MetaFilter posts tagged with technology and brokenlink

Convert moon rocks to oxygen and other ways to earn $250,000

blahblahblah — Sat, 06 May 2006 17:04:33 -0800

The NASA Centennial Challenges: Inspired by the X-Prize, NASA has begun a series of challenges to private inventors with cash prizes for things ranging from extracting oxygen from moon rocks to building better astronaut gloves to improving personal aircraft. Thanks to Congressional approval, NASA will be launching larger challenges of up to $50 million in value, including a new multi-million dollar lunar lander contest. With government space efforts criticized by private entrepreneurs, is this the right direction for NASA?

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)]

#1-Google, #2-Apple, #3-Microsoft

spock — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 19:32:59 -0800

"A look at the average number of page views per title reveals that Microsoft gets about half as many page views per title as compared to Google and Apple" a strong indication of where reader interest actually resides." - ZDNet. Intelliseek's Blogpulse reveals similar numbers: #1 Google: 473K, #2 Apple: 381K, #3 Microsoft: 262K. Venture capitalist, Ed Sim, says: "While the OS is important, Microsoft has lost its complete and utter dominance as we move to a service-oriented world where broadband is everywhere, apps are in the cloud, and the browser becomes king."

iPod Coffee Table

haasim — Tue, 24 May 2005 09:47:02 -0800

iPod Coffee Table created by a Toronto design student

The first one's free...

FormlessOne — Tue, 11 Jan 2005 08:48:15 -0800

IBM to give away 500 patents. Curiouser and curiouser. Why now? And, what patents? IBM makes a great deal of money licensing their patent portfolio - is this meant to stimulate additional licensing? How does this fit in with the open source movement? In other news, IBM just received the go-ahead to sell off their PC unit to a firm that just won a rather large contract to provide PCs in China.

Everything Old is Cool Again

anastasiav — Fri, 07 Jan 2005 07:10:53 -0800

Vintage Technology :: I like the bric a brac best.

Ubiquitous morality

christina — Sat, 30 Oct 2004 10:06:46 -0800

All watched over by machines of loving grace is Adam Greenfield's take on the consequences for designers of ubicomp. Setting moral guidelines seems critical in these early days of technological encroachment-- but how long can decency hold out against the promise of profit? I was forwarded a recent email from the CEO a major bookseller that made it clear that it's possible for them to track everything I do in their stores and online, and thank goodness they choose not to take advantage. But how long will that last? And with homeland security crumbling our civil liberties, article's like Adam's that remind us about our responsibility are even more important than ever.

Before coming here, had you thought of a place like this?

amberglow — Fri, 20 Aug 2004 16:07:30 -0800

Cybermohalla --really interesting group project in and around Delhi, bringing young people together via "Compughars" (fully-equipped media centers in their neighborhoods). Located in LNJP Basti (an illegal neighborhood) in Delhi, and Ambedkar Nagar (a resettlement colony) at Dakshinpuri in south Delhi, and cyberspace, and created by ANKUR - Society for Alternatives in Education (an NGO) with Sarai, the New Media & Urban Culture Programme of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, they've created everything from texts, collages, posters, animations, and publications, to videos, and large-scale installations. Don't miss by lanes --collected excerpts of some of the kids' personal and public diaries (pdfs), and the scratchbook (55-page pdf) and the animated gifs.

This changes everything!

tranquileye — Fri, 06 Aug 2004 10:35:49 -0800

I just ordered mine. [via Kevin Rose]

Let's kill all the thumb drives

DrJohnEvans — Thu, 24 Jun 2004 06:07:02 -0800

Don't blame the technology. A refreshingly reasonable piece from a mainstream newspaper breaking down people's fear of technology as a springboard for outright condemnation of that technology when it's used for bad things.

How to speak UNIX

carter — Tue, 25 May 2004 08:01:43 -0800

How to speak UNIX - interrobang's nick explained?!

Next step, X-ray specs!

nomis — Thu, 13 May 2004 00:35:40 -0800

Opacity no match for technology! A CS grad student comes up with a technique for restoring words that have been blacked out in classified documents.

title

Twang — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 16:02:02 -0800

US-made ultrasonic gun uses baby's scream The gun is capable of causing permanent ear damage, even death.
Makes me want to scream.

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."

