Odd Things 2007

See also:

• Odd Things 2008

Links

• 2008-Aug-15: reCAPTCHA, harnesses the power of the web to digitize books. After about a year this gets discussed again, and they have made some significant progress in digitizing old texts with this. [5913]
• 2008-Apr-19: Historical currency conversions (exchange rates) [5421]
• Big Brother is setting up to watch the Texas border, supposedly to keep Mexicans out, but I bet the Texans really want to use it to keep the Americans out. The neat thing about this is they are going to try to exploit the bored web surfers of the world to report the infractions. This project still appears to be alive, though with only 21 cameras its hard to see how this covers much of a boarder. [5695] [1]
• Finally, the spammers are getting sued [5912]
• A battery powered airplane is getting ready to fly. [5911]
• Fun with Lasers, the Directed Energy Directorate [5910]
• Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming, notes and errata [5909]
• Extracting DNA from fingerprints. So how long before someone suggests doing this at banks? [5899]
• An indoor tornado at the Mercedes museum. [5717]
• A self-stabilizing electric unicycle [5713]
• A weed-removing robot has been developed [5711]
• The US Navy has demonstrated an 8MJ (mega-joule) rail gun [5709]
• Using robots to build houses out of a mix of concrete and gypsum. The technique is roughly to erect a massive frame at the site and then run a robotic concrete delivery system on it and "spray" the house into existence. The plan is to build a house this way in the spring of 2007 in about a day. More on this including a video of a small scale prototype. [5708]
• The Numbers Stations, a system of communications used in espionage [5706]
• In 2007 a vending machine that can print and bind books on demand will be installed in a number of US libraries, when with Amazon.com start using this to print books on demand, if they thought about this they could offer you a choice of a used book, a new (from the publisher) book or a printed-on-demand book. In fact many low volume titles (like technical books) would be best done entirely with the print on demand system. The print on demand system has another potential benefit for an Amazon, they could set up offices with these machines in major centres (perhaps partnering with some local retailler) and print and ship them from a location close to the person who is placing the order, thus further reducing (or even eliminating - if the purchaser just picks it up) the shipping costs. [5705]
• The Ktrak makes your mountain bike into a half-track, it puts a ski on the front and a short caterpillar tread extension on the back. Obviously this does not give enough floatation to ride on unpacked snow, but it appears to work on something like a ski slope. [5704]
• Drawing on crowd wisdom to answer problems [5703]
• In Dec'06 the complete works of Mozart were finally published on the web in free form [5702]
• The European Space Agency is putting current satellite pictures on the web, the MODIS Rapid Response System from NASA is a similar thing [5701]
• The richest 2% own one half of the world's wealth. A pretty skewed statistic but obvious when you think about it. [5700]
• A rather large stuffed squid [5698]
• Unmanned arial vehicles (discussion on engadget) could become popular tools of terrorists. Given that these can also be hard for radar to detect, and that they will often fly at very low altitudes, could they become popular with smugglers? Heck, with a payload of 110 pounds some of these could already smuggle people. [5694]
• ZipCar is a new car rental service in the USA that is entirely self service and also offers hourly rates. [5693]
• Slashdot discusses the home library problem, how to store and catalog all those books [5692]
• How to cook an egg with a cell phone, this sounds like an urban myth but it would be amusing to try... [5691]
• The Freesound project now has 10,000 sounds on line [5690]
• Tracking the movement of cars by scanning their license plates [5689]
• Cell phones (even those that are just turned on but not in use) could be used to monitor traffic flow for congestion [5688]
• Yahoo is starting to compete with Google in the area of book scanning [5687]
• Part car, part motorcycle, this 3 wheeled vehicle allows the passenger compartment to tilt in the curves [5686]
• A robotic weeding device, this sort of thing could be a great way of reducing the amount of chemicals used in modern farming, plus it should be possible to make a robotic insect hunter to keep some pests under control too [5685]
• Make a garbage can or 55-gallon drum into a supersized cyclonic dust collector for your shop vac, just add the Veritas Cyclone Lid. [5684]
• How about a hydrofoil kayak [5683]
• A solar-powered hydrofoil [5682]
• Nautical Solar Racing [5681]
• Ah, the ripsaw, a rather excessive solution to the 4x4 question: tires or tracks? [5680]
• A cross platform 3d scanning solution, called Splinescan, its now being reimplemented in Python [5679]
• PC World's 20 Things They Don't Want You to Know, (discussed here) includes unlocking cell phones [5678]
• The Bitfall Aquadisplay, rendering images in a water fall [5677]
• Hacking Blackjack, a look at some of the devices used in the past [5676]
