GPS tracking to replace 70-year-old radar technology in planes

http://cnn.com/video/?/video/business/2010/07/21/qmb.david.melcher.itt.cnn

If Intel has its way, boring cash registers will be replaced with these machines of the future. They're more than just sexy glass, metal and touchscreen too—they're an Intel-powered experience that recognizes you and the way you shop.

Intel had conceptualized this new-age cash register a year ago, but this working prototype puts their idea to glass and steel. The way this self-checkout kiosk works is that it'll recognize your shopping habits and purchase history from your credit card and give recommendations of other products you might want to buy. You know, to get you to spend more money. The idea is to give the best features of online shopping (ease of checkout, recommendations, history) in a brick and mortar setting. And to look really cool doing it. [Wired]

超現實個人電腦(過去?現代?未來??)

Sharp Creates First 100GB Blu-ray Disc
Thanks to nifty lasers, Sharp has created the first 100GB Blu-ray disc. The new Blu-ray format, called VR-100BR1, uses a new triple-layer standard that allows storage space of up to 128GB on single-write discs and 100GB on re-writable discs.

The new max is double the space of the current cap, 50GB, and will give you a whole lotta space for all those extra features no one ever uses (kidding!). The first 100GB discs will be available in Japan later this month for $60 (!). Enjoy your time at the top Sharp, either Sony's upcoming laser or the overall demise of physical media will topple you (not kidding!). [CNET]

Wal-Mart Wants To Track Underwear With RFID Tags

Theft of underwear and jeans must be a pretty big issue for Wal-Mart stores considering that the company wants to track each garment using RFID tags. All that stands in this plan's way is some itsy-bitsy privacy concerns.

Click on the image for a closer look.

The concern with the tags is that while they can be removed when someone takes a purchase home, they can't be simply deactivated by consumers—meaning that they can still be tracked. On top of the tags being worrisome, the systems used to read them in stores are also raising eyebrows:

[Privacy advocates] also worry that retailers will be able to scan customers who carry new types of personal ID cards as they walk through a store, without their knowledge. Several states, including Washington and New York, have begun issuing enhanced driver's licenses that contain radio- frequency tags with unique ID numbers, to make border crossings easier for frequent travelers. Some privacy advocates contend that retailers could theoretically scan people with such licenses as they make purchases, combine the info with their credit card data, and then know the person's identity the next time they stepped into the store.

The whole idea seems a bit awkward, but then again: It's not really any worse than creepy men putting GPS-tracking systems in their lovers' lingerie. [WSJ]

Forget Walmart. Hackers Conference Badges Show The Future of RFID Tracking

When it comes to tracking people's every movement—or "location-aware applications" if you're trying to sound less creepy—nothing beats the badges at hacker conferences.

This year, HOPE's Attendee Meta-Data or AMD badge reached new heights, and suggested more about what you could do with RFID attached to people—both good and bad.

"This badge knows what talks you go to. It knows who you talk to. It knows what places in the conference you go. It knows when you were there," says Rob Zinkov, of the HOPE badge team.

The HOPE badge was meant to be hacked and let people flash the firmware. "It really appeals to people in both hardware and software," says Zinkov. The basic badge is an active RFID that can report itself and read other active RFIDs up to 60 ft away, all in a tiny and entirely open source package. It has a small bit of memory that lets it take down other badge ID numbers for later, and eight sensors the wearer can press with a finger.

Attendee Adam Mayer hacked his badge to let him steal the identity of anyone whose badge reported to his own, and walked around the social system as them for a few minutes before stealing the next identity.

"The badge works on multiple levels," says Aestetix, project manager and pointy haired boss of the AMD badge project. It allows its wearer to see what other talks have interested attendees that have attending similar talks, and find friends. "On the flip side, we can take what we learn from it and we can apply that to the next conference." Aestetix pauses, and grins. "There's also the big privacy aspect. We have a system that knows exactly where you were at all times."

The overproduced badges of hacker conferences got started with Defcon's challenge to hack the badge, which generally involves a circuit board and wild imagination. (Last year's entries included attaching a Geiger counter to the badge and using three badges to fly a robotic blimp—and those were the losers.)

The other parent of the HOPE badge is the Sputnik experiment from the 23rd Chaos Computer Congress in Berlin in 2006, where roughly 1000 attendees wore RFIDs on their badges that reported to 35 stations in the conference, tracking each person's movement. The creators of Sputnik mapped the movements of attendees and put them on display on large monitors.

HOPE went much further, adding in hardware hacking and a website. They wanted to bring in application software as well as firmware and data visualization. HOPE's badge team connected the badge IDs to a social network, allowing for friending, deriving preferences from talk attendance, and letting attendees associate real world data like websites with their in-con personas.

"It's kind of perpetually in alpha stage," says Aestetix. They try to add enough to the badge each HOPE that it never quite works right, and stretches both the hackers putting on the conference and the hackers getting the badges. Work went into the badge through much of the year.

Zinkov used the social network data attendees added about themselves to spider their websites and build even more complete data about everyone. Now they are building data visualizations and maps of correlations with conference activity. Anyone can get into the game, too. A torrent of the 8GB of collected data is publicly available. (Last year's data weighed in at only 20MB.)

