Absolutely spot on. A few years from now I can see Google pushing natural language processing on leaps and bounds thanks to the vast data set that they are building up. And then from there, they may improve image recognition so that you can do a textual search of their images and it would 'know' what you're after.
Being able to develop machines that can search through the vast amount of information that is out there on the internet and return what it is that we are looking for, is in my eyes a great achievement.
I subscribe to plenty of RSS feeds, and colate them together using Google Reader http://www.google.com/reader/view/ . Then I can just set up a live bookmark in Firefox to view them whenever I'm bored. My feeds are as follows:
http://www.alistapart.com/feed/rss.xml Useful information for designing websites; particularly when in it comes to standards compliance and CSS.
http://aminorjourney.co.uk/wordpress/feed/atom/ An honest blog about living with an electric car, and modding it.
http://adam-buxton.co.uk/ad/feed/ British comedian who shot to fame (well in my eyes anyway), with the Adam and Joe show.
Official blog of the Tesla motor company, an electric car company. Follows the development of their Roadstar and the future Whitestar models.
http://www.badscience.net/?feed=atom Written by Ben Goldacre, Bad Science tries to find the truth behind scientific claims.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/stevelamacq/index.xml Steve Lamacq writes about new bands on the UK music scene.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/rss.xml Follows the development of the BBC website, and iPlayer
http://www.cleangreencars.co.uk/services/newsrss.jsp Provides information on new cars that consume less juice.
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/Pharmacology/dc-bits/dcquack.xml Another science blog trying to find the truth behind scientific claims
http://www.fanfiction.net/atom/u/1152747/ Stories that my girlfriend has written; yes I do have a girlfriend!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/charliebrooker/rss Hilarious blog from Charlie Brooker. This is UK centric and half the posts are TV reviews.
http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/1.0/group/Indie%252FRock%2BPlaylist/journals.rss Provides links to torrents for new unsigned artists, and for some established ones who are releasing new material. A great way to discover new music.
http://jamesomalley.co.uk/blog/?feed=atom Mostly a political blog by a British student, although he's now unemployed. Funny, yet insightful
http://blog.last.fm/atom/ Blog about the development of last.fm and all the technical details from behind the scenes. Very interesting stuff, especially considering the large amount of data they have to work with.
Blog from a Cornish lifeboat man. Its interesting what people call them out for.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/martinlewisblog Blog from Martin Lewis, the money saving expert. Another UK-centric blog.
http://www.matts411.com/main/feed Excellent web development blog.
http://www.neenaw.co.uk/index.php/feed/ Blog from an ambulance control room
http://freekorea.us/feed/ Articles about North Korea. Its somewhere I'm interested in, as its hard to imagine the suffering of those who live there.
http://www.petrolprices.com/blog/feeds/atom.xml Blog that generally rants about petrol and diesel prices in the UK.
http://inspectorgadget.wordpress.com/feed/ Blog from a police officer in the UK. Makes you realise how much PC crap they have to deal with just for the collection of statistics.
http://www.petesy.co.uk/?feed=atom Reviews of outdoor hiking gear and photos and writings from different walks
http://randomreality.blogware.com/blog/index.xml An EMT (ambulance man) based in London writing about the number of people calling an ambulance who really don't need one.
http://www.stevecooke.org/?feed=rss2 Blog from a local politician in Salford, UK.
http://www.batteryvehiclesociety.org.uk/wordpress/?feed=rss2 UK Battery Vehicle Society. Interesting articles about electric vehicles.
http://www.bileblog.org/feed/ Blog from Hani Suleiman, a member of the Java Community process.
What an excellent project, and something that I've never considered. Interesting that he made use of distributed computing, and wrote several Perl scripts just to extract the data he needed.
Interesting, but I suspect that they've done this as a way to get plenty of press attention and free advertising for the May half-term holiday. And its worked!
I think they will allow phone calls, just not the tapping away that you see when people are checking up on their emails from the office.
And on another note, this preview feature takes a long time.
