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I don’t know about you guys, but my parents are terrible at computers and still use IE5. That’s why I think Update Your Parent’s Browser Day is a great new holiday we all should take advantage of:
This year, though, do something different. Don’t just explain to Grandpa or Mom or your father-in-law that there is a whole world of secure web browsing out there. No, take a firm stand. Tell them they won’t be able to watch funny fishing videos on YouTube with IE6 anymore. Usually, by this point, most parents are begging for help and you can extract excellent perquisites for your labor.
There you go kiddos, it’s just that easy to improve your parent’s online life.
With so many fonts out there, have you ever wanted to use something that’s just “normal?” Designer Mortiz Resl combined almost 1000 fonts on his computer and the average font is what he came up with.
This project shows what a font would look like if it consisted of all typefaces installed on my system. Every character from a to z is drawn using every single font with a low opacity. In total there are over 900 typefaces in my library. I didn’t exclude the ugly ones.
What do you think? It seems pretty average to me.
Link Via Mental Floss
I don’t know about you guys, but I’m always misplacing all my USB drives and SD cards. Fortunately, someone has finally created a delightful city where they can all go to spend some time together when you’re not using them.
Link Via Geekosystem
Everyone’s seen their fair share of Apple lovers, but there are those that take it beyond an admiration and into a religious-like obsession. Mental Floss has a great look at the many levels of Apple fandom. Do any of you fit into these categories?
In the future computers could have Jello based memory drives. Researchers have developed a new memory device with a “gelatinous consistency.” Just don’t let Bill Cosby near your Jello flash drive or he will “erase” all your data.
Researchers from North Carolina State University have come up with a new sort of memory device that has a gelatinous consistency and an ability to work in wet environments that give it potential bio-electric applications. There are a couple of pretty revolutionary qualities that differentiate this from your garden-variety memory device. First of all, the gel uses a liquid alloy (gallium and indium) set in the water-based gel for it’s wires instead of, well, wires. This way, the gel can work in wet environments without shorting and is also remarkably flexible. This liquid alloy also transmits data in a non-standard way. Typically, electronics use electrons (go figure) for their binary communications. The gel memory however, uses ions. Basically, the alloy can switch between being resistive and conductive by being exposed to positive and negative charges respectively, which gives you your two values
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An artist wondered “How do computers see us?” To figure it out he set up computers in stores around NYC to capture people staring at computers. See the fun video and gallery at the link.
With the Lulzsec recent post of email addresses and passwords, along with all the regular hacking that occurs on a regular basis, it can be really hard to know if your email password has been compromised. Fortunately, Should I Change My Password can help automatically scan a variety of these info leaks to check if your password has been hacked. This way, you only have to change your password if it actually needs to be updated.
Update: Just to be clear, you don’t have to enter your password on the site, just your email.
The vision of the future in which we all wear our own personal headset based computers may be a thing of the past to some as hand-held smart phones and tablet computers seem to be the norm. However some are championing devices such as smart phone style watches. What do you think? Are we going to move toward wearable electronics?
Here are some milestones, mistakes, and projects in the world of wearable electronics. From geeky watches to wearable music players – I’ve always wanted to utilize my wrist real estate to my shoes for electronics of some kind. Many of the “wearables” I’m going to share are from my project archives, some are now “real,” and others are products that are out now. I think we’re finally entering an era where wearable electronics can look good and work well.
Researchers have developed software that allows computers to see, helping us get closer to a day in which intelligent machines will see the world the way we do. More importantly this technology has led to an application that helps you purchase wine by snapping a photo of the bottle with your smart phone.
With their company, Cortexica, British Drs. Anil Bharath and Jeffrey Ng have created technology that allow computers to see. It’s already being used by consumers to quickly retrieve information about what they buy, and will soon help companies advertise more effectively. In developing the technology, they drew inspiration from a computer that already sees very well: the human brain.
In 1983 many people were discovering home computing for the first time. This book was unearthed recently and found to have some pretty accurate predictions for the future of computing.
Best of all though is the section on the history and future of computing. As with all computing histories, the emphasis is on how quickly things have progressed, with plenty of laughter at how ENIAC could carry out a calculation in three millionths of a second, while the 1980s machines could to it in one ten-millionth of a second. To put that into context, while the 1980s machine was thirty times faster than its 1945 counterpart, today’s fastest supercomputer is something like 260 million times faster than the 1980s model described in the book.
Why are USB Drives one of the few computer items that people seem to be overly creative with? Why not make cool designs for our laptops and desktops we use all day? Regardless this gallery features some new and unique USB drives.
