Thursday 31 May 2007

Apple U iTunes Now Coursecasting


Apple Inc. with the initial assistance of Stanford University on Wednesday announced the launch of iTunes U, a dedicated area within the iTunes Store featuring free content such as course lectures, language lessons, lab demonstrations, sports highlights and campus tours provided by top US colleges and universities served up a larger sampling from 16 North American Universities ( including Stanford University, UC Berkeley, Duke University and MIT.) with a smattering of Audio and Video podcasts and from within a broad general perspective of Disciplines.

Brian S. Brooks, associate dean of undergraduate studies and administration at University of Missouri's School of Journalism, says that the school used the service for a few classes on a trial basis last fall, and that the system worked well.
"It makes a lot of sense to deliver course content to students in a medium they're all familiar with," he says, noting that many students already use iTunes, and many own iPods. He says that the college is looking into putting materials on the iTunes service that would be available to anyone, with the hope that alumni and others interested in the university would tune in.Both Mr. Brooks and Ms. Johnson say that their biggest concern in committing to the project was security, but that Apple officials persuaded them that the system is safe.


So Apple today announced how universities across the globe can supply their materials

iTunes U has arrived, giving higher education institutions an ingenious way to get audio and video content out to their students. Presentations, performances, lectures, demonstrations, debates, tours, archival footage; school is about to become even more inspiring.
Colleges and universities build their own iTunes U sites. Faculty post content they create for their classes. Students download what they need, and go. Learning isn’t just for the classroom anymore. It’s for anytime and anyplace you’ve got a Mac, a PC, or an iPod.


Created in collaboration with colleges and universities, iTunes U makes it easier to extend learning, explore interests, learn more about a school and stay connected with an alma mater. Content from iTunes can be loaded onto an iPod with just one click and experienced on-the-go, anytime, making learning from a lecture just as simple as enjoying music.

When searching a technical archive at MIT I usually found one or two subject areas each with 30 or 40 tracks apiece, and should you decide to have a bit of a play at the itunes u site (direct link to iTunes Music Store) you may notice an interesting complimentary apology in the form of a Donation button. Nevertheless its early days when if you could consider the enormous number of qualifiable instuitions that exist in the known world, Its interesting to note that as our devices get smaller our cognitive sense of the world expands considering the latest number of Extrasolar planets we have in our minds eye.

Update: Big drawback about this new type of podcast is that it downloads your lecture into your Music Library and not in the Podcast Library. I wonder whether it has anything to do with the dowloadables File Format, or whether there is a farout Apple justification in this ?

PlayPay; Now "the world's largest MP3 store" ?


PayPlay has just launched "the world's largest MP3 download store" -- a store selling more than 1.3 million indie music tracks, with a search engine that allows you to search for your fave artists and get similar indie artists in the catalog.

Amazingly the prices seem to be incredibly close to the bone but lets not forget that Indie means Independent, ie distribution of Independent music has been until now rather impossible to sell in such potentially large market

The recommendation system is the key to PayPlay, since it's unlikely you've heard of most of the artists in their catalog. The artists self-identify, citing their musical influences. Searches for better-known artists -- David Byrne, Tom Waits, Talking Heads -- yielded less fruit: there were so many artists in the search results and many of them appeared to be quite adept at, um, hiding the extent to which they were influenced by some of my favorite acts.
Cory Doctorow


Although there appears to be some chatter about numbers of indie Artists available. I feel certain that once the word has got around a bit that there will be an explosion of Indie Artists and most likely some not so Indie after that and after that, well one has only to realize that paypal aka ebay has an unholy stretch of users in the worlds of business/financial transactions and seo influence. And speaking of finding those elusive Ivory Tower Indie Artists, go here.
But should you need to listen to some Indie Artists, then you can begin at ElectronX.

Bill Gates Showing off his Expensive Table


Billy Gates was on the Today Show (USA) this morning showing off his fancy new table. Want to see it in action rather than just in photos? Check the video for all sorts of goodness of it being used for all sorts of applications, such as playing with photos, wirelessly pulling photos off a camera, and ordering and paying for food using credit cards.