• A machine that builds houses, could this be the end of wood frame construction? [5675]
• Nikwax waterproofing products for clothing [5674]
• A good resource that includes a web applet for calculation of the Easter dates and algorithms for doing it yourself. [5673]
• ResellerRatings.com apparently gathers feedback about various online merchants. [5672]
• Zoom Airlines is a new international carrier operating out of Canada. [5671]
• Sodaplay, hard to describe but really neat [5670]
• The CIA's museum of spy things [5669]
• ATM machines have been contracting windows viruses [5667]
• The return of the Rubik's Cube, and how to solve it quickly [5666]
• Combining a tomato with tobacco, I wonder what other sort of "pot"ted plants may be made this way? [5665]
• Could the national do not call registry be the begining of the end of telephone spam? [5664]
• Time travel spam, in case you ever wondered what was the point behind these spam emails [5663]
• The British Pathe, the history of Britan on film, now digital [5662]
• Which Sci-Fi character are you? [5661]
• Calgary Real Estate News, the online home of Calgary's free real estate weekly newspaper. [5659]
• DigitalSurvivalGuide.com the web side of a short tech radio show [5658]
• Star War Origami, some pretty amazing stuff, take your paper folding into the galaxy [5657]
• Send a FAX by email (for free) to a lot of places around the world. An overview article on free and commercial services for this. Ourfax seems to be a add-supported service. [5656]
• Battery adapters that allow one to use a AA sized battery in a device that only takes C cell or D cell sized batteries. American Science and Surplus also has a similar adapter set. Here is one that takes two AA cells and makes them into a D-cell. [5655]
• More progress being made on vegitarian-friendly meat products. Yes lab-grown fish and beef steaks, grown in a petri dish. [5654]
• Using cell phones to monitor road traffic congestion. All that's needed is a bit of GSM and some phones that are turned on (they don't have to be in use). This has some interesting possibilities: it could be used to determine approximate traffic volume (based on the simple statistics of the percentage of people who have cell phones) in real time (which would be far more useful than other car counting techniques used today). It could also be used to determine how fast the traffic is going, of course they cannot use this to issue you a speeding ticket as they don't know that you are the driver, but it would be useful for planning enforcement activities (even on a personal nature - if someone does some serious speeding on a regular basis the police could stake him out and follow him to catch him in violation). Ok, maybe that's not a particularly good way to spend a limited policing resource, but how about monitoring phones that leave bars at closing time and then take a "drive along the back roads" in an attempt to avoid check stops, this might save some lives? This sort of location ability might be useful for tracking down potential witnesses to crimes (imagine the police serving you a summons on the basis that you were "in the vicinity" of a crime...) as well as gathering a list of potential suspects (better have that phone turned off when you go to do evil - or better yet, leave it on, in some other part of town, to establish your alibi). [5653]
• Avalanche sensors and locators [5652]
• A personal jet pack, home built, but will he ever have the nerve to fly it? [5651]
• Analyzing the RIAA's reports on the industry's recent grief, sounds like it might just be self-inflicted due to miss-management [5650]
• Later in 2003 Sharp expects to have a true-3D LCD computer monitor on the market (they have just released one for phones - Dec 02), this is based on the "parallax viewer principle" (which is how old stereo photographs work) and so does not need any special glasses. The restriction is that you need to view the monitor from one distance (about 40cm in the current design) and moving nearer or further will cause the two images to appear. I would guess that off-angle viewing would also not work. Apparently they have a two LCD sandwich along with a mask of some type that causes the two images to be projected separately to the viewer's eyes. [5649]
• Refigerating with sound. [5648]
• It's true, you do have a radioactive glow when doing chemotherapy. That's ok just don't ride the NewYork subway. [5647]
• The abandoned tube stations of the London Underground - sound's like a fun thing to do on your next holiday [5646]
• And airbags for motocyclists... making the transformation into Michelen Man. [5645]
• How about a tornado in a can? [5644]
• Drinking Vodka from the Freezer, does anyone remember Simon F's "Gun" album? In fact does anyone sell it any more? [5643]
• A Slashdot review of Universal Music Group's new music shaaring service - basically pay by the track for electronic delivery of watermarked music which you can burn to CD [5642]
• Let's make a Deal, Microsoft style. If you're a third world country or a large company then the way to get discounts from Microsoft is to start looking like you might switch some machines to Linux [5641]
