OK, house of my dreams, you knew our love affair couldn't last. It's. OVER. It's not your fault, honey. It's hers. My new love stole my heart. I'm headed to Kamala beach—in Phuket, Thailand—to live with her forever.
I mean, don't get me wrong, I still like you very much. If you are into it, you can both share me. Actually, the three of you can get me in bed anytime. But Villa Amanzi—designed by Original Vision and built in 2008—has most of my heart. What's not to love about this dream home, perched on a 197-foot-high cliff overlooking the turquoise waters of the Andaman Sea?
Absolutely nothing.
Photo: Alain Delorme China is the world’s 3rd largest country, and with over 1.3 billion people, the most populous. For decades China remained closed off to the outside world, either struggling through the troubles of civil war or due to the secretive nature of its Communist government. Photo: Alain Delorme
Since the 1970’s, though, the country has opened up and has taken its place at the international table of superpowers. Due to its huge population and natural resources, China is a manufacturing powerhouse that will soon become the biggest and most powerful economy in the world. The economic boom has seen cities become mega cities, sprawling across vast areas and decorated with some of the tallest buildings in the world. Photo: Alain Delorme
However, in between these polished golden skyscrapers and beneath the looming financial might are the people who keep the cities ticking, the average citizens who provide the work – and oil the gears of the newest kid on the superpower block. Because of the population density and its associated issues, the citizens of China’s most populous city, Shanghai, have developed their own means of ensuring progress. Here is a glimpse at some of the most innovative means used. Photo: Alain Delorme
In China, bikes are everywhere. Pushbikes, motorbikes, mopeds, scooters – you name it, they've got it. In cities too large and congested to get everything where it needs to go in transit vans or HGVs, bikes are the main means of transport. Photo: Alain Delorme
From tires to rubbish, nothing is too heavy or too big to fit on a bike; you just need the right amount of rope. Photo: Alain Delorme
China is building skyscrapers at a rate only seen before in Sim City. According to Cranestodaymagazine.com, China is the largest market for cranes in the world, but the Chinese still rely on one of the the oldest forms of modern transport to get materials from A to B. Photo: Alain Delorme
There are no machines used in the stacking of bikes, proof of the people's improvisation and innovation – in the Chinese sense of making do with what you've got. Photo: Alain Delorme
China swept to the top of the medal table at the Beijing Olympics in 2008; it's just a pity there wasn't an Olympic medal available in Jenga. Photo: Alain Delorme
Flowers provide the perfect example of the delicate art of overloading bikes, proving that loading a bike in this way isn't completely dependent on the tightness of a rope. Photo: Alain Delorme
Alain Delorme, who took these wonderful pictures, is a French photographer living and working in Paris. He studied Science and Technology in Photography at the University of Paris and has exhibited throughout Europe. His next exhibition, Totem, from which these pictures are taken, shows in Paris and Amsterdam in early 2011. Photo: Alain Delorme
Please see Alain Delorme's website for further details.
The XWave can sense and detect human brainwaves, interpret them and connect it to everyday technology.
(PhysOrg.com) -- A new application for the iPhone, the XWave, lets you read your own mind via a headset clamped to your head and connected to the phone’s audio jack.
The plastic headband, which costs around $100, has a sensor that presses against the user’s forehead and communicates with a free XWave iPhone application that then shows your brain waves graphically on the iPhone screen. As you focus your mind on a task the graphics are changed — a ball may move higher for instance, or your state of relaxation may be indicated by changes in a pulsating color, which moves towards blue as you become more relaxed.
Brainwave detection is powered by an NeuroSky eSense dry sensor, which provides a brain-computer interface (BCI) to sense even faint electrical impulses in the brain and convert them to digital signals that are sent to the iPhone. Previous applications of the NeuroSky technology include computer games and toys. In XWave an algorithm is applied to the brain rhythms to convert them to graphical representations of attention and meditation values. Enlarge
XWave enables you to manipulate a number of other iPhone graphical applications and objects in games using only your brain waves, providing your rating in attention or meditation is high enough. At present you cannot text or browse the web using XWave, but you can use the device to train your mind to relax and focus on command. The list of applications for the device is likely to grow rapidly.
XWave, developed by PLX Devices, is meant to be used purely for entertainment, but the implications for the future are enormous, and may be particularly important for people who are disabled since they may be able to have much more control in their lives using their brain waves alone to control their phonse and potentially other applications. According to PLX, the headset device is also open for use with applications from other companies. Enlarge
XWave iPhone app screen.
XWave is compatible with the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Wireless versions are also available for WiFi and Bluetooth devices. The free XWave application is available for download via iTunes.
…when you can simply glide along the surface of the water with nothing but the power of your own rear end? No board, no water skies, no paddle, and certainly no rope attached to a speed boat here. Just man versus nature, and it looks like man is winning.
I have always been impressed with liquid mountaineering, but those dudes have nothing on this guy!
