Saturday, April 24, 2010

 

Woman begins experiments with Mobius music box


Woman begins experiments with Mobius music box. Click here to listen.

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

 

Wonderful world of early computing


Wonderful world of early computing.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

 

The strange future of avatars and virtual world


The strange future of avatars and virtual worlds. "With each generation of avatar, they will become more life-like, growing in realism, pressing the limits of autonomy as we become more and more reliant on them for experiencing the world."

Thursday, June 11, 2009

 

Beautiful and transcendent long-exposure photos


Beautiful and transcendent long-exposure photos.

Sunday, May 24, 2009

 

Tiny cities made of crystal

Tiny cities made of crystal

Sunday, April 26, 2009

 

Brilliant Spiral Sink


Water follows the coriolis effect and spirals into the drain on its own - this clever sink design just helps it along and accentuates the proecess in a dynamic and elegant way. Shaped like the imprint of the shell, the curves of this sleek sink are at once organic and clearly the product of design. Source of photo and text: dornob.com.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

 

8 Brilliant Scientific Screw-ups.


8 Brilliant Scientific Screw-ups

Saturday, February 21, 2009

 

Top-Secret Aircrafts Mistaken for UFOs.


6 Top-Secret Aircraft that are Mistaken for UFOs.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

 

Perpetual motion machines


Perpetual motion machines. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_motion

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

 

Strategy games may help conquer aging


Strategy games may help conquer aging.

Monday, November 10, 2008

 

What is a "sideways bike"?


The sideways bike is an invention by Michael Killian, a software engineer from Dublin. He was inspired by the way that snowboarding is preferred to skiing due to the greater artistic potential, and decided to design a snowboard equivalent for the conventional bicycle. The result: a bike ridden sideways with the rider operating both wheels. The bike, unlike a conventional bike, uses front-to-back balance like a snowboard. Conventional bikes use left-to-right balance, like skis. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Sideways bike". This entry is a fragment of a larger work. Link may die if entry is finally removed or merged.

Friday, October 03, 2008

 

Recent strange and wonderful fashions


Recent strange and wonderful fashions for women.

Friday, September 12, 2008

 

Reserve a spot in heaven


Reserve a spot in heaven.

Friday, August 15, 2008

 

Humans helping computers helping humans


The biggest secret on the Internet: Web security words actually help to digitize old books. "And the number of words that we've been able to digitize like this is insanely large, it's like over a billion. It's like 1.3 billion by now," von Ahn says.

Monday, July 14, 2008

 

The Remember Ring

The Remember Ring™ utilizes patent pending Hot Spot™ technology to deliver a reminder that it's "That time of the year again!"

Monday, June 16, 2008

 

Will your next computer setup look like this?

Will your next computer setup look like this?

Friday, May 16, 2008

 

Brain machines


Emotiv has created technologies that allow machines to take both conscious and non-conscious inputs directly from your mind.

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

 

Cool Gadgets - The Digital Video Brush


Cool Gadgets - The Digital Video Brush, uses digital paint - Video

Friday, March 07, 2008

 

Planetary-Scale Views on an Instant-Messaging Network


We present a study of anonymized data capturing a month of high-level communication activities within the whole of the Microsoft Messenger instant-messaging system. We examine characteristics and patterns that emerge from the collective dynamics of large numbers of people, rather than the actions and characteristics of individuals. The dataset contains summary properties of 30 billion conversations among 240 million people. From the data, we construct a communication graph with 180 million nodes and 1.3 billion undirected edges, creating the largest social network constructed and analyzed to date. We report on multiple aspects of the dataset and synthesized graph. We find that the graph is well-connected and robust to node removal. We investigate on a planetary-scale the oft-cited report that people are separated by "six degrees of separation'' and find that the average path length among Messenger users is 6.6. We also find that people tend to communicate more with each other when they have similar age, language, and location, and that cross-gender conversations are both more frequent and of longer duration than conversations with the same gender. Authors: Jure Leskovec, Eric Horvitz

Wednesday, February 06, 2008

 

Ultimate office setup


Ultimate office setup. Strange computer and game workstations with surround-sound speakers, custom colors, and actual car seats instead of a standard office chair.

