Merry Xmas & Happy New Year to All

Connecting at Christmas the high-tech wayASHER MOSES
December 23, 2009 - 1:57PM

The Brisbane-based members of the Dobinson family gather for their trans-continental Christmas feast. Photo: Paul Broben

..Three generations of the Dobinson family gathered around a table for a Christmas feast this morning for the first time ever, a remarkable feat considering they were spread out across three cities around the world.

The tyranny of distance was bridged thanks to state-of-the-art video conferencing technology that has typically been the preserve of high-flying executives but will soon begin making inroads into the home.

Far removed from the traditional Skype home video conferencing experience - which is low quality and requires users to gather around a tiny computer screen - the Cisco TelePresence system uses large screens and high-definition (HD) cameras to create the impression that all participants are sitting in the same room together.

The Dobinson family, based in Sydney, Brisbane and the US, won Cisco's "Christmas Connections" competition, which asked families to submit their stories for the chance to connect using TelePresence.

The three eldest sisters - Claire (83), Athlone (80) and Sonia (73) - have been separated since just after World War II, when Claire emigrated to the US.

The younger sisters have only seen Claire twice in the intervening years and with their health in decline, an in-person Christmas reunion would have been all but impossible.

But this morning, about 20 family members in Sydney, Brisbane and the US city Herndon, which is just outside Washington D.C., gathered virtually around the same table for a Christmas feast that none of them will forget in a hurry.

"You can talk on email and you can talk on the phone but to actually see people and interact immediately was the most special bit," said Danelle Dobinson, 56, who is Athlone's daughter.

"It was quite funny because it was just like a crazy Christmas dinner anyway, with everyone talking over the top of everybody else and vying for attention and trying to get their message out.

"We had to call for order at one stage."

The event was bitter sweet for the family because it may be the last time they see Claire, who is seriously ill.

"It was especially hard because we weren't sure how she [Claire] would be health-wise and as it turned out she couldn't talk to us and was sleeping most of the time, but we did get to see her," Danelle said.

Cisco TelePresence systems cost between $20,000 and several hundred thousand dollars a piece, far out of reach for most punters. They have been adopted by over 350 organisations around the globe, including ANZ, Telstra and the Federal Government in Australia.

But Peter Hughes, the general manager of Cisco's collaboration business, said versions for the consumer market would be launched within around a year.

"Between Sydney and London or Sydney and New York there is no perceived delay or latency on the call at all," he said.

Already, companies including Microsoft and Logitech sell consumer webcams that attach to PCs and are capable of delivering HD audio and video.

But Hughes said Cisco's systems would be designed to connect up to the big screen TVs in living rooms.

He said consumers were now recording a lot of their video memories in HD using the latest gadgets, and would soon expect to get the same experience from real-time online chat.

"We believe that video is going to really, truly scale human interaction and the capabilities that we have with the technology today mean that it's as good as being there," he said.

Source: smh.com.au

Webwilly and Astrok link

Hi all

this could be a final sign off for webwilly although I have linked it through with astok in hope that once my hbl email is dicontinued I can blog on time will tell.

Im off to WebBrighton maybe a new blog here?!

Anyway thanks to any and all who have visited this blog in the past

Worth a read

Building the home theatre of your dreams
ROD EASDOWN
November 25, 2009



Setting up the home theatre of your dreams takes time, money and patience but you'll never regret it.

My mate Neil began lusting after a plasma screen as soon as he heard about them 10 years ago. The stumbling block was always his wife, who couldn't see the point of spending all that money on a big screen when they already had a perfectly good television.

Through the years the prices of plasmas plummeted but Neil's requests to buy one were always met with his wife's standard rebuttal: they're too expensive.

Then, on a one-week visit to New Zealand, Neil happened to buy the right lotto ticket and came home $NZ200,000 ($160,400) richer. The first thing he did was throw away his return ticket on Jetstar to get a "proper" airline seat and the second was buy a plasma. His wife's standard objection was suddenly as empty as the old TV cabinet.

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Screen size - how big is big enough?
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The install - stuff you need to know
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Four days after it was installed I rang her to ask what she thought. "You can't drag me away from it," she said. "It's wonderful, simply wonderful."

Now this is not a one-off story. I know this because the same thing happened at our place. My partner couldn't see any point in cluttering up the wall with a big plasma when we had a perfectly good, if rather dated, 68-centimetre Sony. Right up until Pioneer lent me a road-test unit for a couple of weeks.

All went fine until the guys turned up to take it back. She was inconsolable. So, once again, I floated the idea of buying one and the response, in summary, was: "Yes. Oh yes, yes, yes!"

From my experience, therefore, by far the most difficult part of getting a home theatre is gaining the permission of the person with whom you share the house. And once this particular mountain has been climbed, you may be tempted to assume everything else is a doddle, to which I would respond: "No. Oh no, no, no!"

If you're going down the five-speaker-plus-subwoofer surround sound route - and why wouldn't you? - you first have to figure the best way to work all those speakers into your living room. Despite the many options here (satellite speakers, normal speakers, in-wall and in-ceiling speakers; you can even buy speakers disguised as rocks), it's a task fraught with difficulty, especially since you also have to find enough vacant wall for your large flat-panel screen.

At our place we had to ditch a cabinet and turn everything through 90 degrees to put the screen on a formerly useless free-standing wall, which presented a challenge so great the installer declared it impossible. Then his boss came out and told him how to do it.

Valuable lesson one: when an installer excavates a speaker cable channel up a single brick wall and into the ceiling, do check who is cleaning up. Otherwise it will be you.

Valuable lesson two: when an installer excavates, he does not concern himself with filling the channel back in. That's a job for a plasterer. So now you need a plasterer. After the plasterer you will need a painter.

Valuable lesson three: surprisingly few installers are licensed electricians. If you need an extra power point, your installer may not be able to assist. But what's another tradesman at this point?

Valuable lesson four: check that your installer is familiar with audio installations. Otherwise you may find the speaker cables he inserts are little better than electrical flex.

Once the cables are laid, you'd assume all that's between you and home cinema nirvana is hooking everything up. You're about to learn that nothing in home cinema is ever this easy and this is where it really pays to buy your equipment through a specialist supplier rather than what these specialists sniffily refer to as box shops.

Such people know one brand of amplifier goes all huffy when it's connected to another brand of DVD player. They know how to get around the decidedly perplexing set-up menu system of a variety of 7.1-channel receiver I hesitate to name for fear of being sued to Tokyo and back. They know that some flat-panel screens need far more ventilation than others and cannot be mounted over fireplaces.

After a jolly good laugh, they can even figure how to incorporate your old and much-loved laserdisc player in the system.

And, if they're any good, they'll keep coming back until your Blu-ray player's intermittent refusal to provide any sort of vision with its sound is sorted.

Valuable lesson five: deal with a local business; you'll be going back there a lot.

Installation cost me just over $1000 and, given the work required and the follow-up when all the glitches happened, it was worth every cent. My overall budget, however, proved a tad optimistic.

Observing my own first law of home cinema, I spent as much on the sound as on the vision. My magnificent 127-centimetre plasma cost $5000 and I spent that much again (maybe a little more) on speakers, amplifier and Blu-ray player.

Valuable lesson six: the free movies that come with some Blu-Ray players aren't worth a cracker.

I can't say how glad I am that I bought a sound system with genuine horsepower. The sound is sensational, especially from Blu-ray discs. Sure, there are lots of cheaper, one-brand surround sound systems available but their shortcomings are only revealed at home. One is that they often won't go loud enough and another is that they can sound pretty thin. It's a fact that the bulk of people buying their second home cinema spend vastly more on sound than they did first time around.

The marketing manager at importer Audio Products, Holger Pfeilmaier, has noticed this. "An increasing number of people are realising that a big screen is only part of a modern home cinema," he says. "The focus has started to shift to the other core ingredient - spectacular sound."

So $5k for the screen, $5k for the sound and 10 per cent again for the installation. Total $11,000. So how come I wound up spending more than $14,000? Well, things cropped up.

