Happy Tech

Just want to give a shout out to Zorba the Geek for an excellent Excel csv merging tip that saved me some time today.  Awesome work and thanks for making it clear, simple and concise.

Instead of releasing the new OS X software in September, Apple is now releasing it on Aug. 28. Although though not much has changed in terms of content, with few new features being added, the real benefit is in the refining of the operating system and code. Snow Leopard is half the size of the previous operating system, which in turn frees up 7GB of drive space after the install. Speed, speed and a bit more speed as it makes many applictions twice as fast as they use to be.

Oh, Tech.

FriendFeed has been acquired by facebook. Not too much to report on yet, Techcrunch broke the story about 10 minutes ago.

While watching a video on certain technologies that will be active in the next 10-15 years, it came to my attention that many people look at technology as something void of nature. That it is leading many to believe that they can play god. Having nanomachines that are implemented into our brains is blaspheme! Well, i guess, sure i can see the argument that it could be pretty dangerous, and, yes all sorts of crazy conspiracy theories can be formed in my mind. But, lets put all these aside for a few moments, and really look at what it would mean and what it could do for the human species.

Humans have created technology or stumbled across it, either way you would like to look at it, i don’t believe it really matters. Bottom line, it is something that we can use to benefit us as a species. Imagine if you could inject 10,000 nano-machines into your blood stream and rid your body of cancer, diabetes and any other ailments. Imagine being able to turn of the gene that tells your body to hold onto as many calories and fat as it can. We no longer live like the hunter and gatherers that needed this gene to survive when a hunting season didnt go well.  We are at a cross-road, for the first time we can start to take control of our species evolution, whether this is a good or bad thing will be how we use this power. I personally don’t believe in a god that made us for his own pleasure and that we would be taking his roll by doing this. I believe that we have evolved to a point where we can take more control over our own fates even if it still on a small level.

We are at the end of the industrial age and on the frontier of the information age, and it is an interesting place to be. Watch this video and leaves some comments, i would like to rap with some people about all these enthraling ideas.

Hey, Tim here -

We’re very sorry about limiting your listening last month – I’m writing to let you know that, starting today you can listen to the free version of Pandora again. We hope you’ll come back!

Sorry if this limit is driving you nuts – it’s the last thing we want to do, but it’s the economic reality of streaming. We pay royalties for every song we play, which we feel good about, but it means that for our most consistent listeners, like you, advertising revenues don’t cover the costs. If you want to listen more than 40 hours a month, we’ve come up with two options:

• For unlimited, ad-free listening, along with a bunch of other cool features, you can upgrade to Pandora One.

OR…

• If you run out of hours in any given month, you can pay $.99 to listen for the rest of the month (you’ll still have advertising). This is a one-time fee: we won’t charge your credit card again.

We really hope one of these options works for you. To check on how many hours you have remaining, just click the ‘account’ link above the Pandora tuner. There’s also more information on our blog.

Thanks again for listening and, I hope, welcome back!

Tim Westergren Founder Pandora

From Thomas Edison, Nikolas Tesla and many, many others, scientists have been struggling to develop an electrical system that would work without wires.

In 18 montths Witricity, A Massachusetts company says it will be able to sell this sought after wireless electrical system to the general public. Based on the work of MIT physicist Marin Soljacic, the company made the announcement at the TEDGlobal conference that ended Friday in Oxford in the U.K.

The company showed a transmitting unit, placed in a wall, powering a television set several feet away. CEO Eric Giler also showed how the system could wirelessly charge a G1 Android cellphone equipped with an antenna within the phone case itself without any outside modification. The iPhone was part of the demonstration but due to the Iphone design the antennea had to be external.

The system works on resonant magnetic coupling and is safe for humans. It could not only eliminate power cords but also tons of batteries used yearly to power household devices so this is also important for environmental needs and fits right in with the growing ‘green’ movement.

WiTricity showed a version of the technology in January at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

While 18 months may just be around the corner the company does have some notable competition such as Intel.

Watch live video from Your Movie lounge on Justin.tv
While this is not the typical post it is interesting to see how the internet evolves.

A few years ago I read a Techcrunch post about Justin.tv and how live-streaming will grow in the near future. I didn’t pay much attention to the article and little did I know that the video streaming services are growing like weeds. One of the side effects of easily streaming media and anything visible on your computer screen is piracy. See for yourself as movies that are still in theaters are available to view for free through various streaming media servers.  Maybe I should add this site to the Deals section, what do you think? Now if I can just find some free popcorn.

If you are curious how live streaming services can take advantage of the Twitter phenomenon check out this site for some twitter live streams.

While I havent had a chance to fully comprehend everything within the video, it is over an hour after all, I wanted to share with some of the guys that subscribe to the feed. If you have any thoughts or comments feel free to leave them below.

