The team from Carnegie Mellon University finished first in the DARPA Urban Challenge where robotic cars were to complete a fully autonomous 60-mile journey including turns, intersections, overtaking and flat out cruising. Stanford came in second with Victor Tango in third place. MIT finished sixth. (via Scobleizer)
Category: Science
WOW! Minority Report’s “futuristic” UI is now real! 🙂
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=he-j1BbZf58]
A small hand-held printer is one of many upcoming products from Zink which produces inkless polaroid quality, water proof prints instantly. “The core of the technology is the paper, which is layered with crystals that, when melted at specific temperatures, become colored.” – [via VentureBeat]
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) have designed a 71-story, 2.2-million-square-foot net-zero-energy-skyscraper called Pearl River Tower as the headquarters of CNTC Guangdong Tobacco Company in new city of Guangzhou, China. The high-tech design employs four ways to make it environmentally friendly: reduction, reclamation, absorption and generation. Check the link for pictures. – [via BD4D]
I was delighted to attend Irving’s talk this morning. Some thoughts I retained and that I thought you may find insightful:
- Innovation: Move from Technology innovation to Business innovation and Societal innovation
- Complexity in IT: The need to learn from other engineering disciplines
- Traditionally we have been compensating the lack of engineering with good/talented labour (consultants)
- Business simulations to get it right the “first” time, like micro-processors/airplanes
- The move from Industrial economy to Knowledge economy
- And the move from “Classical” Engineering to “Services Sciences”
- Moving up the value-chain/pyramid: At the very bottom is Technology, then Products, then Applications and then Business
- Far fewer jobs expected at the bottom, and only the very best will be needed and will survive.
- Move up the value-chain to do an interesting job
- Business optimization > Business > Applications > Products > Technology
- Flexibility and Adaptability – Not just important for success (opportunity) but important for survival (fear)
- Fear >> Opportunities. Fear is more effective, typically.
- Biological systems and eco-systems: Survival of the fittest
- Business: Ability to respond to change
- Personal also.
- Human Designs – Visual, Interactive and Immersive interfaces for everything (virtual worlds)
International World Wide Web Conference is a global event that brings together key innovators, decision-makers, technologists, businesses, and standards bodies shaping the Web. The conference is sponsored by the likes of Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Nokia and more.
Organized by the IW3C2 since 1994, the WWW conference is an annual gathering place of the international community to discuss and debate the future evolution of the Web.
Past conference websites contain research papers, podcasts, presentations, posters etc. freely available for those interested.
Past conference websites: http://www2007.org/ http://www2006.org/ http://www2005.org/ and so on…
Next Conference: http://www2008.org/ (Beijing, China, April 2008)
Categories
Time may not exist
An interesting scientific article about space and time. It states that time may just be a faction of human understanding, not a reality. – reddit
Categories
The age of electric cars
The electric green valley car with lot of promise. Flashy, $98k tag and fast. Team is impressive: 250 employees in all create a new car, focus on core differentiating features, outsource mundane stuff and manufacturing, core tech and the bet is on laptop batteries (lots of them); and invent their own business model in mature auto segment. Success is to be seen, looks promising 🙂
I was just reading this article and found it very interesting. It is bit slow in the middle, but see if you like it.
Categories
Wireless energy promise powers up
MIT Researchers have powered a light bulb remotely. The successful experiment was to lit a 60-watt light bulb from a power source two meters away, with no physical connection between the power source and the light bulb. Named: WiTricity, or wireless electricity. The MIT work improves upon previous knowledge and does not require an uninterrupted line of sight.
Awesome and fascinating 🙂
Wireless energy promise powers up
Related post: Wireless electricity in near future?