The Blu-ray player, for example. We tried three before we found one that didn't get emotional about the cabling of my system. I didn't like that one so I paid as much again to upgrade to a better-quality one that not only worked but gave a palpable improvement in both sound and vision quality.

I had to buy expensive HDMI cables because manufacturers never put them in the box, despite breathlessly declaring how many HDMI connections their product has. Should this be valuable lesson seven?

There was also the matter of my partner disliking the cabinet I'd picked and opting for something smaller (thereby doubling the number of speaker stands needed) and considerably more expensive. Which is valuable lesson eight: in all matters pertaining to aesthetics, your partner is right, you are wrong.

There was the painter and the plasterer, of course. And all that other unpredictable stuff, like the slab of beer for the painter when he went above and beyond the call, the surge protector the installer thought was a good idea and some neat conduits that look like skirting boards, which I didn't even know existed when I embarked on this odyssey.

My home cinema has now been up and running for a year, and flawlessly for the past 10 months. Valuable lesson nine: if you watch action movies late at night and have neighbours, you'll need to get some headphones.

I love, love it, love it. Even more importantly, so does my partner. And she'll love it even more when I get rid of that stack of remote controls cluttering the coffee table and replace them with a single smart remote that controls the lot.

Valuable lesson 10: No home cinema sounds as good as a happy partner.

What are your tips for

Source: smh.com.au

Ethical hacking ?!

Students learn 'ethical hacking'
Saturday, November 21, 2009 » 04:35am


Cyber attacks on businesses has led to a rapid increase in 'ethical hacking' courses at universities.


The threat of cyber attacks on businesses and governments has led to a rapid increase in the number of universities offering students the chance to learn how to hack computer networks.

The degrees have been set to feed the expanding industry of 'ethical hacking', in which companies pay hackers to infiltrate their systems and expose weaknesses.

The prospect of a lucrative career in the security services, police, defence and IT industries has fuelled the popularity in the courses, with hundreds of undergraduates and graduate students already enrolled.

The ethical hacking degree at Abertay University in Dundee was set up in 2006 and was the first of its kind in the UK.

Since then, other courses have been set up at Coventry, Northumbria and Sunderland, with more in the pipeline at Glasgow Caledonian, Edinburgh Napier and Leeds Metropolitan amongst others.

Colin McLean, the programme tutor in Ethical Hacking and Countermeasures at Abertay, told Sky News that teaching his students to hack networks means they will have the skills to protect banks, businesses and the critical national infrastructure against cyber attacks.

'The current people in those jobs are not protecting against hackers,' he said.

'There should be jobs for people who know exactly what hackers are doing and obviously how to stop the hackers as well.'

Critics have warned of the dangers of arming young people with knowledge that could so easily be turned to criminal endeavour.

But, according to Jennifer Higgins, a fourth year undergraduate on Abertay, the boundaries are clear.

'Take, for example, chemistry students,' she says.

'They might know all the chemicals to cause damage but that's not the sort of thing they're interested it, they're interested in putting their knowledge to the greater good.

'You're well educated on the laws and the way people detect things.'

'It's not made to seem glamorous to hack into anything, it's more about protecting the systems.'

The Government claims cyber crime costs the UK economy billions of pounds every year and recently set up its own Office for Cyber Security.

However, the increasing demand has also made ethical hacking one of the UK's fastest growing industries in the private sector.

NCC group, based in Manchester, is one of the largest firms in Europe to offer ethical hacking as one of its services, claiming to have 94 of the UK's top 100 companies amongs its clients.

Chief executive Rob Cotton said the importance of ethical hacking has yet to be fully realised.

'It's actually an arms race. It's the bad guys getting better and better and us, the good guys, trying to overcome them,' he said.

'Business is becoming more aware of it but more often than not organisations turn round and are shocked that they've been hacked.'

''Why would somebody hack us and steal our information', they say? Simple reason is information is valuable, and becoming more valuable as every day passes by.'

With both the private and public sectors increasingly dependent on networked technology, the promise of a lucrative career waging war against criminal hackers is likely to make the ethical option even more mainstream.

Robotics an interesting field

2009 space odyssey: Brisbane maps robotic futureSCOTT CASEY
November 18, 2009 - 3:10PM Be the first to comment


University of Queensland scientists are working on algorithms to help robots rapidly 'learn' about their environment.

Scientists in Brisbane are blurring the line between biology and technology and creating a new generation of robot "helpers" more in tune with human needs.

The University of Queensland is hosting the the Australian Research Council's Thinking Systems symposium this week, which brings together UQ's robotic navigation project with the University of New South Wales' robotic hands project and a speech and cognition project out of the University of Western Sydney.

Scientists are working towards a range of robotic innovations, from the development of navigation and learning robots to the construction of artificial joints and limbs and the creation of a conversational computer program, a la 2001: A Space Odyssey's HAL.

UQ's School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering head, Professor Janet Wiles, said the symposium paired "some very clever engineers...with very clever scientists" to map the future of robotics - and it was going to be a very different world.

"You're bringing together neuroscience, cognitive science, psychology, behaviour and robotics information system to look at the cross disciplinary projects we can do in this space," Professor Wiles said.

"We're doing a combination of the fundamental science and the translation into the technology and that's one of the great benefits of our project."

The group aims to advance robotic technology by decoding the way human and animal brains work to equip machines with the ability to operate in the real world.

"There's a strong connection to cognition - the way the brain works as a whole - and navigation, so what we've been doing is studying the fundamental of navigation in animals and taking the algorithms we've learnt from those and putting them into robots," Professor Wiles said.

Over the next two decades, she sees robots becoming more and more important, expanding from their current roles as cleaners, assemblers and drones and into smarter machines more closely integrated with human beings in the form of replacement limbs and joints.

"It's not going to be the robots and us. Already a lot of people are incorporating robot components; people who have had a leg amputated who now have a knee and in the knee. It is effectively a fully-articulated robotic knee [with] a lot of the spring in the step that a natural knee has," Professor Wiles said.

"The ability of robots to replace component parts is an area which is going to be growing.

"This is where you're going to blur the line between technology and biology when you start to interface these two fields."

At UQ, the team is working on developing computer codes or algorithms that would enable a robot to "learn" rapidly about its near environment and navigate within it.

"Navigation is quite an intriguing skill because it is so intrinsic to what we do and we are really not aware of it unless we have a poor sense of navigation," Professor Wiles said.

"The kind of navigation we are dealing with is how you get from one place to another, right across town or from one room in a building to another you can't see."

With about four million robots in households right now, performing menial chores such as vacuuming the carpet, improvements in navigation has the potential to widen the scope of these creations to take a larger place in everyday life.

According to Professor Wiles, the ability to rapidly process information and apply it to the area they are working in will give robots the edge into the future.

"Robots need to learn new environments very rapidly and that's what a lot of our work focuses on.

"When you take a robot out of the box you don't want to program into it with the architecture of your house, you want the robot to explore the house and learn it very quickly," Professor Wiles said.

"Household robotics is going to be really big in the next 15 years or so and this is one of the things you need is for robots to be able to look after themselves in space."

But as Australian universities and international research institutes look into replicating the individual parts of biological creatures and mimic them in machines, the question of intelligence inevitably become more important.

While the sometimes frightening scenarios played out in science fiction novels and films - where so often robots lay waste to humanity - remains securely in the realm of fantasy, Professor Wiles believes that some day machines will think like us.

"There's strong AI [artificial intelligence] and weak AI. Strong AI says there will be artificially intelligent creatures which are not biological. Weak AI says they will have a lot of the algorithms and they do already have a lot of those algorithms," she said.

"The bee, whose brain is a tiny as a sesame seed, already has better navigation abilities than even our best robots.

"So we have a little way to go before robots reach biological intelligence let alone human intelligence but I don't see why we shouldn't take steps towards it."

