TSV Park Hoeven: Lentetoernooi 2008

Foto's van het Park Hoeven Lentetoernooi 2008 zijn hier te zien.

Bloem 29 maart 2008

Spam blights e-mail 15 years on

Spam continues to blight e-mail exactly 15 years after the term was first coined and almost 30 years since the first spam message was sent.
The term is thought to have been coined by Joel Furr, an administrator on the net discussion system Usenet, to refer to unsolicited bulk messages.

Billions of spam e-mails are sent each day, blocking mail servers, slowing down networks, infecting people's computers with viruses, helping hijack machines and generally making the internet a painful experience for many.

The term spam was inspired by the Monty Python sketch, first shown in 1970, in which a restaurant only serves the processed meat product.
In the sketch, a group of Vikings start singing: "Spam, lovely spam, wonderful spam."
The term was picked up in internet chat rooms in the early 1970s and used in a variety of contexts until it became best-known as a reference to unsolicited bulk e-mail.

Whole story >>

Making the board more strategic: A McKinsey Global Survey

Corporate directors want to spend more time developing long-term strategies to help maximize shareholder value, according to the latest McKinsey Global Survey.

However, directors say they need more information: only 45 percent report having good access to key company performance data and leading industry indicators.

Less than half of the respondents have substantive discussions with management or consider global trends and future scenarios when developing value creation plans.

Boards that greatly influence the creation of corporate value work differently: they focus on long-term strategy, have deep expertise and access to many levels of managers, and engage with management in substantive debates about long-term strategy.

Read the report >>

Mashup Security

Companies search for ways to mix data from different sources without opening themselves up to attack.

An insecure mix: Current methods of making mashups, which combine data and tools from multiple sources on the Web, can introduce security concerns. Experts are looking into ways to preserve the broad creative freedom that mashups offer while making them safer to use. This is of particular concern to business users who want to build mashups.

Read the whole story >>

Is.gd - The Shortest URLs Around

Long URL addresses are annoying and difficult to manage. Is.gd is a solution for anyone having to work with them- the website will convert any URL into a shortened address using the is.gd domain. For example, if you want to send a web link in a text message, a long URL address is inconvenient and more costly. By shortening it with is.gd (URLs generated through this site will never be longer than eighteen characters, including the “http://”) users simply click the .gd link and are immediately directed to the intended site.

Why it might be a killer
Long URL addresses are a hassle, but I think that some of the most interesting aspects of is.gd have nothing to do with the length of an link. The ability to hide your email address from spammers but still have it be “clickable” is great, as is the ability to post an entry about your competitor or a website you dislike, but without having it add to their search engine rankings.

Travel photos

Tripntale offers free unlimited storage for travel photos, journals and videos and hopes to become the social network of choice for all the world’s travel lovers. Right from the homepage, you can scroll over a map of the world and see what photos, videos or journals people have posted about any given area. The next time you get the itch to travel, check out Tripntale and see photos and videos of the places you are interested in and read about people’s experiences and opinions. Also, wherever you decide to go, post your photos and videos on Tripntale and allow jealous family members and friends to live vicariously through you.

Making the impossible possible

Modern technology, such as email and the Internet, has increased both our productivity and our workload. Wouldn’t it be great if we could use this technology to find a way to do twice as much in a day? It may sound like a dream but the reality is not far off, according to Daniel Burrus, a leading technology forecaster and author of the best-selling book Technotrends.

As Burrus explains, the already speedy rate of technology is about to dwarf anything we’ve seen so far and give us some exciting options in the years ahead.
“In the next five years, we’re going to experience more technology-driven change than we have in the last 15,” he notes. “Moore’s Law says that the technology behind most devices – such as processing power, bandwidth and storage capacity – doubles every 18 months. This has held up for 40 years but now things are moving incredibly faster.

“For example, it took 20 years to go from a fivemegahertz chip to a 500-megahertz chip but to double that took just eight months. And that was five years ago,” Burrus emphasizes. “The curve is now going vertical, which means we can barely fathom the technology that will come our way in the future.”

Twice the work in half the time
It’s this advance in technology that will make things even more interesting – and give us our very own virtual personal assistant, says Burrus. Soon you could wake up, turn on the television and be greeted by your assistant – available 24 hours a day, seven days a week without complaints. After outlining your schedule for the day, your assistant then updates you on a change in your travel plans – your morning flight was cancelled. But not to worry: your personal assistant has already re-booked you on another flight and printed your boarding pass. At the airport, your assistant tells you where to find a free spot in the parking garage. Not enough time to research the company you’re visiting? Not a problem, your assistant does the research for you – in a nanosecond.

