interweb ink
news from around the web from people addicted to tech

Big Strides for Quantum Empowered Data

by Jason Patocka April 26, 2010

Considering the press generated this past year by cyber attacks on both corporate and Department of Defense infrastructure, encryption methods are in dire need of an upgrade. The policy wonkisphere has been brooding over this subject for some time now, as evidenced by former White House Terrorism adviser Richard Clark’s new (and controversial) book Cyberwar released earlier this month. Between the alleged China backed theft of Google’s password source code, to the decimation of Georgia’s digital infrastructure by Russia during their brief skirmish during the Beijing Olympics, robust quantum networks are tech who’s time is long overdue.
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iPhone 4.0 Leaked: Lost and Found (by gizmodo)

by Savan Thongvanh April 19, 2010

Gizmodo may have the scoop of the year with their story today on the possible iPhone 4.0 prototype that was found in a bar. Where else would it be found?

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Remember Microsoft Surface?

by Jason Patocka April 14, 2010

Microsoft Surface.  Yeaaaaah. You remember that right?

Well, Surface has decided to emerge again from the depths of obscurity, this time demonstrating pen and photoshop touch functionality through an application called Manual Deskterity.  While I don’t contest that touch is a must have feature right now, the reality is that Apple and its iPad are drinking some serious milkshake in this space.  After all, who wants to buy a piece of furniture to run apps off of it?  This isn’t to discredit the concept entirely, as an intelligent surface could be really cool.

*Could* being the operative word.

If it automatically and non proprietorially expanded the functionality of hand held or tablet devices on its surface, that would be cool.

If surface automatically recognized me when I walked up to it irregardless of coffee shop and it pulled up my settings when I wanted to use it, that would be some hardcore cloud computing crack.

But touch enabled photoshop? Cracker, please.

Don’t get me wrong, by providing a large work surface and eliminating pen discrimination, many digital media artists would gladly wrestle a velociraptor just to get their pens back. Barehanded even. But so far, Apple has defined its niche in the creative space for some time now. The immutable laws of marketing are providing some pretty hardcore odds to overcome.

There are benefits to large stationary touch enabled surfaces. But perhaps the true test of usability for platforms like Microsoft Surface and their developers will be their ability to condense their hardware and software into a thin film that can be applied to any public surface.  I wonder when they will be demonstrating that, because that would be pretty revolutionary.

To that end, my feeling is that Surface R&D needs to submerge a bit longer, and perhaps use its periscope to see where the trends are before purging the ballast tanks over touch and pen enabled photoshop. Its a good thing that Manual Deskerity is looking to expand to other platforms, because I foresee a serious pivot in the future.

Scientists Create Molecular Paper

by Jason Patocka

Photo by Roy Kaltschmidt, Berkeley Lab Public Affairs

Photo by Roy Kaltschmidt, Berkeley Lab Public Affairs

Next to grilled cheese sandwiches and classic Zelda, building blocks were quite possibly the best creation known to childhood. I remember spending countless days sifting through a giant tub filled with assorted blocks trying to find the ideal piece. These days, my RSS stream is filled with news of labs building systems that scale our concept of blocks down into the realm of atoms and molecules.
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Memristors to Replace Flash Memory in 2013

by Jason Patocka April 9, 2010

Imagine a world where you no longer have to wait to boot up your laptop. You simply hit the power button and you’re instantly back to where you were before you switched off.
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Blizzard Announces Starcraft 2 Collector’s Edition

by David Thongvanh April 8, 2010

Blizzard has released details on 2 editions of the upcoming Starcraft sequel, the regular priced at $59.99 and the other at a hefty $99.99
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Meet Geminoid F

by Jason Patocka April 5, 2010

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dJOAf2Dt98&feature=player_embedde

Robo-media darling Hiroshi Ishiguro recently held a press conference in Osaka demonstrating his latest android, aptly named Geminoid F. As Japan’s population ages there is great concern over who is going to care for the elderly. One proposed approach that has garnered considerable public attention is to create robots that can provide companionship and care for seniors. To this end, Ishiguro has listed the price for the Geminoid F model at 10 million yen or $110,000 USD.
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Mind Over Matter or Matter Over Mind?

by Jason Patocka

Reverse engineering of the brain is providing some answers in the hot field of Artificial General Intelligence. Previously we highlighted efforts with IBM’s Bluebrain project, but also of note is the work that Palm computing founder and TED darling Jeff Hawkins is doing with his work on Hierarchical Temporal Memory.
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Biomimicry Your Time Has Come

by Jason Patocka March 30, 2010

The American Chemical Society assembled its grand hive mind of chemists for the 239th time in San Francisco last week. Among the 12,000 presentations delivered across a wide spectrum of scientific disciplines, a presentation by doctors Tongxiang Fan, Di Zhang, and Han Zhou of the State Key Lab of Matrix Composites at Shanghai Jiaotong University highlighted a rapidly growing trend in chemical engineering. The group presented efforts towards designing renewable energy systems with a synthetic leaf, where the prototype would capture photons and use them to change water into hydrogen fuel.
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LHC Shatters Record, Enslaves Grad Students

by Jason Patocka

Geneva’s high energy physics juggernaut CERN shattered records and pushed scientists closer towards their quest to recreate the conditions of the Big Bang this morning. Reports indicate that the particle collider recorded nearly half a million events after three hours of operating at a mind boggling energy of 7 TeV. And that is just half of its proposed design energy.

That’s a lot of awesome.
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