Check out this amazing advertisement by Silestone, a company that makes countertops. Everything in this video is computer-generated and it took 2 people in 2 1/2 months to create.
The "fresh fruit" in this video blows me away.
Silestone -- 'Above Everything Else' from Alex Roman on Vimeo.
(h/t Geek)
Geek.com has a nice full article about Epic Games' upcoming game engine. The video demo below represents the next generation of Unreal. The engine is so advanced that you can't run it on any gaming systems available on the market today. Instead, the new Unreal engine is intended for the next generation of computer hardware...the Xbox 720, the PS4 and next generation PC graphics cards.
The Geek article ponders that unless Microsoft and Sony release a new console within 4-5 years, there may be a resurgence in PC gaming, since PC's will have 2 generations of advancement ahead of the consoles.
Anycase, check out the video. This is true beauty in computer graphics, soon available on your standard PC within a few years. Use the full-screen, HD option or go to YouTube itself to watch.
An international team led by engineers from the University of Queensland in Australia have overcome a key hurdle to the real-life applications of quantum computing. In essence, using current technology, engineers have no way of efficiently measuring the behavior of qubits. Like computer bits, "qubits" are the smallest measure of quantum information. According to the article, just an 8-qubit quantum computer would require over a billion measurements. The measuring tasks increase exponentially with the number of qubits.
Dr. Alessandro Fedrizzi, co-author of this study published in Physical Review Letters states:
“Imagine that you're building a car but you can't test-drive it.This is the situation that quantum engineers are facing at the moment.”
The team developed a "compressive sensing algorithm" that for the first time allowed drastic simplification for measuring quantum processes.
Quantum computing is the holy grail of computer technology. We've covered quantum technology developments a ...
read moreThe New York Times has a great article summarizing current trends in AI spreading throughout the economy. Computer AI has become so advanced that it's now starting to replace and automate higher-level jobs. Case in point, back in 1978 a lawsuit against CBS forced the company to spend $2.2 million to hire a team of lawyers and paralegals to sift through 6 million documents for several months.
Fast-forward to today. In January 2011, a company called Blackstone Discovery in Palo Alto, helped analyze 1.5 million documents for less than $100,000 and, of course, taking FAR less time.
Some law bloggers have noted the difficulty for recent law graduates to find jobs, noting that perhaps the trend is due to the bursting of a higher education bubble combined with the current economy. That probably is also the case, but this truly cost-cutting technology probably foreshadows that those ...
read moreGuger Technologies, a company based in Austria has developed a computer interface controlled by human thought. While it isn't the most elegant way to type, each letter requiring about 40 seconds of concentration, the new technology promises to give a voice to disabled patients who may have no other way to communicate.
The company has recently announced that they've reduced response time to about 1 second.
Computer maker Lenovo has produced 20 prototype laptops with the ability to scan your eyes for instructions. Lenovo hopes to head off Microsoft's attempts to drag society into motion detection with its Kinect. Instead, their new computer uses a sensor bar to shine infrared lights into the user's eyes, which it uses to track eye motions.
They even put together a demo game where players blow up asteroids simply by looking at them. Engadget has given it a great review. Unfortunately, the technology will take a few years to get to market.
The Speculist, a longstanding blog dedicated to Futurism, posted an excellent article today about IBM's supercomputer Watson and what it means for employment and jobs.
IBM has already declared their intention to move Watson into helping doctors diagnose disease and then into customer service. However, Watson's exorbitant price tag of $100 million dollars means he's isn't a very profitable investment for businesses right now.
However, the cost of computing halves every 18 months. This means in a decade, Watson will cost only ~$780,000. In 15 years, he'll cost less than $100,000.
Basically in little over 10 years, if you run a business and you replace 20 workers who make $40,000 dollars/year, not only will you get their labor value, but as Speculist writer Stephen Gordon comments, Watson never sleeps, can work 24/7 (triple the shift work of each human), never ...
read moreI'm sure this product has been out for a bit, but it was so cool I had to post it. Touchscreen tables have long been a mainstay in museum exhibits or educational science centers. However, now you can have one in your home thanks to the ingenuity of a company called Touchscape.
