Category Archives: Digital Identity Management

Designer Dogs … coming soon!

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I can only imagine … in a world like ours … when we’ll see the 100lb. Chihuahua being walked (dragged?) by its master.  Or maybe it’ll be the miniature Great Dane?  Now that we are discovering the inner working of the genome, I can only imagine the business opportunities that will come to mind.  Genetically modified pets are only a short time away!

What Makes Little Dogs Small? Researchers Identify Gene Involved In Dog Size. Science Daily Apr 6 2007 6:54AM GMT [Moreover Technologies – Genetics news]

Google wants MORE of your identity!

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Ok … this is one place where I like Local.Live.com even more than Google Maps … again!  I was long a user of Google Maps, however they didn’t allow me to mark-up the maps and add my own annotations.  Yes … I could hack code, but c’mon … Local.Live.com has had the ability for a long time.

Well FINALLY, Google adds the ability to annotate and more through their new My Maps features … BUT … I MUST create an account and be tracked by Google in order to use the features!!  What the heck?  I can’t just hack out a quick annotated map for a friend or family without providing information to Google about who I am and having them permanently note my interest in some specific point on earth?

Once again … the average person has NO idea they are now going to have even more records kept of every place they have marked or annotated, and when they did it.  Google continues to gather even more information about you … who you are … what you do … where you do.  Amazing.  I’ll stick with Local.Live.com.

Google makes mashups easy, even for me. The search giant’s new My Maps feature lets anyone create customizable maps with photos and video, regardless of technical know-how.
Photos: Google maps out mashups [CNET News.com]

Measuring the accuracy of computer models

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It really impresses me as we continue to make advances in the reproduction of human senses or capabilities in silicon and software.  What really caught my eye about this article was thinking about the fact that the accuracy of the model can be measured not only by it’s success at mirroring human-like abilities … but that it also makes errors in a way that is similar to humans.

Once the models are solid enough, then they will be able to learn from the errors in humans … and potentially due to shear quantity, scale, or speed exceed our human abilities.  Closer and closer to the Singularity we move each day …

Computer Model Behaves Like Humans On Visual Categorization Task. In a new MIT study, a computer model designed to mimic the way the brain itself processes visual information performs as well as humans do on rapid categorization tasks.

The model even tends to make similar errors as humans, possibly because it s… [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News]

ZoomInfo.com … a nice search engine!

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After reading this post, I went out and played with ZoomInfo … it’s got some very interesting features.  You are able to search using various keywords, names, etc. and it seems to come up with some pretty impressive results.  Looking for a business in a particular market?  Looking for people in a particular role in a market?  Give it a try … there are some really interesting results.

First Semantic Search Engine?. Business search company ZoomInfo announced today the launch of what it’s calling the first-ever semantic search engine.

The site works by applying tags to information that distinguish between key concepts, such as a person, an industry, or a compa… [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News]

First Annual Utah Geek Cruise?

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I just found out today that tomorrow is the deadline for deposits for the First Annual Utah Geek Cruise!  Of course its open to anyone that wants to go … and it’s an amazing deal … September 2nd … 7 nights starting at $455.00!  There was a group of us that wanted to take a nice cruise, and my girlfriend found the amazing deal.

Its a Royal Caribbean Cruise … Southern Caribbean route, going from Puerto Rico, to Aruba, Curacao, St. Maarten, St. Thomas, and then back to Puerto Rico.  There are lots of things to do, and everything is included except for airfare (right now the roundtrip from SLC to Puerto Rico is ~$465!!), alcohol, and shore excursions.  There are a bunch of us geeks going to be on the trip – and yes there is a wireless Internet available – and we’ll have two days at sea to hang on the ship and have a lot of great conversations.  When on the islands, there are a lot of shore excursions available, including visiting some caves, scuba, snorkling, lots of pirate stuff, etc.  This shore excursion document outlines all of the various activities.

So from SLC, the whole deal is less than $1000 per person for a full 7 night cruise!  For anyone that has never done a cruise … this is an incredible deal on a really nice cruise line.  Read the details … if you want to join us, the contact information is on the brochure!