The ARC Thinking Systems symposium continues at the University of Queensland in St Lucia today.

brisbanetimes.com.au


Source: brisbanetimes.com.au

Thats powerful can u believe it?

Japan eyes solar station in space as new energy source

November 9, 2009 - 8:26PM
It may sound like a sci-fi vision, but Japan's space agency is dead serious: by 2030 it wants to collect solar power in space and zap it down to Earth, using laser beams or microwaves.

The government has just picked a group of companies and a team of researchers tasked with turning the ambitious, multi-billion-dollar dream of unlimited clean energy into reality in coming decades.

With few energy resources of its own and heavily reliant on oil imports, Japan has long been a leader in solar and other renewable energies and this year set ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets.

But Japan's boldest plan to date is the Space Solar Power System (SSPS), in which arrays of photovoltaic dishes several square kilometres (square miles) in size would hover in geostationary orbit outside the Earth's atmosphere.

"Since solar power is a clean and inexhaustible energy source, we believe that this system will be able to help solve the problems of energy shortage and global warming," researchers at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, one of the project participants, wrote in a report.

"The sun's rays abound in space."

The solar cells would capture the solar energy, which is at least five times stronger in space than on Earth, and beam it down to the ground through clusters of lasers or microwaves.

These would be collected by gigantic parabolic antennae, likely to be located in restricted areas at sea or on dam reservoirs, said Tadashige Takiya, a spokesman at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

The researchers are targeting a one gigawatt system, equivalent to a medium-sized atomic power plant, that would produce electricity at eight yen (cents) per kilowatt-hour, six times cheaper than its current cost in Japan.

The challenge - including transporting the components to space - may appear gigantic, but Japan has been pursuing the project since 1998, with some 130 researchers studying it under JAXA's oversight.

Last month Japan's Economy and Trade Ministry and the Science Ministry took another step toward making the project a reality, by selecting several Japanese high-tech giants as participants in the project.

The consortium, named the Institute for Unmanned Space Experiment Free Flyer, also includes Mitsubishi Electric, NEC, Fujitsu and Sharp.

The project's roadmap outlined several steps that would need to be taken before a full-blown launch in 2030.

Within several years, "a satellite designed to test the transmission by microwave should be put into low orbit with a Japanese rocket," said Tatsuhito Fujita, one of the JAXA researchers heading the project.

The next step, expected around 2020, would be to launch and test a large flexible photovoltaic structure with 10 megawatt power capacity, to be followed by a 250 megawatt prototype.

This would help evaluate the project's financial viability, say officials. The final aim is to produce electricity cheap enough to compete with other alternative energy sources.

JAXA says the transmission technology would be safe but concedes it would have to convince the public, which may harbour images of laser beams shooting down from the sky, roasting birds or slicing up aircraft in mid-air.

According to a 2004 study by JAXA, the words 'laser' and 'microwave' caused the most concern among the 1000 people questioned.

Internet radio

Crowd-sourced radio show ditches the DJ
ASHER MOSES
October 26, 2009 - 12:39PM


A mock-up of what Austereo's online voting system will look like.

A mock-up of what Austereo's online voting system will look like.

Austereo listeners will be able to control what is being played on air in real time and even nix bad song choices as they are playing in a radical new radio experiment that blends online and traditional broadcasts.

The radio network, in partnership with US internet radio station Jelli, will unveil a new 24-hour national digital radio station, Hot30 Jelli, next month. It will let listeners go online and vote on the music they want to hear on the terrestrial station in real time.

Those without a newfangled digital radio can also take part in the crowd-sourced radio show as Hot30 Jelli will be simulcast on 2Day FM in Sydney from 10pm to midnight four nights a week.

"The next song that is played is decided half a second before the last song finishes," Jaime Chaux, Austereo's digital content director, said.

On the Hot 30 website, listeners will see the live queue of songs to be played on the station and can vote whether each song "rocks" or "sucks". Users also have a limited number of "rockets" and "bombs" they can use to send a song to the top or bottom of the queue, although the songs played will always be the ones with the most votes.

"The order of the songs that get played and what's on the playlist is being constantly decided on by listeners," said Chaux, adding the initiative played on young people's desire for "instant gratification".

"The Hot 30 currently is a show that's built on votes but once that countdown is built you can't change it and if you vote for a particular song at 7pm you might not hear it until 9.30pm."

Jelli began as an internet-only radio station but it is now spreading into traditional media, with the company recently inking a similar deal with Triton Digital Media to provide a user-controlled radio show for 4500 terrestrial FM radio stations across the US.

The show is expected to begin broadcasting early next year.

Since June, Jelli's technology has powered a two-hour Sunday night alternative rock show on a San Francisco radio station, Live 105 KITS.

Parent company CBS told the San Francisco Chronicle that Jelli's system had more than doubled ratings in the 18-49 demographic for the first hour, and increased ratings by 50 per cent over the second hour.

The ability for users to pull a song before it even finishes is particularly radical but Chaux said he expected this would not be common in practice as songs are not played in the first place unless they have a high number of votes.

The list of songs on offer includes anything played on Hot 30 in the past five years, which is far broader than the selection offered on today's music countdown shows.

"There's a window on screen where players can talk to each other and they end up supporting each other on song choices ... so it ends up being an online community," Chaux said.

Source: smh.com.au

Hobsons Bay Libraries now using Eventbrite for Library Bookings

Check out the link to Eventbrite under WebWillys hit list for all the events @ HBL libraries and book online YAY

Around the bay in a day

Thousands up bright and early for charity ride
DANIEL ZIFFER
October 19, 2009
More than 15,000 people participated in yesterday's Around the Bay in a Day.

More than 15,000 people participated in yesterday's Around the Bay in a Day. Photo: Penny Stephens

In a blaze of Lycra, Victoria's 17th annual Around the Bay in a Day cycling event put 15,000 people in the saddle, reports Daniel Ziffer.

ENJOYABLE punishment on a glorious scale led thousands of cyclists to saddle up to go Around the Bay in a Day yesterday.

More than 15,000 riders - we counted wheels and divided by two - pedalled around Port Phillip Bay. From 5.30am, riders took off from Alexandra Gardens pursuing goals ranging from 50 kilometres to a punishing 250-kilometre option, circumnavigating the bay.

In its 17th year, Around the Bay burns calories, packs the Sorrento-Queenscliff ferry and raises money for the Smith Family.

Geoff Moore cheered on his business partner Mark Duncan. Their company raised $5000 for charity and their team was called Frosty's Wheels after Mark's father who died last year.

''I completely winged it,'' American student Amanda Devilliers said, laughing. ''Just the 50-kilometre option. I didn't want to hurt myself.''

Melbourne Life has never seen so much Lycra en masse, as riders rolled back into the city. Among the wearers, Naji Aoukar said conditions were ideal for his 100-kilometre jaunt.

''A good day. Not too hot and not too windy,'' he said. ''Headed down to Sorrento and cruised back.''

Oarsome Foursome rower Drew Ginn wasn't weighed down by his three Olympic gold medals, joining V8 driver Cameron McConville and Sydney Swans player Ryan O'Keefe on the 250-kilometre ride, while newsreader Helen Kapalos did the 100-kilometre option.

Blackburn's Georgie Christopher went for the century, praising the organisation of the event. ''No major stacks that I saw. I'll do it again,'' she said, as she prepared to ride home.

The future of books

One of my favourite whizz-bang gadgets is a thing called the Book. No, not iBook, e-book, m-book or anything like that. Just a handy-sized collection of bound pages and type. It looks and feels good, it responds to touch. I can take it anywhere and be transported in an instant to an astounding virtual world.

Of course the Book has been with us ever since Johannes Gutenberg dreamed up his own revolutionary piece of high tech, the printing press, around 1440. It is not going to disappear – at least, not for a while yet. But if you believe the prophets, it’s going to expand and diversify to a point where it won’t be a book as we know it. And not only the Book, but our fundamental ways of communicating are going to change.

