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Historic Figures Facebook Status

Quang Ly — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 22:21:53 +0000

These are pretty hilarious Facebook status updates from Galileo, the Church, Ben Franklin, John Hancock, Charles Darwin, Isaac newton, God, Adam and Eve, Julius Caesar. By the way, did anyone go see The Social Network? What did you think?

Captcha Fail – Hideous Secretaries

Quang Ly — Tue, 04 May 2010 13:20:16 +0000

In September of last year, Google made a smart and obvious acquisition: reCAPTCHA, the service helps secure websites while at the same time helping computers learn to read old, scanned text. Google had reportedly been working on its own CAPTCHA solution, but found reCAPTCHA’s better, and were undoubtedly happy to welcome the talent behind it. Today, just seven months later, one of those key team members is defecting to Facebook.

Ben Maurer was a co-founder of reCAPTCHA and its chief architect. As he announced on his blog today, he’ll be joining Facebook’s infrastructure team. “With all the growth Facebook has seen comes unique challenges in scaling systems. I’m looking forward to working on this,” Maurer writes.

So why leave Google for Facebook? Well certainly, Facebook is getting a lot of buzz right now as a company that can potentially rival Google in the years ahead. Also, Facebook is not yet a public company, so the move probably makes sense for monetary reasons. Most importantly though, Maurer used to be an intern at Facebook a couple of years ago, so he’s returning home, so to speak.

And the Facebook he’s re-joining is undoubtedly different than the one he left. As the service approaches 500 million users, saying they have “unique challenges in scaling systems” is putting it mildly.

Meanwhile, reCAPTCHA (at least the technology) will live on. “It’s been over 3 years since we started working on the crazy idea of getting millions of people to digitize the world’s books in their spare time. I’m looking forward to seeing reCAPTCHA continue to grow,” Maurer writes.

Read more: http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/03/recaptcha-co-founder-facebook-google/#ixzz0mxxL45a2C

Captcha Fail - Hideous Secretaries

Captcha is the scrambled text that shows up requiring the user to enter manually to prevent automated bot systems from spamming. Every once in awhile, a funny captcha appears that is worth sharing. This particular captcha comes from craigslist.org. How many hideous secretaries have you seen?

In similar news, Google acquired reCAPTCHA, which is a service to secure websites while at the same time helping computers learn to read old and scanned text. The scanned text and the second is a random. reCAPTCHA determines statistically how often users get the scanned word correctly. If it is a high degree of accuracy, then the system assumes that is the word.

Leveraging user input through captcha text is a scalable approach to scan all the books that Google wants to do with a high level of accuracy. You know how they say that eventually, we all work for Google?

Tech inspired design

Sarah — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:30:53 +0000

It seems like everywhere I look every gadget/tech related blog is talking only about the iPad (including this one!). I’ve never been much of one to follow the group so I’m just gonna post whatever I wanna post (and it’s not because I’m resentful of the fact that I don’t have an iPad yet… no really, it’s not).

I found some cool nerdy design related stuff I’m going to post about instead. First, ceramic tiles modeled off the old school 3 1/2 inch floppy disks.

Designed by Australian design firm ENESS, these tiles are sadly not for sale. Though if they were they would totally corner the computer nerd market. I can already envision my kitchen countertops, or possibly the top surface area of what was previously a normal computer desk. If you know someone who can make ceramics these wouldn’t be hard to do. I think I still have a 3 1/2 inch floppy tucked away somewhere that could be used as a mold (no idea what is on it but some things just have sentimental value, you know?).

Via Wired Gadget Blog

Second is a modular floor covering concept from Kyoto based design student Shin Yamashita and unfortunately titled “The Land Peel”…

Made out of an insulating material, this floor covering converts into furniture. Need a seat and a TV tray to watch that next episode of Fringe while eating dinner, you say? No Problem!
Would you like to face east while working on your laptop today, but make it face west tomorrow? You can do that too.

I can see how this type of thing would go over well in Japan. I probably would have preferred this type of thing in my shoebox apartment as opposed to the table that came out of the wall and desk that couldn’t be moved along with the most uncomfortable chairs possibly in existence. And it looks like it can be totally customized as to size and shape. Here in the States I don’t see it garnering much popularity except possibly in children’s game rooms or daycare centers. But maybe I’m just not using my imagination.

What would make it much cooler would be to make it out of actual tatami mat material. Lose the gray with the primary colored accents. But what I really want to know is where did they get that tiny lamp?

Grenade shaped USB drive

Sarah — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 13:40:36 +0000

After watching the series finale of Dollhouse (which made me very sad and also a firm believer that Joss Whedon should finally give the Fox Network a huge middle finger) I found this little treasure, which to me would be exactly the kind of tech that would belong in such a dystopian future.
A grenade shaped USB drive!

