Avicennasis - Apply directly to the forehead!

The latest project from Lucidscience.com is a simple AVR based GPS tracker. As usual, the instructions here are quite in-depth including schematics and step by step procedures all the way down to modifying cables when necessary. What we found interesting is that the GPS module he's using is so simple. It only requires 3 wires, one for power, one for serial communication, and one for a heartbeat.

For the microprocessor, he's using an ATMega 324, which is a bit of processing overkill but he needed the SRAM for the GPS point storage. You could obviously expand to external storage but the goal here was to keep it extremely simple. Actually, there just isn't a whole lot here other than the microprocessor, the GPS module, and a level converter. After wrapping up the circuit he goes on to explain how to get the data into Google Earth for display. After a few trips around the block you can see the results are quite nice.

The only surprising thing about the WikiLeaks revelations is that they contain no surprises. Didn't we learn exactly what we expected to learn? The real disturbance was at the level of appearances: we can no longer pretend we don't know what everyone knows we know. This is the paradox of public space: even if everyone knows an unpleasant fact, saying it in public changes everything.

- "Good Manners in the Age of WikiLeaks" by Slavoj Žižek, January 20, 2011.

This is precisely our situation today: we face the shameless cynicism of a global order whose agents only imagine that they believe in their ideas of democracy, human rights and so on. Through actions like the WikiLeaks disclosures, the shame – our shame for tolerating such power over us – is made more shameful by being publicised. When the US intervenes in Iraq to bring secular democracy, and the result is the strengthening of religious fundamentalism and a much stronger Iran, this is not the tragic mistake of a sincere agent, but the case of a cynical trickster being beaten at his own game.

- "Good Manners in the Age of WikiLeaks" by Slavoj Žižek, January 20, 2011.

Adafruit forum member [Stephanie] embarked on a mission to replace the thermostat in her home with one that was far more robust and full of electronic goodies.

Her goal was to build a networked thermostat that allowed for 2-way communications between the base station and any other networked device, such as her laptop or iPhone. She wanted to not only be able to monitor her furnace and air conditioning systems remotely, but to control the units from afar as well.

The brains of the thermostat have changed throughout the project, becoming simpler as time went on. It is now controlled with just an ATMega328 mounted to the back of an LCD display with a Wiznet network module where an Adafruit Ethernet shield used to reside. The thermostat shows the current temperature, set temperature, and time on the front mounted LCD, the latter of which is provided by a Chronodot module. It also has an on board LED that can be seen from afar, indicating whether the heat or air conditioning is running,

Right now the thermostat can be controlled at the unit itself, or remotely using a Telnet session. [Stephanie] is currently happy with the setup, but future plans include creating an iPad application to provide a more user-friendly interface.

If you are interested in learning more, or building one yourself, be sure to swing by her blog for a far more in-depth look at the build process.

You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, 'Look at that, you son of a bitch.'

- Edgar Mitchell
 Apollo 14 astronaut

[Scott] was looking to source some LCD screens for an upcoming project, and was considering buying them from SparkFun. While the Nokia panels they sell are not expensive, they aren't necessarily the cheapest option either – especially when building in volume.

He searched around for something he could use instead, and settled on Blackberry screens. Old Blackberry models were even more durable than the current offerings, plus companies are trying to get rid of old handsets by the truckload. The only problem was that he could not find any information online that would show him how to write to the screens.

It took a bit of digging, but he eventually determined which ICs were used to drive the LCD screen. He had no luck finding screen pinout information online, so after spending a few hours testing things with his multimeter, he came up with a full listing on his own.

He wired up a connector so that he could use the screen on a breadboard, then got busy writing code to display some text on the screen. Everything came together nicely as you can see in the video below, and he has released his code in case anyone else is looking to repurpose some old Blackberry screens.

All we want to know is what sort of project all these screens are going to be used in.

[Trav] was pondering virtual reality and decided it was no longer all that it was cracked up to be, so he created an experience in what he calls "Remote Reality". While we have seen many installations over the years that allow people to remotely interact with objects across the globe, his Orbduino project consists of more than simply toggling lights on and off (though he'll let you do that too).

In his house, he has set up a robotic playground of sorts that allows anyone who visits a chance to play around with the robotic arm he has installed there. The arm is situated in a pen filled with random objects which can be stacked and moved around. He also promises to show you something fun, provided you can guide the arm to pick up an object and hold it against the target positioned outside the pen.

He didn't forget the obligatory remote light controls either. You can turn the overhead lights on and off, as well as control a multi-colored orb situated in the corner of the room. Most of the project's interface is done with an Arduino Mega, which handles the robot arm interface, as well as messing with the light installations.

If you have some free time, swing by his site and give the robotic arm a try. It's a fun little time waster that you will likely enjoy.  Just make sure to take it easy on his web server!

This is Sarco the robot, it has been developed by the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon. the robot demonstrates balance and weight shifting from one leg to the other, something that we humans are good at!

The robot may not be too steady or fast, but in robotics this is a giant leap as balance is the key to robots being able to carry out all sorts of different jobs that we human types seem to feel are below us these days.

Source [Nerd Approved]

The Internet has become our global data ecosystem. It is an evolutionary force in the speciation of humanities' communication and computation infrastructure. As a result of the ease with which data of all types flows around the global, and with the increasing connections made to this data on a daily basis, our species is on the verge of seismic and profound changes. In just a few decades, the Internet has grown like a developing nervous system, transcending national boundaries, shrinking geographic distances, dissolving geopolitical barriers, and binding many of us together into a single, global network. If allowed to continue its course unshackled by shortsighted power players, then it may become humankinds most powerful, liberating, unifying, and transformational force.

- "Who Should Own the Internet?" by Jeff Sayre, April 21, 2011.

