September 29, 2008 by sean.

Via the Cult of Mac:

Posted in mobile computing | No Comments »

September 27, 2008 by sean.

Entertaining look at living in the GooglePlex [via gizmodo]:

The first Android phone is dropping next week, and the people who pick it up will be toting around mobile Google software in their pocket wherever they go. They’ll be using mobile Google apps, probably in concert with using Gmail, Gcal and Google Maps on their normal computer. We know that Google is tossing out all user data after 9 months, but you’ve got to wonder what kind of a picture Google is getting of its heavy users like that when it’s only getting info from how its apps are used. After the jump, an imagined day in the life of a Google user, as recorded and perceived by the Googleplex itself.

Posted in fun, pervasive computing, social networks | No Comments »

September 21, 2008 by sean.

From virtual pets to virtual boyfriends [via techcrunch]:

In Japan, girls are crazy over virtual boyfriends. Webkare (Web Boyfriend in Japanese), a mix between a social network and dating simulation site, is Nippon’s newest web sensation. Geared exclusively towards girls, the site attracted over 10,000 members just 5 days after its release on September 10, racking up 3.5 million page views in the same time frame.

Posted in games and simulations, fun, social networks | No Comments »

September 18, 2008 by sean.

University of Utah biologist Dennis Bramble and Harvard University paleoanthropologist Daniel Lieberman suggest that efficient running has a role in human evolution [via Discover Magazine]:

In the 1970s, Carrier was assisting with Bramble’s studies of how dogs, horses, and people regulate breathing while running. A marathoner himself, Carrier began to wonder about the role of endurance running in human evolution. People, he noted, can shed heat quickly—not by panting, like most animals, but by perspiring through millions of sweat glands. A lack of fur also helps dissipate heat more quickly.

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September 13, 2008 by sean.

“It just got a bit harder for law enforcement agencies to turn your cell phone into a personal homing beacon: A federal court has slapped down the Justice Department’s appeal of a February ruling that required investigators to seek a probable cause warrant before acquiring historical records of a cell phone users physical movements.” [via arstechnica]

Posted in mobile computing | No Comments »

September 11, 2008 by sean.

[Professor Wolffsohn from Aston University] believes that within five to ten years, people will be able to have their vision premanently repaired for less than £1,000 by having one of these flexible lenses implanted in their eye. [via telegraph.co.uk].

Posted in bionics | No Comments »

September 7, 2008 by sean.

Rap about world’s largest science experiment becomes YouTube hit [via Daily Telegraph]:

After 14 years, the European particle physics lab near Geneva, known by its French acronym CERN, is preparing to switch on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), designed to seek out new particles including the long-awaited Higgs boson responsible for making things weigh what they do, the possible source of gravity called dark matter, as well as probe the differences between matter and its “evil twin” antimatter.

Now a larky but accurate rap song explaining the point of the 17 mile circumference machine, which formally starts up on September 10, has made a star of Kate McAlpine, 23, aka “alpinekat”, who stars with her friends in a YouTube video that has been downloaded more than 400,000 times.

Posted in science, fun | No Comments »

September 6, 2008 by sean.

Posted in collective intelligence | No Comments »