NeatTrix

Or Roboplow rather.  This is awesome. I’m always looking for new ways to get snow off my driveway.  I like the remote control, but something autonomous would be cool too.

I was playing around with my black light the other day, and when I put my Kindle under it’s light, I saw this:

I’ve asked a few people and they can’t seem to make anything of the pattern of florescent (or non-florescent) keys.  One suggestion was the first character (if that’s indeed what it is) is an ‘a’ presumably for amazon, but it’s less clear what the second thing is.

I suppose one explanation could just be a coincidental mixture of florescent and non-florescent keys were used to make my particular Kindle (perhaps they’ve changed the formula for the plastic in the keys, who knows?)  This explanation is easy enough to test.  I just need some other people with Kindles to check their keyboards under a black light and get back to me.  Does Kindle 1 have the same pattern, or any pattern?

If however, everyone sees the same pattern of lighted keys, then what does that mean? Does anyone see some significance in this pattern? Or perhaps with the individual letters themselves? Something I didn’t think of?

I’ve seen technology like this before. They were demoing it at a simulated medical disaster event almost 10 years ago, but this looks more user friendly, and I’m sure the accuracy of all the component parts is much better than it was: speech recognition, translation, and text-to-voice. One ability that’s always appealed to me is languages. I’m glad the technology is catching up to my lack of ability. Step two, read my thoughts, or at least the electrical signals being sent to my vocal chords and do the translation in actual real time. Step three, rule the world. Step four, tacos.

The Wiimote controlling drum machines, by which I mean, machines that play the drums. A quick read of his website tells me that he’s using Arduinos to control the machines, plus some custom stuff. Pretty nice.

So this looks all well and fine, but it’s hardly the ‘holy grail’ of alternative energy. For one thing, it requires fuel and oxygen. To me the holy grail is a black box that reaps dark energy or gravitons or neutrinos from thin air and spits out 120V. Or Fettuccine Alfredo. Anyway, if it’s all that it says it is, it beats coal and the mountain rape that goes with it.

We’ve talked about the Emotiv Systems EPOC headset before (Emotiv EPOC). Alex Blainey has put up an impressive video where he uses the EPOC to control a simple robot arm…and he uses another favorite of ours, NeatTools, to tie it all together. Great job!

Thank you, Amazon! With this software, I can now read books on my PC, laptop, netbook, etc. The software can be configured to download books you’ve already purchased or new books. The big bonus is that maps, diagrams, and pictures are higher resolution and in color. With the original Kindle, almost any graphical content was unreadable. I avoided technical books and magazines for my Kindle because of this. Now I don’t have to. I can read technical books on my PC. Since that’s where I’m most likely to need the information, it’s a real win-win.

Amazon.com Download

No, it doesn’t see dead people (not yet). It’s a wearable gestural interface.

Description

Videos

NeatTools (an open-source project I work on) is finally (thanks to me) getting some documentation and media, out there on the web.  It’s early days yet, but there is a new wiki and a YouTube Channel both with growing amounts of information.  Here’s the first video to get you started:

In February, Amazon is having a limited beta for the Kindle Development Kit, which will allow development of third-party applications for the kindle.    There is very little information about it at the moment, but they do say this

Voice over IP functionality, advertising, offensive materials, collection of customer information without express customer knowledge and consent, or usage of the Amazon or Kindle brand in any way are not allowed. In addition, active content must meet all Amazon technical requirements, not be a generic reader, and not contain malicious code.

I can think of a few dozen useful things I’d like to see right off the bat, although I’m sure if you thought about it you could think of a few of your own.

http://www.amazon.com/kdk/

Here’s the official propaganda from Microsoft, and it clearly say that this is only the “project vision” and that the actual functionality will most likely vary.  Some of the things seem silly without some kind of a prop in your hands.  I agree that things like hand to hand combat would be much more natural with no controller, but things that have always had a physical element, like driving a car, just become ridiculous without something in your hands.  It certainly warrants keeping an eye on.  More than just gaming, as one element in a “smart” house, this could be very cool.

I have my doubts about this one.  Seems like it would have the same frustrations of voice recognition (hello computer) but like all new game technologies, it all depends on people writing good games for it.  It could be a gimmick or it could be a whole new experience that changes the way we interact with computers. The AI behind the kid seems a little too polished, like maybe he says the exact same things every time.