Can you imagine the pressure on the son of the greatest man to ever touch a basketball? Can you even fathom the basketball scrutiny and critique with which he much endure daily? No matter what type of player he would turn out to be, he would forever be compared to his father. If nothing else, Marcus Jordan has shown so far this year that he has game and that he can lead a squad. Jordan’s University of Central Florida Knights have quietly gotten off to a 14 – 1 start this season and that’s thanks in large part to him.
UCF is off to their best start in their Division I history and are one of only seven teams to be undefeated after their first 14 games, before losing to Houston over the weekend. In a game last week against Marshall, MJ 2.0 dropped 26 points including 18 in the second half. Before their winning streak came to an end a few days ago, Jordan reacted to the attention the streak was receiving:
“We’re trying to not even think about the streak. We just want to go out and win the next game. Whenever the streak ends, it ends. But we’re trying to keep that from happening.”
Defense is actually what propelled the Knights to their hot start. In that same game against Marshall, UCF held them to under 30% shooting from the field and UCF had 11 total blocks as a team.
“Our defense has been our staple all year long and that’s the thing we’ve focused on. Everybody thinks we’re an offensive team, but the thing we preach the most is defense”, said head coach Donnie Jones.
After enduring an investigation this past summer due to an alleged gambling incident, Jordan, a sophomore, who has led the team in scoring seven times this year, is the Knights’ leading scorer at a 16.3ppg clip. That is more than double his freshman output of 8ppg where he earned a spot on Conference USA’s All-Freshman team.
The team just recently lost to Houston over the weekend, 76 – 71, but they are off to a blistering start. While not quite his father, Marcus has definitely shown that he has similar leadership qualities as the elder Jordan. In fact, earlier in the year, he also showed us that he can certain get up too.
Tiago Della Vega attempts to break his current world record in Intel's booth at CES. He holds the current world record for playing the guitar at 320 beats per minute. Today, he broke the world record by attempting to play at 340 bpm! What an incredible display of talent!
pcmag.com— This Thursday, the Computer History Museum in Mountain View will unveil "R:Evolution," a $19 million renovation focusing on the first 2,000 years of computing. And it's amazing.
This amazing sunset with a difference is a phenomenon than can arise when you view the sun through millions of ice crystals.
As water freezes in the upper atmosphere, millions of small, six-sided ice crystals - known as diamond dust - flutter to the ground.
And at the approach of either sunrise or sunset, this is what an observer passing through the same plane as the falling crystals will see.
Sunset with a difference: This dazzling halo was taken in Stockholm, Sweden, with the sun at the centre and two bright sundogs glowing on the left and right
Each crystal acts like a miniature lens, refracting the eye's view of sunlight and creating the phenomena known as sundogs.
The dramatic effect is also referred to a mock sun or a phantom sun.
This sun halo image was taken in Stockholm, Sweden, with the sun in the centre while two bright sundogs glow prominently from the left and the right.
Also visible is a bright 22 degree halo - as well as the rarer and much fainter 46 degree halo - also created by sunlight reflecting off atmospheric ice crystals.
Sundogs can be seen around the world as long as the conditions are suitable.
Sundogs: Famous painting Vädersolstavlan believed to be the oldest picture of the phenomena - and the first landscape portrait of Stockholm
A famous Swedish painting from Stockholm in 1535 called Vädersolstavlan is thought to be the earliest ever picture of the natural phenomena.
It is also the oldest landscape painting of Stockholm - although the original by Urban Målare is thought to have been destroyed long ago.
However, a 1636 copy by Jacob Heinrich Elbfas is thought to be an accurate recreation of the original and has been restored in recent years.
As if making the oldest known leather shoe wasn't enough, a prehistoric people in what's now Armenia also built the world's oldest known winery, a new study says.
Undertaken at a burial site, their winemaking may have been dedicated to the dead—and it likely required the removal of any fancy footwear.
Near the village of Areni, in the same cave where a stunningly preserved, 5,500-year-old leather moccasin was recently found, archaeologists have unearthed a wine press for stomping grapes, fermentation and storage vessels, drinking cups, and withered grape vines, skins, and seeds, the study says.
"This is the earliest, most reliable evidence of wine production," said archaeologist Gregory Areshian of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
The prehistoric winemaking equipment was first detected in 2007, when excavations co-directed by Areshian and Armenian archaeologist Boris Gasparyan began at the Areni-1 cave complex.
In September 2010 archaeologists completed excavations of a large, 2-foot-deep (60-centimeter-deep) vat buried next to a shallow, 3.5-foot-long (1-meter-long) basin made of hard-packed clay with elevated edges.
The installation suggests the Copper Age vintners pressed their wine the old-fashioned way, using their feet, Areshian said.
Juice from the trampled grapes drained into the vat, where it was left to ferment, he explained.
The wine was then stored in jars—the cool, dry conditions of the cave would have made a perfect wine cellar, according to Areshian, who co-authored the new study, published Tuesday in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
Wine Traces
To test whether the vat and jars in the Armenian cave had held wine, the team chemically analyzed pottery shards—which had been radiocarbon-dated to between 4100 B.C. and 4000 B.C.—for telltale residues.