Nevertheless it maybe interesting to note Touch Screens have been around for a good while now, I must admit that I do remember having seen this screen being demoed a little while ago in a a tech discovery site which unfortinately at the present time of writing I can't remember, hang on was it around the time that Steve Jobs announced the touch screen iphone back in early January this year ? .....er maybe ?
I find it pretty damn freaky that Mr Gates already the worlds richest man in the world will with this device have unimaginable numbers of these screens in every commercial precinct on the globe and beyond. whew. Hey so everyone will have an apple in their pocket and a Microsoft on every table. I imagine it won't be to long before were all reading Murdoch epaper on the bus in the morning ?

Sunday 27 May 2007

360 Degree Movie Panorama

This panorama is a movie panorama. Wait for the whole movie to download first, then press play. As the mobilsed camera moves down the street you can swing the panorama around 360 degrees either to the left or to the right (by holding the mouse down and moving the mouse left or right). As the camera moves down the street you can see on the adjacent map a large red dot on top of the street marked heavily in red as to where the camera is in relation to the geographical location. Amazing what a little ingenuity can achieve according to Peter Murphy the camera is actually facing up towards the sky but it is focusing on a parabolic mirror. The actual stitching of the captured footage apparently works via some kind of miraculous software. Here is a technical explanation of shooting a panorama with a mirror.

Saturday 26 May 2007

500 Years of Women Portrait Paintings

500 years of female portraits in western art in just under 3 minutes morphing from one to the next, featuring the following Artists, but not in order of appearance
Leonardo Da Vinci, Raphael, Titian, Botticelli , Boltraffio, Albrecht Durer, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Messina, Perugino, Hans Memling, El Greco, Hans Holbein, Rokotov, Peter Paul Rubens, Gobert, Caspar Netscher, Pierre Mignard, Jean-Marc Nattier, Vigee-Le Brun, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Winterhalter, Tyranov, Borovikovsky, Venetsianov, Gros, Kiprensky ...
perhaps someone who is reading this can post a comment revealing the correct oder of appearance..............

Yet More Flights of Flexibility

Sony and Philips Unveil Flexible OLED Displays

The new display combines two technologies: Sony's organic thin film transistor, which is required to make flexible displays, and organic electroluminescent display.

Two of the world's biggest flat-panel display makers, Sony Corp. and LG.Philips LCD Co. Ltd., unveiled flexible full-color displays at a display industry show in California this week.

Sony took the wraps off its prototype on Thursday and released an impressive video showing the display being bent to form a semi-circle while still displaying a moving video image. The 2.5-inch display has a resolution of 160 pixels by 120 pixels making it a little larger than the typical cell phone screen and a little lower resolution.

The screen from LG.Philips LCD is larger at 4 inches in diagonal width and has a higher resolution of 320 pixels by 240 pixels. In contrast to Sony's video, LG.Philips LCD released only a photo that showed the display curved at a slight angle, as seen here.

This is a profound development in Electronics and will probably mean circular and/or curved panoramic advertising billboards making for even more clutter than as seen here


These flexi screens with looped animations or movies will probably be exploited as in the form initially as watch bands and may also create a whole new form of Jewellery such as.

But flexibilty can also prove to be hazardous
as one crickey fella found out

Thursday 24 May 2007

Thin,Flat Flexible,Wireless Power Source

A team of Japanese researchers has created a novel wireless power-transmission device that is thin, flat, and flexible. Based on a sheet of plastic, the device can be put on desks, floors, walls, and almost any other location, delivering power to electronics placed on or near it without the use of cables or connectors.
The electrical components are deposited onto the plastic via state-of-the-art inkjet printing technology using “electronic ink.” The finished product is about one millimeter thick and 21 centimeters square, although power sheets large enough to cover entire walls or floors could potentially be created.
The sheet can deliver up to about 40 watts, enough to power light bulbs and small electronics (cell phones, clocks, etc.) equipped to accept wireless power. The sheet has an impressive 81 percent efficiency, meaning 81 percent of the emitted power is received by devices.
The sheet is an example of “organic electronics,” a fast-growing field in which circuits are based on conducting plastics rather than conventional silicon. Organic electronics have several advantages, including being cheaper to manufacture, more environmentally safe to produce, physically light, and, as in this case, are often thin and bendable.


Corresponding researcher Takao Someya, a scientist at the University of Tokyo, told PhysOrg.com, “Our power-transmission sheet addresses two of the issues facing the electronics field: creating ecologically friendly power systems and developing power-transmission technologies that further the imminent trend of 'ambient electronics' – electronic networks, such as sensors, built into our homes and offices to increase our day-to-day security and convenience.”

