Archives of computer blog

March 14, 2006, 10:04 PM CT

Americans Want Banks To Spy On Their Accounts

Online technology and the proliferation of electronic fraud have caused Americans to change attitudes about banking. Consumers are much more wary of e-mail from banks, and they're much more willing to have banks monitor their accounts.

Google Buys Maker Of 3D Modeling Software
Google acquires @Last Software, a company that makes modeling software tools for a general audience, not just design professionals. The acquisition was the second for Google this month.

Group Fingers Technology As Likely Cause Of Hearing Loss
The use of portable music players, such as Apple Computer's iPod, may be breeding bad habits that can lead to hearing loss, a survey done for the American Speech-Language-Hearing-Association shows.

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March 8, 2006, 11:33 PM CT

Google Earth + Domus = Hyper Domus

From the March 2006 issue (Domus 890), readers will be able to take a “virtual guided tour” of the buildings published in Domus thanks to a preconfigured itinerary that can be loaded in Google Earth-. This itinerary will take you on a tour of the most recent architectural projects, viewed in context. [Hyper Domus]

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March 8, 2006, 9:50 PM CT

Tougher Electronic Components

Like modern day alchemists, materials researchers often turn unassuming substances into desirable ones. But instead of working metal into gold, they create strange new compounds that could make the electronic components of the future smaller, faster, and more durable.

Alexander Goncharov of the Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory and his colleagues* have used extreme temperatures and pressures to make two durable compounds called noble metal nitrides; they are the first to succeed in making one of them, and the first to accurately determine the chemical formula of the other.

Both nitrides possess a diamond-like hardness, and some compositions might have very low, nearly superconductive electrical resistance-a blend that could prove quite valuable to industry.

The two nitrides-one containing iridium and another containing platinum-could eventually replace the titanium nitrides currently valued by the semiconductor industry as surface coatings because of their strength and durability. The scientists believe iridium and platinum nitrides might be even more durable. The group's work is presented in the March 3, 2006, issue of the journal Science.

Like several other metals such as gold, silver, and palladium, platinum and iridium are noble metals. Such metals are resistant to corrosion and oxidation, and do not easily form compounds with other elements unless coaxed to do so under very high temperatures and pressures. Goncharov and colleagues used a special tool called a diamond anvil cell to compress the samples to nearly half a million times the atmospheric pressure at sea level. Then they used a focused laser to heat the samples to over 3000 degrees Fahrenheit, or roughly the temperature of a steel mill blast furnace. Under such extreme pressure and temperature the rules of chemistry begin to change, and noble metals can be made to form compounds with other elements such as nitrogen, as in the case of iridium and platinum nitrides.........

Posted by: Ethan Permalink Source

March 7, 2006, 11:39 PM CT

Late New Year's resolution: letting go

When it comes to computer stuff, I'm a pack rat. I pile away all kinds of things that I don't need now, but I just might need later.

Take my old laptop. (Please.) Five or six years ago, I bought an IBM Thinkpad for work because my company used junky underpowered laptops, and I wanted a quality machine for my day-to-day work. I loved it, but years later, the backlight started flickering. Eventually it gave out completely, making it useless as a laptop - who wants a laptop with a display that you can't see? The computer part of it still worked great, though, and I couldn't stand for a working computer in the house that was going unused.

I tried building a car computer, but when iPods came along, we just put iPods in our cars. Presto, all of our music at our fingertips, and they were so easy to use that having a real computer in the car just didn't make sense.

So then I stuck the laptop under the couch, connected it to my home network, and .... well, I didn't really have a legitimate use for it. It just sat in there, plugged in. I put Windows Server 2003 on it in an effort to make it useful - I figured I'd use it to train myself on the new OS. Didn't happen - besides, we have Windows Servers at work anyway.

This morning, surveying the apartment, I realized I have a bunch of halfway functional pieces of gear, none of which are actually being used. At all. There's the IBM 15" flat panel attached to my desktop computer - I used to use it a lot when I telecommuted, but now it stays blank all day. There's a Sony receiver under the TV, looking as if it's meant to be there, but in reality not a single cable is plugged in. After all, I can't play loud music in our condo, and even if I could, well, my only stereo speakers are in the bedroom closet. They're great speakers, a gift from a close friend of ours, but they need repair work and I haven't gotten around to fixing them yet.

Combine this with the fact that we don't really have enough closet space anyway, and I arrived at the conclusion that I need to start letting go of some of this stuff. Okay, all of it. Out it goes. I took pictures and placed Craigslist classified ads this morning.

Literally as I was writing this blog posting, a guy called and he's buying the laptop and the monitor. Wow, Craigslist rocks. Anyway, I should have done this before we moved to Miami Beach - somebody could have been using this gear this whole time.

Except for those speakers. Those, I gotta fix. Those are fantastic. Heh.

