Month: May 2009

Categories
technology

Google Wave

Google Wave LogoThe other day a friend and I were talking about the history of messaging mediums and what the next generation of communication tools will look like. Snail mail, the telegraph, the telephone, fax, email, and instant messages have each taken their turn as the communication technology of the day but we wondered what the next iteration of such technology would do and how it would either replace or compliment our existing tools.

I’m happy to say we’re about to find out. I just learned about a brand new tool that is about to change everything. Google Wave is an amazing mash-up of chat, email, blogging, event planning, and document sharing all in one. I was sceptical too, at first, but check this out (at least some of it):


[Google Wave Developer Preview at Google I/O 2009 – YouTube]

Will it mean the beginning of the end of existing social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter? How will it affect usage of collaborative tools like Sharepoint and Basecamp? Well, I’ve always felt that outside of its core search business, Google has faced an uphill battle for user acceptance. I’m still shocked when I find friends refusing to upgrade from whatever ridiculous email provider they’re using to the super efficient and powerful Gmail.

I think that Google Wave’s openness and flexibility will be enough to overcome the tipping point of adoption though because of its inherent backwards compatibility. Twitter users can tweet from Twitter, while Facebook users can update their statuses from Facebook. Meanwhile Google Wave will consolidate everything into the interface of my choice and I can even respond back without reloading my browser.

I have seen the future; it is Google Wave.

Categories
humor

Outsourcing for Humour

Ze Frank’s been creating videos specifically for Buzz Feed. Here’s one on dealing with the economic downturn from his series Hard Times:

Categories
Sport

Setting Forth on the Castle River

Over the long weekend I participated in the Pinch’O’Crow paddling club’s annual River Rendezvous. Here are a few memories from my excellent weekend:

Categories
Art cooking

Super Mario Cupcakes

Check out these super cute Super Mario cupcakes. They make my mouth water and my fingers itch for video games.

super mario cupcakes

Categories
advertising crime humor

ShamWow Guy in Prison

Vince Shlomi, the phenomenally successful television pitchman for products like the ShamWow and Slap Chop, was arrested at a swank Miami hotel last March after a violent confrontation with a prostitute.

From The Smoking Gun:

MARCH 27 – Meet Vince Shlomi. He’s probably better known to you as the ShamWow Guy, the ubiquitous television pitchman who has been phenomenally successful peddling absorbent towels and food choppers. Shlomi, 44, was arrested last month on a felony battery charge following a violent confrontation with a prostitute in his South Beach hotel room. According to an arrest affidavit, Shlomi met Sasha Harris, 26, at a Miami Beach nightclub on February 7 and subsequently retired with her to his $750 room at the lavish Setai hotel. Shlomi told cops he paid Harris about $1000 in cash after she "propositioned him for straight sex." Shlomi said that when he kissed Harris, she suddenly "bit his tongue and would not let go." Shlomi then punched Harris several times until she released his tongue.

For those of you that are not familiar with Vince:


[Vince with Slap Chop – YouTube]

Here he is peddling the ShamWow:


[ShamWow – YouTube]

I’ve saved the best for last. Guess what he’s doing now that he’s in prison?


[Shamwow Guy in Prison – CollegeHumor]

Categories
Art

Carousel

Carousel is a short film by Adam Berg created around the idea of a frozen moment with cops and robbers engaged in an epic shootout that includes clowns, explosions, a decimated hospital, lots of broken glass, and plenty of bullet casings.


[Carousel – YouTube]

See how clever they were with the title? It’s designed to be played as a loop.

Categories
friends physics Science

Herschel Launch

An Ariane 5 rocket launched two scientific space observatories, Herschel and Planck, at 13:12 GMT this morning that will help scientists better understand the formation of the universe.

The launch took the better part of 30 minutes from ignition to spin-up and separation of the Planck and Herschel.

The launch:


[Herschel and Planck Launch – YouTube]

My physicist friend Richard Querel works with the group that built SPIRE, an infrared imaging camera and low-resolution spectrometer that was aboard the Herschel. He tells me the instruments will be sensitive down to picojoules, which is the equivalent to the energy emitted by one living cell, or to a dim star, very far away.

It’ll take 3 months for them to get to their orbit, but they’ll likely start collecting science validation data immediately.

Herschel has the largest mirror of any space telescope now in orbit. Its 3.5 metre diameter primary mirror is one-and-a-half-times the size of the Hubble Telescope’s main reflector.

From the Herschel Space Observatory entry on Wikipedia:

The mission, formerly titled the Far Infrared and Sub-millimetre Telescope (FIRST), will be the first space observatory to cover the full far infrared and submillimetre waveband. At 3.5 meters wide, its telescope will incorporate the largest mirror ever deployed in space. The light will be focused onto three instruments with detectors kept at temperatures below 2 K. The instruments will be cooled with liquid helium, boiling away in a near vacuum at a temperature of approximately 1.4 K. The 2,000 litres of helium on board the satellite will limit its operational lifetime. The satellite is expected to be operational for at least 3 years.

Categories
entertainment Science

Mythbusters- Lego Ball Myth HD

A group of friends in San Fransico built a giant ball of lego, dressed one of the friends up as Indiana Jones and then had him run from the ball. “Fun times”.

The original Lego Ball video:


[Giant LEGO Boulder – YouTube]

On a recent episode of Mythbusters, the gang decided to find out if such a ball can actually be created:


[Mythbusters- Lego Ball Myth – YouTube]

Categories
article Sport

When Underdogs Break the Rules

Malcolm Gladwell’s interesting article, How David Beats Goliath is about how underdogs, when playing by their own strategies, can beat out the favorite much more often than one would suspect.

Eurisko was an underdog. The other gamers were people steeped in military strategy and history. They were the sort who could tell you how Wellington had outfoxed Napoleon at Waterloo, or what exactly happened at Antietam. They had been raised on Dungeons and Dragons. They were insiders. Eurisko, on the other hand, knew nothing but the rule book. It had no common sense. As Lenat points out, a human being understands the meaning of the sentences “Johnny robbed a bank. He is now serving twenty years in prison,” but Eurisko could not, because as a computer it was perfectly literal; it could not fill in the missing step-“Johnny was caught, tried, and convicted.” Eurisko was an outsider. But it was precisely that outsiderness that led to Eurisko’s victory: not knowing the conventions of the game turned out to be an advantage.

Gladwell responds to a couple of criticisms aimed at the section dealing with Rick Pitino and college basketball.

Categories
tutorial

YouTube Video Direct Download Script

If you use Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome or Opera, you can download YouTube videos directly by pasting the following code into your address bar while watching the video.

javascript:window.location.href = 'http://youtube.com/get_video?video_id=' + swfArgs['video_id'] + "&l=" + swfArgs['l'] + "&sk=" + swfArgs['sk'] + '&t=' + swfArgs['t'];

When the download is finished, be sure to rename it with a .flv extension.

Alternatively, use this code:

javascript:window.location.href = 'http://youtube.com/get_video?video_id=' + swfArgs['video_id'] + "&fmt=18" + "&l=" + swfArgs['l'] + "&sk=" + swfArgs['sk'] + '&t=' + swfArgs['t'];

to download in the higher quality mp4 format.

(via)