Spaxels, Aerial Robot Swarm Light Painting

An Ars Electronica's art group, Futurelab is experimenting with lighted forms, formations and geometric patterns in airspace kind of like crop circles in the sky with a drone swarm of programmed robot quadcopters in full operational flights.

Filter Feeders providing carcinogens to the food chain

A suspension-feeding Octocoral, an Indo-Pacific Menella 

Filter feeders are animals that consume by straining suspended matter and food particles from water, typically by passing the water over a specialised filtering structure.

A filter feeder, also known as a suspension feeder, is any animal that obtains food by filtering water for nutritious particles. The strategy of filtering small particulate matter out of the water has been occurring for over 400 million years, when suspension feeding was quite common in what is know as the Palaeozoic era.

Filter feeders range from the very small (krill) to the largest living animal, the blue whale which eats other filter feeders for food, namely zooplankton.

Generally the smallest of the Filter feeders are sea floor dwellers that soak up a mixture of mud and sand and a thin film of slime or ooze accumulates as a sort of pap at the interface of the water at the bottom, together with what other detritus might be mixed within it.

Rufus Cuff, Wearable tethering smartphone accomplice

Earlier today Google released it's much anticipated Android Wear, an operating system for smart-watches and almost immediately announcements emerged from an assortment of technology companies, with a number of new 'wrist-wear' devices. 

Most of these devices are called smart-watches and are at most 'in-between' devices, that function in accompaniment with a smart-phone. Similarly the Rufus Cuff has emerged as a real life Star-Trekesque 'wrist communicator'

The Rufus is a wrist communicator that can pair either with an iphone or Android smartphone, The cuff has an exceptionally large screen although the band that attaches to your wrist appears to have a fairly normal looking size band!

Wake up call on the worlds changing climate

Back in 2008, I wrote here, in this blog that:

"While most Governments of the world are attempting to address the dramatic increase of noxious gases into our breathable atmosphere the worlds climate continues incessantly to deteriorate."

Nothing much has changed since from the collective efforts of world governments,  except that we now know that earth's average temperature, has, due to increased CO2 in the atmosphere warmed up one degree Centigrade  in last 100 years.

One degree C may not seem much on the face of it but if it actually rose to four degrees all of the equatorial regions of the world would become uninhabitable.

It's predicted by climate scientists that if the world were to continue to put out the same CO2 levels, then by the end of the century the world's average temperature will rise another 3 degrees above our existing average temperature.

Nietzsche's Writing Ball, an historical re-formed invention

Typing as we know it, has for sometime relied upon using qwerty keyboards, but unremarkably perhaps, the worlds first typewriter was hemispherical.

The worlds first commercially sold typewriter ever made was engineered by a Danish inventor, Rasmus Malling-Hansen in 1870, known as the Hansen writing ball.

As can be seen in the image here this writing ball was not a qwerty keyboard that apparently arrived a mere 4 years later from Sholes & Glidden otherwise known as the Remington typewriter.

As we know the qwerty keyboard typewriter has been and still is our main technical interface for writing and publishing. Thus when the Remington emerged onto the stage for writers the western world over, the Malling-Hansen's invention was almost completely forgotten. 

The possibility of completely removing your identity from the internet

but, just how far into the future is impossible to determine, largely because of the exponential growth of internet compliant appliances for everyday use. Up until as recently as six years ago the only everyday consumer device that was compliant on the internet was the computer. Certainly since from the launch of Apple's iphone around 2007, a growing list of everyday consumer electronic devices are being released as connectable, or some even, dependent upon the internet and hence a legally binding identity to use and connect them.

Many if not the greater majority of them, need an online legally binding identity in order for them to even work. To name just a few of these currently internet compliant gadgets are cell phones, tablets, refrigerators, ovens, tv's, vacuum cleaners, and on the immediate horizon if not already in the consumer market motor cars.

Mirror City Time Lapse, an abstracted video of US cities

The major cities of the world are bustling cosmopolitans of people amongst huge architecture of buildings, infrastructure and plazas outlined by multitudinous  transport networks. 

