MetaFilter posts tagged with software and technology

People doing strange things with electricity

funkiwan — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 21:59:04 -0800

Dorkbot is a "monthly meeting of artists (sound/image/movement/whatever), designers, engineers, students, scientists, and other interested parties who are involved in the creative use of electricity." Started in NYC in 2000 by Douglas Repetto, Director of Research at the Columbia University Computer Music Center as well as one of Wired's 10 Sexiest Geeks, there are now dozens all over the world. Past presenters have been featured here on the blue. For instance Jeff Han presented his multi-touch interface at dorkbot-nyc in April of 2006. Miru Kim presented her naked city spleen at dorkbot-nyc in October of 2006. Bummed that there's not one in your own city? Start your own! The NYC meetings (first Wednesday of the month) are very casual and draw an eclectic range of presenters. A great mix of software and hardware mixed with various artistic influences. Would love to hear how they are run in other cities if anyone's been.

Words words words. (And symbols!)

sonic meat machine — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 13:04:47 -0800

Editor wars are some of the most divisive debates among programmers and writers. These days, the battles are between proponents of IDEs like NetBeans, Eclipse, and the like as often as they are between proponents of vi and Emacs, the traditional battlegrounds. That fight hasn't ended, of course. The support of the vi camp has largely solidified behind Vim, the largest and most feature rich (or bloated, if you like nvi) variant, and GNU Emacs has essentially vanquished its internecine rival. Are you a traditionalist? You can find an argument if you really want to. Of course, a lot of people now vote for third parties. There are candidates for the ignorant, for the masochistic, and the insane. Some people are more comfortable with familiar interfaces. Still others are obsessed. [Previously]

Are software upgrades driving you crazy?

ThePinkSuperhero — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 10:28:01 -0800

David Pogue on the Power of Simplicity Complete with musical opening.

A race of atomic supermen which will conquer the world

Smart Dalek — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 08:51:36 -0800

An' all the hot cats on the block have been doing it too - c'mon now, honey, I wanna do it with you. Anyone hoping to build their own Death Probe without dismantling the vaccum cleaner or floor waxer can rejoice. The creators of Roomba and Scooba have released a barebones version. Add-on software from Microsoft is available, should more ambitious types decide to pair iRobot's tech with LEGO MindStorms pieces.

Buy now, pay later.

davehat — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 04:50:33 -0800

FlexGo™. Microsoft targets emerging markets with pay as you go and subscription models.

WSYP

H. Roark — Thu, 20 Oct 2005 10:58:57 -0800

Microsoft WSYP A very exciting and promising new technology coming from Redmond. [movie - .asf (windows media)]

there's something actually in there

Pretty_Generic — Wed, 28 Sep 2005 07:30:53 -0800

THE ULTIMATE SELF LINK: MY BRAIN. Use this excellent little MRI program to open .hdr 3d-scan files. Endless, disturbing fun.

Wikipedia and journalism (and ant farms, Bombay, etc.)

Tlogmer — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 10:53:26 -0800

The avatar versus the journalist. Ant farms, Bombay, the neolithic revolution, and Wikipedia.

Google to Search Your PC For You

tranquileye — Wed, 19 May 2004 08:40:02 -0800

The John Markoff of the New York Times [registration required] reports that Google plans to roll-out a text and file search tool code-named Puffin for finding information stored on PCs. The move is seen as a defensive one; Microsoft plans to include PC searching in its new operating system, scheduled to be released in 2006 (at the earliest).

What software version numbers really mean

jeremias — Mon, 29 Sep 2003 07:14:58 -0800

What software version numbers really mean. Not sure who started the latest trend of dropping version numbers from software. We could always blame Microsoft with Windows ME . But Macromedia is at fault too with the whole MX thing. And MX doesn't even stand for anything. Now Adobe is getting into the mix. There will be no Photoshop 8 or Illustrator 11. Just CS . So is this a good thing? Version numbers may not be exciting but it sure did make it easy to keep track of the latest upgrade.

Etch-A-Sketch-A-Site

eyebeam — Mon, 12 May 2003 07:10:56 -0800

Denim "A team at the University of California at Berkeley has developed a software sketching tool that helps designers create fully interactive websites using just a graphics tablet or mouse...

Developed by the Group for User Interface Research at UC Berkeley, Denim allows designers to play around with different ideas with the speed and ease of drawing on paper. Even better, sketches can be hyperlinked, allowing a series of rough drawings to become a fully interactive site.

'We're trying to replicate the way designers have traditionally worked in the early stages of design, which is with pen and paper,' said the project's lead, James Landay, an associate professor at the university."

(Quote above is from this Wired News article.)