Wednesday 23 May 2007

A Whale of a story

A rather daunting prospect awaits you if you are prepared to sit and watch a streaming image of a full sized blue whale glide across your screen. I only have a 512k broadband and a 17inch monitor, I therefore only had enough patience to watch the blue whale's eye slide out of view. So I imagine an ADSL2+ speed or higher might be more pleasurable and probably even more so if you either had at your a disposal a large wide screen TV/monitor or better still a projector. The accompanying audio track creates a similar cohesion to Brian Eno's 77 million paintings, except that the blue whale is making the sound and is therefore not a generative widget. Nevertheless the whole experience of the gliding whale echo's a similar ambience to Eno's work ?

There are few creatures that evoke as much mystery, awe, and wonderment as do whales. So many of the greatest worlds and creatures imagined by comic artists, video-game makers, and film-makers are inspired from these lumbering giants.

Unfortunately, the closest most of us will ever get to whale will be watching one through a pane of glass at an aquarium or maybe (though hopefully not) on one of those horrible whale watching (chasing) tourist boats. And even then the best you’ll get is a Beluga whale or maybe an Orca.

Thanks to some clever Flash work by the anti-whaling folks at WCDS, now you can see a life size whale right on your computer screen–life size! If your week is getting off to a hectic start and your Monday starts to spiral out of control, just click below and take a moment to drift in the sea with this gentle beast. This is a must click.

Tune-In Italy (online or off)


Founded in 2004, RadioArteMobile is an online radio station and more. The Italian organization creates programming, on and off the internet, that explores the ever-evolving relationship between sound and visual art. These projects extend to exhibitions and public events, and RAM most recently helped found Rome's Sound Art Museum, which will appropriately be run by run by a visual artist, curator, and musicologist/composer. The institution was inaugurated with an exhibition called Inaudita, the title of which means unprecedented as well as unheard. Granted, the show presented artists fairly steeped in audio art practice (Vito Acconci, Markus Huemer, Donatella Landi, Stephen Vitiello, and Achim Wollscheid), but attempted to provide new context both for an Italian audience and with broader regard to the sound/image relationship. All of these shows and, of course, RAM's radio shows, are archived online and the group takes pride in the 'mobility' of their archives--making th! em more approachable to a diverse international audience. Remain dialed-in for further developments. - James Petrie via Rhizome

................running the mouse over the letters after the jump reveal some pretty bright neat sound samples...............


Monday 21 May 2007

77 Million Paintings by Brian Eno

Brian Eno's 77 Million Flights of Fancy
But are they really paintings, aren't they just computer graphics of the generative kind ? Its going to be interesting to see if aestheticians of fine art will accept this new genre (what Eno describes as visual poetry) as paintings, except to say that we will have to throw out the notion that 'paintings' can be other than real objects and accept that 'paintings' can also be accepted as virtual objects !
Eno's website is moreso a sales a pitch for his 'at home installation'. When we first visit his site we are introduced to his concept thru a a little audio introduction about his art and his music - his voice is as crisp as his computer graphics and I say computer graphics because they are not really paintings ! Paintings are real objects that are viewed on a wall - paintings are painted onto a real surface. If we are going to accept Eno's latest installation artwork as paintings then we will have to include all the generative computer graphics like the iTunes visualiser and all of the other 'visual poetry' type generative computer art just for starters, after that there billions more of screen based virtuae !
(I have just created this word virtuae to denote a plural of virtual)such as can be seen as a slide show or a movie or an animation ?
No they are paintings in name only and really is a slow moving ambient visual poetry for Airports or lounge rooms. He may have had more luck coming up with this idea before generative computer graphics had come about, Nevertheless, if he can make a buck or two then good luck to him. Personally I believe he would make much more money selling Photographs of his gallery installations on ebay !

