Here’s Comes an App Which Can Help You Avoid Run-ins with Exes, and be tracked by the police


Awkward moments are made of these; when you meet someone you don’t want to meet. Avoidr is a web based app that can help you out of those jams.Awkward moments are made of these; when you meet someone you don’t want to meet. Avoidr is a web based app that can help you out of those jams.We always talk of being social. The web has helped to propagate the ‘social movement’ with a bunch of social networking sites. On the web, you can easily avoid someone by ignoring their messages or deleting the contact info altogether. The real world is not so convenient.The man behind the web application, Jesper Andersen’s Eureka moment did not come in a bathtub. But the idea for designing Avoidr came from the face-offs he saw between his friends and their exes."It was an emotionally resonant feeling — you don't actually want to go to this bar because your ex is there."
To avoid these very awkward moments, he thought of an application that will let you know where the friends you want to avoid are right now. Avoidr is based on Foursquare and you will need your Foursquare account to log-in and select the people in your friends list that you want to steer clear of.According to Andersen, the site has taken off with around 20,000 people, and around 2,500 active users.





READ MORE
Add Comment
 
 
Picture
This is ridiculous. Reading what anyways??? So you won't be able to read without a webcam? 
Innovation: Smarter books aim to win back the kids


17:10 25 June 2010 by Paul Marks
Video: Augmented reality book

Innovation is our regular column highlighting emerging technologies and predicting where they may lead

With digital technology now offering so many compelling options, encouraging children to read books has become a herculean task. So said the author and playwright Tom Stoppard this week, when he told the London Daily Telegraphthat children are such technophiles that he fears for the future of reading.

David Crystal, president of the UK's National Literacy Association, thinks these fears are overplayed, however. Speaking at the Royal Society of Arts in London this week, he denounced those who say the abbreviated style used in texting is corrupting English. He thinks we should embrace any and all new technologies that get people reading – whether that's Facebook, blogs, texts or emails.

"When these critics walk down the street, don't they see kids reading all the time – on their mobile phones? Are they so blind they can't see that?" he says. "To say kids aren't reading is just false. Too much attention is paid to the technology carrying their words and not the content."

Indeed, the digital written word seems to be in rude health. This week an e-book price war broke out, some say as a direct response to the Apple iPad, which is now used by 3 million readers around the world.

READ MORE

Add Comment
 
 
Picture
US unveils plan to make online transactions safer

June 26, 2010 By LOLITA C. BALDOR , Associated Press Writer

This screen shot of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security website set up to gather input from experts and everyday Internet users on how a voluntary internet identification system should be structured. The website was already getting votes, snipes and suggestions Friday afternoon _ underscoring the incendiary nature of any discussion of Internet regulation or formal structure. (AP Photo)

(AP) -- In the murky world of the Internet, how do you ever really know who you're talking to, who you're buying from or if your bank can actually tell it's you when you log in to pay a bill?

Amid growing instances of identity theft, bank account breaches and sophisticated Internet scams, the government is looking for ways to make those transactions in cyberspace more secure.

But officials must tread carefully, as efforts to create identity cards, personal certificates or other systems of identifiers raise privacy worries and fears of Big Brother tracking its citizens online.

In a draft plan released Friday, the White House laid out an argument for a yet-undeveloped, voluntary identification system and set up a website to gather input from experts and everyday Internet users on how it should be structured.

The website was already getting votes, snipes and suggestions Friday afternoon - underscoring the incendiary nature of any discussion of Internet regulation or formal structure.

"The technology that has brought many benefits to our society and has empowered us to do so much has also empowered those who are driven to cause harm," said White House cyber coordinator Howard Schmidt in a blog posting Friday outlining the need for better security online.

The plan, he said, envisions a future in which people would be able to get a secure identifier - such as a smart identity card or a digital certificate - from a variety of service providers. Customers could then use the card or identifier to prove who they are as they make their online transactions.