• The telezapper, supposedly this will trick the dialing computers that telemarketers use into thinking your phone is disconnected, but does it really work? I must admit the idea of paying one fee, only once, to get rid of these calls is appealing (it sure beats having to pay "protection money" to the phone companies on a monthly basis for caller ID, a service that costs them absolutely nothing to provide and on 90% of my telemarketers identifies them as Mr. "Out of Area" because they are calling from another province) but I can't help thinking that a few software tweaks to the computers that do this calling and they will no longer be fooled, and you'll have to buy a new zapper. 27-Feb-03: it looks like the telezapper may actually have been for-real; however, its days are numbered by software from Castel that will allow call centers to ignore the tones the zapper produces. And best yet, Castel's software will allow the call center to transmit any caller ID information they care to choose - you can bet they'll be choosing some misleading names like "visa" or just taking your last name and putting a different, random, initial in front of it. [5640]
• PayLowerTax.com dedicated to seeking ways to pay less tax [5639]
• The fan-wing aircraft, its not the approach that first comes to mind (a vertically ducted fan blowing downwards through the wing...) [5638]
• High speed rail is going to come to California [5637]
• The Seattle monorail project [5636]
• Now that drug making genes are being added to corn, how do you keep this out of the regular crop? [5635]
• Information and reviews on various cell phones and providers in Canada [5634]
• A good source for batteries [5632]
• A very nice laptop with wide aspect display [5631]
• Microsoft Office 11 is supposed to be XML capable, both save and load without information loss, this could be a good thing [5630]
• Free books, an internet success story? [5629]
• Roomba, at long last an auto-vac (or as the British would call it: a Noo-Noo) [5628]
• Global warming is affecting the highest point in Africa [5627]
• Fog machines, and how one might build one [5626]
• Gattaca may now be found in California (getting your DNA scanned for defects) [5625]
• Princetontec makes LED based flashlights, I got mine from the Calgary MEC store. These work well off NiHM rechargeable batteries too. [5624]
• Battery holders from batteryholders.com, something to hold every cell. [5623]
• The Canadian Government is planning to issue a digital certificate to every Canadian (I wonder if they will issue the same excess number of these as they did with our Social Insurance Numbers where there are something like 27 million SINs issued to those of working age, while the Canadian Census thinks there are only 22 million people in this demographic) [5622]
• Xlibiris is a print on-demand publishing house [5621]
• What ever happened to all those old hand-held scanners? [5620]
• Use your left overs to power your TV. [5587]
• Fun with sodium metal [5586]
• Body networking, exchanging data through a handshake (what would the Red Dwarf team make of this?) [5585]
• A new freeware video codec system called Ogg Theora [5584]
• There may be life on Venus after all (sorta sounds like something from Hal Clement) [5583]
• Why software piracy is good for MicroSoft - along the lines of any publicity is good publicity [5582]
• ZipZaps reach RadioShack, more fun for the Holidays (or the office) [5581]
• DVDSynth is a Windows tool to manipulate the data stream from your DVD drive [5580]
• detecting illegal music by matching to a sample database [5579]
• a portable LOGO written in Java [5578]
• Self-cleaning glass becomes available in Europe [5577]
• The 9th Tee has electronic and computer parts and also sells expansion kits for TiVo [5576]
• Looks like the Greeks have overturned their recent law that banned all computer based games [5575]
• Cell phones and stupidity, is there a link? [5574]
• War driving meets barn storming, now when is someone going to do this from public transport? [5573]
• a robotic lawnmower, but more significantly this team's next project will be a robo-vac! [5572]
• Manipulating search engines and some guesses as to how Google functions [5571]
• Track the location of your kids or cars with GPS based transponders from Wherify Wireless [5570]
• What to do when one roll of toilet paper is not enough [5569]
• Fido Canada [5568]
• Bell-Mobility Canada [5567]
• Flugtag, the human powered flight competition will be in San Francisco in Oct 2002 [5566]
• IAEA - The International Atomic Energy Agency [5565]
• Some evidence that the speed of light (in a vacuum) may have changed over time [5564]
• The Baen Free Library, online Science Fiction [5563]
• Audio Books for Free, available in MP3 format and sponsored by advertisements [5562]
• Walking forestry equipment [5561]
• How to build a computer chair out of an old BMW seat... ...now where do you get the BMW seat from? [5560]
• uVNC - running the VNC server on very small machines, such as 8 bit microcontrollers (or even the Commodore 64) [5559]
• Jef Raskin's Humane Environment for computing [5558]
• Familysearch from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints [5557]
• Retrosystem is mixing old computer cases with new motherboards [5556]
• The SpyFly, micromechanical flying insect project. [5555]
• BargainFinder.com is a good place to look for anything used [5554]
• CanadaTrader.com is a good place to look for used vehicles of all sorts [5553]
