Month: August 2001

Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate

Go here. Do this. I don’t even know who to give credit to, but it’s damn good stuff. They appear to be things called “Presents” written by Ellen Pronk. Clever animation, beautiful concepts. Severe time-burner.

Spintronics, taking advantage of electron spin in addition to its charge, is in the news again. Here’s a good article written from a physicist perspective, and here’s the New York Times dressing it up so it’s fit to print.

Soon you will be watched not only by Big Brother, but by ten thousand nosy computers as well. Alarming, but true: connect all those surveillance cameras to some face recognition software and the authorities can know who’s where all the time. Read this article in the Washington Post for more: Matching Faces With Mug.

Article about SF author Vernor Vinge in the New York Times. He was doing cyberspace before cyberspace was cool (i.e. before William Gibson had given it a name). Plus he’s a physicist, for whatever that’s worth.

I really like the Jim Leftwich’s blog JIMWICh. Take a look at the Frida Kahlo postage stamp he was nice enough to make for the US Postal service: Frida Kahlo American-Style!

Now this is real progress. Computer-generated maps like real people really draw: Rendering Effective Route Maps: Improving Usability Through Generalization. And it’s already in use at MapBlast. Now all we need is anti-aliased maps (why hasn’t anyone done that yet?) and we’ll really be getting somewhere. [spotted on peterme.com]

What a shame… the “cool new stuff” weblog Rapidly Changing Face of Computing has gone away. It appears to have been a surprise to author Jeffrey Harrow, based on the publication schedule that he was publishing only a few weeks ago. Compaq must be tightening the old corporate belt. Too bad. We’ll miss you, Jeffrey. :-(

I like the idea of magazine called Small Times. They must save a bundle on postage. Small Times: News about MEMS, Nanotechnology and Microsystems

Now a computer can sound just like you: see Software Called Capable of Copying Any Human Voice in the NY Times. I predict one byproduct of all this soul-stealing will be an increased appreciation of intimacy. Or not.