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« Older Entries | Newer Entries »Adobe & Microsoft – A Marriage Made In Heaven?
[ Comments Off ]Posted on October 9, 2010 by admin in Technology
Saturday, October 9th, 2010If Microsoft acquired Adobe, you could finally watch your PDF’s and Word documents freeze in the same window! And… is Slate the new Coal?
Wouldn’t it be great if Microsoft, a company notorious for terminally insecure, crash prone, memory hogging software with mind-numbingly illogical menus, and constant new overpriced versions that are backwards-incompatible, were to partner with Adobe, a company known for terminally insecure, crash prone, memory hogging… oh wait. So why is it that so many tech industry and finance blogs are excited about the rumour of a possible merger or acquisition involving the two? It’s ironic that Apple – once the prideful domain of snobbish, intellectual arty types – is now part of the Evil Empire (along with Google) that everyone thinks needs to be taken down. In my opinion, anyone who sees anything positive in a possible Adobe/Microsoft merger is beholden to a business model that we can only hope is in its death throes. Apple and Google have gotten where they are right now with a really crazy idea: give the user what they want or need, and do it exceptionally well. Adobe and Microsoft, on the other hand, have for nearly a decade stuck to a strategy of buying their competitors , rolling exceptional products into their existing lines of outdated and over-developed re-releases of lumbering software suites, usually to the detriment if not total destruction of really great products. In any case, the rumour is already being called “nonsense” by credible sources, so the whole idea may be as vaporous as Microsoft’s “slate”, an attempt to compete with the iPad, which is supposed to be available in time for Christmas. What a great stocking stuffer for the people on your list who’ve been naughty, not nice! Maybe slate is the new coal. Read the rest of this entry »
Increasingly Impossible Objects Becoming Increasingly Possible
[ Comments Off ]Posted on October 7, 2010 by admin in Technology
Thursday, October 7th, 2010These 3D renderings of fractals suggest that just around the corner, there’s something just around the corner.
There’s a place I know, just around the corner of the corner of the corner. It’s inside a house designed by Karl Menger , and the walls, floors, and ceilings are covered with carpets designed by Waclaw Sierpinski. I’ve been going there since I was about five, when a Japanese fellow who rented a room from my family showed me how to make a Möbius strip. You’ve probably seen examples of impossible objects before; people are probably most familiar with MC Escher’s work, but there are many other artists who’ve dabbled in this arena. You can even make your own impossible triangle, or if you’re feeling really ambitious, you can engage in a little fractal origami. I love illusions like this, but I’ve always been even more fascinated with objects that can be partially represented in two or three dimensions, but require a little imagination or mental investment to grasp. We’ve touched on hypercubes and extra-dimensional ideas before, but today I ran across something I’ve longed to see for ages, which is detailed, 3D animations of fractals, and objects like the “Menger Sponge” referenced at the top. I became a little obsessed with these forms when the book Chaos: Making a New Science
Facebook & Skype. Two Great Tastes That Don’t Taste Great Together
[ Comments Off ]Posted on September 29, 2010 by admin in Technology
Wednesday, September 29th, 2010I’m not so sure I want audio/video in my Facebook account, but I do have suggestions for some Like Button-like audio widgets I’d like to see.