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Steampunk ascetics glorifies the Victorian age though creating retro futuristic technology. This computer terminal goes all the way. See link for full gallery. Link
A couple of these home computer setups look like the set up for the evil mastermind in every high tech action movie. However, for all of us who slave away all day at a discount laptop PC, you will understand the jealousy felt toward these personal computing behemoths. Link
From to Google Wave to the Microsoft KIN, we have seen lots of failed technology in recent years. However nothing seems as doomed to fail as “The Wearable Computer.” Check out this list of the 50 Worst Fails in Technology History Link
With touch screen technology taking over much of the way we interact with computers it’s fun to remember how we used our clunky old trackballs to scroll through AOL message boards. The Visual History of The Computer Mouse illustrates this evolution. Link
While Apple would be happy having many of us believe that the iPad is the genius invention of Steve Jobs and company alone, it turns out that tablets have been in development for over 100 years. As far back as 1888 the forerunners of today’s devices where being patented. In the 1960’s the RAND Corporation created The RAND Tablet, a stylus that could digitally capture handwriting. I’d like to believe that in a parallel universe people in the 60’s and 70’s were walking around with funky RAND Tablets.
(A)ll technology evolves from sometimes cruder predecessors, and tablets are no different. People have been playing with some of the technologies underlying tablet PCs for over a century: In July 1888, for example, inventor Elisha Gray (pictured) received a US patent for an electrical stylus device that captured handwriting.
Over at the website for The New York Times, they have added a rock-paper-scissors game where you play against a computer, which is getting better and better at predicting what your next move will be.
Computers mimic human reasoning by building on simple rules and statistical averages. Test your strategy against the computer in this rock-paper-scissors game illustrating basic artificial intelligence. Choose from two different modes: novice, where the computer learns to play from scratch, and veteran, where the computer pits over 200,000 rounds of previous experience against you.
If you enjoyed the video clip with The Imperial March (Darth Vader’s Theme) being played on a floppy disc, then this new version with the same musical theme being played on a hard disk drive instead should probably be right up your alley. Or maybe you prefer if Beethoven style.
via Pusha
Researchers at the University of Michigan have developed a solar-powered computer so small that it can be inserted into the human eye to help monitor glaucoma patients. Professor Dennis Sylvester explained:
In a package that’s just over 1 cubic millimeter, the system fits an ultra low-power microprocessor, a pressure sensor, memory, a thin-film battery, a solar cell and a wireless radio with an antenna that can transmit data to an external reader device that would be held near the eye.
“This is the first true millimeter-scale complete computing system,” Sylvester said.
“Our work is unique in the sense that we’re thinking about complete systems in which all the components are low-power and fit on the chip. We can collect data, store it and transmit it. The applications for systems of this size are endless.”
The processor in the eye pressure monitor is the third generation of the researchers’ Phoenix chip, which uses a unique power gating architecture and an extreme sleep mode to achieve ultra-low power consumption. The newest system wakes every 15 minutes to take measurements and consumes an average of 5.3 nanowatts. To keep the battery charged, it requires exposure to 10 hours of indoor light each day or 1.5 hours of sunlight. It can store up to a week’s worth of information.
Link via Popular Science | Photo: Greg Chen
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In 1837, Charles Babbage designed an early computer. He called it the Analytical Engine. Unfortunately, Babbage died before he could build it. But there’s a campaign underway to make one using the original blueprints:
Elements of the engine have been built over the last 173 years, but this would be the first complete working model of the machine.
“It’s an inspirational piece of equipment,” said Mr Graham-Cumming, author of the Geek Atlas.
“A hundred years ago, before computers were available, Babbage had envisaged this machine.
“What you realise when you read Babbage’s papers is that this was the first real computer.
“It had expandable memory, a CPU, microcode, a printer, a plotter and was programmable with punch cards.
“It was the size of a small lorry and powered by steam but it was recognisable as a computer.”
Link via blastr | Photo: Daily Telegraph
Previously: Andrew Carol’s LEGO Difference Engine
You would think today’s Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss would be easy -if you’re an Apple fan. Test your Apple knowledge with ten questions about the history of the company and its products. It’s not easy -I’ve used nothing but Apple computers for twenty-five years and I only scored 40%! I bet everyone who beats that score will leave a comment about it. Link
This video is an OD to the Mac by way of the Mac Museum, a two minute rendition of simple tech desktop computers like the Mac II, IMac G4 and G5 to the more advanced IMac Core 2 Duo and IPad.
My introduction to the Mac was the little Mac Classic which isn’t featured in this video. They’ve come a long way since then.
A Braille PDA, a foot mouse, a breath-controlled device that allows computer users to move a cursor around a screen by blowing into a microphone.
There are several gadgets on the market right now, and more on the horizon, that make it easier for people with disabilities to use computers, and TakePart.com reviews some of their favorites.
You don’t have to be disabled to want the futuristic-looking, LED-lit, ergonomic Gravitonus work station (above), but it was designed for people who are paralyzed. Among its many features is a special attachment that aligns three screens with the user’s best field of vision in any body position. It also has surround-sound and a subwoofer built into the back of the seat so the sound is felt, not just heard.
Photo: Gravitonus.com
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by Marilyn Terrell.
Computer technology has certainly come a long way in only a few decades and though we may like to complain about failed OSes and hardware, looking back at some of these often hilarious computer commercials from the 1970’s and 80’s really goes to show how far we’ve come. Pictured is the IBM 5100 Portable Computer, which had a 16-bit processor and 64K of memory. It only weighted about 50 pounds and would set you back around $10,000.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by mrmunchies.
