Swarminoid

These robots are really cool.


Check out the project here: http://www.swarmanoid.org/index.php

Bitcoin - P2P payment system

Directed via a Slashdot article (http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/03/23/0210207/Google-Engineer-Releases-Open-Source-Bitcoin-Client) about a Google engineer who created a Bitcoin client I started to read up on the Bitcoin concept.

It is actually really cool. It cuts the banks out of the equation making money transfer for transaction less expensive, less traceable, and more in your control.

Check out the Main wiki page for the project (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Main_Page). As well as the introduction page that has a great walk through of our current system and how Bitcoin is different (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Introduction)

3 Minutes

Great short! Check it out

3 Minutes

3 Minutes from Ross Ching on Vimeo.

Learn the Top command options.

The top command is a utility to see what processes and resources are being used on a system in real time via a terminal. Personally I use it constantly to check on the health of my web server when connecting remotely.

The Geek Stuff has a writeup: Can You Top This? 15 Practical Linux Top Command Examples on 15 great things you can do with the top command.

Even though I use this command all the time I seldom use these more advanced features, but I will certainly keep the article around for reference.

I'm in love with the N900

I can't wait to get my hands on one of these devices and play around with it. The next few years are going to result in some REALLY cool new phone/computer mashups in the device world.

Thi Chi robot!

This is really neat. Especially if you consider the irony of a robot doing the forms perfectly, but robots don't have any Chi... or do they!?

Thanks to Sara for sharing!

Why you should care about open source software!

Occasionally people ask me why I use Ubuntu?

The simple and fairly complete answer is choice. The thing that really appeals to me about the open source software movement is the fact that if I don't like the direction my distribution is moving, I can change to another without loosing out on much functionality. If you don't like the way your IM app works, try another one, or write your own. If you don't like something you are free to change it.

I was reading a posting on the infamous slash dot on a comparison between Snow Leopard, Windows 7, and Ubuntu 9.10 (http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/08/31/1916238/OS-Performance-mdash-Snow-Leopard-Windows-7-and-Ubuntu-910) and came across a great comment from user KingSkippus (http://slashdot.org/~KingSkippus) which nails the issue for me, I've posted the whole comment because finding it over there might be challenging, and it really is a great post from that site.

99.997% of the people using these computers don't care.

First of all, I think that number is way too high. While it may seem that way sometimes, people do care. Maybe not even a majority of them, but enough that it does make a difference.

Second of all, those who in theory don't care, when explained why it's important, start to care. When you add up the cost of upgrading from Windows 95 to Windows XP to Windows Vista to Windows 7, along with all of its associated applications (I'm looking at you, Microsoft Office), versus the cost of upgrading through the various versions of Ubuntu or any of the other popular distributions and their associated applications, people really start to notice. One of my favorite things to do when I'm showing off Ubuntu to people is to open the package manager application. I tell them it's like the "Add or Remove Programs" applet, except that you can actually add programs. "All this stuff is available to you for no cost. Just click it, and you're good to go."

When you explain to these people how there is absolutely zero technical reason why they can't have a movie or song play on the DVD player in their living room, their iPod, their computer, and anywhere else (and anyway else) they want to play it, but that thanks to DRM systems incorporated into Windows 7 and Mac OS X, they are artificially restricted from doing so because some third party has decided to "manage their digital rights" for them, it definitely gets their attention.

When you explain to these people how honest competition from really smart people doing really smart things just because they can and because they feel that others should benefit from their collective knowledge is one of the reasons why a lot of commercial closed-source software these days that might otherwise cost hundreds or thousands of dollars is sold for really low cost or given away for free because of how hard it is to compete with volunteer work, it also gets their attention.

When I show people my web browser (Firefox with AdBlock) and how I don't see particularly onerous ads on web sites because the person who wrote my browser isn't beholden to financial interest or corporate mandates, it has raised a lot of eyebrows.

I could go on, but hopefully you see my point. Free and open source software benefits everyone, even people who don't otherwise care, even people who shun it in favor of commercial and/or closed-source options. And sitting back and saying that people don't care isn't very productive. It's in our best interest to actually educate people so that they will care.

Fun UI innovations from the SIGGRAPH 09 conference

An interactive, tactile hologram? SWEEET!



Keep Reading for more super cool interfaces.

This interface is pretty amazing. It uses a HUD kind of system to overlay information and provide some basic interactive elements that really enhance this game. Some minor bugs to work out, but TONS of potential.

