Guy Hoffman, postdoctoral associate at Georgia Tech performed and programmed the above robotic marimba player. The robot automatically detects the sounds made from the human piano and matches the beat and sync using a percussion instrument. The robot design and construction was made by Roberto Aimi of Alium Labs and Gil Weinberg of the The Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology oversaw the direction.
Another recent experiment I wrote about that was conducted at Georgia Tech was about how scientists were finding out ways to convert biomechnical energy into electricity.
Tomorrow Facebook is expected to launch a new set of APIs for developers to build applications revolving around profiles and the homepage itself. As you all know, Facebook recently redesigned the homepage to make it appear similar to the user homepage of Twitter.
This means that developers will be able to build services that revolve around photos, videos, notes, comments, the Like button, etc. with the permission of users. This service will work with Facebook’s current standards.
Building applications around the homepage of Facebook may be beneficial because it has been a proven model for Twitter. Many Twitter applications that track user activities have become widely popular with TweetDeck being an example.
Facebook currently has 200 million users and they are expected to make the announcement to the developers at a conference in Palo Alto, California tomorrow.
If you are too lazy to roll your luggage in an airport, you should look into the self-propelled suitcase by Hammacher Schlemmer. This suitcase provides power assistance when you need it. There are sensors in it that detect how much force is being used to pull it. The motor can propel the suitcase up to three miles per hour when you are struggling with it.
The suitcase is designed to transfer 85% of its carried weight to the wheels. The battery lasts up to 2 hours 15 minutes.
This tiny keyboard comes with 56 keys and 29 hot keys. It has a built-in trackpad and a scroll wheel. It has an operating distance of 32.8 feet. It operates at a 2.4 GHZ radio frequency. You can buy it for $55 here.
Alberto received a $62,000 bill from his mobile carrier for using his data card in Mexico to download Wall-E. He was able to get the charge reduced to $17,000 by contacting the unnamed mobile provider.
Alberto made the mistake of not signing up for a roaming plan with his carrier. All major mobile providers offer international roaming plans. AT&T for example offers a number of roaming solutions to help travelers save money. $5.99 a month gets you their AT&T World Traveler package. The World Traveler package reduces your voice roaming rates in over 85 countries. However, the company’s roaming data plans are a lot more expensive. Their 200 MB Data Global Add-On plan costs a hefty $199/month.
Apple MobileMe is a way to sync e-mail, contacts, and calendars with applications with different devices. The login details for actress Salma Hayek has been hacked and the information has been leaked to everyone on the 4chan forum. It sounds like that the hacking was a joint effort between between EBaum and Anontalk and then posted on 4chan. Regardless of who did it, the person did got the password with little effort on their part. After he or she logged into Hayek’s account, the anonymous person changed the login details and made this posting:
Her email address is shayek@mac.com
Go to me.com, forgot password, type shayek@mac.com
Her birthday is Sept. 2
Answer to change password question is: frida
The hacker guessed the ID by assuming that most Apple IDs are commonly the first letter of the first name and the whole last name followed by @mac.com. Then the hacker used the Forgot Password feature and found the answer on Hayek’s Wikipedia page which had to do with her birth date. Fortunately for Hayek, there is nothing incriminating in her Mac e-mail account.
This makes me question the whole security question standard that is asked when a password is forgotten is not good enough. Sometimes the questions are too obvious. For example, when David Kernell hacked into Sarah Palin’s e-mail account, all he did was guess the security questions. The questions had to do about where Palin went to high school, where she met her husband (the same high school), birth date, and zip code.
LEGOs have been used to make an oversized Nintendo DSi and now it is being used in rock and roll video games. The new game is a collaboration between Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, TT Games, Harmonix, and MTV Games.
Some of the songs included in the LEGO version of Rock Band will include Song 2 (Blur), Kung Fu Fighting (Carl Douglas), Boys and Girls (Good Charlotte), and So What (Pink).
“Players will be able to create their own Lego Rock Band style as they customize their minifigure avatars, band and entourage, including roadies, managers and crew,” stated the companies in a press release. The LEGO Rock Band game will work with music controllers and Rock Band instruments.
“For us, it’s about doing great products. When I look at netbooks, I see cracked keyboards, terrible software, junky hardware, very small screens. It’s just not a good consumer experience and not something we would put the Mac brand on. It’s a segment we would not choose to play in.”
Tim Cook made the above statement during Apple’s earnings call yesterday. Clearly Apple has a whole isn’t very fond of the whole netbook market. But they may very well be working on a tablet computer.
On the earnings call an analyst asked about the return of Steve Jobs. Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said that Jobs will be back in June as planned. The company has made about $8.16 billion in their last quarter and is sitting on $28.9 billion in cash. The company has also just hit 1 billion in application downloads.
Popular