Waiting for the right buy price on stock you’d like to own? The assistant can track stock prices and not only inform you when it’s hit the target price but also buy the stock for you – with a financial plug-in from your broker, of course. Anxiously awaiting lab test results? Just download the medical plug-in from your doctor and the wait will soon be over. As soon as the results are entered into your medical records, your assistant gives you the details. Eventually, your assistant will learn from your requests and begin to anticipate your needs, almost like thinking for itself. The best part: as our assistants take care of logistics, we can spend more time on the things we actually enjoy. “With this, we could do almost twice as much in one day,” Burrus notes. “And with the mountains of new information that will be available in the future, having an assistant will quickly become a necessity, much like owning a car.”

Best yet to come
In the healthcare field, there have also been tremendous advancements in technology but the best is yet to come, says Burrus. Besides e-enabled assisted living for patients and routine genetics mapping, we could soon have access to a virtual hospital that performs tests from the comfort of our own home. He offers the example of late-night heart palpitations: is it a heart attack or just indigestion?

Currently our options are limited, Burrus says. “If I experienced heart palpitations, I would have two options: I could call an ambulance to take me to the emergency room and after many hours and many tests, I could find out that I only have indigestion – and a large bill. But on the other hand, if I assume it’s indigestion and go back to sleep, I may never wake up.”

But a virtual hospital opens up the options, he explains. “I just turn on my television and choose the virtual hospital’s admissions desk and give them my symptoms. After pulling up my medical records using multiple biometrics for identification, they then ask me to attach an inexpensive bio-sensor to my chest so they can take my vital signs, like blood pressure and pulse, and an EKG reading – all virtually,” Burrus notes.

“The information instantly transfers to a real-life doctor for analysis, and the doctor either asks me to come in for further tests or suggests I take an indigestion pill,” he adds. “Imagine the time, stress and money a system like this could save. With the rate of advancing technology, we could see this within the next 15 years.”

Fraud-proof identification
Both the virtual assistant and ‘at-home hospitaling’ would use biometrics for identification but Burrus insists that neither privacy nor fraud will be an issue. “Biometrics will soon become so advanced that fraud won’t be a problem. We’ll see defense-industry technology pour into the public domain and new biometrics will be coming out that are almost impossible to steal, like the blood vessel pattern embedded in our hands. We’ll also use multiple biometrics like this to establish identity depending on the level of security required.”

Another hot topic these days is climate change. But will the new awareness impact technology? Actually, it could be the other way around, says Burrus. “Technology is only bound by the limits we give it as humans. If we decide to use technology to solve global problems such as climate change, then it can get us there. Technology has the ability to turn the impossible into the possible.”

SKIN : Tattoo

Tattoos and physical mutilation are amongst the oldest forms of personal expression and identity. Subcultures have used tattoos as a form of self representation; a visual language communicating personality and status. Philips Design examined the growing trend of extreme body adornment like tattoos, piercing, implants and scarring.

The Electronics Tattoo film expresses the visual power of sensitive technology applied to the human body. The film subtly leads the viewer through the simultaneous emotional and aesthetic transformations between two lovers.

A natural choice

As with other modern inventions, most of us would find it hard to imagine life without an alarm clock. But it hasn’t always been this way. Until relatively recently, humans depended solely on the rising sun – and the natural light it produced – to wake up each morning.

So what happened? Our modern-day lifestyles often demand that we start our days before sunrise, especially during winter. Although it was deemed one of the most hated inventions in a 2004 MIT survey, the alarm clock is still the wake-up method of choice for most. As natural as this may seem today, biologically it’s clearly an unnatural choice.

A more natural approach

So if the loud alarm clock we typically wake up to isn’t such a good thing, what options are there? Other than teaching yourself to wake up without stimulus, the most talked about alternative is dawn simulation. It’s a relatively new technique that involves a device much like an alarm clock that uses gradually increasing light instead of sound to wake you up. Mimicking a natural sunrise, dawn simulation tricks the body into initiating the wake-up process in a more natural way.

Putting experience into creation

Although research on dawn simulation is a relatively new field of study, so far all studies show a beneficial correlation between dawn simulation and how users feel upon waking up. This was enough to inspire Philips to leverage more than 100 years of experience in lighting technology to develop a ‘Wake-up Light’ more advanced than all others in terms of light intensity (lux), a key factor in how well the wake-up process goes.

Read the complete story at Philips Research >>

PHPR

Het is er van gekomen!

Sinds een week ben ik nu ook actief in het bestuur van tennis en squash vereniging Park Hoeven in Uden.
Ik leid nu de commissie Park Hoeven PR. Samen met mijn andere commissieleden ga ik de interne en externe communicatie verzorgen.