Cloudmark SpamNet

skallas — Thu, 19 Dec 2002 19:37:48 -0800

Distributed spam filtering. Sure, your spam filter may be hot stuff, but Spamnet takes filtering to the communal level. With its easy install, point and click simplicity, and Outlook support could Spamnet be the SpamCop for the masses?

The Self-Healing Minefield

Armitage Shanks — Wed, 27 Nov 2002 14:33:45 -0800

The Self-Healing Minefield From the current Village Voice: "Utilizing commercial off-the-shelf computer chips and 'healing' software, the networked minefield detects rude attempts to clear it, deduces which parts of itself have been removed, and signals its remaining munitions to close the hole using best-fit mathematics."

Bonus ubertasteless Flash animation courtesy of DARPA here. Color me fascinated and repulsed in equal measure.

moz — Fri, 25 Oct 2002 13:41:52 -0800

Glitch Art. When software fucks up, their display on-screen sometimes goes with them. Beflix finds the art in these glitches, and in all kinds: glitchy circuit design printouts and electron scans, for example.

brookish — Fri, 12 Apr 2002 17:43:53 -0800

On flight simulators, Tetris, and the CIA The Sunday Times Mag has a feature on Gilman Louie, popularizer of Tetris who was recruited by the CIA in 1998. " Louie's marching orders were to provide venture capital for data-mining technologies that would allow the C.I.A. to monitor and profile potential terrorists as closely and carefully as Amazon monitors and profiles potential customers."

Su — Wed, 12 Dec 2001 14:35:37 -0800

[re]distributions is a collection of art software and essays centering on PDAs and information appliances. Glad I cleaned out my Jornada at work today. Most of the artists have various other projects at their own sites, if you follow their links.

rushmc — Sat, 24 Nov 2001 09:17:37 -0800

WE ARE WATCHING YOU. "The FBI added that its research is 'always mindful of constitutional, privacy and commercial equities,' and that its use of new technology can be challenged in court and in Congress." No really, go ahead, try and stop us if you don't like it. That's your (snicker, snicker) right.

cCranium — Tue, 02 Oct 2001 06:30:26 -0800

The W3C's RAND Patent Policy commenting deadline has been extended. At first glance, the new policies seem to encourage software patents, but after reading the whole thing and the W3C's response to current comments, it looks, to my admittedly naive eyes, as though the W3C is trying to make it so that companies using proprietary software are going to have to make it available to other people for licensing. Why is this new structure potentially a bad thing?

rushmc — Sat, 08 Sep 2001 13:16:29 -0800

Next generation emoticons or another step in tearing down cultural (and man-machine?) walls?

fuzzygeek — Wed, 01 Aug 2001 11:16:16 -0800

Anti-rip CD system bypassed. heh. nice try, boyos. i've never understood how people can believe something digitized can possibly be protected in such a manner as to be foolproof. what one process can scramble, another can undo. [via /.]

rschram — Fri, 27 Jul 2001 15:01:42 -0800

San Diego Opensource Convention Ends With "Positive Feelings"
The conference included a debate (documented in real time!) between Microsoft open source---what's the opposite of evangelist?---Craig Mundie and the CTO of RedHat Michael Tiemann entitled "shared source versus open source." Tiemann was feisty and "baited" Mundie, who remained cool as a cucumber. I thought we could all benefit from some postgame analysis here... (1, 2, 3)

m.polo — Sun, 17 Jun 2001 19:33:01 -0800

I usually just ignore Jakob - he has his right to his opinions, tho' I seldom agree with him - but I draw the line at misrepresenting a technology so egregiously... Acrobat's not that hard to understand; I can't believe it's possible for Neilsen to not know that the features he berates Acrobat for missing are, in actuality, right there to be used.

fil! — Thu, 05 Apr 2001 12:48:30 -0800

Internet Explorer 6 and Standards Microsoft says they'll have 100% CSS1 and DOM (I assume level 1) support. A step in the right direction? Too little too late? Discuss.

tatochip — Wed, 14 Mar 2001 13:42:52 -0800

Big Blue moves into the web services arena, claiming to be the first company to provide such services. Ever hear of .NET? Seems to me that they've been rolling a framework (that's got BETA development tools already) since last summer.

i think the most poignant point in this article isn't the fact that IBM's making false claims, but this quote by Peter O'Kelly:

``It's amazing that these guys are agreeing to work with the same standards. They've finally realized it's a disservice to customers when they try and compete on the basis of proprietary formats and protocols."

Now if the browser wars could end, we'd all be in better shape.

rschram — Fri, 02 Mar 2001 10:25:24 -0800

The Future of the Internet is the Web application!
From the USATODAY story:

The Internet will be less about going to big sites like Yahoo and Amazon.com and more about using specialized pieces of software that connect to the Net. Two current examples: Napster and the Miller Lite Beer Pager.

Wow, the future is now!