Already we can download and read books, stories and other texts on devices such as laptops, e-readers, mobile phones, iPods and iPhones. Millions of young Japanese women are hooked on romances which they consume on their mobiles. The Age is introducing an m-phone serial story written by Melbourne author Marieke Hardy. But this is only the beginning.

According to Jeff Gomez, US author of Print is Dead, there are two schools of thought on the future of publishing, much like the Big Bang and Steady State theories about the universe. Either nothing much will change, or everything will expand so far that the industry will cease to exist – “except for, probably, Oprah”.
Bob Stein, co-director of the New York-based Institute for the Future of the Book, believes the changes the book is undergoing are much more radical than we think. "We are changing the way that humans communicate with each other," he says. "This profound shift is more significant than the invention of the printing press… A thousand years from now, humanity will look back at the late part of the twentieth century as the time when something big started."
I can’t begin to get my head around what might happen in a thousand years, but I know one thing about now. We human beings are devices wired for story. We love a good narrative and we will take it in whatever form is the most reasonably-priced and reader-friendly. The electronic screen has come to stay, but for the long-haul read, it’s still true that nothing beats the old-fashioned book.
Jane Sullivan is a Melbourne writer and regular contributor to The Age.

Twitter or Facebook?

Could Twitter be turning us into birdbrains?GORDON FARRER
September 12, 2009
THIS just in from the Department of the Sky is Falling: Twitter makes you dumber. Dr Tracy Alloway, cognitive psychologist and director of the Centre for Memory and Learning in the Lifespan at the University of Stirling, in Scotland, says that the ''instant'' nature of texting, Twitter and YouTube is not healthy for working memory.

In a talk at the British Science Festival last week, she said working memory - the ability to recall and apply information - was the real basis of learning and more important to success and happiness in life than IQ.

''On Twitter you receive an endless stream of information [that is] very succinct,'' said Alloway. ''You don't have to process that information. Your attention span is being reduced and you're not engaging your brain and improving your nerve connections.''

It was a revelation shadow treasurer Joe Hockey might not have wanted to hear. Hockey sent five messages to his followers on the micro-blogging social networking tool during question time this week.

On Tuesday he opened his foray into digital democracy with ''sitting in question time wondering if tanner will actually answer a question''. A minute later he followed up with ''now the pm is coaching tanner with answers … get real guys''.

In her comments about Twitter, Dr Alloway noted evidence suggesting that extensive texting has been associated with low IQ scores. (Whether it causes them or reflects them was not clear.)

She also argued that the ''tyranny of technology'' - with aids such as speed dial meaning we no longer have to remember phone numbers - was generally making us dumber.

On the other hand, keeping up with friends on Facebook, doing Sudoku puzzles and playing video games that involved strategy - she cited the Total War series - might improve working memory.

''I'm not saying they're good for your socialisation skills, but they do make you use your working memory,'' she said.

So, ditch Twitter and jump on to Facebook. Smarten up. Except …

According to Dr Aric Sigman, fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine and an associate fellow of the British Psychological Society, the news on Facebook is not good, either. Dr Sigman argues that online social networking may be displacing face-to-face contact and that lack of social connection can be associated with physiological changes, increased illness and higher premature mortality.

And leading neuroscientist Dr Susan Greenfield, professor of synaptic pharmacology at Oxford University, has made the case that social networking behaviour infantilises the mind, shortens attention spans, makes users susceptible to sensationalism and damages their sense of identity. Shoot-'em-up computer games, she has said, reduce players' ability to empathise.

The technology-is-bad-for-you camp is not new. Experts in brain plasticity have warned for years of the potential detrimental effects of fast-motion electronics and behaviours on brain development and function.

''Any technology that we use rewires our brains - pencil and paper rewire our brains,'' says Norman Doidge, author of The Brain That Changes Itself. ''The problem with electronic technologies,'' he warns, ''is that they're extremely compatible with the brain because the brain uses them as prosthetic extensions very easily and takes on the characteristics of those technologies.''

The result, he says, is that if people aren't inundated with novelty, they get bored and are unable to pay attention.

Putting aside such concerns, technology evangelists suspect there is an element of the Luddite in any knee-jerk reaction that says technology must be bad if it changes the way our brains work.

Could it also be possible, they suggest, that we are at the start of a process in which the human brain will evolve from an organ confused by the cacophony and activity around it into one that is sped up, sharpened, able to multi-task in ways we can't imagine?

There's bad news on that front, too.

Research from Stanford University published last month found that good multi-tasking is a myth; the brain can effectively perform only one task or process one piece of information at a time.

Chronic multi-taskers find it impossible to ignore irrelevant information, reducing their efficiency at completing tasks.

They might appear better at juggling tasks but, the Stanford research showed, their performance is considerably weaker than those who concentrate on a single task.

Which puts the kybosh on Joe Hockey's response to suggestions that tweeting from the frontbench could distract him from debate in the chamber.

''I know it's hard to believe that males can do this,'' said Hockey, ''but we can walk and chew gum at the same time.''

Gordon Farrer is technology editor.

First Look: The Beatles: Rock Band
September 3, 2009

The Beatles: Rock Band trailer

The trailer for the upcoming release of the much-anticipated game The Beatles: Rock Band.



Sing along with the Liverpool lads, writes Andrew Murfett.

The Beatles: Rock Band, arguably the most anticipated game of the year, should satisfy the diehard gamers and older music fans who do not own a console.

The stakes are high. Harmonix, a music-based gaming group formed in Cambridge, Massachusetts, by two MIT graduates in the mid-1990s, developed the million-selling Guitar Hero franchise in 2005. The group splintered when the game's publisher sold the Guitar Hero brand to Activision.
Paul McCartney is a playable character in The Beatles: Rock Band.

Paul McCartney is a playable character in The Beatles: Rock Band.

Harmonix was itself bought by MTV in September 2006. It developed the Rock Band game, which added vocals and drums to the Guitar Hero blueprint. The company is now the chief competitor of the game it originally produced.

Rock Band has sold 10.1 million copies, about half of Guitar Hero's sales.

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Do the Beatles remasters capture the Fab Four sound?
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Dhani Harrison, the gaming-fanatic son of late Beatle George Harrison, met Harmonix co-founder and chief executive Alex Rigopulos and convinced Apple Corps, which controls the Beatles' back catalogue, to consider a game based on Beatles music.

Harmonix began developing demos of Beatles songs set to Rock Band and pitched a game chronicling the Beatles' career.

"It was a year-and-a-half before we started working on art," Mr Rigopulos says.

"Nobody here exhaled until we finished the game."

After several months of negotiations, they cut a deal ensuring "the shareholders" — the Beatles' estates — would be proactive members of the creative process.

Giles Martin, the 39-year-old son of Beatles producer Sir George Martin, was enlisted to administer the painstaking process of separating the instruments on to individual tracks. He was also entrusted to scour the archives for rare audio sources that could also be used.

"My concern was we would provide them with the music and they would just make the game without collaboration," Mr Martin says. "It wasn't like that at all."

Mr Martin had digitised the Beatles' master tapes recently during his work producing the Love project, the group's collaboration with Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas.

A list of 45 songs was compiled in consultation with Harmonix and "the shareholders". Giles and his engineer, Paul Hicks, began mixing the multi-tracks.

As Harmonix's sound engineers worked at Abbey Road on audio content for the game, company artists in Cambridge, near Boston, developed a narrative and designed illustrations.

Rock Band is inherently based on simulating live music play.

Long before they finished recording, the Beatles stopped playing live, so the game is broken up chronologically via Beatles live-music high points and "dreamscapes" of the band playing in the famous Abbey Road studios.

The dreamscape sequences, which simulate the chemical influences of the band or images inspired by the lyrics, are arguably the most impressive aspect of the game.

"We'd make a drawing or painting and talk the shareholders through each idea," creative director Josh Randall says.

"They would tell us how each band member moved."

In the past, Harmonix had not attempted to emulate real people. Rock Band simply used generic caricatures.

Not this time.

The game begins with a stunning animated introduction that condenses the Beatles' career into 2 minutes.

