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.

We’ll surely see them show up in newer versions of the Asus Eee and similarly inexpensive ultra-portable laptops, but the introduction of the Atom line also leaves the door open for Intel to step into the handheld computing market. Next generation Pocket PCs may actually be able to compete notebook and desktop PCs. It also means that we’ll see Intel further perfecting this market, and moving closer towards the mobile processors that have ruled cellphones and mobile devices until now.

In a few years time, we’ll probably see some massive innovation leaps in the realm of tiny CPUs, and I for one can’t wait. While the battle for desktop and notebook processor domination will continue for the foreseeable future, this unseen battle among small-yet-powerful CPUs has a greater potential for changing the way we interact with technology in our daily lives.

The concept of ubiquitous computing comes to mind; wherein our computer interaction will not only occur between dedicated computing devices like desktops, laptops, and PDAs, but also more mundane devices like refrigerators, clothes, and pretty much anything you can think of. With processors both tiny and inexpensive, the computing possibility of our environment becomes limitless.
I for one welcome our tiny and omnipresent computing overlords.

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Intel’s New "Atom" Chips Bring Us Closer to Ubiquitous Mobile Computing

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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.

Comparisons to Google Sky, Stellarium, Celstia, and a wealth of other space programs are unavoidable, but it seems as if Microsoft is trying to do something very different with this software. All of the above programs offer detailed views of the sky in differing ways, but none of them combine seamless access to a wide variety of telescopes around the world in the way WWT does. In many ways, this seems like an evolution from the Photosynth technology shown a few months ago, although we don’t know much about the specifics of the project yet.

Given everything we see in this demo, I think it’s very likely that WorldWide Telescope will significantly shift the way we all relate to the night sky. Instead of being something distant and untouchable, we could all be amateur astronomers. And with the state of science education in America at such a low point, this can only be good news.

What I find surprising about this announcement has little to do with the content of the demo, and more to do with how the public is reacting to it. Take a quick glance at the comments for the Slashdot posting and TED video, and you’ll see people who instantly dismiss the whole WWT endeavor seemingly only because it’s coming from Microsoft. MS-bashing isn’t new on the Internet, but it is disheartening to see many devalue this project due to petty misconceptions and fanboyism.

The WorldWide Telescope has world-changing potential–but I suppose that isn’t enough for the M haters out there. It really makes me think about what, if anything, MS can do to shift their public perception. They’ve been so ruthless over the years, and Google so benevolent, that it just seems like the natural order of things. While this initial preview still has a fair amount of doubters, I suspect that their number will diminish as we learn more about WWT and actually get to play with the technology. If anything can shift the public perception of MS, it’s this.

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Microsoft’s WorldWide Telescope Shows Great Potential, Haters Say Meh

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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.

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Ray Kurzweil at Singularity Summit 2006

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