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.’

[Read more →]

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

[Read more →]

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:

[Read more →]

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.

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

[Read more →]

Via sciencedaily

 Physicists in the USA and at the London Centre for Nanotechnology have found a way to extend the quantum lifetime of electrons by more than 5,000 per cent, as reported recently in Physical Review Letters. Electrons exhibit a property called ‘spin’ and work like tiny magnets which can point up, down or a quantum superposition of both.

The state of the spin can be used to store information and so by extending their life the research provides a significant step towards building a usable quantum computer.

“Silicon has dominated the computing industry for decades,” says Dr Gavin Morley, lead author of the paper. “The most sensitive way to see the quantum behaviour of electrons held in silicon chips uses electrical currents. Unfortunately, the problem has always been that these currents damage the quantum features under study, degrading their usefulness.”

[Read more →]

Via physorg

Since their development in the 1940s, transistors have been at the heart of computers and other modern electronic devices. Transistors – whose job is to start, stop, or amplify electric current – come in all shapes, sizes and materials, depending on the application. Recently, scientists have fabricated a new variation: a micro-sized plasma transistor.

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign developed the microplasma transistor by integrating a conventional microcavity plasma device with an electron emitter. Kuo-Feng (Kevin) Chen and Professor J. Gary Eden, Director of the Laboratory for Optical Physics and Engineering, published their study in a recent issue of Applied Physics Letters. As Eden explained, a plasma transistor could one day have certain advantages compared with conventional transistors. 

[Read more →]

Real-Time and 3D Vision for

Autonomous Small and Micro Air Vehicles

Via  newscientist

Via research.microsoft

Flying low to the ground is a pilot’s nightmare: buildings, trees, and power cables all threaten to put an early end to the flight. But now the first large robotic aircraft able to fly at low levels and weave around such obstacles has been developed by US engineers.Giving uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) this ability could aid military operations in urban areas, or help search-and-rescue efforts after disasters.Most UAVs do not have the capacity to sense and avoid obstacles at all - a significant barrier to their being allowed to fly in civilian airspace.But now engineers at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, have modified a commercial civilian UAV helicopter made by Yamaha to be able to see obstacles it encounters.The helicopter’s “eye” is a custom-built 3D laser scanner, which sweeps an oval path ahead of the 3.5-metre long craft. The scanner can detect objects as hard to see as power lines from 150 metres away.

Video:link.brightcove

[Read more →]

The chip is the smallest in size with the lowest cost so far

Via taiwannews

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – National Taiwan University announced their latest invention System on a Chip (SOC) yesterday, the smallest such product at the lowest cost and consuming the least electricity. The NTU research team claims that the transmission speed of the chip is 100 times as fast as WiFi and 350 times as fast as a 3.5G cell phone.

Jri Lee (李致毅), professor of the NTU Graduate Institute of Electronics Engineering, demonstrated their latest invention in the presentation held by the prestigious university yesterday. The SOC successfully combines RF Front-End Circuits and an antenna array to reach the highest transmission speed. A patent application is under way.

[Read more →]

Via flightglobal

US Air Force pilots flyingBoeing F-15s “dominated” and “amazed” Indian Air Force Sukhoi Su-30MKI pilots in a recent exercise, but still expect that legacy F-15s andLockheed Martin F-16s will swiftly lose their competitive edge to the Russian export fighters.

Those remarks came in an explicitly candid assessment by an unidentified USAF pilot posted on 4 November on the YouTube online video sharing service. “Now what I’m scared of is Congress is going to hear that and go – ‘Great, we don’t need to buy any more airplanes. No, no, no, no,’” the pilot tells an audience that includes retired air force leaders.

He adds that “it’s only a matter of time” before the IAF Su-30 pilots learn how to overcome the manoeuvre used so successfully against them at the international Red Flag exercise.

[Read more →]