Technology
« Older Entries | Newer Entries »Can Formula One Cars Drive Upside-Down?
[ Comments Off ]Posted on May 16, 2009 by admin in Technology
Saturday, May 16th, 2009This should be good for an endless round of Male Answer Syndrome at the bar. Someone please StumbleUpon or Reddit this so we can get a decent answer!
 I mean, on purpose? |
This question is more fun than the airplane on a treadmill question. A few years before Paul Newman passed away (rest in peace Paul, you’re one of my few heroes!), I saw him on a late-night talk show on which he put forth the crazy notion that Formula One cars could drive upside down, since their airfoils provide more than 3.5 G’s of downforce. Build a long tunnel with curved walls he said, take the car to top speed, and you’ll be able to swing up the wall and drive upside-down because of the force created by the car’s aerodynamics. On the surface, it makes sense based on the math, but you’re left feeling that a clever old man is pulling your leg. Searching the web offers what feels like less-than-conclusive answers. WikiAnswers answers pretty confidently, with no explanation. Softpedia tries to offer an authorative answer, but then proceeds to use inaccurate downforce numbers. Even the Official Formula 1 web site mentions the idea, but as a toss-off sentence and no solid math. Personally, I’d love to see this on Mythbusters, especially since even their Mailbag site serves up a gross inaccuracy in which they suggest that drivers experience g-forces because of the aerodynamics of the car. Someone, please help with an answer that provides convincing math! In the meantime, we can still rely on Paul Newman’s sage wisdom. When asked once if he’d like to share any life lessons – the sort of things that had guided him throughout his amazing career – Newman thought for a few seconds before answering with a wry smile: “It’s useless,” he said, “to put the brakes on when you’re upside down.”
Wolfram Alpha – Cooler Than Google?
[ Comments Off ]Posted on May 15, 2009 by admin in Technology
Friday, May 15th, 2009The new search engine and technology Wolfram Alpha launches today. Watch out Google.
We made reference to Wolfram Alpha as a “Google Killer” last week, which is something the developers apparently don’t like. It sets people up for the kind of disappointment everyone experienced when the last “Google Killer” Cuil was launched. Well, they’re webcasting the launch of Wolfram Alpha live tonight. If you haven’t heard about it, it’s a new search tool that computes answers rather than simply culling links from a database like Google. Stephen Wolfram’s explanation sums it up nicely, if that’s still not making sense to you: “Fifty years ago, when computers were young, people assumed that they’d quickly be able to handle all these kinds of things … and that one would be able to ask a computer any factual question and have it compute the answer, but it didn’t work out that way … I’d always thought, though, that eventually it should be possible. And a few years ago, I realised that I was finally in a position to try and do it.” Having grown up on Star Trek, this has always been one of my biggest frustrations with technology. I honestly can’t wait to try it.
Paralyzed By Indecision? Let The Intranets Decide!
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on May 8, 2009 by admin in Technology
Friday, May 8th, 2009Sites like Let Simon Decide and Hunch help you make the decisions that your tech overload has rendered you unable to make.
 Would you let this man pick a college for you? |
Great. Now that our minds are paralyzed by the wealth of choices presented by the Internet, our mobile devices, and the toothpaste aisle (I’m serious. On a lark I counted 47 toothpaste options at a local CVS the other day), the biggest offender of this group -the Internet – is trying to play nicey-nicey and help us make the decisions that it spent all that time rendering us incapable of making. Let Simon Decide takes your input and uses sophisticated algorithms to help you make decisions like “Where should I live?” and “Should I sell my house?” I wanted to use the site to ask it if I should use it, but it wouldn’t let me, without creating an account. Now I’ll never know if I should try it. My favorite endorsement on the site is from Amy, of Los Angeles, who says “WOWWWW I seriously love it!!! I asked it where I should live and it really helped me realize where the best location is.” I could’ve told her, just based on her spelling of the word “wow”. Along the same lines as Let Simon Decide, we have hunch, created by flickr founder Caterina Fake. Although it’s invite-only as of this writing, Mashable has a good overviewof how it works here. If you’re traveling (or even if you’re not, it’s kind of amusing anyway) Joobili lets you set a date range, and then it tells you where to go. Save some time and add a comment here on Dissociated Press. I’ll tell you were to go.
It’s Okay To Be A Twitter Quitter
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on May 3, 2009 by admin in Technology
Sunday, May 3rd, 2009The future of the social web? Real time search, recommendation tools, and better aggregation.
My head’s going to explode if one more person tells me why Twitter is the next big thing, or uses the term Google Killer or Facebook Killer. It’s just my opinion, of course, but anybody who claims to know where the web and social networks are headed on a granular level is just regurgitating what they read on tech blogs, or is someone you’d like to make friends with, because they will soon be very, very rich. All the same, this is a pretty interesting time for the web. The obvious trends right now are real time search, social networking, and recommendation tools. When someone makes the simplistic statement that Twitter’s the “next big thing” after Facebook, they’re missing three profoundly important points: 1.) The services are completely different in nature; one is a closed, user-defined network, the other is an outward-flowing stream of information available to anyone. 2.) An estimated 60% of users stop using twitter after one month, and 3). The “next big thing” is already happening. Most would agree that the next big thing is some version of the open web, and if you think about it, that’s what a lot of us are striving for: some kind of reintegration of all the services we’re using. That’s why one of the coolest short-term “Twitter Killers” is making such a splash right now; Seesmic Desktop just added Facebook feeds to the existing tools they had for Twitter. Between Seesmic Desktop and services like NutshellMail, you should at least be able to get your lifestreams under control. I’m personally considering a more effective alternative: unplugging
What’s Your Facebook Footprint?
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on April 19, 2009 by admin in Clean & Green, Technology
Sunday, April 19th, 2009Does the green movement’s use of the web cancel itself out?
Last year we wrote about how Ford was having a Fiesta, and that you weren’t invitado. Well, they’re finally going to market the car next year in the states, and they apparently picked 100 bloggers from over 4,000 applicants to pump their product through social networking. Which all got me wondering. What is the carbon footprint of our time spent on the web? Well, apparently two Google searches produce the same amount of CO2 as bringing water to a boil on your stovetop. Some other examples: the total of electricity consumed by major search engines in 2006 was nearly 5 gigawatts, which is enough to power Las Vegas on the hottest day of the year. What about the trillions of spam messages sent annually? They consume enough electricity to power 2.4 million homes, and release as much carbon dioxide as 3.1 million cars consuming 2 billion gallons of gasoline. Which begs the obvious question: if that’s the impact of spam, what about porn? Based on all of this, will the benefits of buying a Fiesta be undone by all the blogging and Facebooking about them? You decide. Current estimates would put Facebook’s overall carbon footprint at half of New York City’s (thanks mostly to all those photos you share!). That somehow doesn’t sound as bad as the fact that Avatars in Second Life consume as much electricity as actual Brazilians, but it’s still a hefty figure. Fortunately there are lots of Facebook apps to help you manage your carbon footprint. If you actually take this topic seriously and want to figure out your carbon footprint, there a plenty of resources like the LowImpactLiving.com Impact Calculator, and this WSJ article takes a good look at a few products and how their footprints are measured.