The Hackers on Planet Earth conference is an outsized 2600 meeting that happens every two years in New York. It's come a long way in its time, ideas of hacking expanding from software to hardware, society, food and even sex. Quinn Norton is reporting from New York.

Related: Wal-Mart Radio Tags to Track Clothing [WSJ]

Room-Sized Dyson Air Multiplier AM03 Review: The Definition of Luxury

We said the original, desk-sized Dyson Air Multipler is an opulent but fantastic feat of engineering and excess, one that you'd feel guilty for purchasing but love afterwards. The Dyson AM03 is the same, but might be more justifiable.

The Price

$450

The Concept

I don't want to repeat the original review too much, but the technology is the same. The guts of the fan, located in the base, sucks in air from the bottom and shoots it out of the front rim of the circular "fan" portion. The resulting airflow draws in wind from the back of the fan to accelerate the generated air speed 18 times, thus rivaling, or perhaps even beating, traditional some fans.

What's New

The main difference between this and the smaller $300 model is the size. The larger fan accommodates larger rooms and can drive more air, like how a Lincoln Navigator can hold more corpses in the trunk than a Honda Civic. The same benefits from the old model remain: no buffeting, which is stuttering of air caused by the spin of the blades in normal fans, and the ability to stick your head or other appendages through without worry. The AM03 also can be adjusted upwards and downwards, forwards and backwards with the new pivoting system.

So why would I want this?

Room-sized fans are traditionally both large and ugly, giving you unpleasant reminders of sitting in a sweaty gym on a Saturday, suffering through an SAT with a few hundred other teens. The Dyson AM03, although large, is definitely not ugly, and definitely not as loud as those giant monstrosities. That's not to say that it's quiet, but it's definitely not annoyingly loud.

The larger Dyson fan will be able to act as a room circulator well, especially when you use the included remote to adjust speeds and on/offness from a distance. The breeze is pleasant—not harsh—and feels more natural than traditional fans somehow.

One side of my house seems to get a nice cool breeze at night, while the room I sleep in does not. Placing the Dyson on the breeze side, next to an open window, allows me to draw in cool air naturally, starting a current of air that chills the room without AC during the summer. I used to do this with a normal fan, but the height of the Dyson matches the height of the window nicely, plus the non-buffeting way that it blows air makes for a better sensation.

But you haven't told me why I'd buy this yet

This is true, and it's also something you kind of have to decide for yourself. These Dyson Air Multiplier fans are the essence of a luxury product. You can get the equivalent of the AM03 (standing fan) and AM02 (tower fan) for something around 1/6 of the price of Dyson's equivalents, and the Dyson is only a few percentage points higher in functionality.

But perhaps other than the style benefit, you have a safety one. When you're getting into the large, room-sized fan space, you get the worry of having random small objects, not to mention your own hair, get caught in the blades. Maybe I'm only paranoid about this because my parents kept drilling this into me as a kid, but having a fanless solution eliminates any worry of having your scalp torn out because you accidentally placed your head too close to the back of a fan.

What's that worth to you? Six times the asking price of a normal fan? Perhaps. I do know that one of the first things I did while testing the fan was to stick my head through it. [Dyson]

A+ design

Super safe for homes with little children, unless said little children are strong enough to knock over the fan

The non-buffeting breeze "feels" better than normal fans

A bit unwieldy to transport around the house

Not silent, especially at max speeds, but is quieter than normal fans

I think you can guess this one

打針並不可怕?!

No Cuteness Can Make Needles Any Less Terrifying

Syrinx is a syringe substitute for kids. The designers think that, by making them look like little animals with needles coming out of their noses, they are making syringes kid-friendly. Because, you know, blood sucking animals are so cute.

實際上是把雨吹到他人身上的透明概念雨傘

這款概念雨傘採用壓縮空氣作為遮雨部件。通過調整傘柄的控制按鈕，您可以自如控制、調整雨傘的空氣傘直徑。這樣一來，傘的部件便只剩下一支傘柄，而您也不用再為雨天撐傘進入室內，弄濕地板而發愁了。

文/專利之家　

The jacket, on display at this year’s SIGGRAPH interactive technology and computer graphics, links to a website through a Wi-Fi chip in one of the sleeves. When the wearer hits a button in the other sleeve to indicate he or she is feeling stressed, a social networking website notifies other network members. Communicating through a Wi-Fi-linked necktie, the other website members can decide whether to activate the jacket’s massage motors in sympathy.

“It’s much more relaxing because you feel a connection with people, not because the massage is so great,” said Byron Lahey, the wearable-technology coordinator at SIGGRAPH, who was not personally involved in the project.

After a response by a critical mass of users, the jacket, which has six massage motors, starts massaging the wearer. The whole process is anonymous, although the jacket does indicate from how far away the necktie wearers responded. Responses from within 10 miles of the jacket wearer trigger a spinal massage; responses from within the same country work the inner shoulder, and responses from other countries trigger an outer-shoulder massage.

Jacket wearers can log onto a website, see where everyone who responded is located and thank them.

By augmenting online relationships with real physical contact, the SOS project seeks to create tighter-knit online communities.

Designed by students from MIT’s media lab, the SOS system is still in the testing phase, and the attending website has yet to go live.

(technewsdaily)