Michael Shainblum, Filmer and photographer has for the last five years been collecting images of five major cities in the USA  with a view to "emulate these urban landscapes in a way that nobody has even seen before."

Shainblum has done this by collating a visual re-presenting of some significant American cities: Chicago, San Francisco, San Diego, Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

He has set out to "showcase something unique and artistic, which takes Time lapse photography into a more abstract direction".

iSketchnote: Nifty pen gadget records notes and sketches

Although the digital age is well and truly absorbed into our lives and community, there are many many writers and journalists remain using a a pad of paper and a pen or pencil. 

Simultaneously there are some pen pushers who have adopted either a digital pen or other such device to record and digitise their notes, scribblings and or doodles. These devices are by no means the most harmonious of devices between analogue and digital that justifiably satisfy all writers particularly those that use Apple products like the ipad and or Mac  computer. 

Thus an erstwhile team of developers have created an ipad cover enabling Apple centric writers and doodlers alike to digitally record their jottings. While the iSketchnote is being produced as a cover for an ipad, it can also be used with either a PC or Mac via USB.

Pinger alarm system helps prevent "Cetacean By-catch"

Every year thousands of unintended marine mammals lose their lives by becoming entangled and or strangled in commercial fishing nets and lines. This is known as “Cetacean By-catch”.

Marine scientists estimate that more than 300,000 Whales, Dolphins and Porpoises (Cetaceans) accidentally drown in fishing nets every year. "Cetacean by-catch is a global problem and represents the single largest survival threat to many marine mammal populations around the world."

Scientists at the Future Oceans research laboratory in Queensland, Australia have developed a small but clever acoustic alert gadget that emits sound waves, tuned to alert Whales, Dolphins and Porpoises to the presence of fishing nets. These devices called Pingers have been scientifically proven to be the only known solution to significantly reduce cetacean by-catch.

The Device, Thrilling Sci-Fi Short Film

We are all now not only depended upon geeky electronic gadgets of all varieties and more and more fascinated and intrigued by what they may provide or assist us with, that we are all perched on the edge of our seats wondering where the next gadget will be taking us.

Simultaneously many of today's devices that many of us can't seem to do with out like smart-phones, tablet computers and eclipsing the horizon smart wearable computers were all first seen and created in numerous Sci-fi movies and television shows, like Star Trek and 2001 A Space Odyssey. 

Thus the technology harbingers of our modern geeky gadget life are very likely gnawing over  what the latest Sci-fi creators have to offer up.

Open airspace ballet with tractors

On a wide open dusty plain near a waterway is a choreographed group of dancers and tractors performing a contemporary style in an open airspace environment to the accompaniment of some unknown music.

The music track itself is of a rather poor quality mainly near the beginning of the edited  video, but might be because of the position of the video camera, nevertheless the performance is entertainingly original, and massively popular in the region wherever that may be?

Click through to watch the video.

Throwable camera takes awesome in-the-air images

A bit larger than a cricket ball and smaller than a baseball, the Squito, a throwable panoramic video camera provides users to capture stabilised full "360° spherical panoramic video and high-resolution images over the course of its airborne trajectory."

Although the inventor, Steve Hollinger, says his device is packed with sensors, one is given to speculate that there is in all likelihood,  accelerators and gyroscopic sensors housed in this device merely because it knows which orientation it's in when spinning and or drifting thru the air. Simultaneously as it's flying through the air, the device at any given time is reorienting and stitching individual frames into panorama's, not only but also on the fly, captured footages are being sent wirelessly to a smartphone.

Click through to view a well made demonstration video.

Bone conducting Spatial audio sound tracks via vibrating windows

Bone conduction occurs when sound is channelled to the inner ear through the bones of the skull. World famous Classical music composer Beethoven went completely deaf in his later life and relied on creating his compositions, by dismantling his piano, laying out on the floor then leaning the side of his face on the floor. This was possibly the first documentary evidence of someone listening to sound by bone conduction.

These days bone conduction techniques are becoming more commonplace with advances in signalling technology giving rise to  headphones, and hearing aids, among which there are specialized communication products such as a bone conduction speaker that is used by scuba divers. More recently is the Google Glass device for the relay of information to the user through a microphone that sits beside the user's ear.

