Ratchet Up

GeoVector

his is a follow-up to the post below on using your mobile phone when you're lost. It's a new technology from GeoVector:

“Here's how it works: A cellular carrier uses global-positioning-system technology to identify a mobile phone's location. The phone contains a tiny electronic compass sensor from GeoVector that determines the direction it is pointing in.

The carrier then takes all of that information and relays it to a GeoVector search engine. GeoVector matches the directional data with the locations of restaurants, hotels, real estate or other places of interest in databases produced by companies such as Cybermaps Japan and Microsoft MapPoint.

The technology will let you point your cell phone at a building and have it tell you, for instance, that there's a hairdressing salon on the third floor. The salon might list its phone number, which you can then click on and make an appointment. The salon might even send an ad to your phone giving you a discount. Or if you're touring San Francisco and are unsure of which bridge spans out to Treasure Island, GeoVector will tell you it's the Bay Bridge. [...]

Users of remote or device deployed information and transaction services are increasing in number every day. As this number of new users increases, the average level of expertise drops. The new user is less likely to have effective behaviors or habits for searching, sorting or interacting with these services, and the services themselves are equally likely to be new and evolving as they settle into mature markets and audiences.

As service delivery moves from the desktop to handheld or personal devices, new models of interaction and new methods of support will be developed for these services, to supplement and then replace familiar tools that rely on desktop computing power, peripherals or expansive screen real estate. Building on the powerful metaphor familiar from everyday computing, GeoVector brings pointing to the device and takes the real world as its desktop to power compelling applications.”

[GeoVector]

And if you're in the mood for more, but different, Geo, check out Howard Rheingold on Geoweb and Deep Place.

Keyhole

oogle claims their new acquisition, Keyhole, is the “ultimate interface to the planet.” For now, and for us [we're not military], it probably is. It's more Mac-hostile software, so I have not been able to try it. But you should.

Unfortunately, promo writing like this makes Keyhole seem like a 50's amusement park: “From space to your home town. Visit exotic locales such as Maui, Tokyo, Rome and Paris. Satellite imagery makes it real. Explore restaurants, hotels, parks and schools. Think magic carpet ride!” But it looks way more interesting.

You can download the program, or watch their video demo to get the idea.

“Keyhole is the 3D digital earth pioneer—the only company to deliver a 3D digital model of the entire earth via the Internet. Keyhole’s groundbreaking EarthStream™ technology combines advanced 3D graphics and network streaming innovations to produce a high performance system that runs on standard PC’s and commodity servers. Both high performance and intuitive to use, Keyhole’s solutions enable anyone to manipulate a rich map of the earth composed of imagery and feature information.”

I'd be happy to send a nice .jpg gift to the first person to send me a picture of my home from the air. [The one above is the best I have to date.] I'll post it here, and dare any bi-coastal fly-over reader to convince a Northwest pilot to dump his sewage on the beating heart of the Ratchet. I'm not afraid.

[Keyhole]

Blogumentary

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I was in the audience last night for the inter-galactic premiere of Chuck Olsen's new “Blogumentary.” As a film, it's based on two winning strategies. It's built around a first-person narrative featuring Chuck's own bizarre and often charmingly self-depreciating humor; and it smartly tells the story of blogs by telling the stories that blogs tell. That is, it's a series of vignettes wise, funny and anguished that have been made possible thanks to this new private-in-public form of self-writing. Not to be missed. Since it's Hardcore, I'm giving it a full five truckflaps.
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God Is My Co-Pilot: “Brain In A Dish Flies Plane”

University of Florida “scientist has grown a living ”brain“ that can fly a simulated plane, giving scientists a novel way to observe how brain cells function as a network. The ”brain“ -- a collection of 25,000 living neurons, or nerve cells, taken from a rat’s brain and cultured inside a glass dish -- gives scientists a unique real-time window into the brain at the cellular level. By watching the brain cells interact, scientists hope to understand what causes neural disorders such as epilepsy and to determine noninvasive ways to intervene. As living computers, they may someday be used to fly small unmanned airplanes or handle tasks that are dangerous for humans, such as search-and-rescue missions or bomb damage assessments. [...]

A ”Florida scientist has developed a “brain” in a glass dish that is capable of flying a virtual fighter plane and could enhance medical understanding of neural disorders such as epilepsy. The “living computer” was grown from 25,000 neurons extracted from a rat's brain and arranged over a grid of 60 electrodes in a Petri dish.“ [CNN]

DeMarse's experimental ”brain“ interacts with an F-22 fighter jet flight simulator through a specially designed plate called a multi-electrode array and a common desktop computer. [...] When DeMarse first puts the neurons in the dish, they look like little more than grains of sand sprinkled in water. However, individual neurons soon begin to extend microscopic lines toward each other, making connections that represent neural processes. ”You see one extend a process, pull it back, extend it out – and it may do that a couple of times, just sampling who’s next to it, until over time the connectivity starts to establish itself,“ he said. ”(The brain is) getting its network to the point where it’s a live computation device.“