Op mijn eerste dag al een prettige bijeenkomst (zie persbericht):

VAN TILBURG SPONSOR PARK HOEVEN
Tennisclub Park Hoeven heeft onlangs de sponsorovereenkomst met Van Tilburg Mode en Sport uit Nistelrode met drie jaar kunnen verlengen. Voor Park Hoeven betekent deze overeenkomst een bevestiging van het vertrouwen dat Van Tilburg in de club heeft. Reeds vele jaren is Van Tilburg een belangrijke sponsor waardoor onder andere het jaarlijkse bekende zomertoernooi, inmiddels Heineken-Van Tilburg Open genoemd, kan worden gehouden. Ook maakt Van Tilburg het mogelijk dat er in clubtenues wordt gespeeld. Zo hebben alle leden een zeer aantrekkelijke aanbieding gekregen om een trainingspak en twee sets speeltenue aan te kunnen schaffen.
Op zaterdag 15 maart jl. werd de overeenkomst officieel bekrachtigd. De heer Peter Van Tilburg kon bij deze gelegenheid tevens kennismaken met Ary Stuifbergen, die de taken van Harrie van Berlo, het “sponsorgezicht” van Park Hoeven, na 12,5 jaar heeft overgenomen.

Op de foto vlnr: Ary Stuifbergen, Peter van Tilburg en Harrie van Berlo zijn tevreden na de nieuwe verbintenis.

Ps: Bij Peter van Tilburg op zijn kantoor hingen schilderijen van mijn favoriete schilderes Marjan Nagtegaal (op de foto op de achtergrond te zien)

Eckart Wintzen: de idealistische realist

Hij noemde zichzelf altijd en overal 'een realist, geen idealist'. Eckart Wintzen hoopte dat zijn ideeën over ondernemerschap en management in brede kring navolging zouden krijgen. Maar hij maakte zich weinig illusies over de omvang van zijn ware aanhang. Daarmee bleef de afgelopen weekeinde door een hartstilstand dodelijk getroffen Wintzen (68) een buitenbeentje. Hij was de man die vaak werd gevraagd om te spreken over zijn ‘celdeling'-filosofie en andere originele management gedachten. Hij hield zijn gehoor dan een spiegel voor, analyseerde heel raak de makken van grootschaligheid en dreef de spot met de bedrijfsbureaucratie en regelzucht van managers. Maar hoe overtuigend en onderhouden hij zijn boodschap ook wist te brengen, zijn toehoorders besloten doorgaans toch lekker alles bij het oude te laten. lees verder

Weather Engineering in China

Rainmakers: Inside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, senior officials of China's National Development and Reform Commission and its State Environmental Protection Administration meet the press to discuss issues of environment, resources, energy, and emission control (top). Below, one member of China's army of part-time rainmakers mans an anti-aircraft gun to show the international media how he will shoot silver iodide into passing clouds.

How the Chinese plan to modify the weather in Beijing during the Olympics, using supercomputers, airplanes, and artillery.

To prevent rain over the roofless 91,000-seat Olympic stadium the city's branch of the national Weather Modification Office has prepared a three-stage program for the 2008 Olympics this August.
First, Beijing's Weather Modification Office will track the region's weather via satellites, planes, radar, and an IBM p575 supercomputer, purchased from Big Blue last year, that executes 9.8 trillion floating point operations per second. It models an area of 44,000 square kilometers (17,000 square miles) accurately enough to generate hourly forecasts for each kilometer.
Then, using their two aircraft and an array of twenty artillery and rocket-launch sites around Beijing, the city's weather engineers will shoot and spray silver iodide and dry ice into incoming clouds that are still far enough away that their rain can be flushed out before they reach the stadium.
Finally, any rain-heavy clouds that near the Olympic stadium will be seeded with chemicals to shrink droplets so that rain won't fall until those clouds have passed over.

Rest of story >>

Fresh chips vending machine

'Fresh chips' manufactures a fully automated cooking machine that dispenses Hot & Crispy potato snack crisps in a healthy canola oil. This machine also delivers a choice of 4 different tasty dipping sauces (Sweet & Sour, BBQ, Ketchup and Salsa)

'Fresh Chips' originally started of with the quest of developing a vending machine for french fries, but for now they have settled with a vending machine for 'hot chips', an extruded snack that is fried in 35 seconds in the vending machine.

'Fresh Chips' even offers a vending machine with a build in monitor allowing advertisment, or to attract a crowd by showing a movie.

Fresh Chips >>

Long-Distance Wi-Fi

Intel has found a way to stretch a Wi-Fi signal from one antenna to another located more than 60 miles away.