"Digital authentication has been the holy grail of Internet security policy since the early '90s," said James Lewis, cyber security expert and senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. This latest effort, he said, has a better chance of succeeding than previous tries, "but we need to see how much opposition it runs into and whether people will actually use it even if it gets deployed."

Ari Schwartz, vice president at the Center for Democracy and Technology, said the unfettered openness of the Internet is what allowed it to grow and prosper but also created security gaps that need to be addressed. But any move to improve identity systems raises many concerns. 


"The whole thing is very difficult to do and privacy is one of the more difficult pieces of it," said Schwartz, adding that the system has to balance efforts to maintain privacy while still finding out enough about someone to ensure his identity.

The government, he said, is correct to try to plan ways to move toward better security, rather than letting it just happen with no coordination.

But cyber security experts also argued that the technologies for creating such identifiers already exist and are already used in different ways by businesses, particularly banks.

"The vision they put forth is already realized and commercially available," said Roger Thornton, a cyber security expert and chief technology officer for California-based Fortify Software.

He noted that banks already use sophisticated fingerprinting processes to identify a customer who signs in. The system knows if a customer is using a different computer and will often require additional identification if that computer has not been used for the banking website before.

But many companies don't bother with the more expensive or complex identification systems.

So, said Thornton, "the opportunity is there to make things more interoperable and more uniform."

The draft plan is part of an administration effort to promote cyber security both within the government and among society as a whole. Lawmakers have introduced a number of bills aimed at furthering those goals, and the White House plan was met with initial support from one of the authors of Senate computer security legislation.



READ MORE
Add Comment
 
 
Picture
Add Comment
 
 
Add Comment
 
 
Picture
Facial recognition is so much fun!!! Yay thats me on the screen!!! ME!!!! Me getting beat on the ground!!! Yippie!!! Who would have thought I can upload a picture to facebook!!! HIGH FKN TECH!!! Smile for an ice cream, but bend over for a life of debt and blind servitude to the inhumane walking scrotum who have necessarily rid themselves of empathy to conquer those who clearly want to be conquered.

From Australia News

IF you're happy and you know it, smile for the vending machine camera.
The world's first vending machine that serves you if you smile has been unveiled — and it could be heading to Australia.

The interactive machines have a digital screen embedded with a "smile-o-meter" that uses facial recognition technology.

It can even take photos and upload them to social networking site Facebook with the user's permission.

Industry experts say the initiative is a sign of how we will routinely buy convenience products in the future.

The makers of Streets ice creams, which counts Magnum, Paddle Pops and classic Golden Gaytimes among its products, have expressed interest in trialling the revolutionary development.

Parent company Unilever, which recently demonstrated the interactive vending machine to advertising executives, plans to test the machines in select countries later this year.

The touch-screen trial model rewards users with a free ice cream after checking the size of their smile.

Depending on the success of the pilot, Unilever will consider investing further in the technology and charging the same prices as other convenience outlets.

Streets marketing director Andrea Martens said the technology was exciting.

"It's a whole new way for consumers to purchase products that's interactive and really fun and we think there's a great future for innovations like this," Ms Martens said.

"The new smile-activated ice cream vending machine is a fantastic concept, and it would be great to see one in Australia.

"As you can imagine it's highly sought after and a lot of other countries are keen to get hold of one, but Streets would love to give ice cream-loving Aussies the opportunity to try it out, so we've definitely put our hand up."

Add Comment
 
 
Picture
Computer Program Detects Depression in Bloggers' Texts
ScienceDaily (June 23, 2010) 

— Researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) developed a software program that can detect depression in blogs and online texts. The software is capable of identifying language that can indicate the writer's psychological state, which could serve as a screening tool.
The software, developed by a team headed by Associate Professor Yair Neuman in BGU's Department of Education, was used to scan more than 300,000 English language blogs that were posted to mental health Web sites. The program identified what it perceived to be the 100 "most depressed" and 100 "least depressed" bloggers. A panel of four clinical psychologists reviewed the samples, and concluded that there was a 78 percent correlation between the computer's findings and the panel's.