The player is then led to a menu offering the choice of an individual song or beginning a Beatles "career".

As each track loads, previously unheard audio clips of in-studio chatter play, delivering a more immersive feel to the game.

As the game progresses, the player unlocks previously photo-based archival material.

In a nod to new players, at its "easy" level, general gameplay is undoubtedly less complex than previous music video games. Still, to pacify hardcore gamers, expert levels have also been retained, as well as familiar Rock Band modes "rock duel" and "tug-of-war".

The writer travelled to Cambridge, Massachusetts, as a guest of Harmonix.

GPS directs drivers right to the wall

RACHEL BROWN
August 30, 2009

DASHBOARD satellite navigation systems may have resolved arguments about the best way around town but they are driving us to distraction.

Road safety experts warn that a GPS can increase the risk of having an accident because they distract the driver from the road.

A study by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute found that reaching for an electronic device, such as a GPS, increased the risk of collision about six times. A study by the University of Utah showed that distraction from in-vehicle technology could be the equivalent of driving with a blood alcohol level of .08.

Andry Rakotonirainy, an associate professor at the centre for accident research and road safety at Queensland University of Technology, said accidents happened when drivers took their eyes off the road to look at or adjust their GPS.

''Some GPS devices require lots of visual attention and they are the ones which are potentially dangerous. Any device in your car which requires you to take your eyes off the road to operate it significantly increases your risk of having an accident.''

GPS devices can also distract drivers with alarms, beeps or chimes to signal things such as traffic lights, speed cameras or places of interest.

The impact on the road toll of increasing numbers of electronic distractions - GPS, mobile phones and BlackBerries - in vehicles has prompted the US Transport Secretary, Ray LaHood, to organise a summit of transport safety experts, police and legislators next month.

The RTA advises drivers to always set their GPS before setting off and to pull over if they need to adjust it.

In 2002 about 10,000 portable devices were sold in Australia. Last year this figure grew to more than 1 million.

However, Dr Rakotonirainy said: ''Listening to a GPS is obviously a lot safer than trying to read a street map while driving.''

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald

Patients to get self check in

Patients to get self check-in
Article from: The Advertiser


CALLIE WATSON

August 29, 2009 12:01am

A DO-IT-YOURSELF check-in kiosk for hospitals and doctors' clinics, similar to those used by airline passengers, should be considered, a U.S. expert says.

Dr Erica Drazen, a Massachusetts-based partner at IT services firm CSC, this week spoke to SA Health officials about how technology could further help patients take care of themselves and improve customer service.

She said the kiosk system, first used in U.S. clinics before spreading to hospitals, had been a success.

"It's basically the airline kiosk system translated into health care," Dr Drazen said.

"Patients come up and insert some sort of ID card, for example a driver's licence or credit card, and their appointment details come out. It can even print a map telling them where to go within a building or book their next appointment."

The cost of buying, installing and maintaining an Australian kiosk model was still being developed, Dr Drazen said.

SA Health chief executive Dr Tony Sherbon said the new Royal Adelaide Hospital would provide an opportunity to introduce "21st Century" technology to patient care.

"We are interested in what's going on internationally in electronic health reform," he said.

"However, it is premature at this stage to comment on what that technology might be."

Australian Medical Association state president Dr Andrew Lavender said kiosks should not replace face-to-face interaction.

"I think cutting out that initial interaction . . . is not necessarily the best idea," he said.

Classics of tomorrow

Adam's Olympus trip: how the iPod got classical
The Sleeping Gamer rests after long day on the Xbox.

The Sleeping Gamer rests after long day on the Xbox.
* Atlas carries the weight of a giant iPod on his shoulders.
* Pan, the Greek god of nature, jives to the tunes of his iPod.
* The king of the gods, Zeus, calls down the thunder using his iPhone.
* The Sleeping Gamer rests after long day on the Xbox.

Asher Moses
August 21, 2009

What if Zeus called down the thunder using his iPhone, or Pan, the Greek god of nature, serenaded his nymphs with an iPod instead of a flute?

These are the questions that inspired Californian sculptor Adam Reeder, whose latest project, Socio-Technic Evolution, puts a high-tech spin on classical sculpture to examine the way technology has changed how Western culture interacts with the world.

The collection of four life-size sculptures - Pan with His iPod, Zeus with His iPhone, Atlas and The Sleeping Gamer - has already won Reeder several awards and helped him graduate with a master of fine arts from San Francisco's Academy of Art University.

Reeder, 33, said he came up with the idea after his daughter turned six and, instead of asking for a Barbie, wanted an iPod.

It highlighted for him how much technology had changed childhood and our lives.

"The Greek sculptures are my symbol for Western culture ... the Greek god Pan, he would've been dancing in the woods playing his flute, so in my sculpture he's still dancing but the music is being created from a different source," he said in a phone interview.

"So the nature of it stays the same but the context changes, and technology is facilitating that change."

One interpretation of the works is that the Greek gods represent rulers from the old world, while the gadgets are our new overlords.

Reeder's Sleeping Gamer work is a play on the Sleeping Satyr, a follower of Bacchus, the Greek god of wine, who represents unrestrained revelry.

By putting a video game controller in the satyr's hand, Reeder makes a value statement, warning people against playing too many video games.

Reeder recently sold the Sleeping Gamer to Cliff Bleszinski, the creator of the Gears of War video game franchise, for $US7900.

In his sculpture of Atlas, the figure is bearing the weight of a giant iPod, not the world, on his shoulders, symbolising how ubiquitous Apple's iconic music player has become.

"Even in 30 years people are going to look at that and say, 'Hey, I remember that iPod, I know that shape - it's almost like an old Coke bottle,' " Reeder said.

He said he was tired of seeing museum and gallery visitors struggling to engage with what he says are boring classical sculptures. By adding modern technology, anyone could immediately connect with his message.

"They'll see it and I can tell they'll be like 'oh great, another Greek sculpture wannabe', and then they see the iPod and something in their eyes just sparkles, and then they smile and nudge their friend next to them and say, 'Hey, look, he's got an iPod,' " he said.

"It just breathes life into something that's been dead for all these years."

Source: smh.com.au

Wikipedia launches iphone application

August 20, 2009 - 11:25AM

Wikipedia says it has released an iPhone application as part of a drive to open the pages of its revered online encyclopedia to the booming ranks of smart phone users.

Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organisation behind Wikipedia, has made free software for iPhones available at Apple's online App Store.

"Everybody recognises with the growth of mobile tools globally that this is how people access information," said foundation spokesman Jay Walsh.

"Our mission is to spread free knowledge; we want to do everything we can to meet and embrace that audience."

Wikimedia foundation is a small operation with a staff of fewer than 30 people, so it contracted a US developer that was already working on Wikipedia software for Apple's coveted iPhones.

"Our intention is to house the source code and continue to update the application through Apple channels with subsequent releases," Walsh said.

"Then, obviously, take it to other platforms like Palm and Android. We want to take the same tool and make it work in other spaces."

Wikipedia can be reached using web browsers in iPhones and other internet-linked mobile devices, but the pages are scaled-down versions of what is accessible using desktop computers.

The Wikipedia application for iPhones is an open-source, first version that the foundation hopes to incrementally upgrade with input from software savants worldwide, according to Walsh.

"In a perfect world you would be able to do everything on a mobile you could do on a personal computer," Walsh said of using Wikipedia on smart phones.

"It is a platform we are going to build on. The sky is the limit; we can do whatever we want."

Wikipedia envisions people eventually being able to use smart phones to edit entries and upload pictures or other digital content to the website.

Trouble with twittering?

Hackers using Twitter to control infected PCs
August 17, 2009

Twitter's been having a rough couple of weeks.

A researcher looking into the attacks that knocked Twitter offline last week discovered another, unrelated security problem.

At least one criminal was using a Twitter account to control a network of a couple hundred infected personal computers, mostly in Brazil. Networks of infected PCs are referred to as "botnets" and are responsible for so much of the mayhem online, from identity theft to spamming to the types of attacks that crippled Twitter.