But BBDO Germany is taking this technology a step further with highly specialized device attached to the windows of public transport that silently transmits high-frequency oscillations that your brain converts into sound.

Arapaima, the world's largest freshwater fish

With regards to human consumption of fish we can no longer safely use the expression,  "there's plenty of fish in the sea" since more than ever most of the world relies on official quotas and more than ever we're attempting to preserve many species in their natural habitats by farming.

Just as in the organised world the native populations are in the process of observing this same idea, none more so than the people hunting wild species of arapaima, a long slender torpedo-shaped black fish with red markings that lurks in the Amazon river of Brazil. Possibly the worlds largest freshwater fish, can reach up to 15 feet (3m) in length and weigh as much as 200 kilograms (440 pounds). The arapaima are very unique among fish since they breathe air with their very primitive lung, and for this reason are known by the common names "pirarucu" in Portuguese and "paiche" in Spanish.

"Because they rise to the surface to breathe every 5 to 15 minutes, they are easy to locate and fishermen harpoon them to sell their valuable meat or to feed their families. That combination of high value and vulnerability has led to widespread depletion of their populations and they are now listed as endangered" (Sciencedaily).

Often referred to as the "Cod of the Amazon", since the natives often salt and dry the meat, rolling it into a cigar-style tied package and can be stored for a long time without rotting, which is very important in a region where few have refrigeration. 

Whilst the arapaima of South America are threatened with extinction due to overfishing they are "also threatened by deforestation, because the fish prefers to swim into flooded forests during the wet season to spawn and guard their young. The young are vulnerable to predators and need to find cover among the flooded vegetation". (newswatch)

Whilst they may remain on the critical list of endangered species in the Amazon, as a way of preserving the species: "The arapaima has also been introduced for fishing in Thailand and Malaysia. Fishing for this species in Thailand can be done in several lakes, where one often sees arapaima over 150 kg landed and then released". (Wikipedia)

ILO, a shoe box sized telescope

It's conceivable that sometime in the future individuals or groups of individuals will collaboratively create outer space participatory projects. Many things albeit will likely need to change like launch and technology costs, let alone overall finance. Needless to say, there is one such 'citizen science' project in the throws of getting under way.

A shoe box sized telescope is set to be launched before the end of 2015, known as the International Lunar Observatory, (ILO)  the privately funded project was designed and built by Silicon Valley based Moon Express Inc. 

According to Moon Express CEO Bob Richards; "It's citizen science on the moon and it's really a new model of public participation,"  and "This will be a small, but very high-performance telescope on the moon that the public and scientists or professionals and amateurs alike will have access to over the internet." 

This will give just about  anyone interested individual unprecedented access to photograph and film in almost total panoramic views  the surface of the moon, earth and interstellar space.

Accordingly, Canadian-born Bob Richards, CEO of Moon Express, said the very high performance telescope has already been tested on the summit of Mauna Kea volcano in Hawaii, and pretended it to be on the moon and given access to some selected individuals through the internet, testing its successful work-ability.

Casetop: A cradle display case for your mobile phone

The world of computer users are swiftly moving to mobile phones and tablets since they are packed with powerful processors and healthy amounts of system memory and storage.  A significant drawback or limitation they have is when users want to use them for lots of writing and feel confined by the cramped keyboards or get fed up with one or two finger typing. Similarly, but with some exceptions, many mobile phones lack much in the way of adequate screen real estate.

John Andrus realised he had a solution to these issues by inventing a go-between gadget, he calls a Casetop, which is a netbook-like LCD display panel, keyboard and battery pack combination that uses your smart mobile device for it's computing power.

Casetop is universally compatible with most mobile phones and tablets that have Bluetooth and a video out option, except for windows phones since they don't have a video out port on their devices.

Check the video out after the jump.

Chasing the storm - empowering time-lapse film

Just as a thunderstorm can take a day to build, so to can it take less than an hour before it unleashes a plethoric tirade of havoc, some, more dramatic than most others!

