This is amazingly Cool, and definitely with a capital C. Pattie Maes and Pranav Mistry from MIT showcase Sixth Sense in this TED talk (video below). Sixth Sense is an augmented reality device that takes information from the net that is contextually relevant to what is currently in front of you, and seamlessly integrates it in to your viewing space.
The device works using a small camera to track movement and a projector to display information on any surface you present (from the wall to your hand).
Imagine picking up a book in the book store and having the Amazon.com or Goodreads.com reader rating projected on its cover (and reviews projected on the blank inner sleeve), a clock projected on to your wrist or a picture taken by making a square around your subject of choice with your hands. All of these are demonstrated in the below video.
And the best bit? Sixth Sense is going open source. I am so going to be one of the first in line for this.
I just re-found this video from the 2009 Brisbane Riverfire fireworks back in September. I uploaded it ages ago to YouTube but forgot to link to it! It was taken whilst driving along the Riverside Expressway from the Captain Cook Bridge in Brisbane – we hit the Bridge right on 19:00 when the fireworks started – best vantage point ever!
In my last post I wrote about the upcoming MMORPG Stargate Worlds. It will be interesting to see what happens and if the project is dead in the water or not – further research shows news of funding issues, staff cuts and shoddy ‘craftsmanship’. Even in the below interview with Michael Shanks he refers the the growth of the Stargate Franchise beyond the series with movies and ‘failed video games’.
Another cool Stargate related thing is the theatrical trailer for Stargate Universe was released over the weekend. I’m interested to see how this show pans out – it looks at first glance to be a darker show with more of a space drama feel: think Stargate cross Battlestar Galactica. It even has a Battlestar Galactica-esque premise: A bunch of explorers from a variety of backgrounds and nationalities are stuck on a spaceship roaming the ether, with no way of returning home. The spaceship in question is an Ancient ship on autopilot that is seeding stargates across a distant galaxy.
I feel like I’ve been saying this for almost everything I am involved in at the moment, but there has been a lot of behind the scenes work going on for Cognicology. Some technical (we’ve moved to better, faster, stronger hosting for one), some strategic.
In terms of technical, we’ve moved all (well, nearly all) of our hosted services from GoDaddy hosting to hosting through Knownhost. GoDaddy hosting was cheap enough but it had a tendancy to suffer really slow loading times during peak US hours – not really acceptable for a blog delivering video content (see strategic below)! We now have a virtual private server with Knownhost and the service has so far performed flawlessly.
On the strategic setting, Alborz and I have decided that we are going to move away from the traditional text-heavy blog or online magazine format and move towards delivering Cognicology primarily as a video blog, or vlog (not the biggest fan of the term vlog – sounds like something Richard Branson would call his blog). We both currently have to do a load of writing through our other commitments, so switching to video was a great way to get some more of that tasty spice known as variety.
We’ve now got a completely redesigned website for cognicology now that is really strongly centred around video delivery – it has a whopping big space at the top for our videos and the video content is prioritised in the category browsers, etc.. In terms of actual recording style when it comes to the videos we are going for a fairly organic style with little to no scripting – we want to deliver our opinions, ideas and tips on the cognicology subject manner with authenticity and ernest which I think is best captured with unscripted dialogue.
Last week, Insight on SBS hosted a really interesting forum to debate the compulsory internet filter that has been proposed by Senator Stephen Conroy and the incumbent Australian government.
The proposal aims to introduce a level of compulsory internet filtering at the ISP level throughout the country to deny access to any non peer-2-peer material at has been refused classification by the Classification board or otherwise deemed illegal.
The debate offered by Insight has representation from a number of different camps. The for’s and against’s seem to be fairly evenly balanced in the program which is nice to see.
Representatives included (in a very rough order of appearance):
Senator Stephen Conroy
Sue Mclean (Cyber Safety Advisor)
Colin Jacobs (Electronic Fontiers Australia)
Mark Newton (ISP Network Engineer – Internode)
Some Christian guy that spouted rubbish that had nothing to do with the debate
and parents, both for and against.
Now, to get opinionated, I don’t believe that a compulsory filter is the answer.
I don’t have a wealth of statistics to back up my claim here, but I do have a fairly educated opinion given a high exposure and familiarity to the online medium. And my belief is that for the material they are talking about I would strongly argue that the vast majority of it is distributed through peer-to-peer networks, encrypted channels and by ‘old-fashioned’ email. And none of these methods would be filtered with the currently proposed scheme.