The chemical tests revealed traces of malvidin, the plant pigment largely responsible for red wine's color.
"Malvidin is the best chemical indicator of the presence of wine we know of so far," Areshian said.
Ancient-wine expert Patrick E. McGovern, a biomolecular archaeologist at the University of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia, agrees the evidence argues convincingly for a winemaking facility.
One thing that would make the claim a bit stronger, though, said McGovern, who wasn't involved in the study, is the presence of tartaric acid, another chemical indicator of grapes. Malvidin, he said, might have come from other local fruits, such as pomegranates.
Combined with the malvidin and radiocarbon evidence, traces of tartaric acid "would then substantiate that the facility is the earliest yet found," he said.
"Later, we know that small treading vats for stomping out the grapes and running the juice into underground jars are used all over the Near East and throughout the Mediterranean," he added.
(Related: "Ancient Christian 'Holy Wine' Factory Found in Egypt.")
Winery Discovery Backed Up by DNA?
McGovern called the discovery "important and unique, because it indicates large-scale wine production, which would imply, I think, that the grape had already been domesticated."
As domesticated vines yield much more fruit than wild varieties, larger facilities would have been needed to process the grapes.
McGovern has uncovered chemical and archaeological evidence of wine, but not of a winery, in northern Iran dating back some 7,000 years—around a thousand years earlier than the new find.
But the apparent discovery that winemaking using domesticated grapevines emerged in what's now Armenia appears to dovetail with previous DNA studies of cultivated grape varieties, McGovern said. Those studies had pointed to the mountains of Armenia, Georgia, and neighboring countries as the birthplace of viticulture.
McGovern—whose book Uncorking the Past: The Quest for Wine, Beer, and Other Alcoholic Beverages traces the origins of wine—said the Areni grape perhaps produced a taste similar to that of ancient Georgian varieties that appear to be ancestors of the Pinot Noir grape, which results in a dry red.
To preserve the wine, however, tree resin would probably have been added, he speculated, so the end result may actually have been more like a Greek retsina, which is still made with tree resin.
In studying ancient alcohol, he added, "our chemical analyses have shown tree resin in many wine samples."
Ancient Drinking Rituals
While the identities of the ancient, moccasin-clad wine quaffers remain a mystery, their drinking culture likely involved ceremonies in honor of the dead, UCLA's Areshian believes.
"Twenty burials have been identified around the wine-pressing installation. There was a cemetery, and the wine production in the cave was related to this ritualistic aspect," Areshian speculated.
Significantly, drinking cups have been found inside and around the graves.
McGovern, the ancient-wine expert, said later examples of ancient alcohol-related funerary rituals have been found throughout the world.
In ancient Egypt, for example, "you have illustrations inside the tombs showing how many jars of beer and wine from the Nile Delta are to be provided to the dead," McGovern said. (Also see "Scorpion King's Wines—Egypt's Oldest—Spiked With Meds.")
"I guess a cave is secluded, so it's good for a cemetery, but it's also good for making wine," he added. "And then you have the wine right there, so you can keep the ancestors happy."
Future work planned at Areni will further investigate links between the burials and winemaking, study leader Areshian said.
Winemaking as Revolution
The discovery is important, the study team says, because winemaking is seen as a significant social and technological innovation among prehistoric societies.
Vine growing, for instance, heralded the emergence of new, sophisticated forms of agriculture, Areshian said.
"They had to learn and understand the cycles of growth of the plant," he said. "They had to understand how much water was needed, how to prevent fungi from damaging the harvest, and how to deal with flies that live on the grapes.
"The site gives us a new insight into the earliest phase of horticulture—how they grew the first orchards and vineyards," he added.
University of Pennsylvania archaeologist Naomi Miller commented that "from a nutritional and culinary perspective, wine expands the food supply by harnessing the otherwise sour and unpalatable wild grape.
"From a social perspective, for good and ill," Miller said, "alcoholic beverages change the way we interact with each other in society."
****
The ancient-winery study was led by UCLA's Hans Barnard and partially funded by the National Geographic Society'sCommittee for Research and Exploration. (The Society owns National Geographic News.)
We all know that albino animals have pink eyes and skin. So why is this albino lab rat blue?
Medical researchers have discovered that the blue dye used in food products such as M&Ms, Jell-O and Gatorade can actually help heal spinal injuries. Injured rats regained the ability to walk after receiving an injection of the dye. The side effect, of course, is that the rodents themselves turned blue.
Most films are pretty linear and easy to follow in their story telling. Others are muddled, but make sense when you think about them — like Memento. But some, some are designed to bewilder, obfuscate, and confuse. These 15 films are all varying degrees of head-scratchers. Some you can pick apart with a bit of work, some you are deliberately impossible to understand, but all are worth the effort of the attempt. Oh yeah, spoilers.