Sunday, January 06, 2008

 

Fake gadgets deliver shocking consequences

These may look like your typical cheap schlock shop knock-offs of popular gadgets, but they’re much more devious than that. You see, while they may bear a slight resemblance to a certain portable gaming system, media player and a dime-store pocket laser, they’re actually practical jokes that deliver a nasty shock. More information here.

Sunday, December 09, 2007

 

Man unleashes 3D desktops to all

People continue to play with 3D desktops on Windows.

Sunday, November 11, 2007

 

Female Robot


The artist who created the Vanessa Kensington Femrobot from "Austin Powers 2, The Spy Who Shagged Me," was selling the original on eBay. Vanessa has silicon skin, and comes with removable face plate, lights inside eyes and mouth (powered by a 9-volt battery).

Thursday, October 11, 2007

 

China to Record Entire Population

China, in an effort to curb criminal activity, is installing 20,000 cameras in Shenzen. Cameras will track the city's 12.4 million people, and are fitted with software from American firm that promises to automatically detect the faces of those breaking the law. But there's more: 180,000 other cameras are constantly filming in Shenzen.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

 

High voltage piles


Man falls in love with photos of high voltage piles. More info here:

http://pileofphotos.com/view/293/High-voltage

Sunday, August 12, 2007

 

50 terabyte flash drive made of bug protein


50 terabyte flash drive made of bug protein

Saturday, July 07, 2007

 

"The Computer Tree"

"The Computer Tree", from Electronic Computers Within the Ordnance Corps, by Karl Kempf. "U.S. Army Diagram".

Click here to see magnificent magnification.




Thursday, June 07, 2007

 

Photosynth: Impressive technology demo


Impressive technology demo ("Photosynth") involving image manipulation. Curious about that speck in corner? Dive into a freefall and watch as the speck becomes a gargoyle. With an unpleasant grimace. And an ant-sized chip in its lower left molar. "Perhaps the most amazing demo I've seen this year," wrote Ethan Zuckerman, after TED2007. Indeed, Photosynth might utterly transform the way we manipulate and experience digital images.

Saturday, May 12, 2007

 

Nothing is On Sale


Nothing is On Sale for $6.28. It had to happen. Someone is now selling Nothing. It's a piece of packaging with a with a clear plastic sphere sticking out of it that contains absolutely nothing.

Thursday, April 12, 2007

 

A Special Look at Virtual Universes

Second Life is a virtual world where age, race, gender and the other inescapable "realities" of life have been trumped by creative expression. The next great digital divide is here. People are conducting business, having fun, forming global relationships and finding innovative and groundbreaking new ways to communicate, solve problems and overcome disabilities.
Eureka Dejavu, conjured by award-winning investigative photojournalist Rita J. King, explores the virtual world Second Life to see if/how one reality mirrors another...and what it means.

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

 

Weird Bass Guitar Collection


Man assembles photo collection of the world's weirdest bass guitars.

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

 

Computer in Wall Socket


The first computer that resides in your wall-socket. It offers a 500-MHz AMD RISC CPU, 128MB of memory, 64MB of Flash memory, and a VGA connector. The JackPC runs Windows CE and is priced at just $392.

Sunday, January 14, 2007

 

JLr7: Watch From Another Planet?


Here's another one of those cryptic watches that make you guess what time it is, the JLr7 by e35 whose little J and L-shaped LEDs seem to light up at random. Even its name seems arbitrary, but check out the top row of LEDs and you'll see: JLr7. How does it work? The first three rows of lights show the hours in a 12-hour format, the fourth displays quarter hours and the rest of the rows show minutes and seconds.

Friday, December 08, 2006

 

The Pianist Hand


Various gears and levers inside this clear plastic hand interact to move the fingers as if they are playing one of six classic piano pieces; as the digits play selections from Beethoven's "Fifth Symphony", Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer," or Chopin's "Minute Waltz," you'll be fascinated by their precise movement and precision-tuned mechanical genius. Sound sensor starts the music when you clap; requires 2 AA batteries (not included).

