Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Short Mental Workouts May Slow Decline of Aging Minds, Study Finds By Shankar Vedantam Wednesday, December 20, 2006; Page A01 Ten sessions of exercises to boost reasoning skills, memory and mental processing speed staved off mental decline in middle-aged and elderly people in the first definitive study to show that honing intellectual skills can bolster the mind in the same way that physical exercise protects and strengthens the body. 7:45:35 PM      Google It!.

Gaming engineering and armadillos. Armadillo Run is a fun, educational, and insidiously alluring game. A free download, Armadillo teaches basic engineering principles by posing design problems to solve. You assemble ropes, metal sheets, cloth, and other pieces between preset positions, in order to let the Armadillo escape into the next dimension (and puzzle). Armadillo reminds me of the fabulous Soda Constructor, that classic Java game teaching physics of tensile strength and gravity. (thanks to Richard Liston) Infocult: Information, Culture, Policy, Education, December 26, 2006. [Conversation] [Stephen's Web ~ by Stephen Downes ~ Edu_RSS Most Recent - RSS old] 7:35:25 PM      Google It!.

Beating Procrastination with Self-Imposed Deadlines. castironwok writes "Procrastination attracts us because of hyperbolic time discounting: the immediate (guilty) rewards are disproportionally more compelling than the greater delayed cost. Procrastination is the reward itself. An MIT professor found that when he allowed his students to give themselves their own homework deadlines, they would artificially restrict themselves to counter procrastination. However, they did not set deadlines for optimal effectiveness. I am personally a huge procrastinator and it's always a pull between rational logic (giving yourself the most time by choosing end dates as the deadline), and your past experience saying you will put it off so force yourself to start early."[Slashdot] 7:32:55 PM      Google It!.

Roomba + Wii remote + Perl = Awesome. Anonymous Wii Lov'n Coward writes "Check out the WiiRoomba, a mashup using a Wii remote, a perl script, and the Darwiin Remote software. While a little sluggish to respond, the Roomba is entirely controlled by the Wii remote accelerometers." All of the source code to do it yourself is available at the site linked, along with a youtube video of how it works. [Slashdot] 7:31:31 PM      Google It!.

On The Road: Away From the Tour Group, an MP3 Player as Your Guide. iJourneys produces narrated walking tours for use with personal MP3 players, including iPods, for those who do not relish the idea of doing so in a group. By JOE SHARKEY. [NYT > Technology] 2:10:11 PM      Google It!.

George Orwell Was Right [~] Security Cameras Get an Upgrade. Jamie stopped to mention that Bloomberg is reporting on a recent addition of speakers to public security cameras in Middlesbrough, England. From the article: "`People are shocked when they hear the cameras talk, but when they see everyone else looking at them, they feel a twinge of conscience and comply,' said Mike Clark, a spokesman for Middlesbrough Council who recounted the incident. The city has placed speakers in its cameras, allowing operators to chastise miscreants who drop coffee cups, ride bicycles too fast or fight outside bars." [Slashdot] 2:09:14 PM      Google It!.

Social Network Users Have Ruined Their Privacy. Steve Kerrison writes "'There's little point in worrying about ID cards, RFID tags and spyware when more and more people are throwing away their privacy anyway. And the potential consequences are dire.' I've written an article on the dangers of social networks and how many users seem to forget just how public the information they post can be. This follows a warning sent out by the CS department of Bristol University, advising students that they risk lost job opportunities, getting in trouble with their parents and more, if they don't take care. The warning, however, really applies to all social network users, be they college students or over-zealous blog posters.[Slashdot] 2:07:53 PM      Google It!.

RFID Fitted Throughout Tokyo Ginza Shopping Center. Liam Cromar writes "In one of several RFID trials being held in Japan, the famous Ginza shopping area in Tokyo has been blanketed with around 10,000 RFID tags and other beacons. The trial got underway earlier this month, and general trials should start on January 21st 2007. Four languages, including English, will be supported by the service, which uses hand-held RFID terminals to get information about shops in the centre, including special offers and restaurant menus."[Slashdot] 2:06:39 PM      Google It!.

Annotating the Earth - Wade Roush, Technology Review. Thanks largely to Google Earth, released by Google in 2005, finding information linked to geographical locations is becoming far easier. Now, earlier this month, Google unveiled new layers for Google Earth: collections of practical and educational resourc Educational Technology, December 26, 2006. [Conversation] [Stephen's Web ~ by Stephen Downes ~ Edu_RSS Most Recent - RSS old] 2:01:56 PM      Google It!.

Wikipedia founder to launch search engine. Jimmy Wales, who founded Wikipedia, is going to start up his own search engine. Wales has the backing of Amazon.com, and is calling the new search Wikiasari. ("asari" is Japanese for "rummaging search." Nice.) According to the Times, the project has major funding from Amazon and a group of Silicon Valley VCs. Wales is calling out Google too, with a little trash talk: âo[ogonek]Google is very good at many types of search, but in many instances it produces nothing but spam and useless crap. Try searching for the term âo[breve]Tampa hotelsâo[dot accent], for example, and you will not get any useful results," the Times quotes him as saying. If anyone else were to launch a new search, I'd say they were doomed to failure. But Wales may just put up an interesting alternative. Lost Remote, December 26, 2006. [Conversation] [Stephen's Web ~ by Stephen Downes ~ Edu_RSS Most Recent - RSS old] 2:00:20 PM      Google It!.