Imaging tech

Source: C|Net Kodak shows that, despite the virtual replacement of film cameras with digital cameras, they are far from dead in the water. They have entered the challenging market of inkjet printers with an "All-in-one" printer, capable of producing colour documents and photos far cheaper than those currently on the market. The new system uses Kodak proprietary ink; however, that ink is $10(US) for black-and-white and only $15(US) for colour. This means that a 4x6 print can be generated for as little as 10 cents. The printers themselves are relatively inexpensive, ranging from a $150(US) base model to a $300(US) model with duplexer and fax machine.

Source: New York Times The Oneida Indian Nation in New York State are upgrading their story-telling big-time. They plan to use 3D animation to tell their traditional stories. The tribe created a multimedia company, Four Directions Media, Inc., four years ago for purpose like this, as well as for creating CDs of music by native artists.

Source: New Scientist Scientists have learned how to use optical flow (rate of change of the contents of a sequence of images) to land a miniature helicopter using a very simple software system. Optical flow is believed to be used by insects to control their height above a surface, a task that requires massive computational power for robots. They trick, they discovered, was to keep the optical flow rate constant. They were able to control the height and speed of the helicopter gracefully using a simple feed-back network and no special hardware or software to determine height or speed. The system may be adapted to commercial helicopters to improve their maneuvering.

Source: Technology Review Zink Imaging has developed a new way to generate photos without using ink. The key is a special photopaper that changes colour when heated. Specifically, the paper consists of a plastic base covered with a thin layers of thermally-activated dye crystals. Heat causes the crystals to amorphous glass, releasing the dye. by controlling the temperature and heating time, they can control which colour crystal (yellow, magenta or cyan) is affected. This may allow them to make ultra-portable printers for the next generation of Polaroid-like cameras. Not surprising, given the company is a spin-off from Polaroid. They hope to get the cost of paper down such that photos could be generated for less that 25-cents each.

Source: Sci-Fi Tech Iris On the Move (IOM) takes 30 pictures per second of people from various angles to obtain sufficient information to reconstruct the patterns of your iris. Unlike current systems, not only do you not have to stop to have the scan taken, you don't even need to know that it is there. Expect to see these things in airports to screen for suspected terrorists or people wanted for criminal offenses. The system is even undeterred by sunglasses or other eye-covers. Essentially, if you can see out, it can see in. The only deterrent may be semi-silvered mirrors as glasses.

Patently absurd

Source: Patent Series Nr.3 - Anti-Eating Mouth Cage & Doggie Umbrella: part 1

Source: Patent Series Nr.3 - Anti-Eating Mouth Cage & Doggie Umbrella: part 2

Source: Patent Series Nr.2 - Baby Cage & Be The Bike: part 1

Source: Patent Series Nr.2 - Baby Cage & Be The Bike: part 2

Source: Patent Series Nr.1 - The Smokers Hat

Multiprocessors and Reading Good Intentions

Source: instructables Follow the link to find out how to make a human-powered hydrofoil. For the uninitiated, a hydrofoil is a craft that "flies" over water. Stretching the definition, this one is propelled by flapping a set of wings. As long as you keep flapping, you stay afloat and move in the direction you are steering. Stopping, it's not so good for you. The video is long and explains how to make such a craft.

Source: C|Net Intel has just unveiled an 80-core processor, capable of 1-teraflop (1 trillion floating-point operations per second). Now, they just need to figure out how perform massively-paralleled programming before it can be of more than academic use. Thanks to ancalagon_tb for catching this story as it broke.

Source: New York Times ThinkFree provides a free Word-compatible online word processor, Excel-compatible spreadsheet, and a Presentations-compatible presentation package. Those who have tried Google's Word processor and spreadsheet might be interested in giving it a go to see how it compares. The software can be found at http://www.thinkfree.com/ for those who are interested. So far, I've been unsuccessful in attempting to create an account so I have no idea how well this system works.

Source: Washington Post Apparently, one of the downfalls of providing free wireless is the inability to track who is using it, and for what reason. In this article, a police descends on what they thought was the source of child pornography, only to discover an elderly woman whose wireless router was being used by one of her neighbours to distribute child pornography. Unable to determine which neighbour it was, they could proceed no farther. An increasing number of criminals are making use of the anonymity of free wireless to perpetrate crimes that cannot be traced to the source.

Source: BBC News Scientists are developing ways to use fMRI to read people's intentions, opening the door to a new form of computer control. This is of particular interest to paraplegics who might be able to use this technology to attain greater autonomy. Significant work is still required before this will find real-world application.

Fishcams and Minidesks

Source: FishCam - Watch a Worms Worst Nightmare

Source: BMW Inflatable Bubble Tent

Source: Mini Desk clocks up more mileage than you Thanks to joyeuse60 for finding this.

Source: Radiator Gates

Source: Silence PT2 rocks three wheels, all electric powertrain