When DeMarse first puts the neurons in the dish, they look like little more than grains of sand sprinkled in water. However, individual neurons soon begin to extend microscopic lines toward each other, making connections that represent neural processes. ”You see one extend a process, pull it back, extend it out – and it may do that a couple of times, just sampling who’s next to it, until over time the connectivity starts to establish itself,“ he said. ”(The brain is) getting its network to the point where it’s a live computation device.“

To control the simulated aircraft, the neurons first receive information from the computer about flight conditions: whether the plane is flying straight and level or is tilted to the left or to the right. The neurons then analyze the data and respond by sending signals to the plane’s controls. Those signals alter the flight path and new information is sent to the neurons, creating a feedback system. ”Initially when we hook up this brain to a flight simulator, it doesn’t know how to control the aircraft,“ DeMarse said. ”So you hook it up and the aircraft simply drifts randomly. And as the data comes in, it slowly modifies the (neural) network so over time, the network gradually learns to fly the aircraft.“ ”Initially when we hook up this brain to a flight simulator, it doesn’t know how to control the aircraft,“ DeMarse said. ”So you hook it up and the aircraft simply drifts randomly. And as the data comes in, it slowly modifies the (neural) network so over time, the network gradually learns to fly the aircraft.“ [U. of Florida release]

On Deck: Teaching higher animal forms to fly.

[DeMarse at Florida Biomedical Engineering]

New Camera Obscura With All Digital Design And Construction

s part of its “$13 million redevelopment of [the village of Greenport, New York's] waterfront, SHoP, as the firm is known, is building a camera obscura. Latin for ”dark room,“ the centuries-old invention is essentially a viewing chamber that gives people inside a 360-degree panorama of what's happening outside.

The camera obscura is the first building to be 100 percent digitally designed and computer fabricated, SHoP's partners say. Every piece of wood, steel, and aluminum - 750 in total - is custom-made and completely unique. When the parts arrive bubble-wrapped at the site, the construction crew has only to fit them together. Weather permitting, the final bolt will be screwed in by New Year's. The firm has used this approach on parts of its other projects but never for an entire structure. That makes the $185,000 camera a modest but important showcase for the firm's ambitious process, which begins with 3-D modeling software and ends with construction workers assembling the laser-cut pieces into their finished form. [...]

SHoP begins its projects in the virtual realm, using Rhino - a more modest 3-D program developed for Hollywood that sells for a sliver of Catia's price, less than $900 a seat - to rapidly make 20, 40, even 60 iterations of a building. Then the architects judge each version against the requirements - light, room size, zoning issues - for the particular project.”

[Wired]

Election Hangover: “...first they got sad, and then hyperactive, and then they died.”

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Radio Re-Volt: Power To The Purse!

ast weekend I went to the Walker Art Center's Radio Re-Volt Conference. Madeline Goreman and Cameron Nordholm joined me. They're the General Manager and the Music Director of Carleton's KRLX.

We assembled individual micro-radio stations, and as you can see from the pix, Madeline put hers into a charming snow-white leatherette retro-purse [the hole on the side is an input for mic or music player], while Cameron went conceptual and installed his in an iPod box. These strategies turned out to inadvertent self-portraits, dog-looks-like-the-owner kind of things.

The little stations seemd to work just fine. In fact, I did what by all accounts was a wildly accomplished radio show for wife Elizabeth while she was reading in bed last night. Broadcasting from the bathroom with two doors closed between us, I loomed up on the clock radio at 97.7 with a deep late-night jazz-radio voice. Had I thought of it, I'd have sucked on a square of chocolate, since that usually helps smooth out and lower the voice. [I learned that from spitting contests as a kid; if you had chocolate, you always won.] I went to sleep a proud radio mogul whose media footprint commands the whole of my back yard and part way through the shrubbery between us and the Bruces next door.

So what is micro radio? It's an actual radio transmitter that broadcasts a signal of .001 watt that extends about 200 feet. Everyone asks, “Is it legal?” It is, since it's really no threat to the big commercial stations that typically pump out 100,000 watts. Micro-radio lets you bring the revolution to your block, or at least your neighbor. If nothing else, it insures that, for a night at least, you'll endear yourself to your partner as an incorrigible goon-ball.

“Radio Re-Volt seeks to rethink the voltage [who has the power to transmit, who owns this power, how can this power be re-thought, re-formed, re-directed] in order to recover radio as a self-controlled tool and generate diversity in the ownership and programming of the radio waves.”

The conceit that drives Radio Re-Volt is that the best way to challenge the mainstream drivel of a 100,000 watt station is to counter it with 100,000 people running their own one-watt stations. So, people, you're either on the bus or off the bus. If you want on, consider buying one and becoming part of the “new voice of indie media” yourself.

If you're not on the bus, just drive over to my house and park your car by the curb. Tune your car radio to 97.7 and honk twice. I'll play you John Coltane's “Love Supreme,” tell a few Rodney Dangerfield jokes, and then personally dedicate to your car's make and color some rants from Herb Schiller on big media.