Speech recognition technology reached 80% accuracy in 2001, then leveled off. The human ear has about 98% accuracy. Why haven’t computers improved in this area? Robert Fortner looks at several reasons.
Many spoken words sound the same. Saying “recognize speech” makes a sound that can be indistinguishable from “wreck a nice beach.” Other laughers include “wreck an eyes peach” and “recondite speech.” But with a little knowledge of word meaning and grammar, it seems like a computer ought to be able to puzzle it out. Ironically, however, much of the progress in speech recognition came from a conscious rejection of the deeper dimensions of language. As an IBM researcher famously put it: “Every time I fire a linguist my system improves.” But pink-slipping all the linguistics PhDs only gets you 80% accuracy, at best.
We can take comfort in knowing that the human brain is still way ahead of machines. Link -via Metafilter
(image source: Creative Coffins)
The computer generation has become nostalgic. The blog How I Met Your Motherboard collects photographs and stories from the days before computer nerds ran the world. Consider the memories Laura has of 1984.
Along with the ZX Spectrum, my parents had also presented us with a selection of computer games. Loading them was an undertaking in itself: each fed into a cassette player, its buttons held down with thumb-numbing force, while the tape whirred and spluttered and made a sound that may be roughly transposed as chkeeewschyrrrrrfffffllychkxduhuhftttt. My brother had three games: a vampire adventure named Transylvanian Tower, a treasure hunt called Espionage Island and a complicated programme that followed the process of evolution. For me, there was a solitary cassette, a numeracy aid named Count About. I cannot deny that I was at that age rather muddled by mathematics, but it only added to my sense of dismay that my computer time would involve assisting a badly graphicked monkey clamber up a tree to collect a specified number of coconuts.
You can contribute your own memories to the collection. Link -Thanks, Jason!
20th Century British mathematician Alan Turning is popularly known for helping to break Nazi Germany’s Enigma code and devising the Turing Test, which is an assessment of artificial intelligence. But he also made major, direct contributions to early computer science. Among them was a 1936 proposal for a computer, which Mike Davey recently built:
Although this Turing machine is controlled by a Parallax Propeller microcontroller, its operation while running is based only on a set of state transformations loaded from an SD card and what is written to and read from the tape. While it may seem as if the tape is merely the input and output of the machine, it is not! Nor is the tape just the memory of the machine. In a way the tape is the computer. As the symbols on the tape are manipulated by simple rules, the computing happens. The output is really more of an artifact of the machine using the tape as the computer.
The heart of the turing machine is the read-write head. The read-write head transports the tape and positions cells of the tape appropriately. It can read a cell determining what, if any, symbol is written there. The machine works on, and knows about, only one cell at a time. The tape in my machine is a 1000’ roll of white 35mm film leader. The characters, ones and zeros, are written by the machine with a black dry erase marker.
Link via CrunchGear | Previously on Neatorama: Math Explains How the Leopard Got Its Spots
In this week’s Cinematical Seven, Alison Nastasi writes about those figments of screenwriters imaginations – the hackers. From the ridiculous to the implausibly miscast, these guys and girls litter films with their fingers flying over keyboards, and their allure showing through their quirky costumes.
Every movie with a character who is a hacker is touted as being the world’s uberest of all uber hackers. While certain films try to maintain some semblance of reality when it comes to portraying their leet haxors, other movies beg you to completely suspend your disbelief — arming their geeky geniuses with an array of outlandish talents and tools of the trade. I don’t have a particularly nerdy background in computers, so I’m ok with letting this kind of film take me where it wants to — but there are some instances where the ridiculous segues into the absurd.
Suspiciously absent from the list is the movie, Hackers (pictured above, ©MGM/United Artists). Every hacker character in this movie is an over-the-top stereotype that should not be taken seriously. Link to article.
Twenty-five years ago today, Symbolics Computers of Cambridge, Massachusetts, registered Symbolics.com as a URL. It was the first such claim in computing history:
That same year another five companies jumped on a very slow bandwagon.
It took until 1997, well into the internet boom, before the one millionth dotcom was registered.[...]
It is unlikely that the early dotcoms were thought of as businesses as the early internet was not seen as a place for commerce but rather as a platform for governmental and educational bodies to trade ideas.
Scholars generally agree that a turning point was the introduction of the Mosaic web browser by Netscape that brought mainstream consumers on to the web.
I am fascinated by how technologically savvy these cyber-outlaws are. If I had the ability to crack into restricted and top secret sites to see the information that is available on them I would be tempted to dabble in hacking as well.
There are many types of hackers out there. The more traditional ones hack in order to uncover and understand the ins-and-outs of a technology, tweaking and breaking codes to discover new possibilities. Many of these guys (and yes they are often male) are committed to the open source scene, developing and sharing code with the purpose of improving the IT infrastructure. Unfortunately, these types of vigilante hackers are increasingly outnumbered by those hacking for monetary gain. In 2007, it was estimated that 67% of those who engage in web attacks are profit-motivated.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by mrmunchies.