Thursday, November 09, 2006

 

What is Sandboxie?


A cool method of computer protection? When you run a program on your computer, data flows from the hard disk to the program via read operations. The data is then processed and displayed, and finally flows back from the progam to the hard disk via write operations. "Sandboxie" changes the rules such that write operations do not make it back to your hard disk. Read the details.

Friday, October 13, 2006

 

The World's Coolest Watch Collection


J.J. Casalonga has fallen in love with strange watches. "Since the early days of watches, the display of the time is always the same: 2 or 3 hands turning in circle to tell the hour, minutes and seconds. I admit, it works. The reading is easy, quick, and straightforward. But when something works, there are always people who try to do something different. The idea behind this web page is not to find a better way of telling time, but rather to provide another way of telling the time. Here are some examples that Casalonga has compiled."


Wednesday, September 13, 2006

 

On the evolution of crowdsourcing

"Crowdsourcing is a term coined by Wired magazine writer Jeff Howe and editor Mark Robinson. It describes a business model akin to outsourcing. The difference is that instead of professional vendors, crowdsourcing relies upon unpaid or low-paid amateurs who use their spare time to create content, solve problems, even do corporate R & D. Crowds targeted for crowdsourcing include data companies, such as Jigsaw, garage scientists, amateur videographers, freelancers, photo enthusiasts, smart mobs and the electronic herd."
More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdsourcing

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

 

USB Computer Aquarium


Every geek likes to add new and interesting toys to their desktop. And if these toys happen to be powered by USB, well then, all the more fun to have. The USB Mini Desktop Aquarium is the home to two life-like tropical fish. A small motor generates a current in the water, allowing the fish to gently swim about the tank. The aquarium is equipped with a high-intensity blue LED that illuminates the tank in dark environment.

Friday, July 14, 2006

 

Man Patents Wearable Wrist Rest

A patent has just been issued for Wristease® (rist-eez'), an all portable, ergonomic wrist support. Worn while typing, writing, and using the mouse, Wristease provides support and comfort to pain caused by carpal tunnel syndrome and other wrist and hand related repetitive motion injuries. Now you can work on many different computers without having to carry your wrist rest with you.

Friday, June 02, 2006

 

Ectoplasmic ghosts and ghouls


Engineers use far infrared imaging to reveal the ectoplasmic ghosts and ghouls hiding within all of us.

Friday, May 19, 2006

 

Ants in Gel


This miraculous gel, derived from a NASA Space experiment, serves as both habitat and nutrition for your ants - allowing you to watch in awe as they turn a brick of aqua-blue gel into a fascinating colony of tunnels.

Thursday, April 27, 2006

 

Touch Rubik Cube


This toy inolves six different surface materials. They are metal, wood, textile, rubber, plastic and stone. Different materials give people different senses, which thus enabled the blind men to play.

Thursday, April 13, 2006

 

Inflating Memory Device


Designed by Dima Komissarov, the Flashbag is a USB storage device that actually inflates as it "fills up with data"!

Thursday, April 06, 2006

 

Behold the Zocchihedron!


Zocchihedron is the trademark of the most common 100-sided die, patented ( USPTO number D303553) by Lou Zocchi, which debuted in 1985. It is not a polyhedron. Rather, it is more like a ball with 100 flattened planes. It is sometimes called "Zocchi's Golfball." You can learn more about it here. You can buy one here.

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

 

All Mail from Europe Considered Spam

Verizon Discovers The Cost Of Being Too Aggressive In Blocking Spam: In late 2004 Verizon got fed up with dealing with spam for its DSL customers, and implemented a massive blocklist, that seemed to block a ton of email from outside the country -- with no way to get around the list. People who used their Verizon email address to communicate with colleagues in Europe, for example, suddenly were unable to do so. Read more.

Monday, March 27, 2006

 

Play Games. Boost IQ. Become a Genius.

Brain research leads to a Nintendo game that boosts your IQ and turns its players into instant geniuses.