13 year old CEO a real bobbydazzler


This bright young chap has a developed a card game as a teaching aid to help anyone learn about the basic building blocks of Chemistry Tables. We are continually made aware in the media of how science and science educators express their concerns of falling student numbers in the classrooms of Science and often how many students of science drop out because of the details associated with such topics as this.
In the youtube video he describes how his game works, based on 66 cards - each card has a Chemical Symbol with a picture of its molecular structure together with the basic information of each. He gives a quick demonstration of how it works with his very professional looking pack. He has set up a small start up company (check out his website) to attempt to attract a seeding funding grant of $100,000.
He seems to be carrying a unique insight into how science educators might be assisted with this game in teaching young learners how to understand the chemical structures of the basic building blocks of matter. A very worthwhile cause indeed, I think I ought to order a pack since I have always had some difficulty in grasping these basics of molecular instructions.

Saturday 19 May 2007

What Is This Handsome Looking Brute


Its the SeaPhantom which has helicopter speed but a powerboat price and its creators are attempting to render the 'Blue Highways' (vid) of the world a reality. Gyroscopes, computers and an aerodynamic lifting system make this one fast and stable sea craft. And it’s supposed to be economical too. Mind you, whichever way you slice the onion, moving fast across water is going to cost money. Apparently you can have one now for a cool half million.

The main body flies approximately four feet above average wave crests on three-point shock dampened foils. Its total dry weight is approximately 1750 pounds (800 kg). The current prototype engine configuration puts a standard Mercury race outboard out on the tail.

Future designs will scale our proprietary technology to the size of 1930's DC3s: 18 - 24 passenger models with projected cruise speeds of 150 knots, flying 8 to 12 feet above the average wave crests, making scheduled travel with impunity, across, for example, the Gulf of Mexico, Coastal US routes, island-to-island throughout the Caribbean, or South Pacific Islands...
Imagine comfortable speed at sea. Traveling at 85 knots (100 mph) without bone jarring wave impacts. Using a fraction of the horsepower of today’s so called fast boats. Speed nearly as fast as a helicopter. But as cheap to operate as an offshore powerboat. Simple to operate. Simple to maintain. Personal, military, commercial fleet travel on the Blue Highways of the open sea where there are no speed limits. (.pdf)

Tuesday 15 May 2007

and from the sweeping seo plains comes swicki


part 'nd parcel of web 2.0 ?

Swickis are among a clutch of technologies described under the collective tag of web 2.0. The term has many definitions, but is generally applied to web pages or applications that can be easily altered by users, rather than just being passively read.

The technology has also come to represent a spirit of free and open communication between or among companies and the users of their products and services. Hence, some web 2.0 technologies are also called social media technologies.

Blogs and wikis are the most common examples of web 2.0 technologies, but the label has been applied to many others, such as mash-ups, tagging, and virtual worlds.


wow search and more search and link search



Sunday 13 May 2007

The Cat's Eye Nebula from Hubble




......................Cloud Burst Horizon Signs Action

"Take over dem da signs boy".
An intergraphic interface with the video screens of the streets

A video art street installation. Documented in this demo movie of Pixelator
After you have clicked your mouse a movie screen Web Site immediately pops up onto your computer display and as quickly runs a download in the movie window and quite shortly plays a very fast video of him using a DIY overscreen light box that he places over street video screens on the streets of downtown ..........
very fast pacey music

Cluster Ballooning SEO Escapes



Have you ever dreamed of being carried into the sky by a giant bouquet of colorful toy balloons?

That's the idea behind cluster ballooning. The pilot wears a harness, to which a cluster of large, helium-filled balloons are attached. Control is achieved by releasing ballast to ascend, or by bursting balloons to descend. The most famous cluster balloon flight took place in 1982. Larry Walters, with no prior ballooning experience, attached 42 helium weather balloons to a lawnchair, intending to go up a few hundred feet, but instead soaring to 16,000. Surprisingly, Walters survived his flight. However, both before and since Walters' adventure, experienced balloonists have experimented with helium balloon clusters, some rising to even greater heights.

Cluster ballooning is an extreme form of ballooning in which a single balloonist is attached by a harness to a cluster of relatively small helium-inflated rubber balloons. While the joy level of dangling from so much eye-popping color might be high -- so is the danger level. Unlike traditional hot-air balloons, which possess vents for altitude control, cluster balloons rise uncontrollably, expanding as they go, forcing balloonists to cut balloons loose to maintain altitude and descend.

The most famous cluster balloonist must be Larry Walters, who, in 1982, without any prior ballooning experience, attached 42 weather balloons to a piece of patio furniture and lifted off.

Monday 7 May 2007

We All Know H2O What About O3 & NO2

Update May 11 this site temporarily closes and reopens after a new work has been added and this has just this minute occurred.

