New Florence. New Renaissance.

Elevator Innovations

At Kone’s test facility in Lohja, Finland, built 1,000 feet down a limestone mine, the company is tackling a problem that’s more familiar to frequent flyers than elevator riders. Engineers are determining the optimal speed for fans that control air pressure inside cars, which can descend in a mega-high-rise building faster than a commercial airplane coming in for a landing, De Jong says. Jets may have 30 minutes to reduce cabin pressure as they approach the airport; elevators in the tallest buildings may have just 30 seconds to depressurize.

For Dubai’s 2,717-foot Burj Khalifa tower, the world’s tallest building at the moment, Otis designed a system using double-deck cars, computerized dispatch, and its compact Gen2 lifts, which replace steel cables with polyurethane-coated belts. It uses smaller, gearless drives instead of bulky motors, eliminating the need for a large engine room.

BusinessWeek

Your Car as a Mobile Device

“In addition to allowing consumers to bring in and connect to personal mobile devices, the vehicle will also act as its own mobile device, enabling embedded vehicle capabilities,” said Mary Chan, president, Global Connected Consumer, General Motors.  “Turning this vision into a reality starts with enabling fast, reliable and responsive connectivity within the vehicle.  Through this built-in 4G LTE connection we have the opportunity to reinvent the mobile experience inside a vehicle.” Over time, applications of widespread in-vehicle 4G LTE connectivity will enable vehicles to interact directly with their environment to enhance safety, efficiency and convenience for drivers and passengers. 4G LTE will make services such as real-time traffic and navigation updates possible, pulling information from the cloud.

Meanwhile at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Ford is showing off its EcoSport connectivity (in picture) with a streaming music arrangement with Spotify

 

The Center of the Universe: You

New Scientist (sub required) on how recent a phenomenon are digital maps

“Yet digital maps only entered the mainstream after Google got involved in the mid-2000s. Google Local was launched in 2004, in which businesses' details were listed alongside a small map. Within a year, Google Maps arrived, complete with functions to search the map and give directions. Soon digital maps began to underpin hundreds of smartphone apps.”

and where we are headed:

“For centuries, the centre of the world was the hub of a civilisation, like China or Jerusalem, then it was Greenwich. Now, it's you. For the first time, we're using maps that know where we are and which can be customised to our needs. This development is poised to transform our ideas about our surroundings and influence our decisions as we navigate through the world. But while there may be no dragons or sea monsters in this uncharted territory, there could be surprises and dangers ahead.”

Photo Credit

Tech event backstage passes

I enjoyed reading about David Deal’s Oscars Backstage Pass and wondered why more tech industry events do not similarly show execs, partners, customers preparing for, reacting to presentations, being interviewed by bloggers and media, on the shuttle bus to the event, waiting for the rock concert event to start. Honestly, that is what makes physically going to an event worthwhile, and where webcasts and other virtual options fall short today.

Many vendors would likely be cautious about broadcasting non-scripted content but I can see friends like Dennis Howlett, Jon Reed, David Vallente who conduct video interviews at events maybe looking at similar “backstage passes”

 

Female engineers make mark in Detroit

“Female engineers — despite their stubbornly small numbers in all industries — increasingly have a big impact on the vehicles and safety features that Detroit is offering”

“(Chris) Barman (who headed team that designed the new Dodge Dart) likes to tell freshmen women at Purdue University, her alma mater, about her work studying Mercedes-Benz's electronic stability control when Chrysler was owned by Daimler.

She tells them about the thousands of lives that are expected to be saved when the now-mandated stability control is on all vehicles.

"Women want to feel like they are making an impact on the world around them," Barman says. "So I tell them I was part of bringing this technology into Chrysler products that resulted in that reduction in injuries and lost lives."”

