TED BLOG – Peter Weyland

Don’t miss this TED talk!
Peter Weyland has been a magnet for controversy since he announced his intent to build the first convincingly humanoid robotic system by the end of the decade.

Whether challenging the ethical boundaries of medicine with nanotechnology or going toe to toe with the Vatican itself on the issue of gene-therapy sterilization, Sir Peter prides himself on his motto, “If we can, we must.” After a three year media blackout, Weyland has finally emerged to reveal where he’s heading next. Wherever that may be, we will most certainly want to follow.

Conceived and designed by Ridley Scott and Damon Lindelof and directed by Luke Scott.

By |March 18th, 2012|Futurist|0 Comments
Read More

Sprint is a ripe take-over target

Sprint looks like a ripe take-over target.  And while regulators might not allow AT&T to acquire T-Mobile, I could see a cable operator whom would like to enter the mobile space and acquire access to Sprint’s wireless network, their sister companies, Boost and Virgin, and get access to iPhone licensing, Sprint would be a good acquisition.

By |October 25th, 2011|Investment|0 Comments
Read More

How Secure is your Password?

Have you ever wondered how long it would take the typical PC to break your password?  Well, one company, Small Hadron Collider, a teeny-tiny web-design company based in Sheffield, decided to find out and offered up this tool and explanation as to how it works.

Visit http://howsecureismypassword.net/

Note: the results that you are seeing here are based on the simplest ‘brute force’ attempt using a PC (no time delay between attempts).  As more significant computing power is available thought a number of sources including cloud based computing, that resulting number of years could be significantly smaller.  The article continues to offer up alternate techniques that people might use including dictionary attacks, etc.

I would surmise that a small delay of time in the validation of any password would ultimately increase the time it would take and thusly, time-delays of even a few seconds, which is incidental for human use, would bring such technique to it’s knees.

Bottom line – when choosing a password, PLEASE do not use words in the dictionary, proper names, etc.  If you want to generate something safe, consider using 10+ characters and include punctuations.  One good site that will enable you to choose a password is: PCTools Secure Password Generator.  If you include even more characters in your password, you’ll gain stronger results.

By |March 7th, 2011|Internet|0 Comments
Read More

Corning’s vision of the future

Watch “A Day Made of Glass” and take a look at Corning’s vision for the future with specialty glass at the heart of it.

By |March 3rd, 2011|Honorable Mention|0 Comments
Read More

Qwiki: Visual Information Engine

Qwiki is the worlds first visual information engine. Created and maintained by members of the Mabuchi Lab at Caltech, it is the first to turn information into an experience. With Qwiki, you enter a search term and rather than receiving back a list of links, you receive a narrated video/audio experience. In essense, it communicates to you in a more traditional sense practiced for thousands of years: Storytelling.

Qwiki is software that strings together content from the web collecting information from sites including Google, Fotopedia, Youtube and Wikipedia and combines the audio, visual, and textual assets into a multimedia format called a “Qwiki”. Note that the team members at Qwiki aptly suggest that they are more of a platform, not a search engine because the response to queries are provided as more of an informational experience rather than an aggregation of results.

How does Qwiki work? Basically, Qwiki turns popular Internet topics into an interactive presentation on your chosen search term. It is accompanied with narration by a computerized voice (female to be exact). For instance, type in “Buenos Aires” and you’ll get a mix of photos, videos, and interactive maps, accompanied by a voice-over summary. Qwiki is giving the real humans (us) more convenience in this cluttered world of information. We tried Qwiki’s Megan Fox demo and felt good about it. Click here to experience it yourself.

Qwiki works by turning popular internet topics into an interactive presentation. The results presented are accompanied with a female computerized voice. For example, take a query, say “International Space Station” and Qwiki builds an interactive video for presentation.

Click here to experience it for yourself:
International Space Station

For an example […]

By |January 23rd, 2011|Honorable Mention|0 Comments
Read More