It’s tiny and malicious looking, and perfect for the nerdy rebel in me that fantasizes about overthrowing the current corporate paradigm that would allow such destructive tech loose on the planet in order to mind control the populace.
Wait. Sorry. Did I get carried away? Man that show was good.
But back to reality here.

Seriously though. Grenade shaped USB drives that can hold up to 8GB of your most important data. I’m sure Topher Brink would approve.

Via ThinkGeek.com

Hitler responds to the iPad

Quang Ly — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 05:37:00 +0000

Never thought I’d say this, but, Hitler got it right this time. The iPad is somewhat a disappointment. No camera. No multitasking. No Flash. No Thanks.

Cool Screenshot – Happy New Year and Resolution!

Quang Ly — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 15:41:40 +0000

Captured at 1/1 11:11

Happy New Year to everyone from the folks at GadgetMETER. GadgetMETER is now officially 1 year old and I am proud of what we’ve accomplished in that time.

One of my New Years resolution consists of simplifying my online and offline lifestyle.

Get rid of junk in my house I haven’t used in years
Eat less or no meat.
Reduced the number of RSS subscriptions.
Deactivated my Facebook account. (I’ll talk more about this later).
Discovered http://mnmlist.com and http://minimalmac.com. These are two great websites if you feel you are too distracted with todays bombardment of information.
Run a 10k
Enrolled at UPenn for Graduate School.
De clutter my MacBook desktop and menu bar

Now, if you are wondering how this screenshot is appropriate for this post. Well, I just happen to look at my iPhone at exactly 1/1 11:11pm so I quickly captured it. The background is a picture of Monica Belluci on my jail broken iPhone. Pretty cool huh? It must be a sign because I see it as a way to reset our tech lifestyle and look back at what’s really important: family, friend (true friends, not the persons you don’t know on your Facebook), health, and the environment. Today, we have way too many distractions in our life that really clouds our judgetment on what’s really important. Let’s take time to get rid of online and offline baggage and welcome the New Year!

So I propose this New Years Challenge for you.

Go take a walk.
Meet with a friend for coffee.
Enough with Twitter already. It’s really just for celebrities!
Delete contacts on Facebook you don’t ever engage with. Heck, deactivate your Facebook account like I did!
Delete LinkedIn. Who really uses this anyway?
Stop texting while having lunch or dinner with someone. Enjoy the moment.
Volunteer at a community center or shelter.
Donate to a charity: time, money, clothes, food. It can be anything.
Read a long form book.
Go camping or hiking.
Call up a friend. No texting!

12 Things X-mas list, part 5

Sarah — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 13:22:05 +0000

Number 9 on my 12 Things It Would Be Really Cool To Get For Xmas list is probably the most affordable and accessible of all the items I have listed (or plan to list).
It’s the Darth Vadar Breathing Keychain.

For only $12.99 this is a perfect stocking stuffer for any Star Wars fan in your life. And double bonus if they tend to lose their keys a lot (they will be much less likely if something as cool as Darth Vadar’s breathing head is on them).

Via Coolest Gadgets

Number 10 on my list is probably one of the coolest things I have ever seen, and completely impractical since I still live in an apartment. The Han Solo secret door book case!

See how it works!

The DIY install only cost this individual about $150, not including the Han Frozen-in-Carbonite addition. That will probably cost a pretty penny. But someday, when I have an actual house, this is going high on my list of priorities.

Via Gizmodo

Han Solo desk and more!

Sarah — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:02:10 +0000

Yesterday I thought I had found the desk of my dreams. But it was not to be since this desk featuring Han Solo frozen in carbonite is just a one off custom job, not ever to be sold commercially to all of us envious Star Wars nerds.

But I have to say, this desk was done right. I especially love the glowing panel legs. I imagine that if Solo had ended up as a prize for the Emperor instead of Jabba, this is exactly what would have been done with him.
The only thing that would make it better would be if the access panels on the front actually came out and acted as drawers (everything for me has to be functional… I don’t know why).

While I was still lusting after the Han Solo desk I came across yet another welcome Star Wars item, though admittedly not on anywhere near as grand a scale (but hey, at least I can actually buy these)…

Star Wars cellphone alert charms! I love phone charms, an obsession I picked up in Japan (those guys are NUTZ with phone charms, seriously). These might be a little too cumbersome to actually connect to your phone, but there are plenty of other places they could go. Where there’s a will there’s a way.

These little light up do-dads respond to frequencies emitted by your cell phone (only for 800-1600 MHz GSM network handsets). So you can leave your phone on silent, in your bag, and these little guys will light up and spin around when it goes off.
Neat. Sadly I don’t think there is one with Boba Fette, but for use uber-nerds there is one with a Dalek!