Thursday, March 23, 2006

 

Buy an alien device


This LED device catches the eye for no apparent reason. The clip will let you stick the device on almost anything. Take the clip off and you can even fix it to a lanyard and wear it as a necklace. It seems to be a clock, a stopwatch, a pedometer, a signal, a motion responsive display, and even a scrolling message display.

Sunday, March 19, 2006

 

Google in the news

Suing Google Because Your Google Site Ranking Sucks

Judge Orders Google To Turn Over Gmail Account To Feds

Thursday, March 09, 2006

 

Futuristic Watch

Ibiza Ride Watch"We really can't over-emphasize the number of envious looks this ultra-modern masterpiece attracts. Because as well as perplexing everyone who sees it (except the wearer), the Ibiza Ride looks like something Buck Rogers might wear when hitting the disco with Twiki. Best of all, it's unlike any other watch out there. And in the war of wristwatch one-upmanship, individuality is everything."

Sunday, March 05, 2006

 

Flash Wristband

The Imation Flash Wristband redefines wearable technology design by combining a portable flash drive that doubles as a wristband. Durable and stylish, the Imation Flash Wristband is the new, convenient way to transfer, share and save digital files. Whether it's homework, photos, graphics, music or e-mails, it's all protected beneath a flexible blue or black rubber shell. Always at the ready, the 256MB Flash Wristband is the indispensable, go-anywhere accessory for the everyday professionals and consumers.

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

 

The Metaphysics of Google Addiction

Six days a week, Shari Thurow spends copious amounts of time conducting searches on Google. But each Saturday, she makes a point of observing a "Google-free day." The rules are simple: Use any search engine except for Google. In practice, however, the policy is surprisingly difficult to implement.

Monday, February 27, 2006

 

Will Machines Ever Think?

Turing’s paper claimed that suitably programmed digital computers would be generally accepted as thinking by around the year 2000, achieving that status by successfully responding to human questions in a human-like way.
Mark Halpern says, "In the deepest sense, the AI champions see their critics as trying to reverse the triumph of the Enlightenment, with its promise that man’s mind can understand everything, and as retreating to an obscurantist, religious outlook on the world. They see humanity as having to choose, right now, between accepting the possibility, if not the actual existence, of thinking machines and sinking back into the Dark Ages. But these are not our only alternatives; there is a third way, the way of agnosticism, which means accepting the fact that we have not yet achieved artificial intelligence, and have no idea if we ever will."

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

 

Nude photo site wins injunction against Google

A federal judge has ruled that portions of Google's popular image search feature, which displays small thumbnail versions of images found on other Web sites, likely violate U.S. copyright law.

Sunday, February 19, 2006

 

New Amazon.Com Patent

The US Patent office just awarded Amazon.com a patent for assisting a user of an item purchasing service in giving groups of related items to recipients." TechDirt asks: "How can this be patentable? It's a patent for link together a group of products so they can all be bought in a single bundle."

Friday, February 17, 2006

 

Shower light generated by water pressure

Look -- color fusion shower head! We’ve talked about showers that light up many times, but this shower is different. You see, it’s powered by the water coming through the head and changes color in response to the water temperature. No wires to run, no batteries to change—just sweet LED light bathing you while you bathe. It’s about $105 in Japan, and there it shall ever stay.
Shower light generated by water pressure : Color Fusion Shower

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

 

Wired Girl

I typed Wire Girl into Google and found this image

Monday, February 13, 2006

 

Chinese Censors of Internet Face 'Hacktivists' in U.S.

The following is an ACM TechNews Summary of a Wall Street Journal (02/13/06) P. A1; Fowler, Geoffrey A.

While the Internet's growing pervasiveness in China has made it difficult to police the activities of an estimated 111 million users, the Chinese government is nonetheless attempting to reinforce its authority, requiring all bloggers to register with the state and continuing its block on objectionable content, such as Wikipedia and the BBC, as well as dispatching roughly a dozen state agencies to monitor Internet activity.

