Another Look At The Google Hangouts Changes
Noah J Nelson on Friday, May. 17th
We've had some more time to kick around the changes over at G+ and the new Hangouts app, and despite my initial distaste, I'm starting to come around.
Stop Whining About Glass
Kurt Collins on Thursday, May. 16th
As you all undoubtedly already know, Google Glass is finally here. Well… sort of. The consumer version of Glass isn’t slated to arrive in your grubby little consumery hands until next year sometime. A developer’s preview edition is what’s already being worn by thousands of eager geeks. For the pleasure of being a first adopter, you get the opportunity to pay Google $1500.
And it’s probably the product’s exclusivity that’s spurred all these (lame) articles about how this alpha product doesn’t live up to the expectations of the consumer market. Until Google releases Glass to the public, stop flooding my Twitter feed with this nonsense. I would like to ask that this crap doesn’t get written in the first place, but we all know that that won’t happen, as any article about Glass is linkbait (cue my hypocritical chuckle). (more…)
SkynetWatch: How The Machines Will Learn To Think
Noah J Nelson on Thursday, May. 16th
Here, let this article by Canadian futurist and i09 contributor George Dvorsky ruin your day. He's aptly titled it: How Skynet Might Emerge From Simple Physics
In the paper, which now appears in Physical Review Letters, Harvard physicist and computer scientist Dr. Alex Wissner-Gross posits a Maximum Causal Entropy Production Principle — a conjecture that intelligent behavior in general spontaneously emerges from an agent’s effort to ensure its freedom of action in the future. According to this theory, intelligent systems move towards those configurations which maximize their ability to respond and adapt to future changes.
The line "spontaneously emerges from an agent’s effort to ensure its freedom of action in the future" in the quote above strikes me as particularly interesting.
Shades of William Gibson's "information wants to be free". There's something profound about the idea of intelligence being bound up with the drive to expand the range of action on has access to.
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Three Things About The Google I/O Keynote That Were … Interesting
Noah J Nelson on Wednesday, May. 15th
Warning: snark ahead. Not like "the tech press corps doesn't have the attention span for a three hour long event so they start whining about it on Twitter" snark, but snark nonetheless.
The New Yorker: Accepting Secrets Since 1925
Noah J Nelson on Wednesday, May. 15th
Secrets make the world go 'round. Uncovering those secrets is the lifeblood of intelligence services and journalists alike.
As Amy Davidson points out in the announcement of The New Yorker's new digital dead drop, the magazine has been accepting leaks from whistleblowers since the first issue in 1925.
This morning, The New Yorker launched Strongbox, an online place where people can send documents and messages to the magazine, and we, in turn, can offer them a reasonable amount of anonymity. It was put together by Aaron Swartz, who died in January, and Kevin Poulsen. Kevin explains some of the background in his own post, including Swartz’s role and his survivors’ feelings about the project. (They approve, something that was important for us here to know.) The underlying code, given the name DeadDrop, will be open-source, and we are very glad to be the first to bring it out into the world, fully implemented.
Follow the link above for the full infographic of how Strongbox works.
Later this month a documentary on the mother of a dead drops, WikiLeaks, will go into limited release. We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks will look at that site and it's scandals.
The world is open, if we want it.
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Square Gets Into The Cash Register Business
Noah J Nelson on Tuesday, May. 14th
Square, the mobile payment system created by Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey is taking another step forward in their quest to own the small business point-of-sale space.
They're launching an iPad holder.
Alright, that's too cynical. This is actually an integrated cash register stand–the Square Stand– that lets business owners connect the essentials to a iPad running Square's register app. iPad not included.
The thing is, they're going to need a major push if they want to make headway in the small business space. At least if the temperature of my own neighborhood' businesses are any indication.
Some anecdotal evidence after the jump.
Covering Pop Hits On YouTube Is Starting To Pay [Extended Cut]
Noah J Nelson on Monday, May. 13th
A version of this story aired on NPR’s Morning Edition.
The online video sharing site YouTube is this generation's MTV. Artists like Gotye and Psy have found mainstream success when their videos go viral. Yet the site is dominated by amateurs covering other people’s songs – from toddlers chirping The Beatles to teens tackling Led Zeppelin.
Between those two extremes is an alternative universe of aspiring professional musicians who use their versions of cover songs on YouTube to build fan bases of their own.
Hidden Secrets of Google Glass Hint At AR Future
Noah J Nelson on Friday, May. 10th
Google Glass, will it be the next Segway, is it just a sign of "status flight"? Will everyone who wears it look stupid?
Who cares? What cool stuff can it do that we can't do now? One programmer went digging and found some hidden developer interfaces. Interfaces that one blogger at Walyou think may lead to alternate reality apps and games beyond the imagination.
Okay, okay… within the imagination:
Draw Like The Old Masters
Noah J Nelson on Thursday, May. 9th
I've always regretted that I never truly learned how to draw. The closest I got was being able to render images from comic books with a fair amount of fidelity.
Still, I'd look at the great illustrators or to the Old Masters and knew it was a fruitless pursuit: I'd never be good enough.
Turns out the Old Masters had a lot of help, in the form of a tool known as the Camera Lucida, a device that makes it possible to, essentially, trace a live subject.
Now a pair of art professors are looking to resurrect this lost art tool. Naturally they turned to Kickstarter, and they've already blown through their planned allotment of NeoLucidas. So what do you do when demand outstrips planned supply and you don't want to get into the manufacturing business?
Teen Coder Creates Way To Block Twitter TV Spoilers
Noah J Nelson on Wednesday, May. 8th
Mother Jones has this awesome story about a young coder who created a solution to one of social media's most persistent annoyances:
Imagine you forget to watch a new episode of Game of Thrones the night it airs. Even if coworkers stay mum about important plot points, Twitter is abuzz with spoilers. Fortunately, there's Twivo, a new program that allows Twitter users to censor their feeds from mentioning a certain TV show (and its characters) for a set time period. Jennie Lamere, a 17-year-old girl, invented the software last month—and won the grand prize at a national coding competition where Lamere was the only female who presented a project, and the only developer to work alone. Internet: Meet the reason we need more women in tech.
There are two big elements to this story, and the bigger one isn't even about the product. It's that fact that Lemere was the only woman who managed to finish a product at the hack.
As for Twivo, it's a Google Chrome browser extension that's not quite ready for primetime… but only by a few weeks. This was a hackathon, after all, where the standards for "best in show" are a minimal viable product. That Lemere has attracted a potential distributor and could have her product out in a matter of weeks makes this more than a victory, it's a triumph.
Via: IndieWire
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