Can be bought from Thinkgeek.com for about $10, batteries included

Via Wired’s GadgetLab

LED Eyelashes by Soomi Park

Sarah — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:15:57 +0000

I recently came across Soomi Park’s LED Eyelashes on Gizmodo.

Without knowing anything about Ms. Park’s design philosophy it would be easy to dismiss these as just some weird Asian quirky accessory that a niche subculture would wear when going clubbing (think Japanese Ganguro). As several bloggers and commenters have stated, wearing these would be like a special form of torture for the fairer sex. And they would be. Which isn’t to say I wouldn’t find a way to design them into one of my own costumes. I could think of at least 2 events a year I could wear these to. As noted on Gizmodo, they are strangely hypnotic.

But then I read this on her website: “Her artwork utilizes the increasing banalization of plastic surgery in many countries around the world, including in Korea.”

I then remembered that the number one form of plastic surgery in Japan and Korea is the kind that makes the eye more round. And these LED Eyelashes very obviously change the shape of the eye, at least to the observer.
So it’s not about fashion. It’s art making a statement. So right on Soomi Park!

Here is a video for your viewing pleasure (note: no need to watch the entire video, it’s awfully long… you’ll get it after the first 30 seconds).

Via Gizmodo

Solar UFO

Sarah — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:30:05 +0000

I came across these interesting little guys a few weeks ago. Solar powered water purifiers being used in Osaka Japan to keep the canals clean, as well as the moat around Osaka castle.
Trust me, they need it.

These Solar UFOs have been built by Tokyo-based engineering group NTT Facilities. They pump fresh oxygen into the water and spray clean water out of a nozzle at the top of the craft. They can purify 2400 gallons of water each day.
And at night they are lit up with LEDs. Some people may think they’re an eyesore, but they are way better than brown smelly polluted water.

Via Dvice.com

Astro-droid gaming console

Sarah — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 12:15:41 +0000

Not very long ago, in a place relatively nearby, a guy named Brian De Vitis totally became my hero. He took his R2D2 cooler and converted it into the ultimate game console. It has eight consoles, a projector and a sound system. And one of those gaming consoles is the Atari 7800 (I totally used to have one of those).

Rad.

I’m not personally a gamer, unless you count the few times a year I find myself in an actual arcade playing Galaga or House of the Dead. It’s really the Star Wars nerd in me that this really speaks to. The only improvement I can think of would be to make some of those controllers wireless.

Via popsci.com

And in the spirit of Star Wars creativity, I found this little nugget too that really spoke to the steampunk in me…

Brilliant.

Via Boing Boing

Ramen making robots

Sarah — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 13:18:02 +0000

I just read on Wired’s GadgetLab about a Ramen shop in Nagoya, Japan that uses robots to make “perfect” bowls of ramen.

I never made it to Nagoya but am surprised I didn’t come across this elsewhere in the country. It’s pretty cool, and definitely a novelty to watch, especially the little shows they put on when there is no ramen to make. Though seriously, how hard is it to make a good bowl of ramen? It’s noodles and broth. Sometimes there are toppings. I never had a bad bowl of ramen the whole time I was there. And trust me, I ate a lot of it.

Not that there is anything wrong with pointless technology (or is there?).

via Wired’s GadgetLab

Humanoid robots, sooner than you think…

Great vid on teh suck that is AT&T

Jay — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 02:30:30 +0000

TechCrunch points us to this wonderful YouTube vid on teh suck that is AT&T. Given that GadgetMETER’s head honcho is now experiencing the Visual Voicemail hell, it seemed appropos to post this.

Funny – Ultimate Internet Security

Quang Ly — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 10:06:54 +0000

Who said geeks don’t have a sense of humor! Enjoy a few laughs on us!

The Ultimate Universal Remote

Finger Drums

Quang Ly — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 16:59:05 +0000

Finger Drums

Turn your drumming dreams into a reality with this touch sensitive Finger Drum Kit. Complete with a bass drum kick and cymbal, this desktop drum kit has both a record and a freestyle function.

The perfect gift for any drummer, talented or otherwise, the Finger Drum Kit is a must-have.

Not only does it provide a great way to exercise your fingers, you can turn yourself into a superstar drummer without leaving your desk. You could even play games with your work buds, friends and family by asking them to name the tune. Prepare to be swooned over by adoring fans, followed by groupies, and emails to flood in from world class booking agents… OK, a guy can dream, can’t he?

I just love playing the drums. Unfortunately, it is probably the least portable instrument out there. What if we can just miniaturize the drum set. Well, my wish has come true. the Finger Drum Kit lets you rock out with the touch of your fingers. It comes complete with a bass drum kick, cymbal, and toms. You can also record your finger beats and also features a freestyle function.

