Entries from May 2007 ↓

Lumosity is a brain fitness program from Lumos Labs which is designed to improve cognitive function through a series of web-based games and exercises.

In developing Lumosity, Lumos Labs worked closely with leading neuroscientists from Stanford and UCSF to design and experimentally test the program. In a randomized, controlled study, the exercises were shown to have statistically significant effects in improving memory and attention.

Brain games are wildly popular in Japan and Europe, the Ninentendo DS Brain Age has sold millions of copies. The delivery of similar functionality online is the logical next step and although they might not be the most engaging games, that’s not the goal here.

Details of the research and methodology behind Lumosity can be viewd here.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Blackmagic Design is now shipping Intensity Pro, a $349 PCI Express card you can install in a Mac or a PC that lets you capture uncompressed HD video via an HDMI port, and then view that video as you edit by plugging in an HDMI-equipped HDTV set.

The Intensity Pro also lets you capture and play back any analog source using S-Video or component connections. If you don’t need that analog capability, for $249 you can just get the previously available Intensity card that handles HDMI only. HDTV shooters and editors, consumer and pro, are going to love this.

Many of the latest consumer-grade HD camcorders have HDMI ports, and they’re able to send their uncompressed video images directly out that HDMI port and into an Intensity card installed in your Mac or PC, bypassing the HDV compression that’s necessary to lay it down on tape. This way, you get mainline 1920 HDTV video straight from the camera’s imaging chips, bypassing that HDV compression.

Of course, you’ll need to have a desktop Mac or PC nearby when you’re shooting this video, a cumbersome prospect for on-location shooting but perfectly suitable for studio work. Once your footage is captured, you’ll end up with some huge files on your hard disc, but Blackmagic also includes its own compression technology, if you choose to make those files smaller and easier to edit, too.

Either one of these cards could also be extremely useful when you want to view your footage on a television set while you’re editing HD footage. This is really hard to do in real time using HDV camcorders, whose video can’t looped through in real time as you can do with standard-def DV camcorders. Using Intensity’s HDMI output, you simply plug in an HDTV set and then you can see all your video in real time as you edit, even effects that usually need to be rendered if you want to see them on an external monitor. The Intensity Pro’s analog outputs can also send video to an S-Video or component monitor in the same way.

What a neat idea, solving a few of the pesky problems of shooting and editing HDV with one card and a few connectors. – Charlie White

Product Page [Blackmagic Design, via Bios Magazine]

If you’re somehow stuck with a notebook that doesn’t sport a video or a D-Sub output but are feeling that multiple-monitor itch (for “productivity,” right?) as long as you’ve got a USB port, you’re in luck. The USB-RGB is a dongle that lets you add an extra monitor to your system via USB. The $87 price tag strikes me as a bit high, but I'm kind of a cheapskate—I'm good with one monitor per computer. – Matt Buchanan

Product Page [I-O Data via Akihabara News]

Sounding more like a Web 2.0 startup than a security device, the Yoggie Pico is a USB Linux security device for your Windows PC. The Isreali designed widget is actually a tiny computer running on a 520 MHz Intel Processor. It’s purpose is to take over all of the security functions which normally slow down your PC and shift them off-board where the dedicated hardware and software can take care of them.

It works by grabbing all incoming network traffic and routing it through the Yoggie first. There is a firewall, anti-spam, anti-phishing, anti-virus, and anti pretty much everything you would normally be running software to protect against. If there’s a problem, the Yoggie goes down, not your PC.

Some clever innovations aim to stop the box getting compromised. A read-only Linux OS sits on one of the flash chips inside, but is copied at the pre-boot stage to the chip from which it runs. This means you get a fresh start at every reboot from the clean copy. The software is also automatically updated over an encrypted connection every five minutes.

For the privacy minded, there are proxies for the main net protocols (HTTP, FTP, SMTP and POP), which will hide your IP address.

Of course, you have to pay for the service, but at $180 for the entry level stick and $40 a year plan it’s similarly priced to the standard anti-virus bloatware you usually use. The main worry, as with any security service, is whether or not you trust the vendor. A Google search on the Yoggie site for “open source” returns zero results, and that may be a worry for some.

Product page [Yoggie]

It’s not convenient to take a tripod everywhere you go at night in order to take good pictures. This is especially true when you’re trying to keep a low profile in the bushes. So what do you do? Adjust stuff like ISO, exposure and aperture. If you don’t know what those are, the instructions will fill you in:

Aperture: F-stops are different settings allowing different amounts of light to enter your camera. This is different from exposure, in that the aperture is that funky iris/anus looking thing that is a series of connected sheets that either open or contract to make a hole get bigger or smaller.