Jose Nazario with Arbor Networks said he found a Twitter account that was used to send out what looked like garbled messages. But they were actually commands for computers in a botnet to visit malicious websites, where they download programs that steal banking passwords.

The affected Twitter account was taken down. Twitter didn't immediately respond to e-mails for comment.

Nazario said what appeared to be the same person was doing the same thing on an account with a Google service called Jaiku, which is similar to Twitter.

Google said the affected account was shut down.

The technique Nazario described isn't sophisticated, and a couple hundred infected computers is small when some botnets contain hundreds of thousands of infected PCs.

But it shows how criminals are finding inventive ways to exploit legitimate social networking services to help with their dirty work. One reason social networks are an attractive target for crooks is because their content is hard to monitor, and because people click on lots of links inside their accounts, which is a key way computer infections are spread.

"I wouldn't call it rocket science, but it's effective," Nazario said. "This is the problem with free social media that people need to be aware of."

The revelation comes on the heels of a destructive "denial-of-service" attack that brought down Twitter at stretches last week. Those attacks appear to have targeted a lone blogger in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, but affected the entire Twitter service.

Denial-of-service attacks consist of flooding a website with so much traffic that its servers buckle under the strain. That's either done by pounding it with an immense volume of traffic (which can be easy to thwart), or increasingly, hammering a site with lots of harder-to-detect computing-intensive requests, like trying to log in or do searches, which can also bring a site to its knees. Botnets, or networks of zombie computers, are the main weapon in both attacks.

for all dog lovers

got to love google maps

Spy tricyles map Paris streets for Google

Arthur Poirier, a French student employed by Google France, rides a tricycle fitted with cameras as part of the Google Street View project. Photo: AFP
August 10, 2009 - 10:06AM
Parisians and tourists, relax. That goofy-looking tricycle equipped with loads of high-tech equipment roaming the streets is not some mad scientist's invention on the rampage.
The three-wheeler is quite a sight with its long pole holding nine cameras, a GPS, a computer and a generator. But the contraption tooling around the French capital needs all that gear to do its job - adding three-dimensional images to Google's Street View Maps.
The U.S. company has hired two young cyclists to ride through gardens, historical sites and other pedestrian-only areas to take thousands of digital photos.
"The idea is to be able to offer 360-degree images of places that were inaccessible before," Google spokesperson Anne-Gabrielle Dauba-Pantanacce said in an interview.
The riders, wearing Google tee-shirts and white helmets, are visiting well-known sites such as the Chateau de Versailles, west of Paris, the Jardin du Luxembourg on the city's Left Bank and Les Halles, in the busy center of the French capital.
Google is to map Paris until Aug. 20, then head to the north of the country. In the fall, the tricycle goes south, Dauba-Pantanacce said.
The company plans to add new photos to their Street View option in all French cities with tourist areas.
Similar tricycles already combed the streets of Britain and Italy in June and July, said Dauba-Pantanacce. Google plans to make 3-D maps of streets in other European countries, but the schedule has not yet been set, she said.
Since its launch in 2007, Google's Street View has expanded to more than 100 cities worldwide, and not everyone is happy about it.
Last month, Greek officials rejected a bid to photograph the nation's streets until more privacy safeguards are provided. In April, residents of one English village formed a human chain to stop a camera van, and in Japan the company agreed to reshoot views taken by a camera high enough to peer over fences.
Google's European Public Policy blog says the company is in contact with a group of representatives from all 27 European Data Protection Authorities. The group has asked, among other things, that Google set a time limit on how long unblurred copies of photos are kept, which it has not yet done.
Google did recently accede to German demands to erase the raw footage of faces, house numbers, license plates and individuals who have told authorities they do not want their information used in the service.
When the camera snaps a photo, everything - faces and license plates included - is in focus. Special software then blurs the picture.
Spotted Friday at La Defense, the tricycle looked decidedly out of place at the modern high-rise business center on Paris' western edge.
A clunky white pole in the back holds an octagonal platform with eight cameras on the sides and one on top. Every minute, the cameras take bursts of high-definition photos to allow online users to get a virtual tour of the area.
"I rode two hours this morning," said 25-year-old Gregory Landais, who was taking a break after cruising through La Defense, France's touch of Manhattan. "For a site like this, it can take up to five hours."
The photos of Paris and other major French cities to follow were expected to be available online by the end of the year.
One curious sightseer was 46-year-old Jose Mountinho of Portugal.
"I've already seen Google Maps but I had no idea how they did it," Mountinho said.
AP
Source: smh.com.au

Clever these smart phones

Put this one on your Xmas list

Apple developing touch tablet device
Apple CEO Steve Jobs ... will he be unveiling a tablet device in September?

Now for my next trick .... Apple CEO Steve Jobs.
July 28, 2009 - 6:45AM

Apple is reportedly planning to launch a new tablet-sized device before Christmas in what is a new product category that will fall between its iPhone/iPod Touch and the entry level MacBook laptop.

The company is also working with four record labels on a plan to increase digital sales of albums, according to a report in the Financial Times newspaper.

The project with the record companies - EMI, Sony Music, Warner Music and Vivendi's Universal Music Group - aims to offer interactive features with music downloads.

"It's all about re-creating the heyday of the album when you would sit around with your friends looking at the artwork, while you listened to the music," one unnamed executive told the paper.

Dubbed project "Cocktail", the Financial Times said book publishers have also been in talks with the computer maker about offering their services on the new device, which could compete with Amazon's Kindle e-book reader.

The AppleInsider blog, which broke the story on Friday, said the device will be feature a 10-inch screen and be "3G-enabled".

However the Financial Times report states that device will "probably [come] without phone capability".

The AppleInsider report puts the launch date as a first quarter 2010, citing "people well-respected by AppleInsider for their striking accuracy in Apple's internal affairs".

Confirmation of the twin projects could come as early as September when Apple traditionally launches its new line-up of iPods for the pre-Christmas shopping seasons.

iPods with cameras?

There has also been speculation that the new generaion iPods - the Nanos and Touches - will retain their current shape but will both come with built-in cameras, similar to those found on iPhones.

The Cult of Mac blog has reported that Chinese companies which make iPod accessories have been showing off new designs and protoypes with space on the back for the new features.

The iPhone 3GS, which was launched last month, comes with a 3.2 megapixel camera.

smh.com.au and agencies

Be thankful for a few good friends

Swamped with friends, Bill Gates quits Facebook
Bill Gates says he's quitting Facebook because he has too many "friends".

Bill Gates says he's quitting Facebook because he has too many "friends". Photo: AP
July 26, 2009

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates says he was forced to abandon Facebook after too many people wanted to be his friend.

Gates, the billionaire computer geek-turned-philanthropist who was honoured on Saturday by India for his charity work, told an audience in New Delhi he had tried out Facebook but ended up with "10,000 people wanting to be my friends".

Gates, who remains Microsoft chairman, said he had trouble figuring out whether he "knew this person, did I not know this person".

"It was just way too much trouble so I gave it up," Gates told the business forum.

Gates was in the Indian capital to receive the Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development, awarded by the government for his work for the charitable organisation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The foundation, built by his massive fortune, has committed nearly one billion US dollars to health and development projects in India, targeting especially AIDS and polio.

Gates also confided to the audience that he was "not that big at text messaging" and that "I'm not a 24-hour-a-day tech person".

"I read a lot and some of that reading is not on a computer," he said.

Gates, who sought to drive a vision of a computer on every desk and in every home, said the information technology revolution had been "hugely beneficial" but added: "All these tools of tech waste our time if we're not careful."

Wanted: women to eat chocolate for a year

July 24, 2009 - 7:04AM

Scientists in Britain are looking for women willing to eat chocolate every day for a year - all in the name of medical science.

Researchers at the University of East Anglia and a hospital in Norwich, eastern England are trying to find out whether chocolate can cut the risk of heart disease and need 40 women to step forward and help.