Chinese Web censorship, sometimes referred to as the 'Great Firewall,' has sparked an insurgent community of U.S.-based 'hacktivists' who have developed programs such as Freegate, which links computers within China to U.S. servers, enabling users to access prohibited sites. Other efforts mask the identity of Chinese Web users through multilayered host messages that obscure their trail, and adopt-a-blogger programs furnish Chinese writers with external servers to transmit their message. Practitioners of the Falun Gong--the banned Chinese spiritual group that has been persecuted for alleged subversion--have contributed substantially to the development of anti-censorship applications such as Freegate.

Voice of America and Radio Free Asia also contribute to Freegate, and a major boost in funding could come from the renewed congressional consideration of legislation to create an Office of Global Internet Freedom in response to harsh criticism of Google, Microsoft, and others for complying with Chinese censorship laws. Freegate, run by North Carolina-based programmer Bill Xia, cannot be blocked by Chinese censors because it constantly switches the address of its U.S. server. Freegate's effectiveness is limited in China, however, as it is employed mostly by technically proficient users, and many Chinese censor their own Internet use, consciously avoiding keywords and content that could be considered subversive. Meanwhile, the government continually devotes more resources to combating Freegate and other anti-censorship applications

Saturday, February 11, 2006

 

Submit a drawing, get one back

In Sketch Swap, you draw something on the screen, and when you're finished, you hit "Submit drawing"... to receive a random drawing from someone else. Sketch Swap was inspired by Markus Renschler's File Swap.

Thursday, February 09, 2006

 

Anti-cartoon protests go online

Almost 1,000 Danish websites have been defaced by Islamic hackers protesting about controversial cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad. The attacks typically replace home pages with pro-Islam messages and condemn the publication of the images.

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

 

Wild Input Devices

Some wild input devices on the market today, and it seems they get even kookier when they're ergonomic. Input devices like the RollerMousePRO, the vertical keyboard, and the vertical mouse may seem esoteric, but they prove that its users prefer functionality over beautiful form. A main driver for this is the desire to reduce the risk or pain associated with carpal tunnel syndrome and other RSI disorders.

Read more.

Monday, February 06, 2006

 

Alien Animal Planet

Flying whales, walking trees, three-eyed killer birds - NASA and SETI imagine life on other worlds.

On Aurelia, an Earth-sized planet half shrouded in perpetual darkness, vast floodplains give way to groves of treelike stinger fans that use ambulatory roots to creep across the muddy surface. On Blue Moon, a lunar orb in an adjacent solar system light-years from Aurelia, winged skywhales gulp aerial plankton suspended in the dense atmosphere, while balloon plants float beneath the canopies of massive pagoda tree forests, buoyed by hydrogen gas-filled membranes like miniature Hindenburgs.

 

Blogosphere shows insane growth

The blogosphere is in the middle of a big bang. According to the blog trackers at Technorati, a company that indexes and searches blog postings, the number of blogs online is doubling about every five and a half months .
Read more here.

Saturday, February 04, 2006

 

Spyware Poses a Significant Threat

A amazing, recent University of Washington study of more than 20 million Internet addresses has found that spyware is driving computer users insane. The researchers found that more than one in 20 executable files carried spyware, while one in 62 domains attempt to forcibly upload spyware for users who merely visit a site. Piggybacked spyware appeared most frequently on celebrity and game Web sites.

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

 

Google in the Year 2100

Ray Kurzweil and Stephen Wolfram predict what Google will be like in the year 2100!

Tuesday, January 31, 2006

 

From Browsers to Boing Boing

♦ Microsoft has just made available their latest beta preview build of their Internet Explorer 7.0 web browser. It is said to have several new features.

♦ Boing Boing Threatened By Software Creator

Monday, January 30, 2006

 

From Wikipedia to Autism

Wikipedia vs Congressional Staffers

♦ Children with highly analytical parents are more likely to be autistic.

Saturday, January 28, 2006

 

From Hackers to String Theory

♦ Microsoft Tricks Hacker Into Jail

♦ The Los Angeles city attorney's office has sued the makers of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas for allegedly hiding pornographic material inside the video game, officials said.

♦ Oh God, who wants to work in an office "cubicle"?

♦ Evidence for String Theory?