New NuMe.com …

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Ok … after another few weeks of work, we just threw out a new version of our NuMe website!  Go and check it out … what is fun is that it is actually gaining some real momentum.  Our videoWrapplet is now finding itself onto webpages all over the planet … it’s fun to see many of the places it’s showing up!

Our biggest hit is the Smashing Pumpkins MySpace page, where they are using it to show off their latest videos.  We’re now on numerous other MySpace pages (like this one from the UK … I love the video he posted called “Spiders on Drugs”), also Blogger.com blogs, and even more sites in South America and Europe.  It’s fun to see the Google Analytics, and to also see some of the uses of the videoWrapplet … a conspiracy web site, a Japanese tech/audio site, Argentinian TV sites and cooking videos and Tech sites, a German Club site, and too many others to link to.  Well … you can always check them out on the NuMe site.  We now have a videoWrapplet detail page that shows all of the top playlists, and the recently updated playlists.

One facinating thing that I caught yesterday, was that we had a user Jim from Mexico grab our videoWrapplet and load it up with videos.  The first videos are Smashing Pumpkins videos, leading me to believe that he found it through their site.  He then added several other videos from other artists.  The best part is that he then went to YouTube and signed up so that he could upload his own home-made videos and put them into the playlist!  So our videoWrapplet actually caused someone to create a YouTube account … just so that they could use our videoWrapplet.  Many people would argue that proves we ought to be hosting the videos … but what I like to see is that the value they perceive in our videoWrapplet caused them to leap the hurdle and create a YouTube account!

Anyhow … I’m having fun with this, and am about to release a new version … with some small tweaks.  But I also have a fully skinnable version in testing, and it also supports transparent backgrounds.  We’re also adding a full set of preferences.  I’m also thinking that it will be easy to open up the skinning to anyone with some pretty basic skills …  🙂

Stay tuned … the video experiments continue …

Amazing Laser Graffiti … 15 stories tall!

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On our NuMe website, the user rufinorosado posted an amazing video to their NuMe videoWrapplet playlist … this is too cool.  The video is by a group called Graffiti Research Labs and they have set up a giant video projector pointing at the side of a building, and then integrating a laser pointer tracking system to allow people to draw giant virtual graffiti on the side of the building using a hand-held laser!

I’ve added the video to my Inevitable videoWrapplet playlist with the title LASER Graffiti by Graffiti Research Labs … you have GOT to check this out … I want one!

We better be nice to them now …

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It seems that someone is thinking ahead . .. to the future where robots and machines might have to make choices about what to do with the “legacy biologicals” roaming the planet.  One robot to another “But remember … they were nice to us in our infancy … don’t we want to stop the humans from becoming extinct?”

Robotic age poses ethical dilemma. The Robot Ethics Charter, an ethical code to prevent humans abusing robots, and vice versa, is being drawn up by South Korea.

“The government plans to set ethical guidelines concerning the roles and functions of robots as robots are expected to de… [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News]

Touch Interface of the Future

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You have to watch the video to really see how impressive this is.  I’ve added the video to my Inevitable videoWrapplet playlist … it’s the presentation that Jeff Han gave at the TED conference of his ‘multi-touch interface’.  This is the stuff of Minority Report … but being demonstrated as reality.  Read the article … check out the video … this is an impressive product.

I keep thinking that I want this on my laptop, or Tablet PC!

TED: Jeff Han, A Year Later. Catapulted to geek stardom literally overnight at this high tech confab in 2006, inventor of mind-blowing touchscreen technology gives Wired News a glimpse into life as an entrepreneur and his new company, Perceptive Pixel. Kim Zetter reports from Monterey. [Wired News: Top Stories]

Dog or Cat Captcha …

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My favorite project talked about this article is one where the blurred letters and numbers – called captcha images – are replaced by the image of a dog or cat … with you having to properly identify which it is.  It turns out that this is a hard problem to solve … today … for machines.

Microsoft’s research labs offer freebies. Many projects at TechFest are simply research concepts that will never come to market, but some are being made publicly available.
Images: From pets to panoramas at TechFest [CNET News.com]

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