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March 7, 2006, 9:03 PM CT

Happy 19th Birthday, Mac II

[Quote:]Chris Seibold of Apple Matters points out that today is the 19th anniversary of the launch of Apple's groundbreaking Mac II-it was the very first Mac with color capabilities! The basic model came with a floppy drive and shipped for $3,898; you could get the fancy pants version (1 MB of RAM, a floppy drive,.....

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Chris Seibold of Apple Matters points out that today is the 19th anniversary of the launch of Apple's groundbreaking Mac II-it was the very first Mac with color capabilities! The basic model came with a floppy drive and shipped for $3,898; you could get the fancy pants version (1 MB of RAM, a floppy drive, and a 40MB SCSI hard disk) for $5,498. We like to complain as much as the next person about how expensive Apple products are, but hey, at least they've gotten a little cheaper over the years.

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March 4, 2006, 11:18 PM CT
Document Icons : The morphology of a document
Document Icons by Amber Frid-Jimenez generates iconic shapes based on a document and its histogram of words to create a intuitive visual search engine for documents. The relationships between 100 documents can be viewed in an instant. via information aesthetics

Document Icons by Amber Frid-Jimenez generates iconic shapes based on a document and its histogram of words to create a intuitive visual search engine for documents. The relationships between 100 documents can be viewed in an instant.

via information aesthetics

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March 2, 2006, 11:02 PM CT
Use your feet to control your computer

Capt.6A858C5A5Ac84954Bfe5A964D096A3Fe.Microsoft Techfest Watw102
Dance Dance those emails away - "This is just one off-the-shelf piece of hardware we can use," A.J. Brush, the lead researcher on the project, said after demonstrating the technology. "Now we're looking at broadening, thinking about accelerometers or other things you could strap onto your feet so you really could be just sitting at your desk and kicking your e-mail away under the desk." - [via] Link.

You can likely make this yourself now, check out the free, open source StepMania - a free dance and rhythm game for Windows, Mac, and Linux. It features 3D graphics, keyboard and "dance pad" support, and an editor for creating your own steps. See their hardware section on dance pads and which ones work, then macro up your dance pad to become a keyboard. Other ideas: DDR RSS reader, iTunes visualizer with StepMania, collaborative & competitive avatar based Dance Dance Revolution / Stepmania in Second Life.

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March 2, 2006, 8:35 PM CT
CPUShare: Supercomputers for the rest of us
CPUShare aims to translate your free CPU time to supercomputing credits on the same network at a later time or real hard cash (soon).

CPUShare aims to translate your free CPU time to supercomputing credits on the same network at a later time or real hard cash (soon).

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March 1, 2006, 11:54 PM CT

Better Weather Forecasts

Purdue University researcher and his team have used improved satellite imaging and powerful computer modeling to more accurately forecast the likelihood and intensity of storms and tornados.

The key to the new weather prediction model is its more precise simulation of the amount of moisture surface vegetation is releasing into the upper atmosphere to affect the weather conditions, said Dev Niyogi (pronounced Dave Knee-yoo-gee), an assistant professor of agronomy and earth and atmospheric sciences. Niyogi said that current weather prediction models represent vegetation at a very simplistic level.

"How well we are able to represent one leaf in a weather forecast model can be a key to predicting thunderstorms," he said. "In fact, the amount of moisture plants are emitting during photosynthesis may be considered the local trigger that trips fronts into violent weather".

Niyogi and his team based the research on two days in the 2002 International H20 Project, a large-scale, six-week field experiment that was a consolidated, coordinated effort funded by the National Science Foundation consisting of multiple scientists gathering huge datasets of weather information. Niyogi, who also is the Indiana state climatologist, was a participating researcher in the International H20 Project.........

Posted by: Ethan Permalink Source

February 28, 2006, 10:32 PM CT
Did You Hear? Pricefish.com Opens Audio Product Listings
In order to drive up sales and enhance a customer's shopping experience, comparative shopping web site Pricefish.com has released FishClips, a service which lets online vendors include a short mp3 audio description of their products. FishClips will appear alongside the standard product listings, and are designed to provide customers with service information, as well as.....

In order to drive up sales and enhance a customer's shopping experience, comparative shopping web site Pricefish.com has released FishClips, a service which lets online vendors include a short mp3 audio description of their products. FishClips will appear alongside the standard product listings, and are designed to provide customers with service information, as well as to highlight special offers.

"We believe retailers are always looking for new ways to separate themselves from their competitors. We anticipate Pricefish.com’s audio FishClips feature will allow online and multi-channel retailers to directly engage potential shoppers as they make buying decisions," said Pricefish president Mark Dresner in a statement. FishClips has been in testing phase since September 2005 with a handful of vendors.

Since 2003, Pricefish has been providing shoppers with side-by-side product and pricing comparisons, searchable and listed by category. Now that the FishClips service is available to all vendors, Pricefish plans to focus on developing other multimedia services as well. "This is a first step in our plan to incorporate full multi-media capabilities into Pricefish.com. We envision that video - full sight and sound - won’t be far off," said Dresner.

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