A small collection of Climate aware Artists attempting to..respond to the relationship between art, global climate change and networked culture.
This is a complex Art Project.... "14 artists havebeen selected to create short web-videos or other “bloggable” projects responding to the pervasive discourse and images of the climate change crisis. The original works may include animations, documentaries, personal testimonials, appropriations, data streams and text or image slideshows"

Although I'm certain that the intent by the project organizer is honorable, the whole project defies the magic of us against nature rather then being in it - we become the spectator.
Nevertheless some of the individual Art works in this project seemed to be doing their hardest
if only at the very least to reinvent reality thru the technology they are using but to mimic small windows of the every day and shower them out to us thru even smaller windows

ROADSIDE GARDEN SOCAL
Roadside Garden Socal is a desktop application that downloads and visualizes daily amounts of O3 (ozone) and NO2 (nitrogen dioxide) in the atmosphere in Southern Californiain the form of a small roadside tree next to a live Souther California highway webcam.

This project includes a downloadable application for Linux, OSX and windows users.

Friday 4 May 2007

Video: E. Coli Hand-Held Sensor


Another break through in medical technology has emerged to help countries quarantine against possible bacterial epidemics transmigrating :
A chemical engineer at Drexel University has developed a handheld, simple to use sensor that can quickly spot contamination by deadly strains of the E coli or by listeria, helping food producers find out whether their products are have dangerous amounts of E coli or Listeria before they are shipped out to consumers. It can also detect other food pathogens, as well as anthrax in liquid and air, cryptosporin in drinking water, and endotoxins in pharmaceuticals. It could also be used to detect early cancer signatures in urine and blood. Detecting E. coli can take 24 hours or more with conventional tests. The Drexel device can detect the presence of E. coli within 10 minutes.

What the hell am I doing here ?


This image is from one of my earliest favorite Bloggers that I have remained loyal to viewing, largely because I'm highly allergic to cats. So Mediawench prides me in the occasional view of their teddy bear warmness and their sometime flighty personality, although I must admit that cats can be quite harmful to native flora and fauna by terribly silly human behaviour.
Well if your a new viewer to my blog you wouldn't've appreciated the dramatic switch in the appearance of my Blog template.

Wednesday 2 May 2007

Global Warming World War Entrapment

Seriously
Global Warming should be treated with the same furore that we pour into a World War.
The Global Warming National Security Report by the retired U.S. military leaders, including the former Army chief of staff and President Bush's former chief Middle East peace negotiator called on the U.S. government to make major cuts in emissions of gases that cause global warming.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Global warming poses a "serious threat to America's national security'' with terrorism worsening and the U.S. will likely be dragged into fights over water and other shortages, top retired military leaders warn in a new report.

Really the whole article deserves a read mostly because of projected human and geopolitical entrapment, issues of mass this and diminishing that. Elsewhere today Scientists warned of vastly quickening rising sea levels. Arctic ice is retreating more quickly than computer models project. Phys org report that scientists have been pouring over computer graphic simulation projections and comparing it to empirical evidence collected in the field.

"While the ice is disappearing faster than the computer models indicate, both observations and the models point in the same direction: the Arctic is losing ice at an increasingly rapid pace and the impact of greenhouse gases is growing," says NCAR scientist Marika Holland, one of the study’s co-authors.
And
"This suggests that current model projections may in fact provide a conservative estimate of future Arctic change, and that the summer Arctic sea ice may disappear considerably earlier than IPCC projections," says Stroeve.

the scientists conclude that; "The Arctic is especially sensitive to climate change partly because regions of sea ice, which reflect sunlight back into space and provide a cooling impact, are disappearing. In contrast, darker areas of open water, which are expanding, absorb sunlight and increase temperatures. This feedback loop has played a role in the increasingly rapid loss of ice in recent years, which accelerated to 9.1 percent per decade from 1979 to 2006 according to satellite observations."
This all seems to suggest that Governments of the world are not actually working fast enough to arrest the enemies, rising carbon emissions among the top 10 Surprising Results of Global Warming

God dam it or should I say, don't bother the Dutch are probably in need of a new country

And as if we can or should continue to play with nature yet more stringently again the Dutch planning agency recommends diverting the Rhine River as sea levels rise.

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