Naturally, it comes with a scratch-resistant surface that can be wiped clean. The company new 47" display comes with the ability to display in HD 1080p and can be used to control various entertainment around your living room, such as speakers and television. In fact, you can even watch television on it, too. I imagine this would be a highly entertaining product for little children as well.
Amazon wishlist!
Now that the mild-toned Watson has demonstrated his dominance of Jeopardy, what comes next? IBM executives have entered discussions with major corporations to answer that exact question. In the near future, when you call in for technical support, the "person" you hear might be Watson instead of a worker in India. I bet when many readers were watching Watson pwn on Jeopardy they didn't think his story would have much relevance to them. Think again. You might just run into Watson in some unexpected places.
Watson's very first assignment will be to help doctors diagnose patients. The skills displayed on Jeopardy are actually highly transferable to a medical setting. Doctors need to collect a list of symptoms and then come up with a possible diagnosis. Now, Watson will help them.
The A.I. will next appear at help desks in stores or on the phone at technical support ...
read moreIBM's Watson artificial intelligence steamrolled his mortal opponents in the 2nd round of this 3 day match. Yesterday, was a tie. However, the mellow-voiced supercomputer flabbergasted his human rivals and the host by betting cryptic dollar values, such as $6,435, to which Alex Trebek responded, "I won't ask."
Alas, humankind put up a good fight...now on to world domination. Watch and weep, fellow humans.
Here's some more science news, Kids. An international research effort involving UC Santa Barbara professors Andrew Cleland and John Martinis, along with scientists from Zhejiang University in China and NEC Corporation in Japan, has resulted in a crucial breakthrough towards the construction of a quantum computer.
Quantum computers are the holy grail of computing technology. A mature one can theoretically perform more calculations per second than there are atoms in the universe, as well as outstripping human intelligence by many, many orders of magnitude.
My understanding of quantum physics is quite limited to explain this article, but what they seem to have done is create a logic circuit, an ability to produce a 1 or 0, which is the fundamental requisite for all computing functions. However, since we're dealing in quantum physics, there exists a little twist. The teams had set up two areas and manipulated them in ...
read moreTime Magazine has published an extensive article about the genius Ray Kurzweil and the Singularity. The Singularity is often referred to as "Rapture for Nerds". The definition that I use for the Singularity is that its the point at which computer intelligence becomes equal to human intelligence. After this point in history, technological progress will become so rapid that most fields of science will converge and bring about all kinds of technological goodies considered blasphemous to many in today's society...such as incredibly-long human life and AI-enhanced human intelligence, to name just two.
The idea doesn't come without controversy. Many fear the Singularity will bring something like Skynet into existence. Mr. Kurzweil has published some corrections to the Time article here.
Ray Kurzweil currently has a little movie on tour called TRANSCENDENT MAN. If interested, look in the link to see if there's a screening near you.
A study released by my way-too-pricey alma mater USC explores the digital capacity of humanity to preserve information. Where do we keep all the data? How much can we store? Well, answering those questions require the use of Greek prefixes that people normally don't hear.
The study found that humanity's storage capacity increases roughly 28% a year. This equates to a doubling every 3 years. So basically in 30 years from now, the storage capacity of all human civilization will be over 1000 times the size it is today.
Authored by Martin Hilbert and Priscila Lopez, some other highlights of their study are:
-Humanity can currently store around 295 exabytes of information. "Exa" means add 18 zeros to the end. A typical 500 gigabyte hard drive on a PC would add 9 zeros.
-2002 marked the beginning of the Digital Age. Why? Because that year humanity's digital ...
read moreScientists at Harvard and the MITRE Corporation have developed the world's first programmable nanoprocessor. The metric prefix "nano" basically means "one-billionth". So, nanotechnology refers to devices measured in billionths of a meter, usually between 1 to 100. This breakthrough makes possible an entirely new class of commercial electronics. Also, the research represents a fundamental step to developing a nanocomputer, first envisioned 50 years ago by physicist Richard Feynman during a lecture at Caltech.
