[Geeks Are Sexy] Technology News

Call of Duty players could be called to duty

A British intelligence agency is to recruit staff via Xbox Live. But sadly it’s not a case of hunting down the players with the best scores in stealth and puzzle games.

Instead the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) is to advertise through videos played on the main dashboard screen. The agency says that not only is it a good way of reaching 18-34 year olds who might not see traditional print or broadcast ads, but that the skills it looks for in candidates can be “reflected in game-play experiences on Xbox, such as quick thinking, problem solving and team work.” Presumably figuring out how to get a modded console to run online after the recent crackdown might also demonstrate the necessary abilities.

The agency’s main role is protecting the security of the communications technology used by the government, armed forces and security agencies.

Officially there is no connection between GCHQ and the Xbox beyond a simple advertising deal. However, I’m not convinced. At the top of this story you’ll have seen a model of GCHQ’s main building (taking photographs of it is generally frowned upon.) However, look a little closer and the full extent of the agency’s powers may become clearer:

[Via Guardian.co.uk]

Why Traffic Jams Happen for No Apparent Reason

We all know it, traffic jams that seem to happen for no apparent reason is one of the biggest source of frustration for drivers. I can definitely relate to that. Fortunately, dear fellow drivers, our frustration now has an explanation! The phenomenon has recently been re-created for the first time on a test-track by a team of Japanese researchers. Check out the following video report from NewScientist for all the details

Researchers from several Japanese universities managed the feat by putting 22 vehicles on a 230-metre single-lane circuit (see video).

They asked drivers to cruise steadily at 30 kilometres per hour, and at first the traffic moved freely. But small fluctuations soon appeared in distances between cars, breaking down the free flow, until finally a cluster of several vehicles was forced to stop completely for a moment.

That cluster spread backwards through the traffic like a shockwave. Every time a vehicle at the front of the cluster was able to escape at up to 40 km/h, another vehicle joined the back of the jam.

The shockwave jam travelled backwards through the ring of vehicles at roughly 20 km/h, which is the same as the speed of the shockwave jams observed on roads in real life, says lead researcher Yuki Sugiyama, a physicist in the department of complex systems at Nagoya University.

[Via NewScientist]

Friday Morning Humor – The Old New Math: 25 / 5 = 14

…and 14*5 = 25. Watch the video below for the reasoning behind this.

Google Chrome OS Demo

Google Chrome OS is an open source operating system for people who spend most of their time on the web built around the core tenets of speed, simplicity and security. This is a demo video to give you a feel for the Google Chrome OS user experience.

Accelerometer-Controlled Marble Maze

In order to spark kid’s interest in robotics at an Illinois’ Boy Scout Jamboree, Engineer Dan Toborowski built this amazing accelerometer-controlled marble maze. Check it out:

I recently completed a project involving wireless control of a Parallax BOE-Bot using an accelerometer and decided to adapt this system to control a custom-built 2 axis maze assembly. Accelerometers can be demonstrated in many exciting ways and kids will likely be drawn to a demo considering the similarity to popular applications such as the Nintendo Wii. The goal of this project was to create an exciting game visitors can play while learning about sensors, microcontrollers, and hobby robotics. Looking ahead, I also have ambitions of one day incorporating vision software and equipment to allow the maze to solve itself.

[Via Team tOBOR]

What if Earth had rings like Saturn?

Made using 3ds Max, this video demonstrates what Earth would look like if it had a ring system like Saturn.

[Via Videosift]

Got a pen? There’s an app for that!

There’s an app store for the iPhone, the BlackBerry, Android, Windows Mobile, and pretty much every mobile device you can imagine.

Including a pen.

Sadly this isn’t for your humble Bic, though I’d happily subscribe to a magical USB auto-refill function. Instead its for the Livescribe Pulse, the digital pen at the heart of a system which allows the user to write on special “paper” and have the results inputted directly to their computer.

The pen also includes a built-in audio recorder for note-taking and will even syncronize the audio and the writing. That means that you can switch on the audio during a speech or lecture and then, if you later find something you aren’t sure about in your notes, you can instantly hear the audio from the point at which you wrote something specific.

The pen having an embedded computer, it’s possible to create other features for it, which is where the app store comes in. At present there are thirty apps, of which 22 must be purchased.

While most of them are the type of novelty app you find in most similar stores (a list of gifts appropriate to particular anniversaries for example), there are a few that make specific use of the pen, such as a range of Hangman games and one to teach you how to draw and name all 239 Acyclic Alkanes.

The most expensive app in the store, retailing at a whopping $99, works with a specially designed book of Hebrew chants and allows the user to point the pen to a section of text, hear a professional chanter recite the section, then record their own attempt and compare the two. The crossover of people who own this device and those who need to learn the chants is probably minute, but at $99 it doesn’t take many sales to make a tidy sum.

Thursday Morning Humor: Shiny Suds

While not really geek-related, this is just too funny not to post. Enjoy!

Dad Spoke Only Klingon to Child for Three Years

Minnesota linguist d’Armond Speers has a doctorate in computational linguistics. He says he isn’t much of a Star Trek fan. But he spent the first three years of his son’s life speaking to him only in Klingon!

“I was interested in the question of whether my son, going through his first language acquisition process, would acquire it like any human language,” Speers said. “He was definitely starting to learn it.”

So when Ultralingua, a dictionary, translation and grammar software company in Dinkytown, honored requests from customers to create applications for a Klingon dictionary, they turned to Speers, a self-employed software consultant.

Speers helped develop a digital dictionary in Klingon for Mac, Windows, and iPhone for the software company Ultralingua. Speer’s son is now 15 years old and doesn’t speak a word of Klingon. If he had stuck with it, we’d have at least one bona-fide code talker for the CIA!

[via Digg]

Introducing the iPhone Blower App

Yes, with the power of the iPhone Blower app, you’ll be able to use your iPhone to blow candles out wherever you go!

The thrilling potential of SixthSense technology

At TEDIndia, Pranav Mistry demos several tools that help the physical world interact with the world of data — including a deep look at his SixthSense device and a new, paradigm-shifting paper “laptop.” In an onstage Q&A, Mistry says he’ll open-source the software behind SixthSense, to open its possibilities to all.

Twitter on TV a reality in Europe

Twitter can be used for as many purposes as there are types of communication, many of them of great social and political importance. But for many of us, it’s a way to discuss TV shows as they are broadcasted without running the risk of swamping a traditional message board forum with one-liners.

The one big hassle with this – and let’s be clear that “big hassle” is a relative term – is that most people have the TV show on one screen and their Twitter application on another. That can mean switching your attention between the TV and a smartphone, or switching back and forth between the TV and a computer including, in some particularly catastrophic cases, actually having to walk into a different room to share your views.

But not for long.

Viewers in France, Spain and Poland will soon be able to send and read Twitter posts directly on their television screen. That’s because mobile phone operator Orange provides integrated TV and broadband packages in which the TV signal is sent via the broadband phoneline, allowing interactive services to be built directly into the TV picture.

It’s not yet clear whether the Twitter function will be limited to particular programs or will be able to be used at any time (as imagined in our mock-up image).