Intel has announced plans to sell a specialized Wi-Fi platform later this year that can send data from a city to outlying rural areas tens of miles away, connecting sparsely populated villages to the Internet. The wireless technology, called the rural connectivity platform (RCP), will be helpful to computer-equipped students in poor countries, says Jeff Galinovsky, a senior platform manager at Intel. And the data rates are high enough--up to about 6.5 megabits per second--that the connection could be used for video conferencing and telemedicine, he says.
The RCP, which essentially consists of a processor, radios, specialized software, and an antenna, is an appealing way to connect remote areas that otherwise would go without the Internet, says Galinovsky. Wireless satellite connections are expensive, he points out. And it's impractical to wire up some villages in Asian and African countries. "You can't lay cable," he says. "It's difficult, expensive, and someone is going to pull it up out of the ground to sell it."
Already, Intel has installed and tested the hardware in India, Panama, Vietnam, and South Africa.
Read rest of story >>

Wall Mounted Fireplace

Safretti's latest in their line of wall-mounted fireplaces for urban living spaces without proper wood burning ventilation looks a lot like a mouth. A mouth much like the mouths Seth MacFarlane likes to draw on inanimate objects on Family Guy, which is why we picture this thing spewing obscenities, as well as 7.1kW of heat from its alcohol-fueld fire hole.

The bad news? That 7.1kW doesn't really measure up against a real fireplace, so this is more for a mouth motif decoration than practical heating.

A new information system records what pills do to the body

The networked pill.
A system that monitors pill taking and its effects is being engineered by a Silicon Valley startup. The technology consists of pills that report when they've been taken, and sensors that monitor the body's responses.
The company behind the technology, Proteus Biomedical, of Redwood City, CA, calls its technology the Raisin system. George Savage, Proteus's cofounder and a former ER physician, says that the company was motivated by the fact that so many medical problems stem from drug compliance problems. According to Savage, 40 percent of hospital readmissions for heart failure happen because patients fail to take their medications properly.
Even when a regimen is followed, it may not be the best regimen. According to Leslie Saxon, a cardiologist at the University of Southern California, who works as a consultant for Proteus, the dosages of drugs used for heart failure are derived from large clinical trials and may not meet a particular patient's needs. "Imagine a situation where drug ingestion is tracked, and heart pressure before, immediately after, and later are known," says Saxon. "That represents real, individualized, tailored drug therapy."
In the Raisin system, each pill contains an "ingestible event marker" (IEM). The IEM consists of a sand-grain-size microchip with a thin-film battery that is activated on ingestion, as it is exposed to water. The battery, Proteus says, is nontoxic because it is made from materials similar to those in a vitamin pill. Once swallowed, the IEM sends through the body's tissues a high-frequency electrical current that's modulated in such a way that it provides a unique marker of the pill. It's not an RFID technology: it uses the conductive tissues of the body to conduct the signal, rather than a radio, and the signal is confined within the body. Mark Zdeblick, the company's CTO, says that the IEMs could cost less than a penny each when manufactured in volume.
The electrical current is picked up and logged by a receiver on a patch placed on the patient's chest or abdomen, or placed underneath the skin as a subcutaneous insert. The receiver also contains sensors that monitor physiological parameters such as heart rate, respiration, and bodily movement. Heart rate is monitored by detecting the electrical activity of the heart; respiration is monitored by detecting changes in the impedance of the electrodes as the chest expands and contracts; activity is monitored with a miniature accelerometer, similar to the ones in iPhones. Combining the parameters can reveal behavioral measures such as sleep patterns.
Read the whole story >>

Washing eggs with fuzzy logic

Arriving at a solution sometimes comes from learning a different way to express the problem.
Fuzzy logic has been around for more than forty years, so it isn’t anything new to the controls community.

Until recently its use has been primarily in the areas of advanced control or in certain embedded OEM applications, where extra performance is required. For example, most manufacturers of singleloop controllers include fuzzy logic as part of their control algorithms. Today, with the advent of sensors that can measure simple quantities that in the past could only be estimated by human operators, fuzzy logic shows new promise for manufacturing end users to solve common problems on the factory floor. For example, simple machine vision sensors today can give good estimates of how ‘clean’ or ‘dirty’ an incoming batch of eggs is, something that until now only an operator could do.

...

Rockwell Automation program manager Dave Carr and software project manager Jeff Shearer recently published a 45-page white paper exploring fuzzy logic and how it helps engineers solve nonlinear control problems. They present fuzzy logic as an intuitive way to design function blocks for intelligent control systems, advanced fault detection, and other complex applications.

