afabbro writes “There are scattered reports today that Apple is building a team to design its own chips, with an eye towards reducing power consumption on iPods and iPhones.”
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Al writes “Researchers at the MIT Media Lab have created a cheaper way to track physical motion that could prove useful for movie special effects. Normally an actor needs to wear special markers that reflect light with numerous high-speed cameras placed around a specially-lit set. The new system, called Second Skin, instead relies on tiny photosensors embedded in clothes that record movement by picking patterns of infrared light emitted by inexpensive projectors that can be mounted in ceilings or even outdoors. The whole system costs less than ,000 to build, and the researchers have developed a version that vibrates to guide a person’s arm movements. Watch a video of Second Skin in action.”
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FEMA has decided to pull a children’s coloring book entitled, “A Scary Thing Happened” from their website. The coloring book contained three images of the twin towers on fire for children to color. Rose Olmsted, the coordinator behind the book said, “I stand firm that it was a very well thought-out and useful resource for kids, but it’s obviously being misinterpreted by a lot of people.” Since people are so upset about the coloring book, I can only assume FEMA’s plan for a human remains concentration game will be put on hold.
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In episode 6 of our podcast we asked the question, “should netbook manufacturers standardise on a single distro?” Well, as netbook manufactuers continue to find ever more obscure distros to fit onto their systems, Canonical has stepped into the fray wielding a mighty cluestick: Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR).
Flickr was spared from cuts for a long time but in recent months has been slowly trimming its staff. Frankly, cutting Flickr team is a bit of a head scratcher: that group is one of the few pockets of future-thinking tinkerers at Yahoo, especially when it comes to building new media experiences around “social objects” such as photos.
From iPod and BlackBerry to Twitter and Wikipedia, we take a look at the processes and people who came up with the names for these famous tech products.
A poll carried out by a major Swedish newspaper predicts that the Pirate Party will grab around 5.1% of the votes in the upcoming European Union elections. This means that the movement, which has gathered huge momentum due to the Pirate Bay ‘guilty’ verdict, will get a seat in the EU Parliament.
Google’s search data may have been able to provide an early warning of the swine flu outbreak — if the company had been looking in the right place.
The latest research from the internet search giant Google, suggests that real-time results could be even more powerful – they may reveal the future as well as the present.
lousyd writes “Volokh has hosted a paper by George Mason University law professor Adam Mossoff on the patent fracas a century and a half ago surrounding the sewing machine. A Stitch in Time: The Rise and Fall of the Sewing Machine Patent Thicket challenges assumptions by courts and scholars today about the alleged efficiency-choking complexities of the modern patent system. Mossoff says that complementary inventions, extensive patent litigation, so-called ‘patent trolls,’ patent thickets, and privately formed patent pools have long been features of the American patent system reaching back to the antebellum era.”
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