USA Today

BTW The Dodge Dart had a series of self-deprecating “how we designed the car” commercials like below

The Pesky Password Problem

One day we may no longer have to jump through all these hoops to protect ourselves. Everyone seems to be interested in solving the password mess, from Google to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which is offering $10 million in grants for developers to come up with alternatives to password authentication. Even Ford (yes, the car company) is working on it, with a Chrome extension that automatically logs you in to sites when your phone is near your computer and backs out when you leave. If all else fails, there's potential in our brains: Researchers are working on training systems that teach humans to store random 30-character passwords in their subconscious. Now that's a smart password manager.

Popular Mechanics

Geeks at the Oscars

On February 9,  the Academy pre-honored 9 Scientific and Technical achievements :

• Pose Space Deformation technique used in computer-generated characters
• Light system for computer graphics lighting at PDI/DreamWorks.
• Katana computer graphics scene management and lighting software at Sony Pictures Imageworks
• Wavelet Turbulence software for simulation of gases and fluids
• Matthews Max Menace Arm which allows for precise positioning of fixtures and cameras
• Tissue Physically–Based Character Simulation Framework
• Mocha planar tracking and rotoscoping software at Imagineer Systems Ltd
• CINE VCLX Portable Power System
• Cooke Optics for advanced camera lenses

Don’t expect these geeks to be too prominent on the telecast Sunday:)

I plan to cheer when the short video about these awards runs during the broadcast.

Broadcast technology at Daytona 500

The 4K “Super Zoom” camera produces pictures with five times the resolution of normal HD cameras and captures the action at 300 frames per second. This additional resolution allows producers to zoom in to smaller details that would not be visible with HD cameras. The resulting images are encoded at regular HD images and incorporated into the regular HD telecast.

The coverage will also use a “Gyro-Cam,” which is a gyro stabilized, in-car camera mounted in the center of the cockpit (see video below) It rotates as cars enter Daytona International Speedway’s extreme 31-degree banked turns. These views demonstrate how dramatic Daytona’s turn angles are at race speed.

In addition, (Fox) will be using a “VIZ-RT Encoded Camera” that places virtual three-dimensional virtual objects on screen, and a “CAMCAT.” Supported by two gigantic cranes outside the track, the CAMCAT cameras can speed up to 85 miles per hour along a 2,900 foot long cable.

Multichannel

 

The New Energy Realities

National Geographic (sub required) has a superb story on the shale boom in the Bakken formation in N. Dakota. The video below shows how hydraulic fracking technology - horizontal drilling and high-pressure fluid pumping which helps free loose stubborn oil and gas deposits - works

Along with the Barnett formation in Texas and the Marcellus formation which stretches north from Pennsylvania and other shale deposits, they are reshaping the global energy landscape. They will reduce our dependence on the Middle East and Russia and maybe even make us net exporters of carbon fuels in the next few years, but also complicate investment in alternative fuels. And fracking is causing concerns about consuming precious water, and dry aquifers causing sinkholes and earthquakes – and of course, on the continued dependence on carbon fuels.

 

The Science of Picking Pockets

Fascinating article in New Yorker on Apollo Robbins “who has a reputation as a pickpocket of almost supernatural ability”. Thanks to John Hagel for the pointer

“In pursuit of his craft, Robbins has ended up incorporating principles from such disparate fields as aikido, sales, and Latin ballroom dancing. He is a devotee of books like Robert B. Cialdini’s “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion,” and has also immersed himself in the literature of criminal lore. The book that made the greatest impression on him was a paperback, published in 1964, called “Whiz Mob: A Correlation of the Technical Argot of Pickpockets with Their Behavior Patterns,” by David W. Maurer, a professor of English who devoted his life to the study of raffish subcultures, before apparently killing himself, in 1981. Robbins loved the vivid trade lingo in “Whiz Mob,” and he continues to pepper his conversation with such terms as “pit” (inside jacket pocket) and “prat” (side pant pocket), “skinning the poke” (removing the cash from a stolen wallet and wiping it off before tossing it) and “kissing the dog” (the mistake of letting a victim see your face). Reading about how street pickpockets operated, Robbins was gratified to discover that he had arrived at similar methods intuitively. “