Well, I’m officially past my blogging phase. It’s been a fun and educational few days. I’ll probably do a different blog sometime in the near future. Thanks to all the people who have visited my blog (all 50 of you), and good-bye!
So let’s say he is successful. And then let’s say that the government steals his design (Of course I’m talking about the US government. See: Armageddon). What do you get? A super-secret surveillance program to go with along with the Patriot Act. Awesome!
A great idea which will probably never see the light of day. This power strip can be reconfigured to fit around your furniture (instead of the other way around).
This is from Yanko Design, an awesome source of design concepts from all around the world. Here you can find stuff like the Foot-Dustpan, the Wall bar, and the hamper-washing machine.
One more video for today. This is also from the Microsoft Website’s entrails, and it shows their vision of hardware in the future. It’s actually really cool looking, and makes you wonder if they have any of this stuff in development?
I’m kind of blown away at the amount of stuff you can download at Microsoft Research‘s site. Their downloads range from developer kits to actual applications, to stuff like Subpolyhedra Library: An Efficient Abstract Domain to Infer Linear Inequalities (WTF?). But here are some good ones (I’m only half-way down the list, by the way):
The next three all have to do with doing stuff with pictures:
The only one I’ve tried so far is Scalable Fabric, and though it’s a bit unrefined (like the Power Toys for XP), it’s quite cool. I may try them all and post updates!
Exploring Microsoft’s website I’m finding that they’re holding out on us. Or me. Their website is full of goodies, but you have to be willing to explore, because some of this shit is buried pretty deep.
So there I was, when I stumbled upon Microsoft Office Labs, and found they have all these concepts and projects available to try for free. Kinda like Google labs. And they actually have some pretty neat stuff.
The most useful one I saw is the Speed Launch application. It’s like a dumbed-down app launcher (unlike the totally awesome Launchy), where you can drag items (applications, websites, documents, etc) to a little bullseye at the bottom right of your screen. You can then call the bullseye and launch the content you’ve stored there by either clicking on the item or by typing its name. You can see it in action here:
There are other projects, such as a “Touchless” application which uses your webcam and “markers” to control your computer touchlessly. It looks like there are some pre-built demos, and also a developer’s kit if you’re into that kind of stuff.
I know a lot of people out there hate Microsoft, but since they pretty much rule the computer world, I think we don’t have a choice but to embrace the bastards. Let’s face it, the average computer user will not go through the trouble to learn Linux, and most of us can’t afford Macs.
I’ll post more as I continue my exploration.
Ok, so maybe it’s not that early, but anytime before I go to work is early morning for me. So here’s something that for some reason has remained fairly unknown: Power Toys for Windows XP. It’s a set of tools which can be individually installed on XP and they do neat little things such as:
Of course there are some others. These tools are all a bit rough around the edges, but some of them can be useful; I personally use the multi-desktop one, and used to use Tweak UI at my old job. Now off to work!
So I forgot about this story: Japan now has a robot teacher, Saya, who can, among other things, get angry. It’s been 15 years in the making, and it brings up a point: how long before they take over? No, really, did these people watch Terminator or for that matter I, Robot?
In all seriousness, this is cool but a little disturbing to me. I thought a part of good education was the human touch, the ability of the teacher to connect with the students. Will these kids be able to develop a relationship with Saya?
I understand that Japan has an aging population, and what they’re trying to do is very exciting to me. But at the same time, it makes me uncomfortable…
This has been blogged and re-blogged in the last couple of days, but it’s just so cool. These guys built a robot which makes pop corn and delivers it to the couch via Twitter. So the scenario they give is, you’re on your way home, you use your smartphone to Tweet your robot “Prep movie 15″, and it makes the popcorn and cues up the movie. Impressive? I’d say so. So maybe this Twitter thing has its uses after all…
via Engadget
Here’s Lola during her first snow day, only a few weeks ago.