15. Vanilla Sky
While personally I didn’t find this American remake of the Spanish psycho-thriller that bewildering, there were plenty who did, to the point where it was voted the most confusing film ever by a DVD rental company. The fact of the matter is that much of the perceived twistedness and confusion from the plot is all resolved by the classic cop out “it was all a dream.” While perhaps not as utterly blatant as that, but the entire film takes place in the lucid dream of a man in cryogenic suspensions whose subconscious has started to assert itself. That explains the constantly switching nature of reality, and the weirdness that surrounds him. There, easy.
14. Pi
Darren Aaranofsky’s first major flick was Pi, and this twisted black and white look at obsession and paranoia was enough to get him into the big leagues. It’s a combination of Aaranofsky’s trademark incredibly quick cuts, the dense subject matter, and an unreliable narrator that causes Pi to be tricky to follow, as Max Cohen struggles to understand the universal patterns that occur through nature as a way of understanding and predicting the stock market. As he uncovers more and more of a number that may be at the root of things, or may be the unknown name of god, his sanity begins to erode, and his headaches increase, his final inevitable decline is as horrific as it is a relief — both for the viewer and the character.
13. eXistenZ
Cronenberg excels at making you question what is real and what is not, and eXistenZ asks that about video games and reality, as the story blurs the boundary between at least three or four levels of the interaction of both. With the advent of a total immersion video game, eXistenZ is all about asking how much is free will, how much is scripted, and how much is even real. As multiple levels of games and reality begin to emerge, the final scene eventually feels like the whole movie has been sorted out — until the very last line.
12. Solaris
Partly due to being in Russian and partly due to its legendary slow pacing, Solaris (the 1972 version) is notoriously hard to follow. Often called the Russian 2001, Solaris takes place on a space station where the researchers are starting to hallucinate and go insane. The hallucinations cause plenty of questioning about the nature of their reality, which when combined with a psychologist main character and the question of how to approach a truly, truly alien lifeform has lead to many scratching their heads. The final open end to the film leaves just as many questions raised as it answers. It’s still a damn good movie if you can handle the glacial pace, but don’t expect any easy answers.
11. Adaptation
Adaptation is utterly confusing, and unlike other films which blur the lines between reality and fantasy within the world of the movie, it takes on the borders between film and real life — as in our real life. Adaptation is an adaptation of a novel called The Orchid Thief, which has no plot to speak of. So the movie is about the movie’s writer struggling to adapt the book, and make a screenplay, which ends up being about him struggling to write a screenplay about the Orchid Thief. It consciously slips between Kaufman’s attempts to write a script true to a book that can’t be adapted, while shamelessly throwing in Hollywoodesque features like explosions, car chases, and love stories. Yeah, it’s bewildering, and just how true any of it is is entirely up for debate. It’s still a great film, though.
10. Akira
Without having read the immense manga or hitting wikipedia, understanding Akira on the first viewing is extremely tricky. The amount of information presented to the viewer is minimal, and the whole “wait, what happened to Akira? Where did he go? And the blue kids? There’s another universe?” thing is pretty damn hard to get your head around, especially when most of the movie only explains these things tangentially, and you’re more concerned about Tetsuo’s crazy ass powers. Repeated watching and further research really do clarify what the hell is going on, because otherwise you’re left bewildered.
9. 2001: A Space Odyssey
2001 is pretty damned hard to follow, mostly due to the bookends of the film, with the prehistoric opening and incredibly trippy closing, which serve to bewilder many viewers. The bit in the middles is juts fine, though. Kubrick was famously exacting in what he required from his films, and the slow pacing is entirely intentional, and so too is the requirement that you as a watcher actually have to think and interpret what is happening, and not have it handed to you on a platter. The transformation into the Star-Child — and proceeding bad trip through space — is definitely obtuse and was designed to be open to interpretation. My personal view is that when Bowman activates the monolith, he’s whisked to an alien zoo for observation, before they ascend him into a new form. But hey, that’s just me.
8. Naked Lunch
Cronenberg directing a book by Burroughs. You know there’s going to be nothing but batshit crazy here. Only really tangentially related to the book, Peter Weller’s laconic take on the insanity and surreality that surround him rapidly becomes an anchoring point for the viewer. Talking insects, hallucinogens, murder, sentient typewriters, psychic communications, body suits and all other manner of weirdness pervade it, and it’s certainly not for the squeamish or easily bewildered. Unlike many of the other stories on this list, Naked Lunch isn’t capable of being picked apart, instead it’s intentionally obtuse and inscrutable. Just sit back and enjoy the ride.
7. Jacob’s Ladder
Military experiments, death, drugs, and psychic powers. Jacob’s Ladder is an utterly horrifying trip into the mind of a broken individual trying to escape the legacy of the horrors of Vietnam. I won’t ruin the ending — which could be viewed either as a cop out, or else the only logical end of the story — but it’s a kick in the gut, that’s for sure. Increasingly horrific hallucinations plague Jacob as he learns more about just what happened when he was wounded during the war, and how it’s linked to everything that’s happened since then. Uniquely terrifying and difficult to pick apart, the ending kind of does away with any real need to explain what’s going on.
