Category: Uncategorized

Convocation Congratulations!

Post ImageThere are so many of you convocating this week, I figured it would be much easier to just make a blanket congratulations post. And hey, if you’ve learned anything during your time at the University, it’s that I am lazy! Or that sometimes, you can’t help but cut a few corners.

So to Violet, Annie, Sharon, Megan, and whoever else is convocating in the near future that I missed, congratulations! Some of you have already made your way into the “real world”, but I know all of you will be successful. I just hope you find your time at University was useful, because we all know my thoughts on that matter.

Ever wonder why it’s called “convocation” and not “graduation” or something? Especially since they limit the number of people who can convoke anyway. There’s your thought for the day!

Read: University of Alberta

Cockroach Powered Robot

Post ImageAs some of you may know, we’re in the process of building a robot. We’ve encountered our fair share of problems so far, specifically with regards to getting the damn thing to move. So I was particularly interested to read about graduate student Garnet Hertz and his solution for robotic movement:

He uses the Madagascar hissing cockroach, Gromphadorhina portentosa, which can grow as big as a mouse. In the summer of 2004, he built a three-wheeled cart that rises about knee high. Atop the aluminum structure sits a modified computer trackball pointer, with a Ping-Pong ball in place of the usual trackball, which is heavier.

The roach–he currently maintains a stable of four–rides on top of the trackball. As it scampers, the robot moves in the direction the roach would travel if it were on the ground; a Velcro patch and harness keep it in place.

Quite an interesting approach! I guess the “robo-roach” could be seen as something of a glimpse into the future, where we might have hybrid biological and mechanical robots. I am not sure I would have picked roaches though – I wouldn’t want to have to look after them just for the robot!

Read: CNET News.com

Edmonton Podcasters Meetup

Post ImageIf you’re into podcasting already or if you want to learn more about it, and you live in Edmonton or nearby, you have to come to the first ever Edmonton Podcasters Meetup! This event is the latest in Tod Maffin’s series of Canadian podcaster roadshows.

It will be Saturday, June 18th at 2:00 PM in the Confederation Lounge of the Fairmont Hotel MacDonald. Bring your favourite podcasting gear and questions. I’ll be talking a bit about how you can participate in The Feed. Please spread the word in your blog or podcast! 🙂

You can bet that Paramagnus will be there, and hopefully we’ll have some goodies to bring along too! We’d be happy to hang out with you if you’re coming – we can show you the office, some Edmonton highlights if you’re new to the city, or whatever you want! Leave a comment or drop me an email.

What are you waiting for? Go RSVP for the event now!

Read: Edmonton Podcasters Meetup

Apple switches to Intel

Post ImageOne of the biggest rumors in the technology industry was confirmed as fact this morning at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference. Steve Jobs, in his keynote address to conference attendees, announced that Apple will begin a phased transition to Intel chips by 2007, with the first Apple-Intel machines appearing by June 6th, 2006.

The move to Intel marks a tectonic shift for Apple, which has used processors from IBM and Motorola (now Freescale Semiconductor) throughout the life of the Mac. However, the company has changed architectures before, shifting in the 1990s from Motorola’s 68000 family of chips to the PowerPC architecture jointly developed by IBM and Motorola.

In addition the previous hardware shift, Apple also underwent a major change with the release of OS X. The new operating system required many changes on the parts of developers. Jobs admitted that Apple has had OS X running on Intel processors for the last five years, so one would assume that the move to Intel has always been in the back of Steve’s head.

So what does the change mean? Not much to the average user, except that future Apple computers might (stressing that word might) be cheaper. Microsoft and Adobe both announced that they will support the switch by updating their software. Apple will make sure that OS X doesn’t run on any Intel machine except the ones they create, though they said that they will not prevent other operating systems from running on Apple hardware. The change probably won’t affect IBM either, as all three major game consoles now run on some form of the Power PC chip, and let’s face it, game consoles outsell Apple computers by a large margin.