Augmented Reality Toys.v2 (Work in progress) from Frantz Lasorne on Vimeo.

This is a fantastic interface. Imagine using the walls in your house as an input method to controll your home stereo or your entire desk surface to send basic commands to your computer. Very Cool.

Opera Unite: Will it change the web?

The makers of the Opera web browser have released an Alpha of their new technology to change the landscape of the internet. They call it Opera unite and the basic idea is to decentralize the content of the internet so that every connected computer is a server providing content for its users. It is certainly an interesting concept, but I'm not sure it will revolutionize the web the way Opera is intending. Here is a video that explains a bit better:

Fleet Foxes: Mykonos

This is a great music video from the Fleet Foxes. Stop motion rocks!

Mykonos from Grandchildren on Vimeo.

Tweenbots!

Take a small cardboard robot that moves in one direction only, afix an indication of its final destination and let people make sure it gets there.


This is the concept behind TweenBots. This is a really cute example of the "wisdom of crowds" concept. Basically the same principals that make things like Wikipedia or the Mechanical Turk Dollar Bill (also known as Ten Thousand Cents ) possible.

In this case instead of the robot developer building in expensive navigation equipment, she uses a simple flag to indicate the robots final destination and let people help it out along the way. It is probably not the most efficient path, but if you consider the time invested in total by the developer and all the 29 people who intervened to navigate the robot through the park and compare that to the effort it would take to incorporate navigation... well you begin to see how competitive a proposition like this becomes.

The result is a very cute video, and a super cool concept.

Nichole Young - Istockphoto

Nichole Young talking with Fredrick Van about her experiences with Istockphoto


Nicole Young - iStockphoto Contributor from Frederick Van Johnson on Vimeo.

What the tweet?

"Twouble with Twitter" sous-titré
Uploaded by LePostfr

Sheep...WOW

These guys have a lot of time on their hands. Pretty cool though

Identity 2.0

I had never heard of the presentation, but while listening to a podcast the Opening Keynote presentation of OSCON 2005 given by Dick Hardt was mentioned and so I took the bait. Its a great presentation laying out some of the challenges that the web is starting to address. If you are interested in sign in technologies and how they are changing, this is a great place to start.

http://identity20.com/media/OSCON2005/

What Web 2.0 Is?

Ok, I know I am late to the game on this one, and this question "What is Web 2.0" has been covered amply, but this explanation really struck a chord with me. Besides it is very Web 2.0 that I feel compelled to share my own experiences with this, no matter how late to the game I am.

I ran across this great article on Slashdot today that in general covers the changes that have been going on with the web for quite some time in the context of the downfall of Dreamweaver. As the article points out, it is not about bashing a product because it doesn't do its job well, quite on the contrary I'd say that Dreamweaver is one of the exceptional products that came out of the Macromedia company (which was bought by Adobe) and though I have long given up the use of Dreamweaver in favor of a plain text editor I do remember how wonderfully easy it made the transition from Infant Webmaster into Toddler Webmaster.

No, the problem is really that Dreamweaver is out moded. It is no longer a significantly relevant way to create content for the web. I can think of NO sittuations in which I was wanting to create a useful site where I reached for Dreamweaver instead of a tool that integrates the content creation experince into the application BEFORE I even get started. Because, and here is where the title comes in, the web is becoming a place where content is created by the content creator. In the words of the articles Author, Tom Arah:

The bottom line is that the old model of the central webmaster hand-spinning every page of every website and, worse, manually adding the navigation necessary to help users find it, just isn’t scalable or viable. The only feasible course for the future is for content to be posted by the content contributor, whether that’s the site owner or site visitors, and for the best possible navigation to be constructed around that content on the fly.

That's it... Web 2.0 marks the transition from Webmaster created sites, into user created sites. The webmaster (or the whole design team rather) is there to make it possible for content creators to do just that.

So simple, and profound.

Long live Drupal indeed!

Juan Enriquez: Beyond the crisis, mindboggling science and the arrival of Homo evolutis

Ok TED Talks are rad, why have I not been paying attention to this stuff?

David Merrill: Siftables, the toy blocks that think

This is one of the coolest and most intuitive UI's I've seen in a LONG time. Great work over at MIT.

More great stop animation music videos

Thanks again to @armyofmeat on twitter for sharing:

April Snowboarding

Here are some video's of my 4 year old niece learning how to snowboard. I've never snowboarded, but she looks like she is doing great for her first time ever.

YAY!