The end result is that people who are running these illegal material rings will still distribute it amongst themselves, the others who want to access it online will circumvent the filter, leaving the rest of us with a infrastructure-heavy filtering system that is filtering out content that we aren’t even trying to access anyway.
And the bit in bold there is the key thing.
Why put in a compulsory filter to stop people accessing material that they aren’t even going to try to access? Sure, their kids might try to get there or stumble upon it, so in those cases offer an opt-in filter that they can choose to run their connection through. The argument that it will stop those that want to access illegal material from doing so is ridiculous. This is a situation where, if there is a will, there is a way. And in this case, I imagine the ‘way’ would be a 2 minute google search…
I was meant to be in Tasmania for a wedding this weekend. Instead the dreaded lurgy has reared its ugly head, and I am instead stuck at home with tonsillitis. Not all bad news though, it has bought on a stream of self-development, blogging and learning (a notable being learning to spell tonsillitis). A lot has been going on over the last month and a bit, so this is a bit of a bubble-n-squeak post.
Firstly, I got back from snowboarding in Japan for three weeks about a fortnight ago. We were in Niseko on the north island, Hokkaido. It was an amazing trip, and an amazing experience. We met some really cool people over there, and experienced the best snow that I have ever seen – hands down. We had a good week of solid and consistent snow… and I was all over it like a fat kid on a cupcake. As you can see… the snow was pretty deep!
There was a sad aspect of the trip however. Whilst we were over there, a skier called Scott McKay went missing after leaving a bar called Wild Bills late on a Friday night (story here). Unfortunately, people don’t last very long in -8/-10 degree temperatures. A couple of community searches were hosted for Scott’s body. I participated in the second search but with the levels of snow that Niseko was having at the time, it was a needle in a haystack situation. I still remember seeing his father addressing the search team before the search commenced. It was a little disconcerting: this was the sort of thing that you see on TV all the time, it felt very strange to actually be there in real life. He was so distraught that he could hardly hold the megaphone he was addressing the crowd through. I think I speak for most people who were present when I say that I felt true empathy for Scott’s Dad that day.
In other news, WiFi in Australia has been growing like magic beans! There are now maps contributed by the community for Perth (thanks Jimmy) and for the Northern River’s region of NSW (thanks Pippa). I’ve also heard through the twit-vine that Neil is currently revamping the WiFi in UK site, so I am looking forward to seeing what comes from that development also.
I’ve been reading a few books too (which will probably make the likes of Jane very proud of me). Firstly, I finished The Graveyard Book a week or so before I hit Japan. It was a typical Neil Gaiman book – brilliant, and not nearly enough of it! I seriously recommend ANYBODY to read ANYTHING he has written – the man is a genius. I’ve almost got through Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. This is an amazing book – published in 1937 after the Great Depression, and is the precursor (and ideological basis) of the explosion of success books published today. I’m also reading Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman. It is an interesting account of how the way we describe the events that unfold around us has an effect on our actions and our mental state, specifically focusing on the human condition of depression. It then shows practical steps people can take to change the way they perceive the events in our lives for the better of our mental health (hence, learned optimism).
Oh, I found this video of David Tennant and Catherine Tate from last years Comic Relief on YouTube – classic!
Also on YouTube, this amazing short film was sent to me by a friend… a work of art and the best YouTube video I have seen so far!
There are probably more things to write about, but I am going to leave it here, so that I can pretend that those other things are in fact new things, giving me a higher post count!
Chris is a shining example of how, in a world where abortion is not as easily obtained as a leg of fried chicken, an ounce of prevention can be worth more than its weight in gold. He is currently completing a PhD in Bioinformatics which he hopes may one day help him get out of a speeding ticket.
)
Firstly, I got back from snowboarding in Japan for three weeks about a fortnight ago. We were in Niseko on the north island, Hokkaido. It was an amazing trip, and an amazing experience. We met some really cool people over there, and experienced the best snow that I have ever seen – hands down. We had a good week of solid and consistent snow… and I was all over it like a fat kid on a cupcake. As you can see… the snow was pretty deep!
Chris is a shining example of how, in a world where abortion is not as easily obtained as a leg of fried chicken, an ounce of prevention can be worth more than its weight in gold. He is currently completing a PhD in Bioinformatics which he hopes may one day help him get out of a speeding ticket.