New Florence. New Renaissance.

Technology and the Inaugaration

2 million folks in DC with mobile phones made calls, emailed photos, texted and watched live feeds at the same time.  GeoEye-1 captured pictures from 400 miles above. Second Life teleported the event. Microsoft developed Photosynths that piece together a mosaic of pictures from various vantage points. Facebook reported 4,000 status updates a minute during the CNN broadcast.

It is the first inaugaration covered by Twitter, and the first one where Google has an office in Washington, DC...and the Inaugural Balls have not even started as I write this post - the 10 physical ones and 1 virtual one.

Photo Credit - The Obama White House web site on its first day

Tracking VIPs at the Super Bowl

"Using a form of hyper-accurate GPS system, U.S. Fleet Tracking will keep tabs on between 80 and 100 limousines, buses and vans carrying VIPs across the Tampa Bay area during Super Bowl week.

Team owners, for instance, can dial into the system from any Internet-connected computer to watch where their team buses are going and when."

Tampa Tribune

Photo of Transceiver from U.S. Fleet Tracking

Rated R

for strong language - for sophisticated data analysis

"Close to 1,600 different packages reside on just one of the many Web sites devoted to R, and the number of packages has grown exponentially. One package, called BiodiversityR, offers a graphical interface aimed at making calculations of environmental trends easier.

Another package, called Emu, analyzes speech patterns, while GenABEL is used to study the human genome.

The financial services community has demonstrated a particular affinity for R; dozens of packages exist for derivatives analysis alone.

“The great beauty of R is that you can modify it to do all sorts of things,” said Hal Varian, chief economist at Google. “And you have a lot of prepackaged stuff that’s already available, so you’re standing on the shoulders of giants.”

R first appeared in 1996, when the statistics professors Ross Ihaka and Robert Gentleman of the University of Auckland in New Zealand released the code as a free software package. "

New York Times

Game Theory

I was reading this Popular Science interview with Les Fisher who uses the Rock, Paper, Scissor game to explain more complex game theory...and I drifted into the site of the World RPS Society and I was fascinated to learn

"The Paper Scissors Stone Club was founded in London, England in 1842 immediately following the issuance of the1842 law declaring “any decision reached by the use of the process known as Paper Scissors Stone between two gentleman acting in good faith shall constitute a binding contract. Agreements reached in this manner are subject to all relevant contract and tort law.”

Your next PC: A television

NY Times interview with Reed Hastings of Netflix

“within two years I think that Wi-Fi and Netflix will be built into all the televisions…”

“PCs have “a lot of memory and a powerful chip. The TV doesn’t have that much memory and not that powerful a general chip… That’s what’s holding it back.”

“We don’t think of it in title count… we think about it in terms of volume and having an even better experience that we have now.”

also MIT Technology Review reports about moves towards 3-D TV

Photo Credit of 1960 TV ad - tvhistory.tv

Super-Resolution Algorithms

"Varah also argues that having to meet the CIA's requirements set a higher standard for MotionDSP's algorithms. The algorithms leverage a handful of patents from researchers at the University of Santa Cruz, explains Nikola Bozinovic, the company's CTO.

The algorithms track motion through several frames of video to determine which characteristics of the motion appear to be due to a jerky camcorder. This motion is then subtracted from the scene when the video is rendered."

MIT Technology Review

A better fitting shoe

"Custom insoles have long been ordered and worn by elite athletes hoping to cure an injury, or avoid one. eSoles now plans to bring that customization the masses with an impressive piece of in-store ingenuity. In just seconds, the eSole self-service kiosk will print out a detailed analysis of your foot, allowing the retailer to offer two choices of custom orthotic. A Lego-style modular insole is put together in the store for $69.99, or a more traditional custom one is manufactured by eSoles to your exact foot pattern and sent to you for the bargain price of $249."

Popular Science

Photo: eSoles

Wi-Fi by the minute

Two brands which have made the world smaller - Skype with IP based calling and Boingo with its Wi-Fi hotspots around the globe - are coming together to allow for per-minute Wi-Fi access and for making it administratively easy by paying with your Shype credit. Initially only available to users of the new Mac client 2.8 beta, this feature will be built into other Skype desktop clients (i.e., for Windows) later on in 2009.

Costing 19 cents per minute (flat rate) users able to do anything they would ordinarily do online (email, etc.). They are not limited to just using Skype.

Of course, if you travel all the time, the monthly Boingo fee will likely work out cheaper

"The Greatest Show on Earth"

This time of the year, like clockwork, the Ringling Bros. circus rolls into town. The last time we went was probably a decade ago when the kids were much younger. So my jaw dropped when my daughter asked to go this year. We had to arm wrestle her younger brother to go over his protests it was uncool.

I was burning with curiosity to see how my Facebook, YouTube, XBox, iTunes hardened teenagers would react to the 115 year-old institution. 

They were not disappointed.To start with the venue was modern - the St. Pete Times Forum, the home of the local hockey team, The Lightning. Scanners for tickets, box suites, flat screen TVs every where.  

No three rings (Ringling dropped that a couple of years ago) any more, but plenty of LCD and LED (like in the photo below). Looked inspired by Cirque du Soleil, the Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony and a Super Bowl half-time show. Had plenty of Hollywood touches - a villain called Mr. Gravity competed with Nicholson and Ledger's Jokers, and Harry Potter inspired the hats and the magic. 

What seemed reduced was face-time for animals. I counted a total of 40 elephants, tigers, horses, zebras and dogs - no other species. There were more animal-rights protesters outside than animals inside. If the activitists continue to have their way, in 5 years the Circus may have no animals to show. Which is a shame, because the really young fans in the audience roared with delight every time the animals came in.

I also missed the old country-fair ambience - the corn dogs, the funnel cakes, the walk around with the smell of the animals and the hay, the mysterious gypsies and the Ripley type oddity characters like the world's tallest man. Gone - replaced by $ 7.50 popcorn and $ 8 beer.

But I had to admire all the technology wizardry. No question the Sprint roadies have taken over for Mr. Barnum.

The Best of CES - for business

While there were plenty of consumer oriented gadgets introduced at CES in Las Vegas, Jason Hiner of TechRepublic hones on netbooks, scanners, projectors, routers useful for business use.

Pictured the Asus T91 which brings the tablet form to the Netbook