I think the most visible change in the short term will be fewer sales of Apple computers. Who’s going to buy a new Apple machine now when they will be so different in a year? Hard to say what will happen long term. Unless Apple decides to sell just OS X or until someone figures how to make it run on other Intel machines, not much has changed.

If I were Apple, I’d sell Mac OS X as a standalone operating system that would run on any x86 based computer. Baby steps though right? Maybe this is the first step towards that happening.

Read: CNET News.com

Why the new .xxx domain is pointless

It was announced late yesterday that ICANN, the organization that looks after the Internet’s naming and such, has decided to go ahead and setup the .xxx top level domain for adult content websites. It is hoped that pornographic and other adult oriented websites will register sites using the new domain so that they can easily be filtered.

And that is exactly why the new domain is useless. Perhaps if pornographic websites were being forced to use the new domain, it would serve some purpose. Without a law or something forcing them, what is the benefit? There is none.

Child-safety advocate Donna Rice Hughes said .xxx won’t help people avoid online porn because sex sites will still be able to hold on to their old .com domain names. A spokeswoman for Playboy Enterprises Inc. said the adult entertainment company had no plans to move any of its Web sites to the new domain.

I suppose approval of the new domain can be seen as a first step towards the ultimate goal of segregating adult content from general websites. However, until the operators of adult sites, of which there are more than 1 million, are forced to use the new domain, it will remain ineffective.

Read: Reuters

Calgary Trip Recap

It’s amazing what you have to catch up on when you’re gone for a whole day! We made it back from Calgary without any problems last night. We did however, have a lot of left over fries from Peter’s Drive In, and four boxes of Krispy Kreme donuts! Dickson’s new car is amazing on gas, thank goodness.

Armed with MapPoint on the tablet, we made our way around the city, visiting all the different stores we needed to. We learned a little more at each place, and as a result, purchased most of the stuff we needed at the last store we visited. So things are moving along nicely for the robot project! We’ll hopefully have the design and preliminary work done by early next week. And who knows, maybe a website 🙂

Roadcasting

Post ImageMy “wireless everywhere” mantra is becoming more and more of a reality every day. The latest wireless technology (and also the latest “add -casting” buzzword for 2005) is Roadcasting, a project developed by current and former master’s students at the Human Computer Interaction Institute.

Roadcasting uses a variant of the popular Wi-Fi technology to create ad hoc networks between vehicles. Each vehicle then acts as a “node”, extending the network’s reach a mile at a time. Essentially you get to have your own little radio station, and instead of tuning to a frequency to listen to music, the system will find music that you’ll like from other people’s collections.

The system — still largely theoretical — will also feature a collaborative-filtering mechanism that compares music in a recipients’ collection to that of the broadcaster. The filter will pump out a mix of songs matching the listener’s tastes.

“What’s really cool about this is that while you’re busy (driving), Roadcasting will just pick songs that you enjoy,” said Mathilde Pignol, one of the Roadcasting developers, “and then it will let you influence the songs with your music taste without you having to do anything.”

Makes one wonder what the RIAA would have to say about this. Considering that in Canada (and perhaps elsewhere) doctors offices and similar entities must pay a yearly fee to play music for their clients, I can’t see how the RIAA would let something like Roadcasting slide. I suppose stranger things have happened though!

I rather like the idea of Roadcasting. Their process page has a really good description of some of the positives and negatives of both radio, and of being a DJ. Apparently the system is in the prototype stage, though its unlikely to take off without major automobile manufacturer support.

And I thought podcasting was cutting edge!

Read: Wired News

David Dodge on U.S. Economics

Post ImageI have read many times about the huge current account deficit in the United States, but usually from American media like The Economist, or maybe something from Europe. Never from Canada! It seems the Canadian government generally likes to keep quiet about our neighbour’s spending habits, maybe for fear of more beef or softwood lumber-like troubles. Needless to say, I was quite surprised to read today that Bank of Canada governor David Dodge had something to say on the matter:

In the text of a speech to be given at a Montreal conference, the central bank chief warned of “large, global economic imbalances that have become the subject of increasing concern” to policy-makers.

