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Four short links: 22 May 2013

By Nat Torkington
May 22, 2013

XBox One Kinect Controller (Guardian) — the new Kinect controller can detect gaze, heartbeat, and the buttons on your shirt. Surveillance and the Internet of Things (Bruce Schneier) — Lots has been written about the “Internet of Things” and how …

Four short links: 13 May 2013

By Nat Torkington
May 13, 2013

Exploiting a Bug in Google Glass — unbelievably detailed and yet easy-to-follow explanation of how the bug works, how the author found it, and how you can exploit it too. The second guide was slightly more technical, so when he …

Four short links: 3 May 2013

By Nat Torkington
May 3, 2013

Causal Entropic Forces (PDF) — new paper from Sci Foo alum Alex Wissner-Gross connecting intelligence and entropy. (via Inside Science) Nyan Cat and Keyboard Cat Are Trademarked Memes (Ars Technica) — the business of this (presumably there will be royalties …

Google Glass and the Future

By Mike Loukides
April 29, 2013

I just read a Forbes article about Glass, talking about the split between those who are “sure that it is the future of technology, and others who think society will push back against the technology.” I don’t see this as …

Four short links: 18 April 2013

By Nat Torkington
April 18, 2013

The Well Deserved Fortune of Satoshi Nakamoto — I can’t assure with 100% certainty that the all the black dots are owned by Satoshi, but almost all are owned by a single entity, and that entity began mining right from …

Mobile native publishing: The rise of dynamic content services

By Mark Sigal
March 25, 2013

One reason that industry disruptions prove so vexing to market leaders is that disruptive waves simultaneously barrel through assumptions about customer needs, industry economics and operational best practices. Consider the case of the motion picture business, an industry that was disrupted …

Four short links: 4 March 2013

By Nat Torkington
March 4, 2013

Life Inside the Aaron Swartz Investigation — do hard things and risk failure. What else are we on this earth for? crossfilter — open source (Apache 2) JavaScript library for exploring large multivariate datasets in the browser. Crossfilter supports extremely …

Four short links: 4 February 2013

By Nat Torkington
February 4, 2013

Hands on Learning (HuffPo) — Unfortunately, engaged and enlightened tinkering is disappearing from contemporary American childhood. (via BoingBoing) FlashProxy (Stanford) — a miniature proxy that runs in a web browser. It checks for clients that need access, then conveys data …

Four short links: 15 January 2013

By Nat Torkington
January 15, 2013

Electronic Gadgets in the NZ Consumer Price Index — your CPI is just as bizarre, trust me. (via Julie Starr) Captive Audience: Telecom Industry and Monopoly in the New Gilded Age (Amazon) — Foo camper and former Washington insider, now …

Four short links: 20 December 2012

By Nat Torkington
December 20, 2012

Use The Index, Luke — free ebook on tuning SQL database access. CamanJS — Instagram-like filters in Javascript, permissively-licensed open source. (via VentureBeat) Don’t Stick That There — USB device pretending to be a keyboard. The benefit of this is …

Four short links: 12 December 2012

By Nat Torkington
December 12, 2012

Kiwi Bond Films Are The Most Violent (Peter Griffin) — it wasn’t always furry-footed plucky adventurers in Middle Earth, my friends. Included to show that you can take an evidence-based approach to almost any argument. Are Githubbers Taking Open Source …

Four short links: 31 October 2012

By Nat Torkington
October 31, 2012

Turing Complete User — General Purpose Users can write an article in their e-mail client, layout their business card in Excel and shave in front of a web cam. They can also find a way to publish photos online without …

Four short links: 27 September 2012

By Nat Torkington
September 27, 2012

Paying for Developers is a Bad Idea (Charlie Kindel) — The companies that make the most profit are those who build virtuous platform cycles. There are no proof points in history of virtuous platform cycles being created when the platform …

Four short links: 11 September 2012

By Nat Torkington
September 10, 2012

Liz Neely Talks 3D Digitisation, 3D Printing (Seb Chan) — On July 19th, Tom and Mike Moceri arrived at the Art Institute dock in a shiny black SUV with a BATMAN license plate and a trunk packed with a couple …