The fluidity of natures meteorological architecture often fills us with a sense awe and wonder when conjuring weather gathers within our sight path. None more so entertainingly present in Nathan Kaso's empowering short time-lapse film "Chasing the storm", shot around the Plenty Valley and Yarra Valley in Melbourne's outer east, (Australia).

Wide open landscape panning, squeeze sped and slowed, altered time lapse sequences elegantly married to Lzn02's delightful 'Fleur De Lune' sound track, and unfortunately all too short!

In case your interested Nathan Kaso captured his raw video footages with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 17-40mm f/4L, 24-105mm f/4L camera then processing in Lightroom and lAfter Effects softwares.

Drobo Mini: Adroit external data storage system

Key to all data is deciding whether your data is worth keeping. This post is for all who wish to save data at all costs, effectively and with as little inconvenience as possible.

Ok, so in something the size of a deli sandwich, the Drobo Mini, loaded with three 2.5inch (63.5 mm) one terabyte hard drives and weighing in at about 3 pounds (1.3 kgs), either sits neatly on your desk and or robust enough to withstand baggage handling in your travel bag.

Among the many technical features - are  hot-swappable drive bays  - no carriers or screws needed to insert drives  - an innovative design allowing drives to click in and out like a ballpoint pen, notwithstanding that it’s the world's first high-performance and protected portable storage system.

Here to give you a more thorough explanation of how you can integrate the Drobo mini into your working or living environment is, the following video review courtesy of George Crump, lead analyst from Storage Switzerland:

The really significant feature of this device is how so little, indeed, if any, attention, is needed during it's operation. The device is in fact a slave robot, continuously updating your data, and depending on how you set it up  automatically shuffles data between it's loaded drives.

The Drobo mini is the "fastest portable storage array—with cutting-edge Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 connectivity and can be loaded with solid state drives (SSDs)."

To read and discover more of all the rigours specifications and technical information of this adroit little tech critter, head on over to John P's One Mans Blog.

100,000 Stars A Google Chrome Experiment

is an interactive visualization of the stellar neighborhood of our region of the universe, which was created within the Google Chrome web browser environment.

"It shows the location of 119,617 nearby stars derived from multiple sources, including the 1989 Hipparcos mission. Zooming in reveals 87 individually identified stars and our solar system. The galaxy view is an artist's rendition based on NGC 1232, a spiral galaxy like the Milky Way."

One can choose to navigate automatically by clicking on the Tour button at the top of the page. Alternatively one can choose to manually pan the map with one's mouse. With a mouse button held down and arcing the mouse around one swing the whole complex and or moving the mouse in or out enables zooming. The tall vertical bar on the right of the screen allows one to push towards the focus of the map our sun and solar system or sliding the bar towards the bottom of the length reveals an edge of the Milky way galaxy.

The creators of this interactive map warn that accuracy is not guaranteed and does not comply with reality standards of interstellar navigation. this stimulating web toy was programmed by some space enthusiasts at Google. The delightful music is by Sam Hulick, whose work you may be familiar with from the video game, Mass Effect. The track is entitled “In a Strange Land” and is used with his permission.

A complete list of references used in conjunction with making this interesting star chart our found by clicking the question mark in the bottom right hand corner.

Delightful Animated Document tour of an email

High tech company Google delivers the goods again by showing us exactly the path an email takes after one clicks the send button. And wow what a maze of tubes and paths interpreted every now and again by a server farm exchange and sent on its way to the next.

I was dutifully surprised as you surely will be by the sheer number of twists and turns and blocks of servers every one's single email takes and some emails are delivered within some instances seeming to appear in some ones inbox in less than a second.

"Google is creating a better web that's better for the environment. We’re greening our company by using resources efficiently and supporting renewable power. That means when you use Google products, you’re being better to the environment."

So go watch the journey your email gets delivered with an equally delightful minimal set of sound effects through their animated document. It's worth noting that your interaction is required as each browser window traverses the width of your browser window with each arrow to the right, requires clicking to continue, (otherwise described as intuitive browsing).

Although the amount of green energy displaced by Google servers might in some cases seem negligible, it's generally enthusing to notice they're asserting the need to switch to carbon neutral technology, albeit there're also likely receiving lower costs benefit in doing so!