6. Mulholland Drive
Pretty much any film by David Lynch belongs on this list, but lets bundle most of them up in with Mulholland Drive, which is possibly his most acclaimed work. Lets face it, barring maybe Elephant Man and Dune, Lynch’s work is uniquely surrealist, and hard to follow regardless of how well you understand his corpus of productions. Lynch has specifically avoided offering explanations of the goings on in Mulholland Drive, instead intentionally wanting viewers and critics to create their own opinions. Non-linear, bewildering, and inter-cut with seemingly unrelated chunks, it’s hard to follow even at the best of times, yet remains a powerful and influential film.
5. Holy Mountain
Chilean filmmaker/artist Alejandro Jodorowsky is either the closest thing we have to a mad prophet, or utterly insane, and I can’t decide which. Anything he makes is so densely packed with symbolism and metaphor that it will break your brain trying to understand what everything means — and it all means something. Steeped in tarot, mysticism, Christian magic, alchemy, and everything else weird and wonderful, his work is transcendental, if you can follow it. He’s more or less given up on film these days, instead focusing on comics where he isn’t limited by things like the laws of physics or budgets. Unfortunately, his later work has become almost a self-cliché, invariably hitting the same points over and over. Here’s something interesting, grab anything he’s done in the last decade, and tick off which of the following are in it: incest, violence and mutilation between family members, castration of a son by a father, a horrible disfiguring wound caused by a parent figure, obese and corrupt priests, back-stabbing royalty. Yeah, all of his stuff hits these points, regardless if it’s fantasy, historical, or sci-fi.
4. Donnie Darko
Donnie Darko is much, much deeper than I originally gave it credit for. I first went in with my brain turned off, expecting something “quirky”, but not actually deep. What I got was only the tip of the story, and it turns out there are volumes more information that you need to really appreciate what was going on — mostly given via the notoriously twisted and labyrinthine website. If you don’t have the time to invest the hours required to plumb its depth, I thoroughly recommend this guide.
3. Eraserhead
I know, we’ve already seen Lynch on this list, but could I really ignore the famously off-the-wall Eraserhead? It’s completely and utterly indescribable. There’s a guy, his wife, a horribly deformed baby which may or may not be human, explosions, machinery, oozing wounds and liquids, eraser shavings, and more craziness than I can even understand. It was Lynch’s first feature film, and is 89 minutes of pure snake-fucking crazy. Highly influential, but still utterly unintelligible, there’s really nothing you can do but try and ride it out, or devote a lifelong academic career to trying to decipher it.
2. Synecdoche, New York
Again we see a Charlie Kaufman flick. The guy really does excel at the mindfuck. This time starring the superb Philip Seymour Hoffman as a play director crippled by neuroses who receives an immense grant, and sets up a massive play in a warehouse where each actor acts out a private and banal life, mimicking the outside. Slowly the play begins to mirror the outside world more and more, as he is afflicted by a mysterious illness, to the point where he hires actors to portray people outside, including himself. The film twists in on itself constantly, with the impossibly large warehouse eventually housing a full replica of New York city, including its own impossibly large warehouse, and so on. Sharply dividing to critics, some hailed it as the best film of the decade, others as unintelligible gibberish. Thematically dense but incredible, if you can follow it, you’ll be justly rewarded.
1. Primer
Shot for a mere $7,000, Primer is about time travel. Sort of. It’s more about the breakdown between two people, but an incredibly confusing causally linked time travel mechanism underpins it. If someone tells you they understood it on their first viewing, they’re filthy liars. Written by a mathematician/engineer, none of the jargon or lingo is cut, making it as factually accurate as one could imagine a time travel story to be. The plot loops in on itself in recursive and terrifying ways. Trying to follow it? Here’s a sample timeline, here’s another, though this one is the most accurate. Yes, it really is that batshit confusing, but watching it over and over to pick it apart is surprisingly fun. Unlike some of the other films on this list which are confusing just to be confusing, Primer actually makes complete sense, if you’re willing to put enough time and effort into it to understand what’s going on.
Salma Hayek and ABC are developing an eight-part miniseries adaptation based on the Oz-centric book “Wicked,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Gregory Maguire’s best seller retells the “Wizard of Oz” story from the sympathetic viewpoint of the Wicked Witch of the West, the green Elphaba. It has already been translated into the hugely successful Broadway musical, but Hayek’s version will not be set to song.
Hayek and her producing partner Jose Tamez guide the version under their Ventanarosa Prod. with ABC Studios.
Erik Jenderson, who won an Emmy for his work on HBO’s “Band of Brothers,” is writing the script.
There’s no official word yet on whether Hayek herself will appear in the production.
NBC Universal is also developing a version of “Wicked” that is based on the musical (so, apparently, there will be at least two places like home).