Lets say, you are walking in a store and are trying to figure out the best wine to get for your dinner. Red or white? Well, obviously the dish will decide that but if you are like most people and you do not have any knowledge on wine what are you to do other than maybe ask someone who might not know that much more then you. Well Imagine having a device that can take all the information from the internet and apply it to real life, in real time. Imagine being able to hold a bottle of wine and have information projected on it that pertains to your personal preferences, in this case that being which wine would go best with a particular dish. All the information about this wine comes to view via a certain device and gives you the knowledge to make the best decision according to what you want.

Well it looks as though a team from MIT is developing a device to do just that. They are calling it  Sixth Sense. And from the looks of things it seems as though the whole Minority Report hand jazz is coming to life. Now, i’m not going to go into all the functions of this device, if you are interested you should really check out the video. It is truly fascinating, and a little scary. But i think like everything else that humans have developed it has its pros and cons.

What i am interested in is what implications this technology will have on humanity. Seeing the way we use and abuse certain technologies  we already have at hand, how will we go about using this one? This technology most likely wont be out for a while so we have sometime to stew over it. But really, how will this effect peoples morality and the basis in which  we we make decisions? In one way, it would make the excuse “i didnt know” obsolete, don’t you think? If people had this accessibility to information in real time and are able to implement it in every day life, it would enhance their ability to make better decisions, or at least ones that could quite possibly be based on the persons intrinsic moral codes rather than their wanting to save money, right? In stead of buying something that is a little bit cheaper, and harmful to particular ecosystem where the product is being made, the person might spend the few extra dollars on the product that is more expensive but has no backlashes on the environment, therefore, weeding out certain companies and products that are harmful to maintaining a certain balance on this planet. In this case, having that bit of knowledge might help the consumer turn to more responsible means of consuming. Instead of our beautiful overkill that we all partake in on a weekly if not daily basis. In this context, this technology, i believe could be beyond anything we have ever come across, at least to my knowledge anyway. It would give people nearly full accountability for what decisions they make as it pertains to knowledge. Either people would have to get really good at lying or it would possibly change everything we know about decision making, whether it be conscious or subconscious.

All  the “oh mans” and “geeeez that is amazing” aside, what could the negative effects of this be? I think it is hard to say for now but, I have my suspicions. In one part of the video they talk about how you would be able to meet somebody and know certain bits of information about that person. If we stretch this a little bit, this will completely change human interaction, not saying that the internet hasn’t already, but this will do so on such an intense level, again, like nothing we have come across. Lets just say this device is out right now. Im at a coffee shop and i bump into a beautiful girl and i have my handy dandy sixth sense and i am able to see certain bits of information about this girl and same with her to me. Im guessing that there would be a way to regulate how much information can be seen by any persons, at any given time. Or at least i hope there will be. Right of the back, all of our interest, blogs we have and god knows what else could be accessible to each other. Now, on one hand all this is really doing i guess, is speeding up the process in which we could get to know one another.  We wouldn’t have to spend however long it takes to find all these things out, at least as far as the superficial things go. Is this a bad thing? I have no clue. But it would completely change the game. Maybe this device would optimize the time in which we get to know one another thus granting us more time to spend with the people we wish? It is hard to fully wrap my head around it. I feel like it could go either way, really. Maybe this might help people find others that have similar interests and personalities? Maybe it will put more weight in developing experiences with one another in a deeper field rather than keeping things at a fairly shallow level which i feel is a problem of modernity. Or, maybe this will push people to be more secluded from one another, and perpetuate this awkwardness that runs through society and meeting new people? Ugh…..what do you guys think? I can see the argument from the “traditional” side but i think the flaw in subscribing to a more traditional view point on this is that it is exactly that, based in tradition. If this technology was going to be used in a daily manner then we would have to completely change the way we do a lot of things. Morals and responsibility i believe would have to be at the top of the things to change. As of now, i dont believe people have the integrity to really use this device in a beneficial way. But maybe, i am missing the point, maybe this is the key to unlocking all of that, or maybe its the key to unlocking Pandoras Box? Aaaaaah!

Happy days for web development firm Smartronix. They put in the winning 18 million dollar bid to redesign recover.gov for the US government.

In a time of economic hardship for many this price tags seems out of line with the typical price of a website redesign. While government waste is nothing new this seems to be a doozy.  Were there no ohter bids? Where does this price come from? While these questions may be obvois issues the real problem is transparancy on both the bidding process and the winning bid. We don’t know what they’re paying for, and will likely never know.

There is a small chance that the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board  will show where each dollar is allocated and how the expense is justified.

See the details: RAT Board Solicitation