - not even in ancient Greece. The proof is in an exhibit titled “Worshiping Women: Ritual and Reality in Classical Athens,” a collection of artifacts at the Onassis Cultural Center in New York that corrects the cliched idea of Athenian women as passive, homebound nurturers of men and children. (AP Photo/Onassis Cultural Center)

 A woman’s place has never been just in the home - not even in ancient Greece. The proof is in an exhibit titled “Worshiping Women: Ritual and Reality in Classical Athens” - a collection of artifacts that correct the cliched idea of Athenian women as passive, homebound nurturers of men and children.

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Via financialsense

The intent of this article is to compare the net wealth of selected nations. The net wealth figures (actually labeled as ‘Net Debt’) for the G-7 nations (US, Japan, Germany, UK, France, Italy and Canada) can be found on the International Monetary Fund website here. It should be noted that all of the G-7 countries have greater government liabilities than assets.

* Net debt comprises the stock (at year-end) of all government gross liabilities (both to residents and non-residents) minus all government assets (domestic as well as foreign). To avoid double counting, the data are based on a consolidated account (eliminating liabilities and assets between components of the government, such as budgetary units and social security funds). General government should reflect a consolidated account of central government plus state, provincial, or local governments. Debt data are not always comparable across countries.

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Via web-strategist

This slideshare presentation by French consulting firm faberNovel dissects Google’s business model, analyzes strength and weakness in each of the markets they are involved with and brings clarity to how some services are loss leaders and how monetization happens from it’s connected product suite. Do take time to look at the page rank formula.

Via plosone.org

image source

The concept of an individual swapping his or her body with that of another person has captured the imagination of writers and artists for decades. Although this topic has not been the subject of investigation in science, it exemplifies the fundamental question of why we have an ongoing experience of being located inside our bodies. Here we report a perceptual illusion of body-swapping that addresses directly this issue. Manipulation of the visual perspective, in combination with the receipt of correlated multisensory information from the body was sufficient to trigger the illusion that another person’s body or an artificial body was one’s own. This effect was so strong that people could experience being in another person’s body when facing their own body and shaking hands with it. Our results are of fundamental importance because they identify the perceptual processes that produce the feeling of ownership of one’s body.

Canon EOS 5D MKII

Via blog.vincentlaforet

I’ve had a chance to get a hold of the 5D MKII on several occasions - seven to be specific (2 of those nights were spent shooting the first film, Reverie.)   I’ve felt compelled to try to create something with it each time I’ve had the camera in my hands.    And I will admit this camera has brought me back the closest to the feeling I had at the age of 15 when I had my first camera and a few rolls of Tri-X to burn through.   Simply put - it’s so much fun and pure.

You’ll see some footage shot with Tilt-shift lenses from the air - my first time with video - as well as one of the last shots of the series that was shot with a full motion picture Steadicam rig.   All of the footage was shot with several different prototypes of theCanon EOS 5D MKII that I was allowed to borrow at different intervals - cut in Final Cut Studio, and graded in Color.  I’m still in the middle of post-productions with almost every one of these shoots - busier shooting than editing to be honest.  But I thought I’d share some of this footage as most of your are likely to receive your production 5DMKIIs sometime this week (those that put their names down first of course.)

vincentlaforet Hi-Def video

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