On January 2nd, a cow gave birth to a calf with two heads in the eastern European country Georgia. Apparently, the calf's mother has refused to let it nurse, which is not an uncommon response when an animal senses its offspring has something seriously wrong with it. Despite that, the calf has been feeding from a bottle with both of its heads. Unfortunately, chances of its survival to adulthood are not good, but possible with lots of human care.
See examples of other multiple-headed animals on Animal Planet's Weird, True and Freaky video page.
VIDEO: Watch video of the little two-headed cow.
Google Goggles works by utilizing the camera in your smartphone to retrieve useful information in search results, essentially, you could snap pictures of objects, text, photos, people, landmarks, among other things, and the app then retrieves search results after scanning the photo.
In late August 2010, Google said it would release future updates that would make the app more effective with more relevant search results.
Since that announcement, today marks the biggest update the app has received.
Photo picture search of a Ferrari model car in Google Goggles for iPhone
The latest Google Goggles version 1.3, available now in the Google Android Marketplace and the Apple iOS App Store, largely brings under-the-hood enhancements to take advantaged of improved algorithms that significantly increase the accuracy of the app when scanning things like a product barcode.
The company also improved the apps ability to better recognize content and other elements in magazines, including text, titles, people, and major corporate brands on magazine covers.
Google says the improved search results related to magazines work best for magazines published after August 2010.
One of the most impressive additions to the app is its ability to solve Sudoku game puzzles, by simply snapping a picture of the puzzle board; the app is able to analyze and easily and intelligently solve the missing numbers.
Although Google Goggles has been available in beta form for Android devices for about a year, the app only made its way onto Apple products late in the summer of 2010 after Google had difficulties in getting the app approved into Apple’s App Store.
In our testing, the application worked very quickly, but not very consistently in analyzing busier pictures.
For example, when a picture was snapped of a Ferrari model car, the app easily recognized the fact that it was indeed a model car, and even the type, but it also had difficulty recognizing popular brands on the car itself, but it was still fairly successful when closer range photos were snapped. Bar codes of popular products like Kellogg Corn Flakes worked seamlessly.
Remember how the ban on Four Loko effectively outlawed the booze-filled caffeinated energy drink? Now, some wholesalers are unloading unsold warehouses of the stuff to a company in Virginia. The company will turn it into ethanol and add it to gasoline.
Some choice words from the geniuses behind this after the jump!
According to the Associated Press, wholesalers across the East Coast have started trucking their cases of Four Loko to MXI Environmental Services, one of just three facilities in the United States that recycles ethanol. Brian Potter, the company's president, is obviously excited.
"We're equipped to process four truckloads a day, and we're at full capacity," he said. "There are about 30 different products involved, and we've only seen a couple of them at this point. It could go on for several months."
The article points out that just one truckload of Four Loko amounts to 2,000 cases of the drink. Figure each case carries six cans, and that's about 48,000 Four Lokos recycled daily. Isn't that so much better than the booze getting recycled in the digestive and urinary tracts of co-eds?
China's vaulting economic ambition has set a new record with the construction of the world's longest bridge over water.
The sheer scale of the Qingdao Haiwan Bridge reveals the advances made by Chinese engineers in recent yearsPhoto: WENN
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World's top ten longest bridges
By David Eimer
At 26.4 miles long, the Qingdao Haiwan Bridge would easily cross the English Channel and is almost three miles longer than the previous record-holder, the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway in the American state of Louisiana.
The vast structure links the centre of the booming port city of Qingdao in easternChina's Shandong Province with the suburb of Huangdao, spanning the wide blue waters of Jiaozhou Bay.
Built in just four years at a cost of £5.5 billion, the sheer scale of the bridge reveals the advances made by Chinese engineers in recent years.
No longer dependant on western expertise for such sophisticated projects, the six-lane road bridge is supported by more than 5,200 columns and was designed by the Shandong Gausu Group. When it opens to traffic later this year, the bridge is expected to carry over 30,000 cars a day and will cut the commute between the city of Qingdao and the sprawling suburb of Huangdao by between 20 and 30 minutes.
At least 10,000 workers toiled in two teams around the clock to build the bridge, which was constructed from opposite ends and connected in the middle in the last few days.
World's top ten longest bridges
A staggering 450,000 tons of steel was used in its construction – enough for almost 65 Eiffel Towers – and 2.3 million cubic metres of concrete, equivalent to filling 3,800 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
Chinese officials said that the bridge will be strong enough to withstand a magnitude 8 earthquake, typhoons or the impact of a 300,000 tonne vessel.
With its economy growing by 16 per cent a year, Qingdao is one of China's fastest-growing and most prosperous cities. The main port of the Chinese navy and home of Tsingtao Beer, China's best-known brew, it hosted the sailing events of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Briefly occupied by Germany between 1898 and 1914, Qingdao's mix of early 20th century European-style villas and churches, sandy beaches and reputation for fine seafood has seen it become one of China's most popular domestic tourist destinations in recent years. It is also regarded as a highly desirable place to live. A 2009 Chinese survey named Qingdao as China's most liveable city.