Read the whole story >>

Emerson goes east with Smart Wireless

Emerson Process Management has rolled its wireless solutions out to the Middle East and Africa, with a launch on March 6, 2008. The global process specialist introduced its Smart Wireless solutions to over 200 customers and press at the Emirates Palace, Abu Dhabi.
Having pinpointed the Middle East and Africa as its fastest growing market place, the launch was an important milestone in Emerson’s worldwide promotion of the new technology.
Sabee Mitra, president of Middle East and Africa at Emerson, introduced Smart Wireless Architecture, telling his customers: ‘we will have more eyes and ears in your plant’.
However, it seems the company’s biggest challenge is going to be convincing its customers that its ‘eyes and ears’ are as reliable as traditional wired alternatives.
Customers seemed very concerned about signals getting blocked or facing distances too great for the technology to work.
Philip Bond, director of Rosemount, and Bob Karschnia, vice president of wireless, explained how self-organising field networks allowed the wireless signal to automatically re-route itself on experiencing a blockage. Using other instruments to relay the signal to the wireless gateway creates a mesh that is, claimed to be, nearly impossible to break.
However, throughout the launch customers repeatedly asked whether the signal would still work given various adverse conditions. Invariably the answer was yes but it may be Emerson needs to get into these plants and prove its technology.
Rest of story >>

Wow, live concerts from Melkweg & Paradiso

If you love music but are growing tired of watching the same videos all the time on your favorite music video channel of if you love watching full concerts but don’t necessarily have the money to go to everyone, then check out Fabchannel. With over 700 videos already uploaded, Fabchannel is one of the largest resources available on the web. The shows come from the famous Paradiso and Melkweg in Amsterdam and there are a ton of artists to choose from. Watch concerts live, or watch a pre-recorded concert, cut and paste your favorite moments or songs from different concerts and make your own viewable playlist.

Bijvoorbeeld dit concert van Amy Macdonald:

Space planes 'to meet big demand'

Interesting story about space touristic market:





Aerospace giant EADS says it will need a production line of rocket planes to satisfy the space tourism market.
The European company's Astrium division, makers of the Ariane rocket, has plans for a commercial vehicle to take ticketed passengers above 100km.
Its market assessment suggests there would be 15,000 people a year prepared to part with some 200,000 euros (£160,000) for the ride of a lifetime.
Astrium anticipates it be will be producing about 10 planes a year.
"To satisfy the market you will need more planes than you think, because once there is regular operation, the price will decrease which means there will be more customers," Robert Laine, chief technical officer (CTO) of the pan-European company, told BBC News.

The intention is to produce a vehicle that seats five individuals - one pilot and four passengers.

The production model will use normal jet engines to take off and climb to 12km.
From there, the rocket engine will kick the vehicle straight up, taking it beyond 60km in just 80 seconds. By the time the rocket shuts down, the craft should have sufficient velocity to carry it above 100km - into space.

As the plane then begins to fall back to Earth, the pilot will use small thrusters to control its attitude, keeping the plane's belly flat to the Earth.

Read the whole fascinating story at BBC News (with lot of movies)

How Twitter makes it real

I wondered why people are using Twitter.

Twitter members can use the company's web site, their cell phones, or IM accounts to post and read messages. The catch is the messages can be no longer than 140 characters long. Most usually answer the Twitter question: What are you doing? The messages go out to the member's social network, but they also go out to a public timeline that posts online.

Interview with founder of Twitter in
What's Twitter's Success? More answers for Jeff Jarvis
Jemima Kiss of MediaGuardian interviewed Ev Williams, Founder of Twitter, (in Oct 2007) to understand its success.
Williams explains that even his mother doesn't understand the tool! But, it's taken on a life of its own...And Williams sold Blogger to Google.
So, what's in store for Twitter? Google...or teaming up with others like docstoc.com where users can share ideas, comment on documents, or refer a friend to needy information at the right time?
What's Twitter?
Group Text Messaging or Micro-Blogging
How's the tool evolving?
It's in its infancy to become a functional, personal tool - "Users need a critical mass of friends, and then the real conversations begin.
"What's the attraction?"
Dedicated users share ideas, ask questions, suggest meetings and post useful links and stories...charming details of day-to-day lives that would otherwise be lost.
"What are these "shared ideas..." called?
Tweets
How old is Twitter?
17 months
How many users Tweet?
350,000
What's Twitter's goal?
To grow the core service because of the practical benefits of socializing

On BBC News Bill Thompson is explaining his use of Twitter:
....
But as I sit here writing this I feel connected to a community of people, feel that we share a space that none of the social network sites can conjure up, a space that is both here and not here, somewhere between offline and online.
And I feel that I have a foretaste of what tomorrow's network world will bring, when the boundaries have dissolved completely and we can experience the network directly through augmented reality contact lenses or direct neural connections or whatever other technologies make it out of the lab and into the streets in the next decade.