Professor Yair Neuman will be presenting his BGU team's work at the 2010 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agency Technology in Toronto, Canada, August 31 -- Sept. 3, 2010. Prof. Neuman's findings will also be published in the conference's proceedings.

"The software program was designed to find depressive content hidden in language that did not mention the obvious terms like "depression" or suicide," explains Prof. Neuman. "A psychologist knows how to spot various emotional states through intuition. Here, we have a program that does this methodically through the innovative use of 'web intelligence.'"

For example, the program spots words that express various emotions, like colors that the writer employs to metaphorically describe certain situations. Words like "black" combined with other terms that describe symptoms of depression, such as sleep deprivation or loneliness, will be recognized by the software as "depressive" texts.

Originally conducted for academic purposes, the findings could potentially be used to screen for would-be suicides.

The software provides a screening process that raises an individual's awareness of his or her condition, enables mental health workers to identify individuals in need of treatment, and can then recommend they seek professional help. Because, "no one can actually replace excellent human judgment," says Neuman.

READ MORE

Add Comment
 
 
Picture
From POpular science Shills

Get ready to lose yourself in videogames—literally. In May, the Excalibur Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas installed the first public Virtusphere, a human-sized hamster ball that lets you move through virtual worlds by walking, running, or crawling inside it. Until now, the sphere has been used primarily for military and police training.

Now, wearing a virtual-reality visor, anyone inside can play a first-person-shooter game or tour historic Russian architecture.

The 10-foot sphere is made of the same plastic as Legos, and its curvature helps to cushion players if they fall. The ball spins on a platform fitted with 45 caster-mounted wheels. Beneath, an optical sensor tracks motion the same way a computer mouse does, watching for relative movement across x and y axes. To make the experience truly immersive, the player is fitted with a head-mounted display with two internal LCD screens. A laptop wirelessly collects the data from the sensor and the gyroscopes, magnetometers and accelerometers on the headset to create the image the player sees. As new spheres pop up in malls and arcades, users will be able to jump into movie trailers or globe-trot using Google Earth.

READ MORE
Add Comment
 
 
Picture
Marines to use autonomous vehicles built by Virginia Tech engineering students using TORC products

IMAGE: The Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory worked closely with Virginia Tech and TORC in the creation of the four Ground Unmanned Support Surrogates (GUSS) that will be used for their ability...

Four unmanned autonomous vehicles designed and built by a team of engineering students at Virginia Tech using the TORC Robotic Building Blocks product line, are headed to Hawaii to participate in the 2010 Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) war games in July.

Fourteen nations, 34 ships, five submarines, more than 100 aircraft, and 20,000 personnel will participate in the biennial RIMPAC exercise June 23 through Aug. 1.

The Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory worked closely with Virginia Tech and TORC in the creation of the four Ground Unmanned Support Surrogates (GUSS) that will be used for their ability to support a platoon of U.S. Marines.

The unmanned vehicles can carry up to 1800 pounds and can move at the speed of a troop on foot, or about five miles per hour. The vehicles are designed to re-supply troops, to reduce the actual loads manually carried by Marines, and to provide an immediate means for the evacuation of any casualties in combat. A Marine unit will operate GUSS during the Naval Laboratory's enhanced company operations experimentation that coincides with RIMPAC.

Virginia Tech and TORC, a company founded by alumni of the university's robotics program, http://www.torctech.com/ share a very successful track record on their collaborations. Together, they developed autonomous vehicles for the Urban Challenge competition sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 2006 and in 2007. "The focus of the collaborations is to leverage the research capabilities of the university with the commercialization capabilities of a small business," said Al Wicks, professor of mechanical engineering (ME) at Virginia Tech and faculty advisor to the team. http://www.me.vt.edu/people/faculty/wicks.html

They took home third place honors in 2007 when their vehicle completed DARPA's 60-mile course in less than six hours, with no human intervention allowed past the starting line.

