Check out this awesome animated music video by Eric Power, which retells the story of the original Star Wars trilogy, set to the tune of Jeremy Messersmith’s song Tatooine. Enjoy!
[Via thedailywh.at]
Facebook / Twitter Portrait Interpretation Guide
So dear readers, after looking at the guide, how would YOU interpret your Facebook / Twitter portrait? (if you have one, of course!)
[Via]
Curtain-twitchers recruited for CCTV monitoring
Some people are really really nosy. The police can’t be everywhere at once. Put those two points together and you’ve got a simple, if controversial, solution to low-level crime.
Internet Eyes, which is launching in the British county of Devon, allows internet users to monitor CCTV footage from participating businesses. They’ll then get a token fee for watching the footage, but can report any crimes they see. Whichever viewer makes the most legitimate reports each month wins a £1,000 (approximately $1,600) reward.
There are several measures in place to stop people abusing the system. Viewers are not told where the camera they are watching is located, and they will never see footage from their own post code (zip code) area, which is designed to stop them recognizing the location and attempting to tackle offenders themselves.
To cut down on bogus alerts (such as deliberately wasting the time of business owners), there’s a membership fee ranging from £1.99 a month to £12.99 a year (approximately $3.20 to $20). It would take two hours of monitoring a day to make back this money in usage rewards, though clearly the hope is that most people will be attracted by the £1,000 prize (or simply their own nosiness.)
Users are also limited to making five reports a month, though any report found to be legitimate doesn’t come off this total.
Each user is able to monitor four cameras at once, with the cameras changing every 20 minutes. Once a user reports a crime, the customer whose premises are covered by the camera gets a text message alert, plus a screenshot if they have a picture-message phone.
To encourage “responsible use” of the system, once a viewer makes a report, they are switched to a different camera. While that’s an understandable move to cut down on voyeurism, it does create the risk that somebody who stumbles across a particularly exciting feed will be tempted to hold back on reporting it until events have played out.
The company behind the scheme told the BBC that more than 13,000 people have already registered an interest in signing up. It explained the original plan was not to charge viewers, but this was a legal requirement under data protection laws which also require that the company verify the age and identity of participants, who must be at least 18.
I Am My Connectome [Video]
Sebastian Seung is mapping a massively ambitious new model of the brain that focuses on the connections between each neuron. He calls it our “connectome,” and it’s as individual as our genome — and understanding it could open a new way to understand our brains and our minds.
Google TV-Ready Revue for $300 by Logitech
Since Google announced Google TV in May, there’s been a bit of speculation about just when it will be available and how it will work. According to CNN, Logitech has been at the forefront of device manufacturing for Google, but until today details were fuzzy. Well, now we’ve got plenty of details and a price: $300 for the Android-based device. And it’s called the Revue.
The Revue has a few interesting features, including pretty wide integration with Netflix, NBA, Twitter, CNBC, Napster, and Pandora (but not Hulu, at least not yet). Essentially that looks a whole lot like my XBox Live. If you happen to be a Dish Network customer, you don’t have to pay the $300 rate, but you’ll get it at a discounted $179. If you want the additional 6-Inch Mini Controller it’ll set you back another $130—these will work with the iPhone, iPad, and Android systems. If you want to make HD calls, you can also purchase the TV Cam for $150.
While I think Logitech and Google are going in the right direction, concept-wise, the pricetag looks really huge from my perspective. Google’s initial press release sounds promising:
Google TV is based on the Android platform and runs the Google Chrome web browser. Users can access all of their usual TV channels as well as a world of Internet and cloud-based information and applications, including rich Adobe® Flash based content – all from the comfort of their own living room and with the same simplicity as browsing the web. When coupled with the Intel® Atom™ processor CE4100, Intel’s latest system-on-a-chip designed specifically for consumer electronics, the new platform will offer home theatre quality A/V performance.
But, as the CNN article points out: currently the newest AppleTV is $99, and the Roku box for Netflix is $69 and up. And if you’re like me, you just use your XBox to stream and access most of these things well, almost for free. Even if you don’t consider the additional accessories, $300 is a lot of money for a box and a keyboard.
Sony is also getting in on the deal, with “the world’s first Internet television” which will be announced during a press conference next week. CNN reports that it’ll essentially be an HDTV with Google TV support.
While Google TV is interesting, the whole effort does feel a little behind the times considering that many people, at least those of us in the geek contingent, have been doing much the same thing at home for years. But, as with all things, it’s in the hands of the consumers. Many of whom are not geeks. Who knows? Maybe we’re more willing to buy $300 pieces of technology than I think!
You Are Here.
You Dropped Food On The Floor: Do You Eat it?
[Via Buzzfeed]
I Require New Batteries [PIC]
[Via]
Natural Selection at its Finest [Video]
Admire as Mother Nature does her magic with what is called the “natural selection” process.
[Via]
Michigan exposes laughs and concerns in DC election security showdown
Hacking an electronic voting system is illegal, undemocratic, deeply irresponsible, and an affront to everyone who ever fought against tyranny. But done the right way, it can also be funny.
A web-based voting system, designed for District of Columbia voters to cast their ballot from overseas, has been suspended after students at the University of Michigan altered the system to play a song every time somebody cast a vote. (The song in question was “The Victors”, the fight song of Michigan’s sporting teams.)
It should be stressed the students were not acting criminally and were among more than a 100 people asked to test the security and given access to the source code behind the system.
The voting option would have been among the first to take advantage of the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act, a law passed last year allowing technology to be used to make it easier for people, such as serving soldiers, to vote. Voters in the DC elections will still be able to log on to a website to print out ballots and return them by e-mail, fax or regular mail.
It’s not just the musical interlude that’s caused concern among officials. Testing also showed that Mac users running Safari and viewing and completing the ballot document with Safari’s default built-in PDF viewer would likely not have their vote counted. That particular setup left the ballot document restored to its original, unedited state when the voter saved and submitted it, meaning they would unwittingly cast a blank ballot.
The DC Board of Elections and Ethics says it has ” determined, with the assistance of the public examination community, that the current iteration of the ballot return feature did not meet our security and file integrity standards for the Digital Vote by Mail pilot project.”
The big question, now, is whether or not the decision to start the public testing program on September 24 was too late for a system designed to be used for real voting on November 2.