15 November 2014

What Gives Gold that Mellow Glow?


In discussions of special relativity, you occasionally encounter a claim like, “The effects of special relativity only matter to particle physicists and others working with extreme energies and velocities. Relativity has no consequences in everyday life.” Well, these days, anybody who relies upon the Global Positioning System(GPS) to navigate their car or the airliner in which they're travelling uses both special and general relativity, because without correction for their effects, GPS would be so inaccurate as to be useless. But GPS is a recent innovation, and the relativistic corrections are both complicated and hidden from the user in the software in the receiver and on board the satellites. But there's an effect of special relativity which was observed, if not understood, by the ancients: the yellow gleam of gold.


With an atomic number of 79, gold is in the last row of theperiodic table containing stable elements, and only four stable elements (mercury, thallium, lead, and bismuth) have greater atomic number. With 79 protons in its nucleus, the electrons of the gold atom are subjected to an intense electrostatic attraction. Using the naïve Bohr “solar system” model of the atom for the moment, electrons in the 1s orbital, closest to the nucleus, would have to orbit with a velocity v of 1.6×108metres per second to have sufficient kinetic energy to avoid “falling into” the nucleus. This is more than half the speed of light: c≈3×108 m/s

12 November 2014

Fjcc Ya

WE LANDED ON A COMET! Rosetta Mission A Success!: http://youtu.be/ZcXZ-6B6ejk

25 October 2014

web: Future of Text 2014

The Liquid Information Company &      presents:


 

A symposium centered around the premise that the written word is a fundamental unit of knowledge and as such is of universal importance.

07 October 2014

Viewing Guide: Watch Blood Moon During Total Lunar Eclipse on Wednesday


When Will the Eclipse Happen?
The eclipse begins with the partial phase, when the moon enters Earth's dark shadow (also called the umbra shadow). That begins at 2:15 a.m. PDT (5:15 a.m. EDT). Then the umbral shadow will spread across the moon's disk, moving from left to right.
At 3:25 a.m. PDT (6:25 a.m. EDT) totality begins, when the moon is fully engulfed in the umbral shadow and turns a shade of orange red. The deepest or midpoint of the eclipse will be at 3:55 a.m. PDT, and totality continues until 4:24 a.m. PDT. The last phase of the partial eclipse ends at 5:34 a.m. PDT.

Evernote helps you remember everything and get organized effortlessly. Download Evernote.

26 September 2014

Top 10 surprising TextEdit for Mac tips - Features - Macworld UK

Here is an excerpt. (I tried this and it WORKS!)

------------------------------------------------------

View word and character count in TextEdit



One missing feature most requested by TextEdit users is word count. Adding it to TextEdit is extremely easy via a little AppleScript.
Open the AppleScript Editor program, which you’ll find in in the Applications list of Finder. When it starts click the New Document button, then paste in to the main editing area what you see below:
tell application "TextEdit"
set wc to count words of document 1
set cc to count characters of document 1
if wc is equal to 1 then
set txt to " word and "
else
set txt to " words and "
end if
if cc is equal to 1 then
set txtc to " character."
else
set txtc to " characters."
end if
set result to (wc as string) & txt & (cc as string) & txtc
display dialog result with title "Word and character count" buttons {"OK"} default button "OK"
end tell
On the toolbar click the Compile button, then click File > Save. When the Save As dialog box appears, type Shift+Cmd+G and in the new dialog box, type~/Library/Scripts.
Type Word Count into the Save As name field, and click the Save button.
Switch back to the AppleScript Editor window, and tap Cmd+, (comma) to open its preferences dialog box. Click the General tab and put a tick alongside Show Script Menu in Menu Bar.
Close AppleScript Editor. From now on, whenever you want to perform a word/character count within TextEdit, click the small script icon at the top right of the screen near the Wi-Fi icon and select the Word Count option.

20 September 2014

Audio Quality Or Lack Thereof

Has anyone else noticed the horrible, abysmal, really awful audio quality for the the audio feature that's been added to Messages in iOS 8?

Apple's new iOS 8

iOS logo
iOS logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Cool new features, no doubt, but it feels a bit hesitant at times. A faster chipset and more memory (on future phones) will surely help.

I've got an iPhone 5s with 32GB...

23 August 2014

Google Guava

Java programmers, new and old, take note: Google, et al, have simplified life for Java programmers:
To summarize, don't reinvent the wheel. If you need to do something that seems like it should be reasonably common, there may already be a class in the libraries that does what you want. If there is, use it; if you don't know, check. Generally speaking, library code is likely to be better than code that you'd write yourself and is likely to improve over time. This is no reflection on your abilities as a programmer. Economies of scale dictate that library code receives far more attention than most developers could afford to devote to the same functionality.
We'd also like to mention that:
  • Guava has been battle-tested in production at Google.
  • Guava has staggering numbers of unit tests: as of July 2012, the guava-tests package includes over 286,000 individual test cases. Most of these are automatically generated, not written by hand, but Guava's test coverage is extremely thorough, especially forcom.google.common.collect.
  • Guava is under active development and has a strong, vocal, and involved user base.
  • The best libraries seem obvious in retrospect, but achieving this state is notoriously challenging.

Is the Mobile App Market Saturated?