Twinkle, twinkle LED...

ukamikanasi — Sat, 10 Jan 2004 09:24:01 -0800

The Vos Pas is an apartment that it's owner has lit entirely with LEDs. More here.

Iranian Blogs challenge President

hoder — Thu, 11 Dec 2003 20:21:22 -0800

Iranian bloggers challenge the President in the Summit: It all started from a post on the Geneva Summit's blog, DailySummit, asking Iranians to report on the Net censorship. Then, they asked them to post their questions for the Iranian President, who was going to have a press conference. Then reporters asked the questions from the president: Is the there a blacklist for Iranian websites? Do you read Persian weblogs? How hard is it to connect to the Net in Iran? Later they asked tougher questions from the Minister of Telecommunications: Why don't they public the blacklist? Why Sina Motallebi, the blogger, was arrested? Isn't the summit about how technology benefits democracy and human rights? Blogs can definitely be a big part of the answer.

What happened to the Modem Guy?

falameufilho — Mon, 01 Dec 2003 12:52:12 -0800

What happened to the Modem Guy? A great story on two partners and personal computer pioneers, Hayes (who got the fame) and Heatherington (who got the money).

Trashtalking - German Style

gregb1007 — Sun, 23 Nov 2003 22:07:22 -0800

Trashtalking - German Style. Forget talking dolls, Berlin's speechifying its trash cans to thank pedestrians after they dump their litter. But is it appropriate to have immaterial things tell you how to use them? [More Inside]

solar challenge

ginz — Sat, 18 Oct 2003 08:03:31 -0800

World solar challenge 2003. Darwin to Adelaide 19 - 28 October. Check out the route. Meet the teams. Have a look at the Green Fleet class as well, where technology meets reality. I won't be able to watch the race but have high hopes for next year's Olympics.

i <3 apple

serafinapekkala — Wed, 01 Oct 2003 08:54:44 -0800

Lick Me, I'm A Mackintosh. One columnist's ode/rant re: Apple's design ethos.

Heaven or Hell? It's Your Choice

metameme — Mon, 07 Jul 2003 14:54:43 -0800

Heaven or Hell? It's Your Choice
A new shareware E-Book is out, penned by the likes of Captain Crunch and Matthew Smith, that makes the claims:

Don't bother planning your pension, the world is about to change and we can prove it, please just take 2 minutes out of your life to read this page, it may change your life. Artificial intelligence is coming and it may become smarter than any of us. Smart networks using grid technologies could become a threat to us ALL, this is the real Matrix. From Dot.Net to the X-Box, from M-Theory to the Playstation 3 the future is V.R. / A.I. and Nanotech. If you ever wanted to know what the system is and what it has done to you, then this ebook is for you. You left school, you were standardised, you took an exam, you were graded, they made you believe in money, this is the last great social control mechanism. There's more to this, than you can imagine.

...and there you have it. Or do you?

ephemera: (noun) a short lived thing

jonson — Thu, 19 Jun 2003 22:39:42 -0800

Ever since I became a TiVo addict, I've found myself wanting to use its features in real life, wishing I could rewind & replay moments of random comedy & chaos, usually involving my pugs. Soon, thanks the good folks at Deja View, I will be able to, with the help of a head mounted micro video camera unit that is always on, recording a 30 second buffer of real time, and up to four hours of manually recordable space for once you activate the record button. The scourge of ephemera will be wiped out in our lifetime.

Tiny digital drives

banished — Thu, 29 May 2003 12:46:51 -0800

Child Pornographers Using Small Storage Drives. Small drives like this are giving the police quite a bit of trouble. One of the more interesting quotes from the story, "Even if the photos are encrypted, computer forensics specialists can break through most encryption schemes these days anyway."

Put safety first

caddis — Thu, 24 Apr 2003 14:10:05 -0800

Technology comes to the rescue via the Department of Homeland Security. Now we will never have to fear terrorists, or criminals again. This post is 23 days late, but remains ever so relevant.

Rook! I'm Invisibir!

jonson — Wed, 05 Feb 2003 13:14:53 -0800

Japanese create "invisible" cloak. Well, not really. Technically, just a two sided cloak, the front of which is a projector, and the back of which is a camera. Only works, one would imagine, if you're looking at a person straight on, and even then it would help if you were partially blind, or at the very least, raised in the wilderness & easily fooled by modern technology.