Four short links: 8 August 2012

By Nat Torkington
August 7, 2012

Reconstructing Visual Experiences (PDF) — early visual areas represent the information in movies. To demonstrate the power of our approach, we also constructed a Bayesian decoder by combining estimated encoding models with a sampled natural movie prior. The decoder provides …

Four short links: 31 July 2012

By Nat Torkington
July 31, 2012

Christchurch’s Shot at Being Innovation Central (Idealog) — Christchurch, rebuilding a destroyed CBD after earthquakes, has released plans for the new city. I hope there’s budget for architects and city developers to build visible data, sensors, etc. so the Innovation …

Four short links: 6 July 2012

By Nat Torkington
July 6, 2012

HM Government Consultation on Modernising Copyright (PDF) -- from all appearances, the UK Govt is prepared to be progressive and tech-savvy in considering updates to copyright law. Proof of the pudding is in the eating (i.e., wait and see whether the process is coopted by maximalists) but an optimistic start. Cisco Provides a Lesson (Eric Raymond) -- This is...

Four short links: 5 July 2012

By Nat Torkington
July 5, 2012

Neocover -- very clever idea: magnetic light-switch frames, from which you can suspend keys and other very-losable pocket-fillers. Design of Checkout Forms (Luke Wroblewski) -- extremely detailed, data-filled, useful guide to state of the art (and effect of) e-commerce checkout forms. In tests comparing forms with real-time feedback to those without, usability testing firm, Etre and I measured a:...

Four short links: 2 July 2012

By Nat Torkington
July 2, 2012

Predicting Crime Before It Occurs (SFGate) -- The new program used by LAPD and police in the Northern California city of Santa Cruz is more timely and precise, proponents said. Built on the same model for predicting aftershocks following an earthquake, the software promises to show officers what might be coming based on simple, constantly calibrated data — location,...

Four short links: 27 June 2012

By Nat Torkington
June 27, 2012

Turing Centenary Speech (Bruce Sterling) -- so many thoughtbombs, this repays rereading. We’re okay with certain people who “think different” to the extent of buying Apple iPads. We’re rather hostile toward people who “think so very differently” that their work will make no sense for thirty years — if ever. We’ll test them, and see if we can find...

Commerce Weekly: Streamlining Facebook's ads

Commerce Weekly: Streamlining Facebook's ads
By Jenn Webb
June 21, 2012

Payvment launches a one-click Facebook ad service, PayPal revamps its website with consumers and mobile in mind, and a Best Buy exec says in-store mobile use has a scale issue. (Commerce Weekly is produced as part of a partnership between O'Reilly and PayPal.)

Four short links: 24 May 2012

By Nat Torkington
May 24, 2012

Last Saturday My Son Found His People at the Maker Faire -- aww to the power of INFINITY. Dictionaries Linking Words to Concepts (Google Research) -- Wikipedia entries for concepts, text strings from searches and the oppressed workers down the Text Mines, and a count indicating how often the two were related. Magic Wand (Kickstarter) -- I don't want...

Three Beeps = Cell Phone Dial Tone

By Peter Drescher
May 16, 2012

"Cell Phone Dial Tone" is an oxymoron, like "jumbo shrimp". Dial tones are analog, cell phones are digital. A dial tone signals an open connection to a landline telephone network. A cell phone sends packets of voice data back and forth via wireless network. The technologies don't intersect ... except in the movies

Understanding Mojito

Understanding Mojito
By Simon St. Laurent
May 10, 2012

O'Reilly editor Simon St. Laurent talked with Yahoo's Bruno Fernandez-Ruiz about the possibilities Node opened and Mojito exploits. Yahoo's Mojito is a different kind of framework: all JavaScript, but running on both the client and the server.

Four short links: 9 May 2012

By Nat Torkington
May 9, 2012

We Need Version Control for Real Stuff (Chris Anderson) -- This is pointing us toward the next step, a GitHub for stuff. If open source hardware is going to take off like open source software, we need this. (via Evil Mad Scientist) Graduates and Post-Graduates on Food Stamps (Chronicle of Higher Education) -- two points for me here: the...

Four short links: 7 May 2012

By Nat Torkington
May 7, 2012

Liquid Feedback -- MIT-licensed voting software from the Pirate Party. See this Spiegel Online piece about how it is used for more details. (via Tim O'Reilly) Putting Gestures Into Objects (Ars Technica) -- Disney and CMU have a system called Touché, where objects can tell whether they're being clasped, swiped, pinched, etc. and by how many fingers. (via BoingBoing)...

