Google Glass: I want one!

The Verge’s Joshua Topolsky recently visited Google and had a hands-on demo of their new Glass project. I’ve been quite skeptical about the whole concept since is was first announced last year, but after reading Topolosky’s account of his experience, I have to say that I am now genuinely more excited about the idea.

Making data more accessible is going to be a become a big thing over the next 12 months. Pebble are now taking pre-orders on their smartwatch, and Apple are widely expected to be bringing out their own version before the end of the year.

Google Now

As amazing as Siri seemed when it was first announced, the reality is that it’s such a hit-and-miss experience it’s pretty much unusable. And when you compare it to Google’s effort, it just looks even worse.

My switch to Android is getting closer and closer.

Source: google.com

The Next Microsoft

Designer Andrew Kim set himself the task of rebranding Microsoft in just 3 days. And he succeeded spectacularly. As he rightly points out, whilst Microsoft’s hardware design is becoming more futuristic and edgy, their branding and advertising has remained soft and fuzzy. Microsoft really should be pushing the fact that they are still one of the worlds leading technology companies.

Here’s hoping they listen and Andrew finds himself with a new job.

Source: minimallyminimal.com

Skynet is coming.

Skynet is coming

Google has developed a virtual “neural network” that taught itself what a cat looks like by viewing images from YouTube. Developed at Google X, the research and development lab best known for Project Glass and self-driving cars, the neural network is a cluster of 1,000 computers with 16,000 cores between them. Google fed the cluster 200 x 200 pixel thumbnails taken from 10 million randomly selected YouTube videos and had it look for recurring features. Not only was its creation able to detect faces, but also “high-level concepts” such as cat faces and human bodies.

A look back at the tech brainstorm for Minority Report

Back in 1999, as he prepared to make a movie called The Minority Report, Steven Spielberg gathered top science and technology types to an “idea summit” where they would share thoughts on what things might look like in 50 years. To mark the ten year anniversary of the movie’s release, Wired asked a dozen of the summit attendees to reflect on the experience. According to one participant: “There was no shortage of megalomania, although there was good reason for it.”

Source: Wired

Dean Kamen’s Prosthetic Arm

Dean Kamen’s ”Luke arm”—a prosthesis named for the remarkably lifelike prosthetic worn by Luke Skywalker in Star Wars —came to the end of its two-year funding last month. Its fate now rests in the hands of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which funded the project. If DARPA gives the project the green light—and some greenbacks—the state-of-the-art bionic arm will go into clinical trials. If all goes well, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration gives its approval, returning veterans could be wearing the new artificial limb by next year.

Source: spectrum.ieee.org

Among the Sleep

A first person horror adventure, in which you play a two year old child. After being put to bed at night, mystical things will happen.

Looks genuinely scary.

Source: youtube.com

Drawings of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, in the style of Leonardo da Vinci

Amazing drawing of the LHC at CERN by Dr. Sergio Cittolin in the style of Leonardo Da Vinci. Dr. Cittolin has worked at CERN for the past 30 years as a research physicist. The idea, according to the physicist, was to simply “present the idea of data analysis to the world within the naturalist world of Leonardo.”

You can view the full gallery at the source link.

Source: cdsweb.cern.ch