quarta-feira, 25 de agosto de 2004

Demonstrate The most recent telerobotics art project by Ken Goldberg Demonstrate provides public access to Sproul Plaza at UB Berkeley. Where the free speech movement began 40 years ago. The installation combines the world's most advanced networked robotic camera. A visual database. And a mathematical model of socio-ocular camera control. LINK Ken Goldberg 5:56:02 PM  Google It!  comment []

Motherlode of century-old postcards. Xeni Jardin: Huge online collection of old postcards from the late 19th century and early 20th century. I spent hours last night noodling through the ones from Guatemala, Nigeria, Hawaii, and Tahiti -- but the gallery includes many more countries. Looks like they're for sale, too. In the "Guatemala" batch, I found three Mayan girls from the early 1900s; I love this postcard of two Mayan men from Solola, from the same period. Then, there's "Visiting a Vietnamese Penal Colony, Wish You Were Here!" How cool is it that the site allows you to search by topical themes like dromedaries, chiromancy, and prostitution? In the latter, I found this totally bizarre image of a sex worker's flea-bitten thighs, and the haunting postcard portrait of an anonymous Algerian prostitute, shown at left. Link (Thanks, Carl!) [Boing Boing] 5:23:52 PM    comment []

Organizr: like iPhoto for your browser. Cory Doctorow: Ludicorp has just shipped a Flash-based iPhoto replacement called Organizr, a front-end for its Flickr photo-sharing service. It lives in your browser and does for photo-organizing what gmail does for email: seamlessly merges your mail with your browser. But unlike gmail's closed interface, Flickr has a gloriously open API so that you can build your own apps on top of theirs. iPhoto has reached the meltdown point for me -- nearly 10,000 photos, and adding new ones and marking up my old ones takes so long I've actually gone and cooked dinner while waiting for the beach-ball to finish spinning -- and I'm seriously considering moving all my images to Flickr. Check out the movie. (Disclosure: I'm an advisor to Ludicorp, the company that makes Organizr). Link [Boing Boing] 5:22:16 PM    comment []

Virtual cellular girlfriend. Xeni Jardin: Hong Kong-based AI development company Artificial Life is launching a sort of persistent, quasi-reality game in which a virtual girlfriend appears as an animated figure on your phone display. Kind of like a tamagotchi with tits. There is a direct correlation between her level of romantic activity output and the amount of money you spend on her. Actually, my people have a word for this sort of creature: ho. (BBC News story says:) But there is a downside to the virtual girlfriend - she will require more flowers and gifts than many real women. Artificial Life is hoping to launch the new game later this year, on the latest 3-G mobile phones. All virtual girls will look the same - but each girl will behave differently - depending on how much money is spent on her. On top of a general subscription, men will be charged a fee to buy flowers and gifts for the virtual girlfriend. In return, she will introduce them to different aspects of her life, like letting them meet her female friends - also electronic images. (Press release says:) The behavior of the virtual characters is based on scientific principles and algorithms inspired by the computer related artificial life sciences and is using artificial intelligence technology to achieve human like behavior and responses. The algorithm of bling, I suppose. Link to BBC News story on the Hong Kong mo-ho, and Link to press release. A Virtual Boyfriend version of the game is slated for release in February 2005; Fleshbot imagines he might be satiated instead with "unlimited supplies of beer, porn, and blowjobs." The company touts itself as a provider of "mobile solutions." This is a mobile solution to what problem? (Thanks, Pimp Daddy Lappin) [Boing Boing] 5:20:08 PM    comment []

Planet of the Apes as a Twilight Zone episode. Mark Frauenfelder: Gerry sez: "While searching for something entirely unrelated, I came across this: the original Planet of the Apes movie, reedited and reimagined as a thirty-minute episode of the original Twilight Zone. Black and white, commercial breaks, Rod Serling narration and everything. "*Extremely* well done. I'm pretty floored. It really is a perfect fit." Link UPDATE Cliph sez: "That fan re-edit of Planet of the Apes is excellent. The site was a bit slow to serve the file when I tried so I've made a torrent. " [Boing Boing] 5:18:11 PM    comment []

Book: "This is Burning Man". Xeni Jardin: With less than two weeks to go before the annual beglittered bacchanalia in Black Rock City begins, BoingBoing buddy Scott Beale says: This is Burning Man is a new book about Burning Man written by our good friend Brian Doherty, who is based out of Los Angeles and is a senior editor at Reason magazine. This is by far the most extensive historical account of Burning Man in print, as well the first book distributed through a major publisher (Little, Brown and Company). If you are on your way out to Black Rock City this year or even if you no longer attend, this book is a must read for anyone interested in the origins of Burning Man, the people involved and how the event is organized, operates, survives and grows. Link to This is Burning Man website, which includes Brian's ongoing book-blog. I've received a review copy, and thoroughly enjoyed it from cover to cover. Required reading for any BoingBoing readers heading to the playa -- or wishing they were, or wondering what the hell all the fuss is about. [Boing Boing] 5:11:21 PM    comment []

Tell an AI where you've been for a month and it'll guess where you're going. Cory Doctorow: Jefferson sez, "This paper won the Outstanding Paper Award at AAAI-04 (Amer. Assoc. for AI's National Conf.) in July. In a nutshell, they took the trace from a person carrying a GPS unit around with him for a month. With no hand labelling of the data, they were able to build a model of the person's travel behavior including frequent destinations (work, home, grocery friends homes), and modes of transportation (bus vs. walking). With new data, the model can predict, on-line, the traveler's most likely destination, and detect 'unknown activities' (e.g. strange behavior)." 144k PDF Link (Thanks, Jefferson!) [Boing Boing] 5:08:13 PM    comment []