This development culminates a 10-15 year struggle according to Charles M. Lieber of Harvard:
"This work represents a quantum jump forward in the complexity and function of circuits built from the bottom up..."
Co-author Shamik Das also comments:
"Because of their very small size and very low power requirements, these new nanoprocessor circuits are building blocks that can control and enable an entirely new class of much smaller, lighter weight electronic sensors and consumer electronics."
Photo ...
read moreFor the first time ever, more smarthphones are being sold than PC's. According to reports, 100.9 million smartphones shipped in the final three months of 2010. In contrast, only 92.1 PC's sold during the same span of time. This isn't a surprising development. Potential computer buyers often wait 2 to 5 years to replace their current computers. Meanwhile, phone companies offer incentives on a regular basis for users to upgrade. Perhaps computer makes should offer similar incentive packages.
The dismal statistics were released by Eurostat, the statistics office of the European Union. According to reports, one-third of European Internet users caught a computer virus that resulted in some sort of loss, despite over 8 in 10 of them using anti-virus or other protection software. Bulgaria ranked as the most dangerous country for computer users, over half of the computers there had been infected by a virus last year. Ireland and Austria ranked as the safest countries.
What do Justin Bieber and Ozzy Osbourne have in common with smart electronic purchases? Probably nothing, unless it's an endorsement deal with Best Buy. Best Buy has created a curious refund program called "Buy Back" where, according to their trademark slogan, you can "future-proof" your electronic purchases by paying a new upfront fee. Looking over the details, I can't say I'm thrilled.
For those paying the fee, Best Buy will offer partial refunds on products out to 2 to 4 years after the purchase date. Please note: the above links are not affiliate links. The "Buy Back" is free until Feb. 12th, after which the following scale will apply:
- Laptops, netbooks and tablets: $69.99.
- Mobile phones: $39.99 to $59.99 depending on the price
- TVs: $59.99 to $349.99 depending on the price
Then, depending on when you return the item, you'll be ...
read moreCreated by the Computer Graphics Group in Erlangen, this new Kinect hack not only makes it possible to scan your face in 3D, but also to texture it with hyper-realism and animate it.
All this good stuff and the Kinect has only been out less than 6 months. You can view more of the latest Kinect ingenuity at KinectHacks.net.
Today, researchers at UC Berkely, backed by DARPA and the Department of Defense, announced they have successfully grown incredibly tiny lasers on a silicon chip. This development opens the way for an across-the-board revolution in pretty much everything electronic...computing, communications, visual displays and signal processing among other areas. The new technique will allow the placement of devices on a silicon chip that previously couldn't hold them; including, lasers, solar cells, modulators and light detectors.
The linked article summarizes the hurdles in a more scientifically correct manner than I can do here on Logic-Cool. Light is a far more effective carrier of information than electricity. One of the problems involved with developing a photonic (light-using) computer is that silicon can't easily be made to generate light. Unfortunately, silicon forms the foundation of the entire electronics manufacturing industry, so the pressures are intense for all research projects to conform ...
read moreMurdoch's news experiment "The Daily" launched today. iPad users have the option to pay 14 cents/day, 99 cents/week and $39.99/year...the latter representing a roughly 20% discount. The new venture is considered a bellwether in the media industry whether people are willing to pay for news through a specific tablet.
My guess is that the answer is ultimately "No." The Daily might be able to build a brand and become successful based on iPad-customized news, but many others crowding into the market will find the waters cold. Bloggers may still find a way to aggregate the news again for free, in similar tablet presentations.
Also, success of The Daily seems dependent upon the continued dominance of the iPad and the ability of Apple to stay on top of the hyped tech market, which are things unrelated to the quality of their news products.
Photo by ...
read moreNo blog categories
No blog archives
