Multitasking is great but sometimes, one simply can’t take the pressure of dealing with a whole lot of tasks at the same time. For instance, when working on your PC, it can be annoying when right in the middle of something important or urgent, you start receiving pop-up notifications.
Such notifications not only distract you, they also waste your time when you have to attend to them only to find out they’re nothing significant. Now, the Graduate University of Advanced Studies in Japan is working on a new technology which could automatically sense when you’re busy working on a PC, and block notifications. (more…)
A rather interesting video has come out this week with New York Fashion Week playing host to Google Glass technology, the ultimate product being an all-Glass shot video on the runway with designer Diane von Furstenberg. What this film “DVF Through Glass” shows us is a very real vision – one we’ve seen a few times before, in different formats – of what it feels like to be the subject of the film rather than watching it. Watch as you become the model walking through the dressing room and you’ll see and experience Google Glass in what we thus far are understanding the project to be all about – ramming the whole world into the head of one single subject.
When you watch a reality television show like Dance Moms or Honey Boo Boo, you and thousands of other viewers watch the subjects live their lives – and perform for the camera no matter how much the show suggests that it’s all taking place exactly as it would without our eyes present. With Google’s Glass, we’ll be able to take the place of the people in the show – and better yet, we’ll only be seeing the world through the tiny Glass camera, not a film crew. In this way we’ll be seeing a whole new environment.
The people in the show will react differently than they would with a full film crew present, and if and when they understand that Glass is what’s filming them, they’ll usher in another set of filmed reactions that wont have been seen by any larger camera in the past. This will be an experiment not so much in taking the place of the subject of the show, but in seeing how the subjects of the show act when they’re filmed by a fellow subject rather than by a standard film crew.
Have a peek at the DVF video here first and check the reactions at this week’s Fashion Week – it gets indy real quick!
Then have a peek at a couple other demonstrations from Google, first with the mother and child duo “Madame & Bebe Gayno” – cuteness!
Then have a peek at the amazingly fantastic skydive session from Google I/O 2012.
We know better than most that when you’re working to a deadline, constant pop-ups, notifications and pings can be a real pain. Our frustrations might soon become a thing of the past, however, with some help from boffins at the GraduateUniversity for Advanced Studies in Japan. They are working on technology which monitors keyboard pressure and silences those distractions until it deems you’re not busy, showing over 80 percent accuracy during volunteer testing. Understanding that quiet time is also appreciated for other tasks, they plan to use similar techniques to spot when you’re staring intently at that report or — more importantly — attending to a beverage. It’s still early days for the project, but if the stress-saving tech ever spawns a product, we’ll take two please.
Winter makes you crazy because you spend so much time cooped up without fresh air or sunlight. With that in mind, some people in New York City have plans in the works for an underground park—the Lowline—to be built in an abandoned trolley station and lit through a remote skylight system. More »
WASHINGTON — Not long after copies of Metro Weekly were distributed on Thursday, someone placed fecal matter in one of the magazine’s distribution boxes.
The next-generation LG Optimus G has been shown off once again before its full launch which will almost certainly be taking place extremely soon – here in a video spot from Korea. This video advertisement shows the device being worked with and played with by a set of happy customers and appears to fit rather well in their hands as they make use of its ultra-powerful processor. Inside you’ll find the Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro quad-core processor we’ve had a peek at just weeks ago and up front you’ll be jamming with a massive 4.7-inch display.
This device works with 1280 x 768 True HD IPS+ across its 4.7-inch screen and will be popping up with 2GB of RAM under the hood. LG is bringing the fire this time around with a styling not unlike the LG Intuition with its rubbery back and simple black outline but brings with it a smartphone-sized experience. Qualcomm will be holding this device up as a hero as well as it’s the first to be coming to the market with its 1.5GHz quad-core architecture.
This device’s advertisement video spot shows off how the device works with 4G LTE and an ultra-powerful camera, likely 8 megapixels or larger. What we’ve heard thus far on the camera front as a possibility is a 13-megapixel shooter on the back, but we’ll know the full truth only when the device is officially unveiled! For now we’ve only to watch and enjoy the device as a fun experience without specification confirmation.
Check the timeline below to see more information on the LG Optimus G before it pops up in full motion soon and very soon!
Bicycles are a popular mode of transportation for smaller distances. Especially, when it comes to kids, most of us want them to try their hands on bicycles for a few years before they turn their attention to more ‘advanced’ vehicles.
Bicycles are already among the cheapest vehicles on the market. However, what if you were told that you could now lay your hands on a cool bicycle for a mere $9? Well, you wouldn’t be able to lay your hands on it exactly for that price, given that it is the basic production cost of a new recycled cardboard bicycle created by Izhar Gafni. (more…)
Only roughly one quarter of eighth and 12th graders are proficient in writing, according to results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress’ first-ever computer-based writing assessment. The new framework represents a move away from the traditional paper-and-pencil format that has dominated the testing scene for nearly four decades.
NAEP’s exams are considered the gold standard measurement of student achievement. In May, results showed that about a third of eighth graders who took its science exam were proficient, a statistic NAEP’s interim director Gerry Wheeler slammed as “unacceptable.” Similarly, only 32 percent of students performed at the proficient level on NAEP’s math exam in 2007, ranking the U.S. 32nd out of 65 countries that were tested on the 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), NAEP’s international equivalent. This trend also appears to hold true for writing, though the format may have changed.
Drawing from a sample of 24,100 eighth graders and 28,100 12th graders representing both public and private schools, the 2011 writing assessment asked students to complete two 30-minute tasks, each of which was designed to measure one of three communicative purposes: to persuade, explain or convey experience. The prompts were presented in multimedia formats that included video or audio segments, newspaper articles, real-world data and other materials around which students could formulate a response. They recorded their answers on a laptop that featured commonly used word-processing tools such as spell check and a thesaurus.
Currently, the salary range for top-five quarterbacks is $16 million-$20 million per year (by average yearly salary) where $48 million-$61 million of compensation is in the first three years of the deal with $41.7 million-$60.5 million guaranteed (includes Matthew Stafford and Sam Bradford’s rookie contracts). Although Flacco—who makes $6.76 million this season in the final year of his five-year rookie contract—hasn’t made much of a case during his four NFL seasons to be mentioned in the same breath as Aaron Rodgers, Tom Brady, Drew Brees and the Manning brothers, his new contract could approach the lower end of such salary levels.
A film festival in Australia allowed the screening of a documentary about bestiality, two years after another film festival banned the screening of movie about gay sex due to offensive content.
On Sept. 8, the Sydney Underground Film Festival (SUFF) screened “Donkey Love”, a documentary that purports to reveal sexual relations between Colombian men and their donkeys, a practice that allegedly prepares men for sex with women and “prevents them from becoming homosexuals.”
The Classification Board, the government agency responsible for classifying films, did not ask to view the film before it screened at the festival. Instead, “Donkey Love” got an exemption from classification, according to an article by the Sydney Morning Herald’s Andrew Taylor. Films in Australia cannot be screened publicly without being rated by the Classification Board, but a festival can screen films that are not rated.
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