Qingdao's residents have hailed the bridge as a long overdue marvel.
"I'm so happy the bridge is finished. The old road between Qingdao and Huangdao is so crowded and now my journey will be much easier. We are a tourist city with beautiful beaches, so it is important we have good transport links," said one commuter on sina.com, China's biggest internet portal.
But people from other parts of China have denounced the huge cost of the bridge, especially as it only cuts the distance between Qingdao and Huangdao by 19 miles.
"To spend billions to save 20 minutes driving time is a waste of taxpayers money. It's just a show project to make the governor of Shandong look good," complained one commentator from Jilin Province in China's northeast.
China is already home to seven of the world's 10 longest bridges, including the world's lengthiest, the 102 mile Danyang-Kunshan rail bridge, which runs over land and water near Shanghai.
And with Beijing pumping billions into boosting China's infrastructure, the Qingdao Haiwan Bridge will not be the world's longest sea bridge for very long.
By: KP/ Ontario artist Mariel Clayton isn’t the first social commentator to decry Barbie’s negative effect on society, and she definitely won’t be the last. But she just might be the most grisly. Her art features Barbie in myriad situations that would put Mattel in a tizzy. Sex, bondage, suicide, murder — it’s all there, in tiny detail.
Clayton was kind enough to share a bunch of photos with us, and she also answered a few questions. Read below for her thoughts on feminism, fortune-telling and robotic dildos.
Why Barbie?
Because I hate Barbie. I intensely dislike the stereotype that the “ideal” female fits no current authentic female form. You can’t get to be Barbie without an ocean’s worth of peroxide, 27 plastic surgeries and a complete lack of intelligence, so it irritates me immensely that this is the toy of choice women give to their daughters to emulate.
At least with boys’ toys like GI Joe and Action Man, these were characters that had personality, depth and purpose, worthy of real imaginative storytelling. Barbie has nothing except clothes and “being a girl,” but what is being a girl? Being a vapid shell with tits up to your ears? Playing in your kitchen or changing outfits for the umpteenth time so “Ken” will think you’re pretty?
My first picture with Barbie was actually of her committing suicide in the tub, after Ken had dumped her for another man — my wishful thinking on the end of evil influence. I’m not sure why it ended up being Barbie killing Ken, if I am to be honest — I think it’s because I find it really damn funny. Behind the vacuous perpetual lipsticked-smile and soulless eyes lurks the black heart of the true sociopath, just like in real life. I think it finally makes the doll interesting, and I like that contrast between saccharine sweet and pure malevolence.
How concretely do you see the scenes in your mind before composing them? Are you thinking “I want to put Ken’s head in the fridge” or do you just pop his head off and go from there?
Sometimes I see a complete picture in my head, down to the last detail and all I have to do is recreate it with the props, other times it might just be a particular piece of a picture that I will then build on. It’s hard to explain because my mind tends to think up these things faster then I consciously comprehend them, so while I know exactly what I want to do, it takes me a while to fill in the details. The latest piece I’ve just finished is G is for Gastromancy — when I saw the word “gastromancy” I flashed on a picture in my head of Ken, shackled and hanging upside down with Barbie listening to his stomach, head cocked, and then vomit dripping out his chin onto the floor. From that I just go on constructing the scene, adding little details as it builds up.
Or when I get a new miniature, I’ll just get an idea of how I want to use it in a picture as a prop, and then I’ll think up what I want Barbie to do with it. I’ve even got some inspiration from the paper I use for my backdrops — I see a pattern or texture, and it just lends itself to an idea.
I think the oddest time I’ve ever had an idea was when I woke up one morning and just thought to myself, “Ken, impaled on the dildo from Barbie’s robot which has broken off, pinning him to the wall.” I never dream of kittens and rainbows and flowers. There’s probably a medication for that sort of thing, but then the pictures wouldn’t be as good. There’s a feminist statement happening here, right?
Nope, I’m actually anti-feminist. I don’t believe in it, because I think the message that “feminism” is trying to convey has escalated to a ridiculous and unfair demonization of men.
I don’t believe that men and women are equal, because logically, they aren’t. However, that doesn’t mean they can’t be treated equally, and feminism is not interested in that.
I think that men have been emasculated by contemporary media, to the point where they are treated like immature, imbecilic children who have nothing to contribute unless it’s something to deride or mock, and feminism plays a large part in perpetuating that characterization.
Everything is so damn gynocentric, every woman is being told to “find herself’ and that she is “special” and “she can be everything she wants to be, damn anyone who tries to stand in her way.” To me that’s nothing more than a way to shirk personal responsibility. If something goes wrong, feminism says that it’s a man’s fault, that if you can’t get the job you want, it’s a man’s fault, if you aren’t being understood, it’s a man’s fault for not being more in touch with women’s feelings, if you are feeling overwhelmed, it’s a man’s fault for not offering to shoulder your burdens, but if he does offer, then he’s terribly insensitive and callous for assuming you can’t handle it. That is how feminism is shaping the female world, and it disgusts me.