Curtis Wong explains what you can do, 5.15 into the video. Before that it is a load of boring talk about how it will allow us all to explore the universe and increase our understanding, etc but with some cool pictures of what you can expect to see from the world wide telescope. It will be a free download this spring from http://worldwidetelescope.org/
I for one, am looking forward to this. I'm sure someone will ask if it can run on Linux. I've no idea, but I can't see it being that hard for Wine to get it working.
If I were to upload a track by an RIAA artist to that MyBytes site, and it converts it to a ringtone, then I guess Microsoft will be an accessory to copyright theft/stealing/infringement. It might have some algorithms to help protect from that, but then you could sample other tracks.
RIAA vs Microsoft over shitty ringtones. Watch the sparks fly:)
If hijacking is the real threat, then the cockpit is what needs to be secured. Have it lock automatically prior to boarding, and have it unlock automatically after the plane is emptied Agreed. Or, for new aircraft remove the door and give the cockpit its own entrance from the outside, so that there is no way of going in without having to get outside first.
I had an idea similar to this last year, but I wasn't planning on transmitting data through the mobile phone networks as that could get costly. I thought that each unit could automatically connect to any open wifi network and download the traffic information for the whole country, much like this one sounds like it does. But, when units pass each other on the road, then they should compare time stamps and then update each other to the newest copy. At that point they could also update each other on slow downs and where they happen, as well as slow downs taken from other units as they passed. This would avoid the expense of a mobile network and the risk of a centralised collection of data.
I currently have one of the mentioned Garmin units here in the UK that uses FM bands to pick up traffic information. The biggest problem is only the major routes are updated, and even then are sometimes missing traffic jam information.
This unit does sound very good though, and I look forward to getting my hands on one.
Thank-you for mentioning OpenLayers.org. I was thinking a while back that some kind of common interface between mapping systems would be useful for avoiding proprietary lock-in down the road. This is incredibly useful.
They could set up as a MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator), which would mean that they piggy back onto someone else's infrastructure. They just run the billing department and buy bandwidth in bulk from the physical carrier. There are several MVNO operators in the UK and according to the linked wikipedia article they also exist in the US.
I guess I've been suckered in by the media pictures of armed police at airports, when it was probably just Heathrow. I've only flown from Manchester and they definitely have them there.
Slashdot Mirror
These MMS messages also show any text and the senders phone number. For example this one has text, several photos and a mobile phone number: http://mediamessaging.o2.co.uk/mms2legacy/showMessage2.do?encMmsId=4DC8E22F33EFC13C
This should be easy to fix with some authentication, I guess o2 will get onto this soon before the mainstream media catch on.
In fact, pure unadulterated sunshine blasts forth from the process at all times and bathes bystanders in with its gentle warmth.
Not true. According to the article, heat is not produced from the chemical reaction taking place as it is 100% efficient!
I for one welcome our new shell based overlords.
Absolutely spot on. A few years from now I can see Google pushing natural language processing on leaps and bounds thanks to the vast data set that they are building up. And then from there, they may improve image recognition so that you can do a textual search of their images and it would 'know' what you're after.
Being able to develop machines that can search through the vast amount of information that is out there on the internet and return what it is that we are looking for, is in my eyes a great achievement.
Useful information for designing websites; particularly when in it comes to standards compliance and CSS.
An honest blog about living with an electric car, and modding it.
British comedian who shot to fame (well in my eyes anyway), with the Adam and Joe show.
Written by Ben Goldacre, Bad Science tries to find the truth behind scientific claims.
Steve Lamacq writes about new bands on the UK music scene.
Follows the development of the BBC website, and iPlayer
Provides information on new cars that consume less juice.
Another science blog trying to find the truth behind scientific claims
Stories that my girlfriend has written; yes I do have a girlfriend!
Hilarious blog from Charlie Brooker. This is UK centric and half the posts are TV reviews.
Provides links to torrents for new unsigned artists, and for some established ones who are releasing new material. A great way to discover new music.
Mostly a political blog by a British student, although he's now unemployed. Funny, yet insightful
Blog about the development of last.fm and all the technical details from behind the scenes. Very interesting stuff, especially considering the large amount of data they have to work with.