 Great. Now the Numa Numa Guy can video chat me whenever he feels like it. |
I really love sushi. I also really love chocolate. However, I suspect I wouldn’t much enjoy chocolate-dipped sushi. Which was the first feeble analogy that sprang to mind when I learned today that Skype and Facebook have formed a partnership . One that we imagine would inevitably lead to being able to video Skype on Facebook. Call me a stick-in-the-mud, a Luddite, call me whatever you like, but when I want to talk to someone, I call them. And if I need to call someone overseas, or have a conference with or without video, Skype rocks. And if I want to peruse what my friends are up to or engage in some low-key attention whoring or silly banter, Facebook is just the ticket. But something that I really don’t think I need is video calls on Facebook. Or a more Facebook aware Skype. C’mon. One of the first things a Facebook noob learns to do is to set their status to offline so that they don’t get random late night chat box popups from opposite-sex stalker friends of their friends that are barely their friends in the first place. Facebook has reached an almost “MySpace before the fall” feeling anyway; between the privacy changes and the late joiners, most people who are even moderately perceptive are starting to feel a little Facebookworn. Sure, it’s a great way to avoid buying birthday cards, and share pictures of the kids, but we’ve all learned that it doesn’t make more people come see your band, and once you’ve gotten a sense of the banal existence everyone is leading, you’re probably happy to go back to not knowing. Besides, linking the two services will just make it that much easier for the government to spy on you. There is however one improvement I think they could make. Since the “Like” button has removed the burden of ever actually having to make intelligent comments, we already suggested a bunch of “Like” button alternatives. But I think it would be even cooler if they added a little audio widget that would let you add simple comments like a rimshot or a trombone “wah wah wah wah” . Or crickets for when someone obviously agonized over what they thought was an especially clever status post but no-one commented. What do you think? Do you want Skype in your Facebook?
What If America’s Highways Were One Big Solar Panel?
[ 4 Comments ]Posted on September 23, 2010 by admin in Clean & Green, Technology
Thursday, September 23rd, 2010Solar Roadways has an idea that could solve several of America’s energy and infrastructure problems at once, and revolutionize energy and transportation.
Okay. So you’re not quite ready to give up your gas guzzling FUV for some pansy little electric just yet. So how about we make the ROADS electric? That’s the rather brilliant idea behind Solar Roadways’ “Intelligent Highway” prototype (video below). The basic idea is that we have 2.73 million miles of paved road in America that just sits there getting driven on. So why not make it a solar grid? We’d produce three times more energy than the country needs, and since the roads go everywhere, including right to your house, why not deliver the electricity intelligently throughout the grid too, eliminating the need for much of the country’s hardwired power distribution? With the erratically skyrocketing costs of asphalt, this idea seems like a no-brainer. Solar Roadways’ highway would be built with – get this – glass, and utilize all sorts of extra features including built-in LED’s that can display virtually any message you like. Personally I think even if the material were quite a bit “dumber”, and only collected and distributed electricity, this would be a brilliant plan for America’s infrastructure. Although there’s a little irony in the fact that much like petroleum, one of the plan’s central materials is plentiful in Saudi Arabia. Down the road we may lament our dependence on foreign sand. But seriously. This is GENIUS. Why hasn’t it gotten more press? Consider giving them a vote to help them get funding from GE. Read the rest of this entry »
New Google Technology Makes Humans Superfluous
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on September 14, 2010 by admin in Technology
Tuesday, September 14th, 2010Google’s search technology has become so good at predicting what you want to search that they’ll soon be doing away with you altogether.
Words could never begin to express the sense of relief I felt today when I read on the Google Blog that they’ve finally developed technology to do away with the human element altogether. After more than two years of generating original content every day, I run out of juice occasionally, and I was starting to worry that I would become one of the millions of user-generated content generators that fails to generate, and ends up apologizing for why I haven’t posted recently. By the way, if you need to filter the 111,000,000 results from that link, there’s a blog for that. And although I have some regrets that this new Google technology will render my existence unnecessary, in a way I’m looking forward to doing whatever it was that I did before the Internet came along. If only I can remember what it was without Googling it. In any case, until Google activates this new, completely human-free web, you may be interested to know that that as a user-generated content generator, you can already build an entire web site without even resorting to the content farms I was making fun of a few weeks ago. That’s right. Primal Pages lets you enter a phrase, and then assembles existing content from around the web for you. After you answer the question “What are you thinking about?”, you really don’t have to make any more conscious decisions except whether or not to click the “publish” button. As their tagline says: “If the website you need doesn’t exist, let Primal Pages build it for you in seconds.” I for one welcome this human elementless web, although I didn’t go down without a struggle. I thought that if I made a YouTube clip of a letter to Google using Google Scribe, that the Internet search deity might lend an ear. Clip below. Read the rest of this entry »