Four short links: 1 May 2012

By Nat Torkington
May 1, 2012

Sugata Mitra: Beyond The Hole in the Wall (YouTube) -- great talk by the education researcher Sugata Mitra whose big kick is self-directed learning. Great stories about the deployments and effects he's had with technology and supervision rather than teaching, but the end is a real kicker: the core skills we have are literacy, search, and belief. Of the...

Four short links: 20 April 2012

By Nat Torkington
April 20, 2012

Tupac Coachella Behind the Technology (CBS) -- interesting to me is Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg were considering taking Shakur with them on tour. Just as Hobbit, Tintin, etc. are CG-ing characters to look normal, is the future of "live" spectacle to be this kind of CG show? Will new acts be competing against the Rolling Stones forever? Javascript...

Four short links: 18 April 2012

By Nat Torkington
April 18, 2012

CartoDB (GitHub) -- open source geospatial database, API, map tiler, and UI. For feature comparison, see Comparing Open Source CartoDB to Fusion Tables (via Nelson Minar). Future Telescope Array Drives Exabyte Processing (Ars Technica) -- Astronomical data is massive, and requires intense computation to analyze. If it works as planned, Square Kilometer Array will produce over one exabyte (260...

Christopher Schmitt and Simon St. Laurent discuss HTML5

Christopher Schmitt and Simon St. Laurent discuss HTML5
By Laurie Petrycki
April 12, 2012

HTML5 author Christopher Schmitt talks with O'Reilly editor Simon St. Laurent about why it's a great time to be a web developer.

Four short links: 22 March 2012

By Nat Torkington
March 22, 2012

Stamen Watercolour Maps -- I saw a preview of this a week or two ago and was in awe. It is truly the most beautiful thing I've seen a computer do. It's not just a clever hack, it's art. Genius. And they're CC-licensed. Screens Up Close -- gorgeous microscope pictures of screens, showing how great the iPad's retina display...

Four short links: 14 March 2012

By Nat Torkington
March 14, 2012

Lessons Learned from a Blended Learning Pilot -- the end-of-pilot report from using Khan Academy for 80-90% of class time. Most interesting is the growing feeling that K.A.'s value comes from analytics on exercises and not the videos: The students greatly preferred working through the problem sets to watching the videos. Students turned to their peers, the hint, and...

Four short links: 2 March 2012

By Nat Torkington
March 2, 2012

Interview: Hanno Sander on Robotics (Circuit Cellar) -- this is what Mindstorms wants to be when it grows up. AAA++ for teaching kids. Hanno is a Kiwi Foo Camper. Context Needed: Benchmarks -- Benchmarks fall into a few common traps because of under-reporting in context and lack of detail in results. The typical benchmark report doesn't reveal the benchmark's...

Four short links: 7 February 2012

By Nat Torkington
February 7, 2012

Integrated Content Editor (GitHub) -- a track changes implementation, built in javascript, for anything that is contenteditable on the web, written by the NY Times team and open sourced. Data Tables -- featureful jQuery plugin for tables of data. (via Javascript Weekly) Creating a Developer Community (Slideshare) -- treat the problem like a channel conversion funnel: turn visitors into...

Four short links: 31 January 2012

By Nat Torkington
January 31, 2012

The Sky is Rising -- TechDirt's Mike Masnick has written (and made available for free download) an excellent report on the entertainment industry's numbers and business models. Must read if you have an opinion on SOPA et al. Tennis Australia Exposes Match Analytics -- Served from IBM's US-based private cloud, the updated SlamTracker web application pulls together 39 million...

Four short links: 30 January 2012

By Nat Torkington
January 30, 2012

Improvisation and Forgiveness (JP Rangaswami) -- what makes us human is not repetitive action. Human occupations should require human intellect, and there's no more human activity than making a judgement call when processes have failed a customer. Kinect Tech in Laptop Prototypes -- "waving your hands around at your laptop" will be the new "bellowing into your walkie-talkie phone"....

Four short links: 18 January 2012

By Nat Torkington
January 18, 2012

Many Core Processors -- not the first time I've heard nondeterministic computing discussed as a solution to some of our parallel-programming travails. Can't imagine what a pleasure it is to debug. Pinterest Cloned -- it's not the pilfering of the idea that offends my sensibilities, it's the blatant clone of every aspect of the UI. I never thought much...