• the BEEP application layer protocol [5552]
• Gravitational channels in space [5551]
• Alton Brown (the Good Eats guy) has written "I'm Just Here for the Food", which is reviewed on Slashdot [5550]
• Floppy TVs made of glowing plastic. I wonder why all the emphasis on making these things roll up (before releasing the technology in to the market)? Sounds like a smoke screen to hide the fact that there is still something else that needs addressing before these can be marketed. Otherwise why not mount them behind a conventional rigid protective layer (such as glass) and then sell them as "hand on the wall" flat screen TVs (which there is a demand for right now, if the price is right). [5549]
• The Underdogs bring you long lost games [5548]
• Logo plays the ukulele [5547]
• The world's first man-made synthetic virus, when will it escape? [5546]
• The development of Windows NT [5545]
• A wireless camera snooping device [5487]
• In the USA a database of DNA fingerprints is steadily growing (discussed here) and is being used in some interesting ways. For example if a "near-match" to crime scene DNA is found, then the police start to suspect relatives of the person who had the close match DNA. [5486]
• Totally insane conversion of an Subaru WRX to a super-ATV [5485]
• Just how far down does the worlds deepest cave (Krubera-Voronia in Abkhazia) go? [5484]
• Are on-line Poker Bots becoming a problem? The referenced article mentions a more "real" threat: that of players working as a team, which even if you were to insist that all participants computers were somehow isolated from the rest of the net would just be defeated by a simple phone call. [5483]
• LED lit light sticks, make for trendy garden decoration? [5482]
• Home defense geek style [5481]
• SeatGuru is a web site that specializes in documenting the seat layout, features and comfort factors of the planes of various airlines, with the objective of helping you select the best seat. [5480]
• Could black boxes in cars lead to cheaper insurance rates? I think they are missing the point here, while where you drive is a factor in the risk you undertake, its probably less important than the distance you drive (i.e. time behind the wheel). In fact insurance companies could get this information very easily by insisting that people report the odometer readings of their insured vehicles once a year and then just adjust the rates for the next year based on the previous years distances. [5478]
• Envirolet makes composting toilets [5477]
• The Degree Confluence Project, still there are many spots left to visit. [5476]
• The Sony Navitus remote control, I wonder why it doesn't have a built in web browser? [5475]
• Trafic flow simulations, including the rather scarey "reservation mode" intersection, which allows streams of traffic to interweave through an intersection without the aid of traffic lights. [5474]
• A robotoic sculptor, what are the Italians thinking? A David in every garden? [5473]
• A new airplane class and sport pilot license has been added by the FAA that's supposed to be easier to get. An odd thing to do in these post-911 times? [5472]
• On-demand book printing is now possible [5471]
• The technology of the Tour de France [5469]
• Don't park near a US naval base, you might not be able to get back into your car if it has a key-less entry system [5468]
• Micropayments get one step closer. Small payments are still a ways off, though now they are getting called nanopayments - there seems to be some acceptance of these in China and Korea though. [5467]
• That's no bouncing baby, its a massively muscled super kid. [5466]
• OpenTextBook.org is attempting to create a free online textbook [5465]
• Project K++ is an attempt at computer generation of abstract art [5463]
• Now the UK is about to launch police spy drones, Blader Runner or Dark Angel here we come. [5462]
• This web site trys to make Project Gutenberg more accessible [5460]
• The population clock gives you an up to the minute count of the number of people in the USA and the World [5459]
• Geeks are having some success playing poker [5458]
• Crying may interfere with iris scanners [5457]
• Eigenfaces, more facial recognition software. More on facial recognition software. [5455]
• Mono-wheeled vehicles, the RIOT wheel design puts the rider outside the wheel, the designer's home page is here [5454]
• Lightning Source publishes books on-demand, one copy at a time [5453]
• When will robots do all the work? And how might the resulting wealth be distributed? [5452]
• Tampa Police have now given up on their face recognition camera experiment [5451]
• Slashdot discusses electrical power blackouts, and also here, and here, the past and present (Aug 2003 in North America) [5450]
• Time to call your electrician... [5449]
• Cleaning up nuclear waste with bacteria [5448]
• Marriage may tame genius, well the statistics are probably weak, but the result is probably correct [5447]
• This wand-based cancer scanner looks a lot like it uses one of the scanning wands used in airport security checks. It may offer a fast, inexpensive, way of screening for presence of any cancer in your doctor's office. If this is fast, cheap and efficient it'll never be welcomed by the medical community, they'll claim something like "it has too many false-negatives to be safe to use".

