New Florence. New Renaissance.

Lights on Tampa

In a run-up to the Super Bowl here on February 1 the city has kicked off a series of installations - illuminated art on our downtown buildings.  The kick off this evening covered the entire south facade of the Fort Brooke parking garage. Before and after photos presented.

Created by Germany-based artists Friedrich Forster and Sabine Weissinger, who collectively call themselves Casa Magica (they have illuminated the Giza Pyramids in Cairo among other places) it consists of six still but dense images projected onto the garage in random rotation. The one in this photo represent "Arrow, knight helmet, uniform buttons and dress trimming, chipboard wall with leftovers of paint coating and graffiti, lattice structure of avatar". The other images contain Seminole patchwork, even a Desert Storm teddy bear - representing some connection to Tampa's history and identity.

The Tampa Convention Center amd surrounding pedestrian areas will be covered with a spinning light - like a giant disco strobe. SeveralTampa structures will show off other installations.

 

The Crunchies

Om Maik reports on what has become an annual celebration of Silicon Valley's Web 2.0, mobile, SaaS and cloud startups...oh and a few old companies like Microsoft and amazon.

Technology and Bowling

Every time I take the kids bowling I am impressed at how few employees run those massive facilities - and how companies like Brunswick have automated the whole lane allocation, pin-setting, score keeping processes - and how much other electronic gaming and entertainment these venues offer.

Of course, the alleys have to compete harder. The Wii is allowing retirement homes and parties to bring the allies to their locations. The there is blending of physical and virtual worlds with short lanes you can fit in many homes.

I have far more basic needs - I am still waiting for some laser guidance technology to reduce the embarrassing number of gutterballs I cannot get away from:)

"Magic Dust"

Presented at the 26th Army Science convention earlier this month

"Regrowing a fingertip cut off in an accident sounds like something from a futuristic movie. But with innovative technology developed by the U.S. Army, such regrowth is possible today."

"The Army's regenerative medicine study combined properties from the intestinal lining and the urinary bladder to create a regenerative substance called Extracellular Matrix. The cream-colored crystallized powder, called "magic dust," boosts the body's natural tendency to repair itself, said U.S. Army Biological Scientist Sgt. Gen Rossman. When the matrix is applied to a missing digit or limb, "the body thinks it's back in the womb,"

Photo credit

Technology and the Disabled

The NY Times

"Some of Mr. Raman’s (a blind Google engineer) innovations may help make electronic gadgets and Web services more user-friendly for everyone. Instead of asking how something should work if a person cannot see, he says he prefers to ask, “How should something work when the user is not looking at the screen?”

and

BusinessWeek

Videophones at airports. GPS for use in wheelchairs with spoken directions. automated guides which use location services to provide customized commentary, spoken names for tunes on the iPod and more ..

"LED Nation"

"The three-acre island off the Connecticut coast is owned by prolific inventor Dean Kamen, who has established North Dumpling (off the coast of Connecticut) as an independent nation - complete with its own constitution, flag and national anthem. When the U.S. Coast Guard cut electrical connectivity to the island's lighthouse in favor of solar power, Kamen seized the opportunity to exclusively use renewable energy sources together with the latest technical innovations in lighting, water purification and appliances - many of which are his own inventions. As a result, the island will achieve net zero energy - meaning its energy use will be negated by its energy generation."

"Philips Color Kinetics will be the official lighting provider to the island. Installation is now underway and includes:

• Replacing incandescent sources with LED alternatives inside Kamen's properties, cutting their lighting-related energy by 70%
• Adding controllable, multi-color LED lighting for special effects on the island while still cutting overall energy by nearly 50%
• Improving the "usefulness" of illumination via the directional nature of LED sources which, unlike the island's former floodlighting system, project light exactly where it's needed for greater efficiency
• Allowing the basement space to be illuminated, where the prior incandescent sources generated too much heat to be safely installed"

Photo credit from this gallery in NY Times

"Adaptive" eyeglasses

"A retired Oxford University physics professor, he came up with the idea in what he describes as a "glimpse of the obvious".

Working on the principle that thicker lenses are more powerful than thin ones, Prof Silver's spectacles can be adjusted by injecting tiny quantities of fluid.

The tough plastic glasses have thin sacs of liquid in the centre of each lens.

They come with small syringes attached to each arm with a dial for the wearer to add or remove fluid from the lens.

Once the lenses have been adjusted, the syringes are removed and the spectacles worn just like a prescription pair.

The invention will enable millions of people in poorer parts of the world, where opticians are in short supply, to get spectacles for the first time"

The Telegraph

"Evolution simulation software"

"Affinnova's premise is that over time, consumer markets evolve much like the natural world: Strong products survive while weak ones die out. Its software, a "genetic algorithm" called IDDEA, essentially simulates evolution, creating generation after generation of possible products or packaging until the strongest possible design emerges. It's not truly design by machine—human designers choose what's going to be tested and consumers then select their favorite options from each generation, thereby determining which survive—but the software is able to process and analyze these preferences in a way no focus group could."

BusinessWeek

"Forgotten what we have forgotten"

I was recently introduced to this book which deals with "primitive technologies" - how to build a bow from saplings, how to build an igloo and more.

No, I am not turning survivalist, but it cataloged for me man's ingenuity and innovation through the ages.

And how good it is that some folks keep alive knowledge of that track record - lost in our modern world where the average US family has 24 electronic devices.

It also started me thinking - we are so lucky early man did not patent things like fire by friction...

50 years of the computer chip

MIT Technology Review has a gallery on how the integrated circuit has evolved over the last 50 years.

Photo of the 1974 vintage Intel 8080. With roughly 5,000 transistors, it was the heart of the Altair personal computer. 

The other photo is of the AMD Phenom II, scheduled for release in early 2009, has four cores (flanking the rightmost yellow blocks), a large shared cache, and around 758 million transistors.