Barack Obama on Twitter Official Twitter Page
Hillary Clinton on Twitter Official (?) Twitter Page

'Mind Gaming' Could Enter Market This Year

The power of the mind may be the next big thing in video games, and it may come soon. Emotiv says its mind-control headsets will be on shelves later this year, along with a host of novel biofeedback games developed by its partners. Several other companies--including EmSense in Monterey, California; NeuroSky in San Jose, California; and Hitachi in Tokyo--are also developing technology to detect players´ brainwaves and use them in next-gen video games. The technology uses a combination of EEGs (which reveal alpha waves that signify calmness), EMGs (which measure muscle movement), and ECGs and GSR (which measure heart rate and sweating). Near infrared spectroscopy, which monitors changes in blood oxygenation, could also be incorporated since it overcomes some of the interference problems with EEGs.
Read Original Article>>

Web enabled Mindmap

Test met Mind42 (Mind for two) mindmap op de web.

Beautiful pictures at Chromasia

From the bizarre to the beautiful now, and a personal blog by a photographer from Blackpool in the UK. Chromasia features the work of David Nightingale, so sit back and enjoy.

Unusually for a blog there are no words on these pages, just beautiful imagery captured on film and presented in a slide show format for the world to enjoy.

To take control yourself click the about tab at the top. Here you will find information on the artist, together with links to his collections of photos.
Complete tumbsnail overview >>

Tablet PCs will replace textbooks and other predictions from Bill Gates

March 13, 2008 (Computerworld) WASHINGTON - Bill Gates today outlined a future of computing akin to a Whole Earth Catalog for technology. The computing systems of the future will be more natural, responsive and capable of easily recognizing objects and people. They will also be completely customizable, he said.
Television, for instance, will be based on the Internet and it "will be an utterly different thing," that's customizable and interactive.
"In the future, instead of having the computer on your desk, you will have the computer in your desk," Gates said, and that desktop will have the ability to recognize what the user is doing, as well as the objects and papers placed on it.
In the home, "intelligent surfaces" will be pervasive, he said, to help organize a trip, photos or just about anything. "It can be done without the hardware being significantly more expensive," he said.
Data centers will be automated with little human intervention, and software development will use models that involve less code, the Microsoft chairman said.
Whole story >>

INDUSTRIAL SENSOR NETWORKING

Wireless sensor networking adoption is growing among industrial companies, according to a survey from On World, http://www.onworld.com/, San Diego, Calif. The market research firm found that one in three of surveyed companies currently use wireless sensor technology, and another half expect to deploy solutions over the next year and a half.
According the survey results, much of growth stems from interest in solving efficiency and cost issues associated with machine maintenance.
“Industrial companies are most interested in adopting new wireless solutions such as machine health, environmental and emissions monitoring, safety, and structural integrity,” says Mareca Hatler, director of research, On World.
Read the whole story >>

Why Don't We Invent It Tomorrow?

In his new book "Physics of the Impossible," Michio Kaku, a professor of theoretical physics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and a cofounder of string field theory, delves deeply into cutting-edge science to tell us what breakthrough innovations we can expect in our own lifetimes -- and which our grandchildren's grandchildren will still be dreaming about.
Read Original Article>>

Fraunhofer 3D screens at CEBIT

Pity if you will the poor boffins of the Fraunhofer Institute - Germany's largest technology research organisation - who have been dragged kicking and screaming from their cosy labs to display their wares at CeBIT.
Their journey has not, however, been in vain. Fraunhofer's 3D kiosk in Hall 11 has been attracting a lot of interest.
Electronic kiosk systems are normally nothing to get excited about - but then of course the information has hitherto been displayed only in 2D. Fraunhofer's new system lets visitors view objects in 3D without having to wear cumbersome glasses. What's more, they can rotate and turn the objects using simple hand movements; the high-resolution 3D objects appear to float in front of the screen.
Here is how it works: Two images - one for each eye - are subdivided into fine vertical stripes and alternately displayed next to each other, a bit like the old 3D postcards. A prism sheet placed in front of the display directs each image to the appropriate eye. To prevent the viewer from perceiving separate images, a camera tracks the position of the head and automatically adjusts the stripes for the correct viewing angle. Interesting stuff.

On a rather more practical note, three Fraunhofer institutes are working together on various telemedicine applications, including a new multi-sensor armband. The wireless device measures a variety of parameters such as temperature, pulse, blood oxygen saturation and heart rate. All that data is transmitted to a base station and then forwarded to the doctor via the Internet or a direct communications link.
According to Fraunhofer researchers, the long-term aim for the technology is the integration of sensors and actuators as part of a 'Personal Area Network'. For instance, a glucose sensor could measure a diabetic patient's blood sugar level and transmit the data to the monitoring station. If the value is too high, the station sends a signal to an implanted insulin pump which administers more insulin.
The sensors could be beneficial not only for the ill and the elderly. Sportsmen and women could monitor vital parameters while training, Fraunhofer researchers believe.