I think women (and men) need to stop worrying about “isms” and suck it up, take responsibility for your own life and how you deal with it, regardless of what gender you happen to be.
It may seem weird that I call myself an anti-feminist when I create pictures that are definitely cruelty towards men, but I’m not doing it with some sort of agenda or social message. I just think it’s funny: sweet little perfect Barbie, the psychopath.
My biggest portion of feedback comes from men — they seem to “get” the humor of it. I’ve had few nasty emails, all from women, calling me disturbed and unbalanced, recommending I seek therapy et cetera, which I find really interesting.
I’m not out to send a message. I’m just out to have a bit of fun and share it with others. View more of Clayton’s work in our gallery, and be sure to visit her website.
If you love arcade games, but don’t have the means, the space, or the desire to pack a whackload of them into your residence like Ricky Schroder in ‘Silver Spoons’… what I’m about to show you could be right up your alley.
Making its debut at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show this past week was the iCADE miniature arcade game controller for iPad. Check it out. The old-school joystick, large buttons and arcade cabinet make this a must-have iPad accessory for the retro-gamer. The cabinet opens from the top, allowing you to slide your iPad into it in portrait or landscape. All controls connect via Bluetooth, and yes, while this is surely a novelty, it’s one I could see tucked-away in my office for use from time to time.
The folks at ION Audio have outdone themselves on this one, as it fits the iPad beautifully, and works pretty darn well to boot. To check it out in action, hit play on the video above.
Look for the iCADE to become available at some point this spring for $99.
To the average consumer, the intricacies of the wireless technologies used by cellphones and other mobile devices are confusing. Fortunately, cell phone carriers have made it easier on us by inventing the “G,” a nebulous standard that makes people think they understand what they’re getting when they sign up for that two-year contract. The bad news: The carriers themselves typically don’t care about what a 3G or 4G network should actually be. And now, as proof of concept, AT&T has re-branded their existing 3G network as a 4G network.
At least now we’re clear on exactly what ‘4G’ means: Essentially, nothing.
By definition, 4G network “standards” like LTE (Long Term Evolution) run at speeds of 1 Gbit/s for low-mobility connections like cellphones. But it doesn’t mean they have to. That doesn’t matter much to carriers, however, since most consumers don’t know enough about how cellular tech works to wonder or even care about the actual capabilities of the network they’re shelling out for. After all, chances are that even if they could, those under-trained representatives aren’t going explain to you the difference between HSPA Plus (what AT&T uses currently) and LTE. Like always, they still only want to do two things: Sell you a phone, and sell you a contract with a network that operates on muddied and arbitrary wireless standards.
Threatened by other providers touting presumably faster networks, AT&T’s new ‘4G’ branding will run on the same old HSPA Plus tech that you’ve been using to get oft-congested connections on your iPhone. Their excuse for doing this? “We won’t notice.”
“The whole industry has come to equate more speed with 4G,” said Ralph de la Vega, chief executive of AT&T’s wireless unit. He says consumers generally won’t notice the difference in speed between AT&T’s HSPA-plus and upcoming LTE networks, so it makes sense to call both 4G.
John Donovan, AT&T’s chief technology officer, said speeds on HSPA-plus and LTE phones will feel similar now, but users will start to notice a difference in the two technologies once richer applications become available.
I had to re-read that first part at least 3 times because it is so absurd that I could not wrap my brain around it. Essentially this is AT&T saying, “we don’t need to wait for a faster network, because we’ve been sufficiently awesome this whole time — we just forgot to give to tack on that cool name that everyone’s using.” And as for applications not being “rich” enough, that too sounds like a massive cop-out. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one that’s seeing the apps on their smartphone choke on current data speeds.
AT&T’s not the only one making semantic upgrades, however — T-Mobile, which still runs on the same ‘3G’ HSPA Plus networks as AT&T, has also recently switched to the “4G” nomenclature. Don’t get me wrong, it’s certainly possible to get faster speeds on a 4G handset using the same old networks, but it’s hard to imagine the boost being anything but marginal.
So in the end, it’ll be up to us to find out just what the heck our carrier’s ‘4G’ network actually is. Lifehacker’s got a pretty decent guide. Read up and don’t be a sucker.
Beginning February 10, the phone that changed everything will be available on both AT&T and Verizon Wireless in the United States. Qualified Verizon Wireless customers will also have the exclusive opportunity to pre-order iPhone 4 online on February 3, ahead of general availability.
Whichever network you choose, you’ll get FaceTime video calling, the high-resolution Retina display, a 5-megapixel camera, HD video recording, long battery life, and all the other great features of iPhone 4.
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All you art collectors out there. Here is a chance to get a Giclee copy of some of Ian M Sherwin work. Ian is planning on doing a whole series of Marblehead, Massachusetts paintings. His work is amazing.
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