Doesn’t everything get much simpler when it’s explained in terms of anuses? – Jason Chen

How to take AWESOME night photos WITHOUT a tripod [Instructables]

Image Credit

Not to be left behind, Google announced their own bit of mapping news at O’Reilly’s Where 2.0 conference today: the debut of ‘Street View’ maps. The new maps are essentially a 360 panoramic image taken from a specific point on the street (see an example here).

The Street View maps are developed in partnership with Immersive Media, which according to the O’Reilly Radar blog is “a company that has an eleven lens camera capable of taking full, high-res video while driving along city streets.” What that means is that these Street View maps, because they are extracted from video shot while driving, are not just static images at random points around the city. They can be advanced fluidly down the street.

Clicking the white arrows on the image, advances it down the street a few paces, and quickly loads a new panorama, and double clicking on any part of the image zooms you in (you can actually read license plates and see recognizable faces). This is a very cool technology that adds a great new dimension to Google’s Maps.

In my post about EveryScape I compared that company to Amazon’s old A9 Block View maps, and the comparison is probably even more relevant here. But these blow A9’s old maps out of the water since they are not static images, but clear, and very well stitched 360 degree panoramas taken every few feet. They offer a very complete and dynamic, block-by-block view of a city street.

I would be remiss, however, if I didn’t compare this technology to EveryScape. It seems like Google really stole the show today, with Street View, but don’t count EveryScape out completely. Their panoramas offer a wider range of motion (Google’s are fixed, 360 degree left to right — no up and down), and they offer one feature that Google cannot with this specific technology: indoor panoramas. Remember, Google’s new Street View maps are shot from the top of a car, and you obviously can’t drive a car into a hotel.

It seems the two companies have opposite aims. Google wants to create better, more useful maps by providing photographic, street-level views of entire cities, while EveryScape hopes to entice business owners with the ability to offer virtual tours of their business within interactive virtual tours of neighborhoods.

According to Greg Sadetsky, Google has rolled out Street View in Denver, Las Vegas, Miami, New York and San Francisco.

The Slurpr WiFi aggregator promises "free" broadband — and jail time  —  Oh my, the 5-0 won't like this one bit.  Meet The Slurpr, a WiFi access point which aggregates up to six "available" (read: unprotected) 54Mbps WiFi channels into one bigazz, "free" connection.

Source:   Engadget

Author:   Thomas Ricker

Link:   http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/29/the-slurpr-wifi…

Techmeme permalink

Travel season has arrived, my friends, and those of you lucky enough to head overseas might be wondering how to power all those electronic geegaws you can’t do without. Coming to the rescue is this universal AC travel adapter, letting you connect a variety of plugs to one side, and then by turning its knob selector, lots of different style plug blades come popping out of its other side. Just a twist of your wrist lets you tap into the juice in 150 countries.

Although it looks a little hefty to play nicely with other things you might want to plug in next to it, it’s still a fairly compact size for the crowded suitcase, and its $17 price is not too burdensome, either. Just be careful what other juice you tap into while you’re over there. – Charlie White

Product Page [GizGeek]

If you’re still secretly thinking about getting a Segway but ashamed of having people know you paid that much for a scooter, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology has something for you. The KAIST has just invented a Segway-like scooter that does pretty much the same thing as Dean Kamen’s baby.

Called the Hubo-Way, the scooter balances when stopped, turns when leaning, and comes with a free copy of Starcraft 2. Well, not really, but 75% of South Korea just got erections. Yes, including the women. – Jason Chen

KAIST to introduce a modified version of Segway ‘Hubo-Way’ in Korea [AVING via Uber Gizmo]

Intel’s Mobile Metro mockup was the loveliest laptop this side of Sony’s old X505, blade-thin and beautiful as a brushed-magnesium, champage-tinted angel could be. The news? It looks like it’ll make the leap from lifestyle fantasy to manufactured product by the end of the year.

Created on a “price is no object” basis by Ziba Design, it’s .7″ thick and weighs 2.25 pounds, features WiFi, WiMax, Bluetooth 2.0, Core 2 Duo chipsets, and an external e-ink display hooked up for Vista’s SideShow functionality. Storage will be flash, making for a claimed battery life of 14 hours.

Naturally, with such a skinny frame, accessories are paramount, and the Mobile Metro will come with a special folder that recharges it inductively. Yes, yes, I think this might be expensive.

Finally, it’s clothed in what looks like a form-hugging leather case, which could be mildly kinky were it not a cuddly pastel green. I am, however, a little unnerved by the single USB port. It’ll need more.

The World’s Thinnest Notebook [Business Week via Gizmodo]