ScienceMatters@Berkeley. David Pescovitz: Please check out my latest issue of ScienceMatters@Berkeley. This month, read all about: * The Tale of the Otter and Abalone--a story of counter-intuitive evolution * Boundaries Unbounded--the mathematics of inkjet printing, MRI brain scans, and microchip manufacturing * The Evolutionary Secret of Body Segmentation--the odd anatomy of arthropods Link [Boing Boing] 5:06:29 PM    comment []

Doom 3 teenagers freaking out. Cory Doctorow: This is a video of two teenaged boys playing Doom 3 -- you can't see the game, just their reaction. As Joey notes, these kids are screaming like hyenas as the boo-scareys lurch out of the Doom 3 shadows and leap on their characters. One of the kids actually gnaws a pillow when it all gets to be too much for him. Pretty cool endorsement for a game, actually. 7.8MB WMV Link, Mirror Link (Thanks, Quentin!) (via AccordionGuy) [Boing Boing] 4:59:12 PM    comment []

Silberman's "The War Room" in WIRED. Xeni Jardin: WIRED contributing editor Steve Silberman says his new story, "The War Room," is a first look inside "a new Pentagon-sponsored training program for soldiers headed to Iraq and elsewhere that immerses them in highly realistic virtual environments designed by Hollywood special effects artists.... Interesting, troubling." This is the new way soldiers will train for battle. In September, a select group of Army infantrymen, Marine corpsmen, Navy sailors, and Air Force pilots at Fort Sill will become the first military personnel to learn the art of combat and the rules of engagement from surround sound action movies starring themselves. The installation is the brainchild of the Institute for Creative Technologies, an Army-funded R&D group at the University of Southern California. ICT brings together videogame developers, f/x artists, research scientists, and Pentagon experts to create faster, cheaper, and more effective ways of preparing recruits for their jobs on the front lines. If all goes well, similar facilities will go up at bases from Fort Bliss to Fallujah. The military has been using flight and tank simulators for decades ("War Is Virtual Hell," Wired 1.01), but the installation at Fort Sill is the first attempt to duplicate battle conditions for troops by combining wartime science and theme-park showmanship. The Joint Fires and Effects Trainer System, or JFETS, is the product of an unprecedented level of cooperation among the Pentagon, film and gaming companies, and Silicon Valley - a synergy that Stanford history professor Tim Lenoir calls the military-entertainment complex. Virtual war will never fully replace the mainstays of boot camp life: live-fire exercises and ass-busting field training. But as weapons systems grow smarter, they become more expensive to deploy in real-world war games. Now that consumer gaming engines like Unreal are able to render cinematic-quality graphics in real time, even big-ticket munitions are trivial to simulate. Link to Steve's article released earlier this month in WIRED. Also of note: a story on the Institute for Creative Technologies from this Sunday's New York Times: Registration-required Link [Boing Boing] 4:56:44 PM    comment []

Video game vampire to go topless in October Playboy. Cory Doctorow: Ernest Miller sez, "Videogame character BloodRayne (a red-headed 'Dhampir' who hunts supernatural baddies for the 'Brimstone Society') will be topless in October's Playboy. According to her creators, 'This is a first in videogame history and trust us when we say that Rayne does not disappoint.'" Link (Thanks, Ernest!) [Boing Boing] 4:52:30 PM    comment []

Space House for Earth. David Pescovitz: The European Space Agency is designing a terrestrial house based on technology like ultra-light carbon fiber-reinforced plastic developed for space-based structures. "The (house) design that engineers and designers came up with is a sphere-like structure - one of the most stable self-sustained shapes. As it stands on legs it is isolated from any movements underneath it as it basically glides on top of the Earth. In its current design the SpaceHouse can withstand vibrations from earthquakes of up to 7 on the Richter scale, wind speeds of up to 220 km/h and up to 3 metres of flooding – specifications that came out of discussions with the insurance industry for a typical European location. The house is designed to be autonomous. It uses energy-efficient solar power as well as advanced systems for recycling and cleaning water. Another idea, now on the drawing board, is to include a system to remove pathogenic particles in the sub-micron range from the air." The bummer is that you'll need to make quite a move if you want to live in SpaceHouse. The model home will likely be occupied by German scientists at the Neumayer Antarctic Research Station. In the meantime, maybe the Taschens might consider selling their ultra-spacey Chemosphere house in Los Angeles. Link [Boing Boing] 4:46:35 PM    comment []

Bjork hearts filesharing. Xeni Jardin: Bjork shares her unorthodox views on filesharing in an interview teeing up her next release, Medulla, slated for formal worldwide launch in a week: Q: So Bjork is not superstitious then? A: "You know, its ironic that just at the point the lawyers and the businessmen had calculated how to control music, the internet comes along and fucks everything up." Bjork gives the finger again, this time waving it into the air. "God bless the internet," she adds. Q: And what about you, then? A: "I'll still be there, waving a pirate flag." Link (Thanks, Dav) [Boing Boing] 4:39:22 PM    comment []

The protesters are coming .... Gary Younge reports from New York as the city prepares a noisy reception for President Bush. [Guardian Unlimited] 11:53:39 AM    comment []

© Creative Commons 2004 Antonio C-Pinto. Last update: 12.09.04; 01:44:36.