Mobile interfaces: Mistakes to avoid and trends to watch

Mobile interfaces: Mistakes to avoid and trends to watch
By Howard Wen
January 17, 2012

In this interview, "Designing Mobile Interfaces" co-author Steven Hoober discusses common mobile interface mistakes, and he offers his thoughts on the latest mobile device trends — including why the addition of gestures and sensors isn't wholly positive.

Four short links: 13 January 2012

By Nat Torkington
January 13, 2012

How The Internet Gets Inside Us (The New Yorker) -- at any given moment, our most complicated machine will be taken as a model of human intelligence, and whatever media kids favor will be identified as the cause of our stupidity. When there were automatic looms, the mind was like an automatic loom; and, since young people in the...

Four short links: 10 January 2012

By Nat Torkington
January 10, 2012

Samsung Develops Emotion-Sensing Smartphone (ExtremeTech) -- By analyzing how fast you type, how much the phone shakes, how often you backspace mistakes, and how many special symbols are used, the special Galaxy S II can work out whether you’re angry, surprised, happy, sad, fearful, or disgusted, with an accuracy of 67.5% From a research paper from a research group...

Four short links: 22 November 2011

By Nat Torkington
November 22, 2011

Facebook is Gaslighting the Web (Anil Dash) -- interesting to see the way in which Facebook is attempting to embrace and extend the web, as opposed to AOL's doomed attempt to set itself up in competition and opposition to the web. As Molly's piece eloquently explains, what Facebook is calling "frictionless" sharing is actually placing an extremely high barrier...

Four short links: 18 November 2011

By Nat Torkington
November 18, 2011

Learning With Quantified Self -- this CS grad student broke Jeopardy records using an app he built himself to quantify and improve his ability to answer Jeopardy questions in different categories. This is an impressive short talk and well worth watching. Evaluating Text Extraction Algorithms -- The gold standard of both datasets was produced by human annotators. 14 different...

Sensors, data, UI and the future of publishing

By Mac Slocum
October 28, 2011

In a recent keynote address, Tim O'Reilly looked at how sensors, data and interfaces will shape information delivery.

Sensors, data, UI and the future of publishing

By Mac Slocum
October 28, 2011

In a recent keynote address, Tim O'Reilly looked at how sensors, data and interfaces will shape information delivery.

Sensors, data, UI and the future of publishing

By Mac Slocum
October 28, 2011

In a recent keynote address, Tim O'Reilly looked at how sensors, data and interfaces will shape information delivery.

"Revolution in the Valley," revisited

By Mac Slocum
October 26, 2011

With "Revolution in the Valley" making its paperback debut and the work of Steve Jobs fresh in people's minds, we checked in with Andy Hertzfeld to discuss the legacy of the first Macintosh.

Four short links: 24 October 2011

By Nat Torkington
October 24, 2011

Tangle -- open source Javascript library for creating slider-type widgets in web pages, with built-in updating of other web elements. This is fantastic for exploring "what-if" scenarios. Check out the demos. Location-Based Security -- The researchers have created a customized version of Android controlled by a “policy engine” on a server. The Android devices use Bluetooth and near-field communications...

Four short links: 19 October 2011

By Nat Torkington
October 19, 2011

OmniTouch: Wearable Interaction Everywhere -- compact projector + kinect equivalents in shoulder-mounted multitouch glory. (via Slashdot) Price of Bitcoin Still Dropping -- currency is a confidence game, and there's no confidence in Bitcoins since the massive Mt Gox exchange hack. vim Text Objects -- I'm an emacs user, so this is like reading Herodotus. "On the far side of...

To page or to scroll?

To page or to scroll?
By Peter Meyers
August 26, 2011

We all got comfortable scrolling through web pages a long time ago, but ereader and tablet design added a new quirk with the introduction of page flips. Here, Pete Meyers considers the applications of scrolling and flipping across reading environments.

To page or to scroll?

By Peter Meyers
August 26, 2011

We all got comfortable scrolling through web pages a long time ago, but ereader and tablet design added a new quirk with the introduction of page flips. Here, Pete Meyers considers the applications of scrolling and flipping across reading environments.


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