Friday, January 27, 2006

 

A Ranking of the 50 Coolest Robots

They're exploring the deep sea and distant planets. They're saving lives in the operating room and on the battlefield. They're transforming factory floors and filmmaking. They're - oh c'mon, they're just plain cool! From Qrio to the Terminator, here are our absolute favorites (at least for now).

Thursday, January 26, 2006

 

From Emoticon Patents to Endtones

♦ The USA based mobile operator, Cingular Wireless has managed to get a patent on the concept of using emoticons -- symbols like smiley faces -- on mobile phones!

♦ A bizarre photographic history of computer hard drives.

♦ The Google Cache feature does not violate copyright law.

♦ Now people are talking about charging for endtones, hang-up tones and drop tones -- bits of music to play when a mobile phone conversation ends via people hanging up or a call is dropped.

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

 

Hyper-light-speed antenna?

Man patents hyper-light-speed antenna

Monday, January 23, 2006

 

What is the Kama Sutra worm?


Kama Sutra worm seduces PC users. A new e-mail worm that spreads under the guise of pornographic content has jumped to the top of the worldwide virus charts.

Sunday, January 22, 2006

 

From Amazon.Com to Pennies

♦ Amazon.com to allow book page purchases

Penny sculptures beyond reality

Saturday, January 21, 2006

 

From Phones to Geometry

♦ Man keeps his computer on slow phone line for security reasons

♦ When should Bloggers turn off their comment function?

♦ Humans are hardwired for geometry

Friday, January 20, 2006

 

From E-Books to Sex Blogs

♦ The latest gossip on e-books

♦ Search for the world's most prolific inventor

♦ The lastest gossip on sex blogs

Thursday, January 19, 2006

 

From Utility Fog to Sex.Com


Utility Fog: The Stuff that Dreams are Made Of

Wikipedia Germany Shut Down

Myware and Spyware

Sex.com sold

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

 

From Rubik's Cake to Spam


♦ Woman cooks Rubik's Cube cake!

♦ Asking People To Hit Reload Is A Felony?

♦ Under attack, spammer begs for mercy


Tuesday, January 17, 2006

 

From swarms to Wikipedia

♦ A swarm is propelled by people with a unified vision and a common desire to "change the world" without reaping any immediate financial rewards.

♦ The biography of Jimmy Whales, Wikipedia founder

Monday, January 16, 2006

 

From Jesus to LSD on the Net

♦ Internet Black market for relicts: Online auctions have included a feather from the Holy Spirit and a vial brimming with the breath of Jesus Christ

♦ Internet users judge a website in 1/20 second

LSD: The Geek's Wonder Drug?

Sunday, January 15, 2006

 

Human and Machine Intelligence


♦ Human and machine intelligence will become indistinguishable due to new brain scanning technologies

 

From Internet Logo to Virtual Lives


♦ Creative Internet money-making scheme: filling room with LEGO bricks for a fee

♦ We are all currently living in a virtual reality

 

From Virtual Funerals to Chinese Wikipedia

♦ Funeral involving real people and real emotions, but on a virtual scene

Virtual reality iPod display

♦ Troublesome players in their virtual world game Second Life are thrown into a secret in-game prison called The Corn Field

♦ Sex offender supports false identity with Wikipedia bio

♦ In Web-based games, items that exist only online are bought and sold in the 'real' world - sometimes for thousands of dollars. Some people are paid to play these games all day.

♦ Chinese communist leaders see Wikipedia as threat

 

From Urine Batteries to Wikipedia Plagarism

Use urine if battery dies

♦ Metatagging and social networks -- ideas that originated in personal online media -- may save the U.S. Patent Office

♦ Computer Security Graphical Passwords

Porn industry quick to jump on new technologies

♦ Top-10 must-have gadgets

Wikipedia Plagiarism Ends Journalist's Career

 

Disclaimer

Disclaimer: I find that the text, headlines, and topics herein to be personally curious, but this content does not represent the interests, opinions, strategies, or views of any particular company or organization. Links to stories, comments, products, services, or other content do not represent my endorsement of these stories, comments, products, or services -- nor do such links imply my agreement with the content at these links. -- The TechSwarm Editor

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