So Apple sues Samsung last week and today we hear news that Samsung sues Apple (not a counter-sue but on different matter).

Now here's the really funny part, Samsung is one of the largest supplier's of Apple's products for iPhone/iPad/iPod semiconductors. Why would you do that to Samsung Apple?

I know, I know, we've been through this like a hundred times before, Apple just likes to sue and leave nails sticking out in other people's businesses. In fact, Samsung's Chairman Lee Kun Hee says, "When a nail sticks out, [people] try to pound it down."  I think he means that Apple will go down and Samsung will stop supplying parts to Apple.

The most frustrating thing for me as a consumer, "is why?"

Apple acts like they've invented everything when they don't realize that much of parts that go in it were invented by someone else (like Samsung).   And now Samsung sues them back for what they should have done long time ago.  And I don't get how they have the "balls" (that's right I said balls if you want to hear it again) to sue one of their major suppliers (who can probably drive them out of business in a hurry).

The point is, we need less of this and more of innovation from both Apple and Samsung.

Why are we going BACK in time when we should be moving forward and make better smartphones, perhaps like the Atrix 4G, a phone that can turn into a laptop?  Seriously, no one cares about the phone's design so much as much what a phone can actually do.  But keep fighting and waste a bunch of people's time and money.  That money should be going to Japan's earthquake fund really.  I am tired of corporate greed.

Disclosure: I am an Android-addict so I am a bit biased towards Android.  I just think Apple is just making some dumb choices at times, it's Apple who should have been sued when iPhone came out and it was so darn slow.

P.S. Funny thing though, Samsung could literally cut Apple in pieces in one day by stop supplying parts to them, I wonder if they thought about that.   Reason why iPhone 4 can be bought for $199 on contract, Samsung.  Now if they pissed off Samsung, that's a whole another story, I don't think Apple can survive without Samsung but Samsung can survive without Apple for sheezy.

While the Kinect is great at tracking gross body movements and discerning what part of a person's skeleton is moving in front of the camera, the device most definitely has its shortfalls. For instance, facial recognition is quite limited, and we're guessing that it couldn't easily track an individual's eye throughout the room.

No, for tracking like that, you would need something far more robust. Under the guidance of [Krystian Mikolajczyk and Jiri Matas], PhD student [Zdenek Kalal] has been working on a piece of software called TLD, which has some pretty amazing capabilities. The software uses almost any computer-connected camera to simultaneously Track an object, Learn its appearance, and Detect the object whenever it appears in the video stream. The software is so effective as you can see in the video below, that it has been dubbed "Predator".

Once he has chosen an object within the camera's field of vision, the software monitors that object, learning more and more about how it looks under different conditions. The software's learning abilities allow it to pick out individual facial features, follow moving objects in video, and can recognize an individual's face amid a collection of others.

While the software can currently only track one object at a time, we imagine that with some additional development and computing horsepower, this technology will become even more amazing.

If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.

- Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami, 2000.

Last week, the Internet was alight with stories of iPhone location tracking. While this wasn't exactly breaking news in security circles, it was new information to many people out there. Lots of blogs were full of commentary on the situation, including ours, with many Android users chiming in saying, "Android doesn't do that".

Well, that's not entirely true – the playing field is far more level than most people would like to admit.

Android does have the same tracking capability, as do Windows Mobile phones for that matter. Both companies also monitor the cell towers you have connected to, as well as which Wi-Fi hotspots you have passed by. All three companies anonymize the data, though they do assign a unique ID to your location details in order to tell you apart from other users.

Where things really differ is in regards to how much information is stored. Microsoft claims that they only store the most recent location entry, while Andriod systems store the 200 most recent Wi-Fi hotspot locations as well as the most recent 50 cell towers.

At the end of the day each vendor does allow you to opt out of the tracking services, and if you are seriously concerned about the data they are tracking, you can always periodically wipe the information from your handset, should you desire.

[Image via TheTelecomBlog]

Windows/Mac: Looking for a way to organize your ebooks, perhaps due to an influx of reading material thanks to Google making millions of public-domain books available? Sony's eBook Library can organize your ebooks whether you have a Sony Reader or not.

(Click the image above for a closer look.)

Much like you don't need to have an iPod to use iTunes for your music collection, you don't need a Sony Reader to use eBook Library for your book collection. After importing your ebooks into eBook Library you can sort them, display them by list or cover, and can even check out ebooks from your local library if they support the service.

On a netbook or laptop, eBook Library would make an excellent solution for portable reading. While viewing documents, you can bookmark, jump to pages, search the text, and adjust the size for ease of reading.

Sony's eBook Library is freeware and available for Windows and Mac.

Windows: LicenseCrawler is a portable and free tool for retrieving serial numbers and product keys from your computer. A simple scan with LicenseCrawler ensures you'll never be left trying to reinstall software without the proper key.

LicenseCrawler doesn't do anything you couldn't do yourself, it just does it much faster and without you actually having to open up your registry editor. The application scans over your Windows registry file, without altering it, and looks for instances of serial numbers, license keys, and other identifying bits of information.

It found a number of licenses on our test system, but it if the application in question doesn't store its product key in the registry—instead in the program or application data folder—LicenseCrawler will miss it.

Have a handy tool for keeping track of and searching out product keys? Lets hear about it in the comments. LicenseCrawler is freeware, Windows only.

Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. I have read and heard many attempts at a systematic account of it, from materialism and theosophy to the Christian system or that of Kant, and I have always felt that they were much too simple. I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth that are dreamed of, or can be dreamed of, in any philosophy. That is the reason why I have no philosophy myself, and must be my excuse for dreaming.

- Possible Worlds and other Essays by John Burden Sanderson Haldane, 1927.