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Saturday, April 28, 2007

Evolution: The Cookie Monster of 1967


OMG, love its nonsense GeekSpeak!, Real fits for those IBM engineers.

LOL! on that part on Doppler Supplamated Magneto, "Can be purchased in any hardware store for about 37 cents".

I guess those born in Sesame Street era would love it.

“”In 1967, Henson used the "Wheel-Stealer" puppet for an IBM training film called "Coffee Break Machine". In the sketch, the monster (with frightening eyes and fangs) devours a complex machine as the machine describes its purpose and construction. At the end of the sketch, the talking machine explains that its primary purpose is to produce the greatest explosion known to man. The monster promptly explodes. This sketch was also performed in October, 1967 on The Ed Sullivan Show”” - Cookie_Monster

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Dasher: Information-Efficient Text Entry System


Above short clip was a fast forwarded video from Google TechTalks 2007 with the following summaries:

Keyboards are inefficient for two reasons: they do not exploit the redundancy in normal and they waste the fine analogue capabilities of the user's motor system (fingers and eyes, for example). I describe a system intended to rectify both these inefficiencies.

Dasher is a computer accessibility tool enabling users to enter text efficiently using a pointing device rather than a keyboard, for example,

- when operating a computer one-handed, by joystick, touchscreen, trackball, or mouse.
- when operating a computer with zero hands (i.e., by head-mouse or by eyetracker).
- on a palmtop computer.
- on a wearable computer.

It has been likened to an arcade game, since to use it you zoom through characters that fly across the screen. It uses a probabilistic predictive model to give priority to more likely character combinations.

Dasher can be described as a back-to-front version of arithmetic coding, a data-compression algorithm.

Users can achieve single-finger writing speeds of 35 words per minute and hands-free writing speeds of 25 words per minute.

It takes advantage of Fitts' law – the fact that larger areas can be selected more quickly than smaller areas.

Dasher is licensed under the GPL. It is available for several platforms including Linux, Microsoft Windows,Pocket PC, and there's even a little java version for your web-browser.

So if this get you hooked :) , see the full 54mins video at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5078334075080674416
and Try Dasher in your browser right now!

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Friday, April 20, 2007

Mr. Bond Cat of Singapore



This was one amazing fearless alley cat performed “Parkour” stunt on balancing and especially climbing down on the steel barbed fence.

Guess that this is not the rare famous Singapura Cat (Kucinta).

Here was another crazy cats walking on balcony from elsewhere…

Technie Note: Thanks to the original author from “One bad cat” video.
This video was spiced up with James Bond’s theme using the freeware versatile VirtualDub video processing utility with Deshaker plugin to stabilize the original jerky video, plus a little touch on lame old skool Ascii Art. :)


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Tuesday, April 3, 2007

Singapore Anti-Smoking TV Ads

“”…. Said HPB’s chief executive, Mr Lam Pin Woon: "HPB has reviewed and revised our advertising timing and channels to minimise causing any alarm to young children."

Housewife Leong Sow Chan was one of the peeved parents. Her nine-year-old daughter was so traumatised by the commercial the first time she saw it that she had a nightmare that night.

"She started screaming at about 3am and woke my husband up. He had to attend to her," said Madam Leong…..”” - Quoted from channelnewsasia.com

Here is another similar but less graphical from Down Under.

Trivia: Singapore are also infamous for whipping the American teenager for vandalism , Banning of Chewing Gum , the “Fine” City and Annabel Chong ...too etc :)

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Sunday, April 1, 2007

Surface-Computing Innovations: PlayTogether


“”Surface computing uses sensing and display technology to imbue everyday surfaces with interaction. PlayAnywhere is a compact surface-computing system shown at TechFest last year. This year, we will show PlayTogether: two networked PlayAnywhere units exchanging video of each other’s desktop surface, including hands, game pieces, and drawing surfaces. PlayTogether offers interesting combinations of the real world with the virtual world: Playing chess across the network, you see your opponent’s hands and pieces superimposed on your own real pieces and desktop. We will show other technologies, including an application of depth-sensing video cameras, which work like a normal video camera but also calculate how far away the imaged surface is at each pixel, resulting in (R, G, B, Z)-valued images. We will show a game that combines the surface-computing idea with this exciting new technology.”” – Microsoft Research TechFest 2007

Video interview by the Geeky Laura Foy of on10.net and the interviewee Andrew D. Wilson.

Cool, one step closer to the Computer UI featured in the movie "Minority Report".


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