Market share of mobile os s 2008
Market share of mobile os s 2008 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The U.S. Mobile App Report

15 August 2014

Siri’s Inventors Are Building a Radical New AI That Does Anything You Ask | Enterprise | WIRED

Siri’s Inventors Are Building a Radical New AI That Does Anything You Ask | Enterprise | WIRED:

Excerpt:
Viv is an open system that will let innumerable businesses and applications become part of its boundless brain. The technical barriers are minimal, requiring brief “training” (in some cases, minutes) for Viv to understand the jargon of the specific topic. As Viv’s knowledge grows, so will its understanding; its creators have designed it based on three principles they call its “pillars”: It will be taught by the world, it will know more than it is taught, and it will learn something every day. As with other AI products, that teaching involves using sophisticated algorithms to interpret the language and behavior of people using the system—the more people use it, the smarter it gets. By knowing who its users are and which services they interact with, Viv can sift through that vast trove of data and find new ways to connect and manipulate the information.


Kittlaus says the end result will be a digital assistant who knows what you want before you ask for it. He envisions someone unsteadily holding a phone to his mouth outside a dive bar at 2 am and saying, “I’m drunk.” Without any elaboration, Viv would contact the user’s preferred car service, dispatch it to the address where he’s half passed out, and direct the driver to take him home. No further consciousness required.

15 July 2014

01 July 2014

Google Buys Songza, a Playlist App for Any Occasion - NYTimes.com

Google Buys Songza, a Playlist App for Any Occasion - NYTimes.com: "Google Buys Songza, a Playlist App for Any Occasion
By BEN SISARIO



JULY 1, 2014
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In a sign of growing consolidation in the digital music business, Google announced on Tuesday that it had bought Songza, a three-year-old app that competes with Pandora and others in making customized playlists of recommended songs."



'via Blog this'

28 June 2014

Tile

The next time you lose your keys, don't say I didn't tell you about this baby: an etile that you can strap or stick on stuff to keep track of it. Not to put on your cheating boy/girl/friend. Just for stuff. Kids maybe. 

20 June 2014

Virgin Atlantic to implement Google Glass strategy

Well if this isn't the most unexpected, and to me weird, implementation of this technology!

Most of the passengers thought that it was "cool," after the nice people at VA explained that it was not an invasion of their privacy. LOL, there are cameras everywhere at Heathrow.

03 June 2014

The Next Big Thing...

The Next Big Thing You Missed: One Day, You’ll Google the Physical World With a Scanner Like This
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02 June 2014

GOOGLE and LUXOTTICA announce strategic partnership for Glass

Technology Is Not Technology
Technology Is Not Technology (Photo credit: lgb06)
“We are thrilled to announce our partnership with Google, and are proud to be once again setting the pace in the eyewear industry, as we have been, with more than 50 years of excellence.” Said Andrea Guerra, Chief Executive Officer of Luxottica Group.
“We live in a world where technological innovation has dramatically changed the way in which we communicate and interact in everything that we do. More importantly, we have come to a point where we now have both a technology push and a consumer pull for wearable technology products and applications. Seeing such a future, over the last years, Luxottica invested heavily in building-out our technology platforms and digital solutions to combine with our products excellence. We believe that a strategic partnership with a leading player like Google is the ideal platform for developing a new way forward in our industry and answering the evolving needs of consumers on a global scale. We believe it is high time to combine the unique expertise, deep knowledge and quality of our Group with the cutting edge technology expertise of Google and give birth to a new generation of revolutionary devices.”
"Luxottica has built an impressive history over the last 50 years designing, manufacturing and distributing some of the most successful and well-known brands in eyewear today." Said Google Vice President and head of Google X Astro Teller. "We are thrilled to be partnering with them as we look to push Glass and the broader industry forward into the emerging smart eyewear market.”
The first collection generated by this partnership will combine high-end technology with avant-garde design offering the best in style, quality and performance. These forward-thinking devices will be the result of a new and unique strategic approach reflecting attention to detail, uncompromising quality and technology nurtured in the global market.  The sophistication and elegance of this new generation of products will be a dramatic step forward in an evolving category and elevate the consumer experience in this area.
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23 April 2014

Google's Purchase of Titan Drones

How a whirlwind 6-week courtship led to Google's purchase of Titan drones

Dan Mayfield
Albuquerque Business First

The UpTake: Vern Raburn says it took an intense six weeks to sell his company, Titan Aerospace, to Google. The solar-powered drone maker may seem like an odd purchase for the search and advertising giant. But its technology could be key for Google to get the Internet to remote corners of the globe.

Last Monday morning at 1 a.m., Vern Raburn finally got the last call and signed the last document that made it official.

After six weeks of intense due diligence work with Google, the Titan Aerospace CEO was finally signing the papers to sell the startup to Internet powerhouse Google.

 “This has been done in record time. This is the quickest merger I’ve ever been a part of,” Raburn told Albuquerque Business First. “I had no sleep from Thursday to Sunday.”

 Raburn can’t disclose the details of the merger in any way, he said. Nor can he confirm that Facebook was also interested in buying Titan.

 “I’m not Titan anymore. I’m Google,” he said.

 Raburn has been the CEO of Titan since last fall, but he doesn’t have a Google title yet.

 Titan, or Google, is developing a solar-powered drone that Raburn calls an “atmostat,” or atmospheric satellite. The idea is to bring the functionality of a satellite, such as mapping, GPS or even communications, to the high atmosphere at a fraction of the cost of launching a space-bound satellite.

 Today, though, Titan’s hangar at the Moriarty Airport couldn’t look any less Google. It looks homebuilt, and Raburn agrees.
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