The Finger Drums also give your fingers excercise burning tons of calories (ok, maybe not that much). Become a rockstar at your office. Too bad it doesn’t come with Finger Groupies. Hmmm…

Via http://www.bluw.com/finger-drums.html

DTXTR translates tweenspeak

Jay — Thu, 28 May 2009 20:11:54 +0000

Via TechCrunch comes word of a new tool from LG called DTXTR (de-text-er). It’s being (humorously) described as a translater of the texting language used by tweens and teens as shorthand for long phrases that would be painful to thumb-type.

To translate, you enter the tweentongue phrase on the left or the English phrase on the right. You then click the DTXTR button to get the proper translation.

I will say that the dictionary is pretty limited and relies on user-inputted updates to its terminology database. However, it did give me a new tweenword to describe my newly teen daughter.

via TechCrunch

Klingon Language iPhone app

Sarah — Mon, 18 May 2009 22:21:06 +0000

Part two of my Star Trek inspired gadgets: The Klingon Language iPhone app.
Yeah, seriously!

I have not personally gone so far in my Star Trek geekiness as too try to learn the Klingon language. But I know a few people that have (they’re not fluent but they have a few key phrases memorized, which makes them hard-core Trekkers in my book).

This is the iPhone version of the Simon and Schuster paperback of the same name.
The app contains all the functionality of Ultralingua dictionaries in addition to the vocabulary and grammar developed by Marc Okrand, the linguist responsible for creating the Klingon language for Star Trek. It also has a suitably “Star Trekkie” GUI. So combine that with the fact that the iPhone already looks like a state of the art Tri-corder, you should feel like you really are a student at Star Fleet Academy (even if you are just sitting in your cubical at work on your break time).

And don’t worry about the pronunciation. It includes a listen-and-repeat function so you don’t cause a difficult situation when you accidentally say “Your mother has a smooth forehead” when you meant to say “Today is a good day to die!”.

FEATURES:
-Interactive, two-way bi-lingual text from English to Klingon and back
-History of searched dictionary terms
-Verb conjugation
-Number translation (critical for targeting)
-Listen-and-repeat audio format by author Marc Okrand teaches you basic grammar and pronunciation
-Text timed with the Conversational Kiingon audio for an added learning aid
-Searchable audio – find the exact portion of the lesson you want via standard playback tools, a handy scrollbar or complete text search
-Audio phrase pronunciation with volume control

In case you are worried about the dictionary’s credibility, rest assured it has been tested and approved by the Klingon Language Institute
For a sample check their site for some commonly used phrases and pronunciation guide!

You can get the app on the iTunes app store for only $11.99.

via iPhone Application List

Ghoulish USB memory sticks

Sarah — Fri, 08 May 2009 11:23:27 +0000

Nothing says more about a person’s personality than the kind of USB memory stick they carry around with them, right?
Ok, that might be stretching it. But today I found these little gems that at least 80% of my friends would like (that is, if any of them needed memory sticks).

USB Geek Ghoul Series USB Drive

Ghoulish USB memory sticks

I’m partial to Mr Black myself. But all are ghoulishly cute with a practical 2 GB storage capability too!

Cutify your workspace

Sarah — Wed, 06 May 2009 19:10:42 +0000

Having just come home from a year in Japan only a few weeks ago, my mind is still wrapped up in Kawaii culture. In case you don’t know what that means Kawaii is Japanese for “cute” and boy do they take it to the extremes over there. This is exactly the kind of thing my former co-workers and students would just love…Tiny USB powered animal shaped fans…

USB Cow Frog Fan

Again from USB Geek (quickly becoming my fave accessory site)…Now if only they had a devil kitty version…

Star Wars R2-D2 Now A Laptop

Quang Ly — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 16:32:50 +0000

If you are a parent and an uber Star Wars fan boy, I’m sure you have pondered how you might influence your kids to get into Star Wars culture. Meet The R2-D2 robot that has been downgraded to a cheap laptop.

Star Wars R2-D2 Laptop

Your kids can learn to expand their vocabulary, understand numbers, and develop logic and reason with everyone’s favorite Star Wars characters.

You can purchase it at Oregon Scientific.

Flutter – The New Twitter Just Shorter

Quang Ly — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 17:53:18 +0000

Flutter - Twitter Just Shorter

First it was the daily blog, then it was the micro-blog Twitter. Now meet Flutter, the nano-blog. It is just like Twitter. But just shorter.

Instead of 140 characters which apparently is too long for some people to read or write. Flutter flaps are limited to just 26 characters.

The idea is based on the humming bird’s wing flaps which is shorter and faster than any other bird.

This is so funny.

Via Key Splash Creative

Apple Introduces The New MacBook Wheel

Quang Ly — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 13:41:13 +0000

Apple introduces the revolutionary One Button MacBook Wheel with no keyboard. This revolutionary product brings excitement for fans of the iPod wheel.

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard