Intel’s latest mobile processor offering, the Intel Atom, is one powerful little beast. It measures around 25mm, but still manages to fit in the Core 2 Duo instruction set and speeds up to 1.8Ghz. While these tiny trooopers certainly won’t be able to compete with a 1.8Ghz Core 2 Duo processor, they shouldn’t really have to. The chipset housing this new processor, Centrino Atom, will also feature low-powered integrated graphics and wireless capability.
You can read more about the technical specifics of the Atom platform over at CrunchGear or Intel’s press release, what I’m more interested in is what this new processor represents. Obviously, Intel is aiming to create small and inexpensive devices which still offer the amenities of larger notebook and desktop chips. But the devices these chips will be headed to will most likely be far smaller than anything we’ve seen Intel tackle before. Read the rest of this entry »
photo credit: DRB62
This morning I woke up to a Slashdot posting on Microsoft’s latest software project, the WorldWide Telescope (WWT). This is the rumored world-changing project that made Robert Scoble cry, and it’s something I’ve been waiting eagerly for since Scoble’s teasing posts. I’ve loved astronomy since I was a kid, so when I caught word that this uber-secret project had to do with collecting images from telescopes around the world, it quickly moved up to “must have” status.
In this preview from the most recent TED conference, Roy Gould, a notable science educator, and Curtis Wong, an MS Research employee who works on the WWT, demo the software and cover a few of the ways it would be useful. Most notably, it will significantly change the way astronomy is first taught, and makes a wealth of astronomical pictures and data available to the general public. Read the rest of this entry »
I spent much of today perusing the video content at the Singularity Institute and the TED conference sites and came across this recording of Ray Kurzweil’s talk at the recent Singularity Summit in Stanford. Kurzweil is a celebrated futurist and one of the defining figures in the Technological Singularity movement. The Singularity has become a bit of a buzzword to represent several up and coming future technologies but it usually refers to the rise of artificial intelligence at and beyond human intelligence in the next few decades.
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I’ll be writing much more about the Singularity in the near future as I have found that there isn’t nearly as much discussion online about this topic as I would like. You can read the Wikipedia pages that I’ve linked to for more specific information regarding these concepts.
In his talk Kurzweil goes over some of the main points of his latest book, The Singularity is Near, and shows off some interesting new technologies. In all of his work he invariably ends up discussing the exponential rate of progress that modern technology is facing and how that will inevitably lead to an outcome like the Singularity.
It’s a long talk but there’s some amazing stuff in there, so I recommend watching it all. He’s not the most compelling speakers out there, but his content more than makes up for it.
Some high points include:
- (4:00) Demonstration of a device meant to make life easier for blind individuals. It’s basically a camera that interprets the contents of the pictures it takes and reads aloud any text located within the picture. In the demonstration Kurzweil takes a picture of a paragraph of text and the computer reads it flawlessly. In the future it will even be able to discern things like people, objects, and animals from the pictures.
- (38:00) Demonstration of a “translating telephone”. Kurzweil speaks into a microphone in English and his software translates and reads aloud a German or French translation. The potential for this is incredible and thus far looks nothing like the translation efforts we’re used to ala Babel Fish.
Somehow I think Japan will be the first country to to pursue the use of robots and A.I. to better their society, not just in development but in actual utility. The vending machine culture in Japan right now seems as if it is a precursor to this. They’ve found many uses for the vending machine; some innovative, like the machines that will dispense free drinks in case of emergencies (water is often useful in these cases), and some completely unneccessary, like the machines that sell panties of young girls for perverse old men. Overall though, it’s technological reliance such as this which makes me think Japan will be the culture most suited to living alongside functional robots.
KRT Wire | Vending machines offer plenty in Japan