Blog from Martin Lewis, the money saving expert. Another UK-centric blog.
Excellent web development blog.
Blog from an ambulance control room
Articles about North Korea. Its somewhere I'm interested in, as its hard to imagine the suffering of those who live there.
Blog that generally rants about petrol and diesel prices in the UK.
Blog from a police officer in the UK. Makes you realise how much PC crap they have to deal with just for the collection of statistics.
Reviews of outdoor hiking gear and photos and writings from different walks
An EMT (ambulance man) based in London writing about the number of people calling an ambulance who really don't need one.
Blog from a local politician in Salford, UK.
UK Battery Vehicle Society. Interesting articles about electric vehicles.
Blog from Hani Suleiman, a member of the Java Community process.
Aston Martin is once again British http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aston_Martin
What an excellent project, and something that I've never considered. Interesting that he made use of distributed computing, and wrote several Perl scripts just to extract the data he needed.
Very cool.
Interesting, but I suspect that they've done this as a way to get plenty of press attention and free advertising for the May half-term holiday. And its worked!
I think they will allow phone calls, just not the tapping away that you see when people are checking up on their emails from the office. And on another note, this preview feature takes a long time.
A UK gallon is equal to 1.2 US gallons. So his 6-6.5 US MPG translates to 7.2-7.8 UK MPG, which is better but still falls short of what you get.
and lolcat
Sohpie Wilson was originally a man called Roger Wilson.
Thanks for adding that. I didn't realise he had gone missing and hope he is found soon.
A website has been set up as part of the search effort: http://www.helpfindjim.com/
Curtis Wong explains what you can do, 5.15 into the video. Before that it is a load of boring talk about how it will allow us all to explore the universe and increase our understanding, etc but with some cool pictures of what you can expect to see from the world wide telescope. It will be a free download this spring from http://worldwidetelescope.org/
I for one, am looking forward to this. I'm sure someone will ask if it can run on Linux. I've no idea, but I can't see it being that hard for Wine to get it working.
I think I'd use a metallic key.
If I were to upload a track by an RIAA artist to that MyBytes site, and it converts it to a ringtone, then I guess Microsoft will be an accessory to copyright theft/stealing/infringement. It might have some algorithms to help protect from that, but then you could sample other tracks.
:)
RIAA vs Microsoft over shitty ringtones. Watch the sparks fly
What an excellent article. I've subscribed to your RSS feed.
I had an idea similar to this last year, but I wasn't planning on transmitting data through the mobile phone networks as that could get costly. I thought that each unit could automatically connect to any open wifi network and download the traffic information for the whole country, much like this one sounds like it does. But, when units pass each other on the road, then they should compare time stamps and then update each other to the newest copy. At that point they could also update each other on slow downs and where they happen, as well as slow downs taken from other units as they passed. This would avoid the expense of a mobile network and the risk of a centralised collection of data.
I currently have one of the mentioned Garmin units here in the UK that uses FM bands to pick up traffic information. The biggest problem is only the major routes are updated, and even then are sometimes missing traffic jam information.
This unit does sound very good though, and I look forward to getting my hands on one.
Link to the article still on the server, but missing the comments: http://slashdot.org/hardware/98/11/11/1011216.shtml /. page on the wayback machine with comments: http://web.archive.org/web/20001219170800/slashdot.org/articles/98/11/11/1011216.shtml
Thank-you for mentioning OpenLayers.org. I was thinking a while back that some kind of common interface between mapping systems would be useful for avoiding proprietary lock-in down the road. This is incredibly useful.
They could set up as a MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator), which would mean that they piggy back onto someone else's infrastructure. They just run the billing department and buy bandwidth in bulk from the physical carrier. There are several MVNO operators in the UK and according to the linked wikipedia article they also exist in the US.
Well they decided that it was worth $599 to them when they handed over that money. They should be grateful to get any rebate, let alone $100.
I guess I've been suckered in by the media pictures of armed police at airports, when it was probably just Heathrow. I've only flown from Manchester and they definitely have them there.
I guess I am too young to remember those hijackings, but I am aware that security at airports in the US have been ramped up following 9/11.