Most of the women will have to eat two bars of "super-strength chocolate specially formulated by Belgian chocolatiers" daily for one year and undergo several tests to measure how healthy their hearts are.

The others will have to eat regular chocolate as a placebo.

One possible catch, for chocolate fans spotting an opportunity: volunteers for the research should be menopausal but aged under 75 and have type two diabetes.

Study coordinator Peter Curtis said: "A successful outcome could be the first step in developing new ways to improve the lives of people at increased risk of heart disease."

How much zzzzzzz do you need?

3 hours' sleep is all he needs

Annabel Crabb

July 18, 2009

THE mystery of Kevin Rudd's impressive work rate has been solved — by his wife, Therese Rein, who reports that the Prime Minister can get by on as little as three hours' sleep a night.

In her first extended interview since the Federal Government's election, Ms Rein — herself a weekly intercity commuter, charity worker, fitness fanatic and global business owner — has described to the The Age how one of the most driven partnerships in politics has adapted to life at the Lodge.

"If he wants to come home and put his tracky daks on and sit in front of the fire and have a chat, that's up to him," she says good-humouredly of her husband.

"I have my own things that I'm doing. I am both continuing to lead the company with the fabulous team of people that I work with, and then I'm doing things like going down to Whittlesea Secondary College, or hosting a UNICEF lunch on women's health. I don't need him to distract me on the ins and outs."

Ms Rein's working schedule involves three days a week spent running her business from Brisbane, with four trips a year to Britain to oversee her company's operations there.

But it is Ms Rein's revelation about her husband's working day that will provoke comment; particularly the news that the Australian Prime Minister's sleep patterns are more Spartan even than those of Napoleon Bonaparte or Margaret Thatcher, both of whom needed only four hours of sleep a night.

Mrs Thatcher trained herself to sleep for only four hours a night, in order to cope with the demands of the British prime ministership.

But Ms Rein says that Mr Rudd has only ever needed short periods of repose — three hours at a minimum — and was like that when she met him at university. "He doesn't need a lot of sleep," she says.

"It's just different."

Re visit the moon walk

Over the moon: marking Armstrong's momentous walk

July 16, 2009

Buzz Aldrin, as photographed by Neil Armstrong.

On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first people to walk on the moon.

Forty years later, a variety of American museums, space centres and other institutions are marking the anniversary with events, exhibits, concerts and lectures.

Here are a few details on some of the bigger activities and venues.

NASA also has a link to anniversary events from its website at http://www.nasa.gov/ (look for "Apollo 40th Anniversary" on the lower left side of the home page).

Ames Research Centre, Moffett Federal Airfield, near Sunnyvale, California:

July 19, "Moonfest," noon-6pm, featuring scientific talks, rocket launches, kids' activities, music. Free and open to the public. Details at http://moonfest.arc.nasa.gov/.

Armstrong Air and Space Museum, Wapakoneta, Ohio:

July 16-18, "Summer Moon Festival" (Thursday, 4pm-11pm, Friday, 1pm-midnight, Saturday, 7 am-midnight), including rides, games and entertainment, a giant MoonPie and other activities. Details at http://www.summermoonfestival.com.

July 20, noon-5pm, museum open for 40th anniversary celebration, with $4 admission.

For information about visiting this museum in astronaut Neil Armstrong's hometown at other times, visit http://ohsweb.ohiohistory.org/places/nw01.

Johnson Space Centre, Houston:

July 18, 6 pm-9 pm, "Fly Me to the Moon" picnic, games, activities, stargazing and talks, at University of Houston-Clear Lake's Alumni Plaza and Liberty Park. Free, open to the public.

July 20, 4 pm-9 pm, 40th anniversary event at Discovery Green, the downtown Houston park, with NASA's "Driven To Explore" mobile exhibit, which includes a moon rock you can touch. Free, open to the public.

July 24, 6.30pm-10pm, 40th anniversary "Splashdown Celebration," at Space Centre Houston, which is the Johnson Space Centre's official visitors centre; family event with Apollo-era speakers, MoonPies, hot dogs and music, $US11 ($A14) (free for age four and under).

For details on other Johnson Space Centre events, including some that require tickets, visit www.nasa.gov/centres/johnson/events/apollo40.html.

For details on Space Centre Houston exhibits and the NASA Tram Tour, visit www.spacecenter.org/. Regular admission to the Space Centre is $US20 ($A25.50) (ages 4-11, $US16 ($A20.40)).

Kennedy Centre for Performing Arts, Washington:

July 18, 8pm, "Salute to Apollo: The Kennedy Legacy" concert with National Symphony Orchestra, Chaka Kahn, Denyse Graves and others, including Buzz Aldrin as a narrator. Free and open to the public for the first 1,400 guests. Details at http://www.kennedycentre.com.

Kennedy Space Centre, near Cocoa Beach, Florida:

July 16, 11am, Buzz Aldrin and other astronauts will share stories from underneath a Saturn V rocket at the Apollo/Saturn V Centre. To attend, you must arrive at the Kennedy Space Centre Visitor Complex by 10am and purchase regular admission.

July 16, 12.15pm, opening of Apollo Treasures Gallery at the Apollo/Saturn V Centre, showcasing artifacts from the Apollo moon missions including space suits, a space suit repair kit, and a cuff check list on how to deploy a flag on the moon, along with personal items from astronauts such as Alan Shepard's Corvette.

July 16, 3pm-4.30pm, book-signing in Astronaut Encounter Theatre by astronaut Buzz Aldrin, author of Magnificent Desolation: The Long Journey Home From the Moon.

July 20, 2pm, a huge chocolate-and-marshmallow MoonPie will be unveiled for public consumption.

Other activities at the Kennedy Space Centre, where Apollo 11 was launched on July 16, 1969, include the NASA Up Close tour of space program facilities and artifacts. Admission to the visitor complex is $US38 ($A48.50) plus tax for adults, $US28 ($A35.70) plus tax for ages three-11. More details at www.KennedySpaceCentre.com.

Museum of Flight, Seattle:July 11-12 and 18-19, 11.15 am and 1.15 pm, Apollo Program: Splashdown! for families.

July 18-25, 11am and 1pm (July 19, 11am and 2pm), Tip-to-Tail Tours: Apollo Artifacts, tour of Apollo artifacts including Apollo command module and lunar rover.

July 23-25, 10am-5pm, NASA Vision for Space Exploration Mobile Exhibit, offering a simulated space journey with interactive and hands-on activities; Museum Airpark Parking Lot.

To July 31: Exhibit of astronaut John Young's Apollo 10 spacesuit.

To September 12: Exhibit of Apollo 11 artwork by artist Paul Calle, who was hired by NASA to document the space program. Calle and his son will be at the museum for a lecture, August 29, 2pm

For details on these and other exhibits, visit www.museumofflight.org. The museum is open daily; admission $14 ($US7.50 ($A9.60) for ages five-17.

Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, Washington:

July 16, 10am, opening of exhibit Alan Bean: Painting Apollo, First Artist on Another World, paintings by Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean. Open to January 13.

July 16, 10am -3pm, Countdown to the Moon family day, with educational activities led by the museum's space history curators and planetary scientists working on current NASA projects.

July 19, 11am-2 pm, book-signings with three astronauts: Buzz Aldrin, author of Magnificent Desolation: The Long Journey Home from the Moon; Alan Bean, author of Painting Apollo; and Michael Collins, author of the 40th anniversary edition of Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut's Journeys.

The museum's collection includes the Apollo 11 Command Module in its Milestones of Flight gallery and Buzz Aldrin's space suit in the Apollo to the Moon gallery. Admission to the museum is free. For details on other events at the museum, visit www.nasm.si.edu/events/apollo11/apollo11events.cfm.

US Space and Rocket Centre and Davidson Centre for Space Exploration, Hunstville, Alabama:

July 20: First Footprint Celebration, 1-5 pm, with NASA-sponsored exhibit of space program artifacts. Event is open to the public with space centre admission ($US25 ($A32) or $US19 ($A24.25) for children, free for ages six and under).

