I love the folks behind Microsoft Research as they are always doing something super cool. Take for instance this new interface that they are developing called the “Muscle-Computer Interface”. This allows them to detect control input by sensing the movement of your muscles in your arm when you do something with your hands. I could never explain it well, so you better watch this demo video. Essentially, you will be able to play Guitar Hero without the Guitar.
What do you say when you become a fan of a fan? But this is no ordinary fan. Take a look at the picture below; are you expecting bladed to come out all of a sudden from somewhere? But no, this not an ordinary fan. This is a bladeless fan designed by Dyson. The fan uses aerodynamics principles to create 
an airflow inducing air from behind the fan into a continuous flow towards the front.
It basically takes in air from a small vent hole from the bottom, and then throws it out along the sides of the ring which causes air from behind the fan to get sucked into the fan as well. To see how that works, go to the page here: http://www.dyson.com/technology/airmultiplier.asp. They explain how the air multiplies technology works on this thing.
Sadly though this is not retailing yet, but it will pretty soon. Its expensive alright – $300 and up. But, I think something like this should be bought no matter the price (if you can afford it, i.e.)
Love it.
Remember Monopoly, the game? I loved playing that game growing up. And now it has finally come into the Internet age. You can now play the game online using Google Maps, and pitting yourself against players from around the world.
The game developers are releasing this version tomorrow (Sep 9, 2009), and here is the link to the website: http://www.monopolycitystreets.com/
While not too much detail is available for the game today, it is already known that you will play the game using Google Maps, and will literally be able to buy anything in the world. Some of the game play details are available here and there, here’s what I came across.
You will get a starting set of $3 million (play money of course), and will be able to buy properties such as hotels, houses, stadiums, high rises, etc. And depending on the property, you will receive rent (up to $100 million a day for a sky scraper). Prices will be a function of the location. And in true Monopoly spirit, you will be able to sabotage other players by using Monopoly Chance cards.
I am very excited to start playing this game.
How many times have you had the need to send someone the results of a Google query? How many times has someone asked you for help on really simple things, the answer for which is the first result on a Google query? I have had the need to do this many a times. If the answer to any of the above for you is also yes, then here’s a savior for us.
It’s a nifty little app on Google App Engine called Gog.Is. It is a TinyUrl type of a service which allows you to send Google queries through a small URL. It works by converting whatever you append to this url into a Google Search query, and returns the query page. For example:
Here’s one of the best blog ideas ever. Its called Post Secret. Its a blog which lets you write your secrets on a postcard and send to the author who promptly posts them on the blog. The author here is a guy called Frank Warren. He started this site in 2005, and has received more than 200 million visitors since then. Every Sunday, the blog is updated with 20 secrets. To me its interesting because you get a window into humanity. Here are some choice ones from last Sunday:
Google by default is not sensitive to the case of the search terms that you are searching. So doing a search for March or march gives you the same results on Google. Mostly this doesn’t matter, though sometimes it would (in the example, March is the name of a month, while march is the act of walking). While Google may not support this out of the box, someone thought it important enough to write an application which does support this.
If you thought that Google Docs is cool when it allows multiple people to edit a document at the same time, you will be surprised to know that it doesn’t even show updates in real time. But here’s a tool that shows Google Docs how it is done. It is called Etherpad. This neat little tool does allows you to have any number of coordinators on a single text document and shows you changes made to the document in real time. I foresee a very neat use of this already: imagine a client telecon, where there are a number of your colleagues present and all are trying to take notes. A tool like this would be awesome, because then everyone can take these notes collaboratively in real time, and add to each others comments.
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