MetaFilter posts tagged with Technology and digital

One man's trash is another man's gold

Christ, what an asshole — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:48:03 -0800

FRONTLINE: Ghana - Digital Dumping Ground On the outskirts of Ghana's biggest city sits a smoldering wasteland, a slum carved into the banks of the Korle Lagoon, one of the most polluted bodies of water on earth. The locals call it Sodom and Gomorrah. One of the biggest fallouts? Identity Theft.

That's no Moon. Or a McDonald's. WTF?

loquacious — Fri, 01 May 2009 11:54:31 -0800

At the mostly abandoned Moffett Field in an abandoned McDonald's, digital archeologists attempt to restore, recover and archive abandoned high resolution imagery and data from previous manned Moon missions, using an abandoned Ampex 2" tape drive found in a chicken coop - the last working machine in the world, restored by the last man alive capable of rebuilding the heads. This is likely only part of their weird story.

reality jockey

nickyskye — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:45:20 -0800

RjDj "is a music application for the iPhone. It uses sensory input to generate and control the music you are listening to. RjDj is mainly listened to with headphones. Think of it as the next generation of walkman or mp3 player." l Michael Breidenbruecker initiated the project, now joined by a team of musical and technological thinkers and coders l "What it’s really about is a new approach to how to listen to music, how to develop musical tools, and how communities own and share that work." The application is difficult to describe and on paper it sounds sort of silly (see the video below for a convincing demonstration). Using the iPhone’s built in microphone, the application listens for ambient noise which it then modifies and infuses into an automatically generated dynamic soundtrack. You can download the full version for $2.99 here, or you can try out the free version (which only has one ’scene’). How to Create Scenes (And incidentally, you can work on scenes with a laptop even if you don’t own an iPhone.) Mentioned previously here and in AskMe.

Chairman Martin Unleashed and Unlicensed

kliuless — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 00:34:04 -0800

FCC paves way for free use of vacant airwaves -- white space -- available in February as TV spectrum is cleared up by digital conversion. Apparently another vote for change will take place November 4. The FCC btw also recently backed a free (ad-supported) nationwide wireless broadband plan in another hunk of spectrum to be auctioned off in 2009.

An Illustrated History of Digital Cameras

carter — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 12:24:51 -0800

An Illustrated History of Digital Cameras until 1998. Mainly looks at consumer digicams, but includes a host of ancestors - obscuras, pinholes, consumer film and SLRs, electronic video cameras, etc.

Technology and Education

Brandon Blatcher — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 17:53:27 -0800

Three columns on technology and eduction by Robert Cringely: the clash between those who grew up with computers and those who didn't in War of the Worlds, Amish Paradise looks for learning models in unexpected places and Ozzy knows best talks about how important digital games, not video games, could be to education. If you're curious, Cringely is pseudonym

Excuse me, I think my forearm is ringing.

tugena13 — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 12:08:23 -0800

The ultimate in nerdy tattoos? "Jim Mielke's wireless blood-fueled display is a true merging of technology and body art. At the recent Greener Gadgets Design Competition, the engineer demonstrated a subcutaneously implanted touch-screen that operates as a cell phone display, with the potential for 3G video calls that are visible just underneath the skin."

I've got moves you haven't even seen yet

Blazecock Pileon — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 01:29:51 -0800

What is the relationship between the optical groove in a record or wax cylinder and sound, and how can we use this to recover analog recordings from the past? Dr. Carl Haber explains IRENE (.pdf; begin at slide 44 for audio samples).

Your best chance of surviving a complete burial.

mistermoore — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 15:08:03 -0800

Avalanche transceivers have become an essential piece of technology for people who spend time in avalanche terrain. Beacons, as they're also known, operate on an international standard frequency and can be used to find other transceivers (hopefully still attached to people) buried under snow, giving rescuers a chance to find victims before they suffocate. [more inside]

Last Night an LJ saved my life.

empath — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 10:32:16 -0800

Traditionally, (video) a DJ uses two turntables, but recently a series of new products has challenged the primacy of vinyl. While local record shops have been closing left and right, online stores have begun offering digital downloads. One digital-only outlet recently sold their 1,000,000th mp3. And now, a new store has taken the DJ completely out of the equation by making mix cds on demand.

Only 20 minutes?

me3dia — Wed, 08 Jun 2005 08:57:44 -0800

"Disposable" digital video cameras. Now available at CVS drugstores in the US, from the same company that last year introduced disposable digital cameras. The video is processed onto DVD at the store in an hour. But at $43 ($30 purchase plus $12.99 for processing) for 20 minutes of footage, is it really worth it? Walt Mossberg says, "Meh."

Digital Utopia and its Flaws

moonbird — Thu, 04 Mar 2004 04:56:07 -0800

Digital Utopia and its Flaws
Cory Doctorow In Conversation With R.U. Sirius

"Every other media revolution that we've had from Gutenberg to the radio to recorded music and so on, ended up with an industry that's a thousand times larger, that makes a thousand times more money, and makes available a thousand times more work. That happens every single time! If you go back far enough, you will find the guild of clavichord makers decrying the advent of the lute."

Contemporary Danish Art

hama7 — Tue, 03 Feb 2004 17:45:14 -0800

Artnode: Contemporary Danish Art

zeoslap — Tue, 13 Mar 2001 16:35:10 -0800

Paper enters the digital era. Anoto has developed a platform that allows you to send anything you write on paper or another surface to any computer in the world.

legibility — Sun, 16 Apr 2000 13:59:55 -0800

The myth of megapixel cameras is explained here in detail, finally "illuminating" why digital resolution is often worse than you'd expect. In brief, digital cameras interpolate to get a color image from a black and white CCD -- losing sharpness in the process, and taking up far more flash card space than reason dictates. Conclusion: buying into the latest technology isn't worth the expense, until camera companies wise up. Finally, evidence which backs up my faith in scanning photos taken on a (decidedly analog) Nikon N70! [via Honeyguide]

mathowie — Wed, 26 Jan 2000 14:16:17 -0800

Paying for McDonalds drive-thru food without cash is the latest shameless marketing attempt to make things as "convenient " as possible. The sad thing is, what they're really trying to do is separate the notion of real money from "digital money" so you'll buy more stuff, thinking it's all monopoly money (credit card companies have built an industry on doing exactly this).