Crowds are expected for the July 20 event. The Davidson Centre is open daily, with permanent exhibits including the Saturn V rocket and other space program artifacts. Details at www.spacecamp.com.

AP

Ever wondered how GPS works?

Beginners guide to GPS

Claire Mcentee

July 16, 2009 - 12:01AM

GPS stands for Global Positioning System and refers to a satellite-based navigational system developed by the United States Department of Defence and operated by the US Air Force.

Officially called NAVSTAR GPS, it was made it available for civilian use in the 1990s.

GPS technology has multiple applications but is perhaps best known for its use in car navigation units, such as those sold by TomTom and Navman.

The units use GPS to help drivers navigate unfamiliar roads or find certain locations and can also tell them how fast they're driving and warn of speed cameras ahead.

Most new smartphones have GPS receivers and with the right software can be used to navigate and even find the location of others - with their permission.

Google's Latitude software and Yahoo!'s FireEagle software use GPS to track people's cellphones and display their location on online maps such as Google Maps.

Users need to download the software to a GPS phone and must ask permission before they can view a friend's location.

Star Droid is another GPS software product developed by Google for mobile phones.

Users with GPS phones can point the phone's camera to the night-sky and read the names of the stars and planets captured through its viewfinder. The software uses GPS to identify the location of a person and compares it with maps of space.

How it works

Twenty-four satellites circle the Earth twice a day in precise orbits, transmitting signals that are picked up by GPS receivers - such as those in car navigation units.

The receivers use signals from different satellites to determine how far away the satellites are and then calculate where they are on earth. GPS receivers must lock on to the signal of at least two satellites to pinpoint someone's latitude and longitude, and four or more to determine someone's latitude, longitude and altitude.

Once a GPS unit knows where you are, it can then calculate other factors such as your speed and direction.

In GPS devices, location information is commonly used with mapping software to give directions.

Most GPS receivers are accurate but atmospheric conditions and things such as tall buildings and tunnels can cause inaccuracies or prevent the satellite signal reaching the receiver.

Russia, China and the European Union are launching satellites to create their own satellite navigation systems.

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I do like lots of tech stuff but also love Melways

Is this the end of the road for sat nav?

TomTom's new navigation app for the iPhone.

Louisa Hearn

July 9, 2009

They might have dominated Christmas wish lists for half a decade, but portable satellite navigation devices (PNDs) for the mass market might be about to join the endangered species list.

Smartphones with sophisticated navigation functions are storming the shelves with bigger screens, longer battery life, turn-by-turn voice prompts and consumers are lapping them up.

While sales of PND units are on the wane, the smartphone market has remained on a growth trajectory in spite of the choppy economic climate.

"A key reason for this is that the majority of the Australian market are on two-year contracts and with mobile penetration well over 100 per cent we can't see people abandoning their mobiles," said Mark Novosel, mobile analyst at market researcher IDC.

While he says economic factors might determine which contract a customer chooses, navigation is being increasingly rolled into lower cost phone plans.

"It wasn't really until the Nokia 6110 Navigator came along that GPS in converged mobile devices really took off. The primary driver for the success of the 6110 Navigator was that the maps and voice navigation software were included with the device, with nothing more to pay," he said.

While personal navigation market leaders such as TomTom and Garmin are unlikely to turn their backs on their core PND business in the near future, neither are they ignoring the smartphone revolution.

TomTom recently announced an app for the iPhone that will turn the popular smartphone into a fully featured car navigation device complete with maps, windscreen cradle, and turn-by-turn voice commands when it launches later this year.

Garmin has gone further with plans to release a smartphone in some markets this year. The Garmin Nuvifone has suffered delays amid speculation that it is struggling to compete with the slew of new smartphones on the market, however Garmin remains confident its phone will stand out.

"I think there is a place for an all-in-one phone designed by a manufacturer of a personal navigation device. It will be marketed as the navigation smartphone," said Matthew DeMoss, national sales and marketing manager of Garmin Australasia.

Novosel says that, because professional GPS software from the likes of TomTom could now be downloaded onto smartphones, many devices were able to provide similar functionality to a dedicated PND.

This has resulted in a flurry of innovations designed to keep PNDs ahead of the field, including lane guidance systems, rush-hour traffic and road speed information, text-to-speech capabilities for street names and 3D landmarks.

Kirk Mitchell, director of business development at mapping specialist Navteq said that a few years ago screen size, Bluetooth and MP3 functionality were killer features that people were prepared to pay for.

"Research proves that people are now finding value in creating a safer navigation environment," he says.

To satisfy this demand, the company is in the process of rolling out innovations such as a phonetic device called Navteq Voice to ensure the correct pronunciation of road names, helping to keep eyes on the road, and a feature that assists safe navigation of motorway lanes.

Matthew DeMoss, national sales and marketing manager at Garmin Australasia says the typical navigation application on a mobile is generally inferior to PNDs in terms of ease-of-use, screen size, voice directions and map display as well as having notably fewer features.

"I think that there is always going to be a customer who wants that all-in-one device - but there is also that customer that wants the very best device for that purpose. A lot of devices that have an MP3 player and camera as well as GPS functionality are a jack-of-all trades and master of none."

Novosel said another disadvantage was that many GPS-enabled smartphones still did not come bundled with GPS software of any sort.

"The GPS capability in these devices often remains unused as consumers can be unaware of its existence. In other cases, such as most Nokia devices, Nokia maps are provided to users at no cost. However, in order to activate navigation, including voice prompts, users must pay additional subscription fees."

Emile Baak, managing director at Nokia Australia said the company had sold 10 million GPS integrated smartphones, boasting "a very healthy activation rate".

He cites the convenience of carrying a single device and the opportunity for more "context aware" services that match a user's location with entertainment and service listings as key benefits of smartphone navigation products. But he concedes the platform is, for the time being, limited by size.

"The challenge is that we always have to fit all this technology into a very small package that should not consume too much energy," he said.

Novosel said that, in spite of their limitations, smartphones could take the place of PNDs for those who only need the device occasionally and don't mind smaller screen and keys, leaving PNDs with a niche market for those who do a lot of driving, such as couriers, taxi drivers and truckies.

"For many people, the convenience of an all-in-one device that can easily slip into the pocket is unbeatable, rather than having to hide their PND in the car or carry it with them when leaving their vehicle," he said.

Source: smh.com.au

iPod modder makes a case for going retro

Josh Darrah's wooden iPod case. Photo: Josh Darrah

Asher Moses

July 7, 2009 - 11:59AM

After reigning for years as a symbol of contemporary design, with its minimalist white finish and chrome accents, the iPod is going retro.

For most the iconic music player's white earbuds are a fashion statement enough, but Brisbane graphics designer Josh Darrah has always thought modern stylings were crass compared to old fashioned wood.

So he took matters into his own hands, gutting the electronic innards of his iPod mini, iTrip FM radio accessory and iPod dock and putting them into his own chassis, handmade from Australian red cedar.

The reaction from friends has been so positive that he is now investigating how he could mass produce the wooden casings and sell them online as part of a do-it-yourself kit.

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Photo gallery: The iPod goes retro
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Darrah said he was even researching whether he could create a wooden iPhone, but would first try to master the craft with the regular, simpler iPod range.

"I'm working out how to streamline the process of making it using routers and a bit of program machinery to carve the wood, so I don't have to do them by hand," he said in a phone interview.

Darrah, 29, who works as a graphics designer for the University of Queensland, said the whole process took him about four weekends and cost about $16.

He simply carved out and hollowed front and back plates for the iPod and separately created a thin wooden click wheel, which replaced the original plastic version without issue.

Darrah also carved and shaped brass end plates, and opted for screws instead of glue to hold everything together.

"Some people have thought it's ironic and harking back to the old days but I guess I just like wood," said Darrah.

"It wasn't a big social comment on my part."

Source: smh.com.au