  Of course the cancer scanning that is currently carried out on all patients on their regular doctors visits is running about 100% false negatives right now... That is to say practically everyone who visits a doctor for an annual medical leaves his office with a false feeling that they are healthy (i.e. cancer free). [5446]

• Finding criminals through the DNA of relatives. [5445]
• The internet-enabled-toilet-roll, with printing capability too... I wonder if the ink is waterproof? [5443]
• WierdStuff.com sells new and used computer equipment. [5442]
• Building a better motorized bicycle on Slashdot [5441]
• How to build your own satellite ground station (I seem to recall that Elektor magazine once (around 1980?) had a similar project) [5440]
• How to build a house that will last for centuries [5439]
• Slashdot discusses a new Internet Book List, rather like the concept of the Internet Movie Database project [5438]
• Transmitting data over visible light [5437]
• Get your own DNA profiled to see what sort of a mongrel you are [5436]
• HouseSmartCenter, a site specializing in home improvement information (The Home Discovery Show by Sell Busey on radio in Western Canada) (ICF is insulated concrete form) [5435]
• An email server tarpit designed to bog down any sender of spam [5434]
• Pictures of snow flakes [5433]
• Micropayments solved using throw away "coins" [5432]
• Dan Bricklin's web site has an interesting software history links page [5431]
• Using a genetic algorithm to design a better keyboard layout [5430]
• Books on the loose (or free-range books) [5429]
• The Hobo Language and WarChalking, how to publically identify wireless LANs. Reminds me a bit of the symbol set used by the Hash House Harriers (an international group of drinkers with a running problem) in which an "H" in chalk or a dot of flour marks a trail, a circle marks a branch in the trail and a circle with an X in it marks the end of a false trail.Nokia does not like this practice, I wonder why? Perhaps they have not secured their own wireless LANs? [5428]
• Mag-lev trains make it to the USA [5427]
• Looks like a great place to search for used books [5426]
• An Actual Internet Success Story, and how not to make money on the net. [5425]
• Fact oriented AI? [5423]
• PubCrawler.com the online beer search engine - plan your trip around a few stops [5422]
• The source code for Return to Castle Wolfenstein has now been made publicly available [5420]
• The Computer History Simulation Project, just when you thought the PDP was dead... [5419]
• Trapping spambots to slow them down [5418]
• DAKOTA a software system for engineering optimization [5417]
• Putting in DSL via a COOP [5416]
• Hacking cars, the joy of the automotive LAN [5415]
• This web site lets you track what planes are flying from whichever to whatever, whenever [5414]
• Rotor, an implementation of the ECMA Common Language Infrastructure proposed standard [5413]
• 10% of the World is now on-line [5412]
• Searching the web, some new observations [5411]
• Is your new HDTV set already obsolete? What about your DVD player? [5410]
• How a 17th century law might be used to fight spammers in Australia [5409]
• Some alternatives being discussed in Britain for road taxes [5408]
• How to ski downhill all day long [5407]
• Driver-less small-car public transport system in Wales [5406]
• Better digital signal processing or compression scheme? More information to be found here. [5405]
• Fuel cell powered van from Chrysler, uses a fuel cell from Millenium Cell,is discussed in this Slashdot article [5404]
• Another way to make money from SPAM [5403]
• Mapquest has a pretty nice city mapping capability, just enter your postal code and voila! [5402]
• Why the music industry has such screwed up pricing [5401]
• X-Plane flight simulator [5400]
• Build your own 100Mbps fibre network for your neighborhood. Here's a do it yourself optical link based on LEDs that can do 10Mbps over distances as great as 1km. [5399]
• htDig is a search engine for html documentation, available under GPL [5398]
• And now there's an Atlas of Middle Earth, for you lovers of Hobbits and Trolls. [5397]
• do it yourself DSL connections (for less) and wireless bridges [5396]
• A hydrofoil catamaran sail boat [5395]
• low power consumption computer for 3rd world countries [5394]
• The perfect book machine , combines both printing and binding of books into one machine, bits in books out. If the speed and cost are right this could be the end of the publishing industry. [5393]
• Little server lost ... and found [5391]
• Ancestry.com a family tree site [5390]
• Annals of Improbable Research and the US Postal system [5389]