The four GUSS vehicles headed to Hawaii are an outgrowth of the technology developed for these DARPA competitions, Wicks said. The sensors have been greatly improved, as well as the perception, planning, and control algorithms to navigate complex environments.

The Urban Challenge featured a cooperative environment with well-defined roads for the competition. When the GUSS vehicles are used by the Marine Corps in Hawaii, they will be "off-road and not in a cooperative environment," Wicks said. "This is a big step forward in autonomous vehicles."

Michael Fleming, a Virginia Tech ME graduate and the founder and chief executive officer of TORC, explained the team synergism, saying "I believe our team of government, academia, and industry all working together has provided the Marine Corps with a well-balanced solution."

As an example, existing algorithms developed by students under previous TORC/Virginia Tech partnerships, were used to create a customized version of the TORC AutonoNav (autonomous navigation system) product to provide the advanced off-road tactical behaviors required to meet the needs of the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab.

The rapid development and experimentation on the GUSS project was made possible through the use of TORC's Robotic Building Blocks product line, said David Cutter, marketing manager at TORC. This enabled Virginia Tech engineers to leverage off-the-shelf technologies and focus on system integration challenges. The entire development process was completed in less than a year, with the first prototype delivered for testing in six months. The additional three vehicles were produced in the next five months to be shipped to the RIMPAC exercises.

READ MORE
Add Comment
 
 
Picture

For more automotive news click here

Smart computer learns from video June 23, 2010

The computer recognises the spatial and temporal patterns of sequences of activities in road traffic.

Swiss researchers have written a computer programme that is able to analyse temporal and spatial patterns of moving objects, and on top of that is capable of learning. This would be a significant aid in traffic monitoring.


The number ten tram crosses the carriageway, makes a sharp bend to the right, and stops in front of the Maschinenlaboratorium building. At the same time, cars roaring down Universitätsstrasse are forced to stop, students scurry across the zebra crossing and the number six tram heading towards the zoo comes around the corner. A typical traffic scene in the city of Zurich. The scene repeats itself in a regular cycle, and spatial and temporal patterns can be recognised.

For a person armed with a stopwatch and something to write with, it wouldn’t be too difficult to track and analyse these patterns. For a computer, however, it is a formidable challenge to collect all the data and analyse such a scenario and on top of that to memorise the patterns too.

Smart algorithm learns patterns

But ETH researchers Daniel Küttel and Michael Breitenstein, together with professors Luc Van Gool and Vittorio Ferrari from the Institute of Image Processing have now developed a computer code - an algorithm - that does precisely this. The software is able to analyse street scenes like this from video images, and map the spatial and temporal patterns that characterise the various road users. The computer can recognise which tram is going past and when, how many cars pass through in its ‘tracks’, and other such details. The computer also registers any deviations from a normal situation.

To create this programme, the researchers mounted cameras at a number of junctions around the city of Zurich and recorded hours of video clips. The computer then analysed these video sequences and automatically, i.e. without intervention by the programmers, established rules governing the flow of traffic. The computer had to spend about a day working out the calculations for each hour of video footage that had been recorded. Once the machine had ‘learned’ the standard patterns, however, it was then able to interpret the video recordings in real time.

The researchers used comparisons with the tram timetable to ascertain that their programme works extremely accurately. To test the programme’s function, they viewed the timetable on the internet and simultaneously monitored how the computer analysed the traffic scenes. These automatic analyses corresponded exactly with the timetable, to the minute, confirming beyond any doubt that the machine was analysing the video data correctly.

Theory was the hard part

What sounds simple was actually tough programming work. It took lead author Daniel Küttel, a doctoral candidate of Vittorio Ferrari, nine months to programme the algorithm. “The hardest part of it was processing the theory behind it”, he says. For the researchers, the first priority was to test the concept. Evidently, they did this so well that at the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition held this June in San Francisco, the IEEE professional organisation included this work in the top five per cent of 1,200 contributions submitted.

READ MORE
Add Comment