Read the story at Fraunhofer Institute

Camera 'looks' through clothing

A camera that can "see" explosives, drugs and weapons hidden under clothing from 25 metres has been invented.
The ThruVision system could be deployed at airports, railway stations or other public spaces.
It is based on so-called "terahertz", or T-ray, technology, normally used by astronomers to study dying stars.
Although it is able to see through clothes it does not reveal "body detail" or subject people to "harmful radiation", according to the designers.
"It is totally and utterly passive - it receives only," said a spokesperson for Thruvision.
The portable camera, which has already been sold to the Dubai Mercantile Exchange and Canary Wharf in London, will be shown off at the Home Office scientific development branch's annual exhibition later this week.

Rest of story

Cebit 2008: Wifi in de auto

Het Duitse Funkwerk heeft een UMTS router onthuld dat een Wifi-netwerk binnen de auto aanbiedt en daarmee surfen op de achterbank mogelijk moet maken.
Het UTMS-WLAN-Router komt rond september dit jaar in Duitsland op de markt. Later moeten ook andere landen waaronder Nederland volgen.
In tegenstelling tot wat de naam suggereert, ondersteunt de apparaat naast umts- ook edge-, hsdpa- en gprs-verbindingen.
Passagiers in een auto zouden ook via een laptop met een UMTS-kaart kunnen surfen maar de ontvangst blijkt dan vaak tegen te vallen, vertelt Marc Bandemer, woordvoerder voor Funkwerk tijdens een interview op Cebit in Hannover.
De router beschikt over een externe antenne die buiten op de auto wordt geïnstalleerd, want de carrosserie kan - als een soort kooi van Faraday - de ontvangst verstoren. Hij is bovendien zo ontworpen dat hoge rijsnelheden en trillingen de netwerkverbinding niet verstoren of vertragen.
Funkwerk is gespecialiseerd in netwerkaccessoires voor in de auto, zoals carkits voor mobiele telefoons en high-end routenavigatiesystemen.
De router gaat naar verwachting zo'n 900 euro kosten en zal in het begin vooral via auto-accessoire-inbouwbedrijven geleverd worden. Later hoopt Funkwerk ook direct met autofabrikanten contracten te sluiten.
Klik voor een filmpje

WIAWTHBNDTA 1: Panasonic's Interactive TV Wall

What I Always Wanted To Have But Never Dare To Ask 1:

New Technology ? What is this ????

Blue Beauty - Earth seen from Space

A spectacular powerpoint presentation entitled Blue Beauty - beautiful images of our earth seen from space - especially impressive are the photos of nightfall. (1.7 MB). Enjoy

Slimme meter wint het van zijn domme neefje

Bard van de Weijer, Volkskrant gepubliceerd op 06 maart 2008 02:46, bijgewerkt op 02:46
De nieuwe meter helpt bij het besparen van energie. Iedereen krijgt er een.
Wat is een slimme meter?
De gemiddelde ‘slimme meter’ doet zijn naam nauwelijks eer aan. Hij wordt vooral gebruikt voor het automatisch doorgeven van meterstanden, waardoor de energieleverancier altijd een actueel overzicht heeft van het verbruik van een klant. Doordat gegevens digitaal worden aangeleverd, hoeven er geen cijfers meer overgenomen te worden van meterstandenkaartjes. Dat bespaart geld.
Wordt de consument er ook beter van?
Ja, maar voorlopig niet heel veel. Wie meterstanden bijhoudt, kan met een slimme meter de gegevens eenvoudig overhevelen naar een pc, voor een actueel overzicht van het energieverbruik. Snelle en gemakkelijke inzage in het verbruik moet ertoe leiden dat consumenten zich bewuster worden van hun energieconsumptie. Het energiebedrijf Oxxio heeft de indruk dat de slimme meter leidt tot een stroombesparing van 1,5 procent. Uit een eerste onderzoek onder 700 klanten blijkt dat ongeveer een op de vijf bezitters van een slimme meter meer dan 10 procent bespaart, zegt Hilbrand Does, bij Oxxio verantwoordelijk voor de meters.
Lees meer in Volkskrant artikel

Piclens

With the web being such a visual medium aesthetics are important and the terribly thoughtful people at Cooliris have given us a totally new way to look at images, on a 3D wall no less.

Head on over to PicLens and hit the download button. If you want to find out more there is a very nice multimedia presentation under the Tutorials button, but trust me, download it ... it rocks.