“I am referring, of course, to the persistent and growing current account deficit in the United States that is mirrored by large current account surpluses elsewhere, especially in Asia.”

Basically what has happened is that the United States has decreased their saving while most of the rest of the world has increased saving. Thus, the U.S. has become reliant on foreign borrowing, creating the large deficits that Dodge and other economists talk about (the United States actually has three deficits, international trade, current account, and federal budget). At the same time, China and other Asian nations have used their large and growing export income to soak up the American debt.

I think it’s really interesting to watch, even if the situation unfolds slowly. For some reason, it seems significant to me that Canada finally had something to say on the matter too, though I can’t put my finger on exactly why.

“At some point, they will have to be resolved. Why? For one thing, a country’s external indebtedness cannot keep growing indefinitely as a share of its GDP. Eventually, investors will begin to balk at increasing their exposure to that country, even if it is a reserve-currency country, such as the United States.

“For another thing, the buildup of foreign exchange reserves by Asian countries will, eventually, feed into domestic monetary expansion and lead to higher inflation. These imbalances will ultimately be resolved, either in an orderly, or in an abrupt, disorderly way.”

Perhaps Dodge is worried that things are heading down the path to a disorderly resolution, which would probably be bad for Canada.

Read: CBC News

Testing BitTorrent's Search

Post ImageLast week I wrote about BitTorrent the company and the search engine they were planning to launch. Well that search engine is now live, so I figured I’d take it for a spin. The site apparently only indexes torrents that it’s robots can find on their own, so I am not sure how well they would do at penetrating the sites that require registration.

The first search I attempted was for something legal, Firefox. The entire site, front page and results page, look a lot like Google, but I suppose that’s typical of most any search engine these days. Anyway, there were 22 results for Firefox, and not one of them was the latest version. In fact, the latest version I could find was 1.0.2, which is two versions behind.

The second search I tried was Coldplay. Of the 20 results it returned, 9 appeared directly related to Coldplay’s music, with torrents for the new single, their previous album, and some rare songs among others. Search number three was for Britney Spears, and it returned 42 results. Keeping with the music, I searched for 50 Cent, and it found 33 results.

I figured software would be a good thing to search for too, so I tried Microsoft. Lots of torrents for Microsoft stuff, with 83 results. How about Linux? There we go, 333 results. Unfortunately, not many of them look like distros.

Based on that brief exercise, I was left unimpressed. I think for now I’ll stick to the torrent sites that haven’t been shut down as they do a better job of indexing and displaying torrents. The BitTorrent search doesn’t show how many seeds and peers a particular torrent has, nor how many times it’s been downloaded. These pieces of information are useful in weeding through the crap that is out there. Perhaps over time the site’s robots will find more torrents too, so the index will become more useful. Room for improvement I guess! Another thing that would be nice to see is stuff like Firefox manually indexed. The search engine would be so much more useful if legitimate software like Firefox was properly listed, and up-to-date.

One definite positive to the search engine is that it should draw new users to the protocol, because it definitely does lower the barrier to entry. What will most people do when they hear about BitTorrent? Either try to visit http://www.bittorrent.com or they’ll type it into Google, so either way they end up at the new search engine.

Anyone else try it? What did you think?

Read: BitTorrent Search

Imagine Cup Conference Call

Post ImageJust a reminder, if you’d like to provide some feedback on the Imagine Cup, we’re having a conference call tomorrow afternoon with the team. The conference call will take place on the phone and over Microsoft LiveMeeting, so if you’d like to take part, either email me or add me to MSN Messenger (mastermaq@hotmail.com) so I can send you the details.

We’re starting at 4 PM EST, and we’re scheduled to go for an hour. What kinds of things did you like about the Imagine Cup this year or last? What would you want to improve? Do you have ideas on how to make the competition even more attractive to students? The team in charge of planning for Imagine Cup 2006 is going to be listening in on the call, so this is your chance to provide very direct feedback!

If you can’t make it or would rather not take part, but still have feedback, leave a comment here and I’ll be sure to share it with the team. Thanks!