Once the plug-in is installed - and you will need to tell your browser to allow editing by the site again - you can go to any site that supports the plug-in and view all the images on a 3D wall in a dedicated full screen environment.
Sites that support the plug-in are places like Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, Deviant Art and Google image search - so there is no end of relevance to this app.
Pop along to Google to familiarise yourself with its remarkably simple operation. Search a term - pick something image rich, like galaxies or cute kittens, whatever takes your fancy - and when the search is returned, click the special PicLens arrow in an image.
You can now use the slide bar at the bottom to zoom along the wall. Click an image to zoom in and use the slideshow controls if you just want to sit back and enjoy.
You can link back to the originating page of the highlighted image by clicking the link in the top left hand corner of the screen.

Find out at Piclens website.

Wat is (niet) bescherming toch fijn!

Vandaag ben ik in Frankrijk en verblijf in Hotel Domaine du Soleil d'Or in Nassandres (Normandie).
Eerst twijfelde ik of ik mijn portabel mee zou nemen. Het hotel maakt geen melding van een internet aansluiting en over WiFi wordt al helemaal niet gesproken. En alle informatie die ik nodig heb staat immers op de USB-stick.
Ik besloot om hem toch maar mee te nemen. Ik ben met de auto en zoveel plaats neemt zo'n portable toch niet in beslag.
Net aangekomen in het hotel en mijn computer opgestart. Eens kijken of er een WiFi netwerk gevonden wordt. Warempel er zijn er 2 waar ik zonder problemen gewoon mee kan verbinden.
Verbazingwekkend dat dit zomaar kan.

En omdat je toch kritisch bent op dingen die je gratis krijgt, de andere verbinding maar genomen, die veel sneller is!

Head Tracking for Desktop VR Displays using the Wii Remote

Amazing stuff!
Using the infrared camera in the Wii remote and a head mounted sensor bar (two IR LEDs), you can accurately track the location of your head and render view dependent images on the screen. This effectively transforms your display into a portal to a virtual environment. The display properly reacts to head and body movement as if it were a real window creating a realistic illusion of depth and space.

Click here to see more from Johnny Chung Lee

Time Travel could become reality sooner than you think

By Dick Pelletier
At a UCLA workshop attended by yours truly and an assortment of future-thinkers, the late physicist Dr. Robert Forward told the group that further understanding of general relativity and quantum mechanics would one day enable humans to travel backwards and forwards through time. “Given the money and the mandate,” Forward said, “a time machine will be built.”

This workshop convened in 1983, and today, 24 years later, scientists are bringing this bold concept closer to reality. Professor Amos Ori at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology recently created a theoretical model of a time machine based on Einstein’s theory of relativity, which would allow people to travel back in time.
Ori’s theory, published in the prestigious science journal Physical Review, describes how a future time machine could be built by forming “closed time-like curves” in a donut-shaped area of space-time. A person traveling around this donut loop would go further back in time with each lap.
Although the laws of physics permit time travel, the concept is laden with uncomfortable contradictions. Say we travel back in time and stop our parents from getting together. This would prevent us from being born; we would not exist and our journey in time could never happen. Scientists call this a paradox; we created a past different from the one that already exists.
Clearly, mischievous time travelers cannot change the present. People are not suddenly disappearing because a rerun of events has prevented their birth. Therefore, something is stopping time travelers from changing our present, and Stephen Hawking, Michio Kaku, and other visionaries believe they know what it is – parallel universes.
If we travel to the past and prevent our parents from meeting, we are immediately thrust into a parallel universe, similar to our old universe, but one where we never existed. In this universe, we appear as a visiting time-traveler from another universe; however returning home could pose a problem. If roundtrip procedures have been developed, we’re OK; if not, we may be stuck forever in a strange world.
Though construction of Ori’s time machine is beyond today’s science, many believe that exponentially-advancing technologies could turn this dream into reality by the end of the century.
Advantages to time travel are mind-boggling. A glimpse into the future would reveal what our lives will be like in the 22nd century and beyond. Will we find extra-terrestrial intelligent life? And visiting the past could allow us to scan the minds of lost loved ones before they died and bring them into our time to continue their lives.
Four billion years ago, life was only a biochemical machine capable of self-reproduction. Today, we venture into space and study ideas ranging from general relativity to quantum cosmology. We’re already thinking about teleporting people instantly from one location to another; and some bold scientists believe that humanity will one day achieve an indefinite lifespan, eliminating the causes of most deaths.
Who knows how far we can evolve. Will we merge with intelligent machines by mid-century as futurist Ray Kurzweil and others predict? If so, these creations could survive virtually forever with human ideas, hopes, and dreams carried with them. Welcome to our incredible “magical future.”

This article will appear in various print media and blogs; comments welcome. See other published work by Dick at positivefuturist.com and click on the “published work” tab.