Hasta La Gadget!

While most applications involving social media encourage interaction, Cloak is an anti-social app developed to help individuals avoid interaction.

Cloak is a mobile app for iOS (iPad, iPhone, iPod touch) that will query posts on Foursquare and Instagram for individuals that you specify, or for everyone in your social network, and try to identify their last known location. Individuals that were recently nearby will show up on a map identifying where they recently were so you can go somewhere else. After about four hours the locations time off and no longer show, assuming the individual you want to avoid has moved on.

The app currently only interacts with Foursquare and Instagram, so your anti-target must utilize one of these services for the system to work but the creators hope to integrate with other social media services soon including Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Snapchat and Tinder.

“We feel like we’ve reached the point of social fatigue — too many networks with too much information, all the time,” says Chris Baker, one of the co-creators of the Cloak app. “It’s OK to turn off and pick up a copy of ‘Walden’ and just be alone.”

Cloak via CNN

Most attempts at cloaking, no matter the slice of spectrum, usually leave clues as to what’s there — even microwave cloaks can spoil the surprise through reflections. At Duke University, researchers have licked some of those past problems with the first instance of a flawless microwave cloaking scheme. By crafting a special diamond-shaped cloak where the light properties stay consistent at the corners, the school’s Nathan Landy and David Smith have successfully shielded a 3-inch wide cylinder from microwave detection without a hint that something was amiss. The gotcha, as hinted by the shape, is a two-dimensional nature that gives away the secret at less than ideal angles. Duke suggests that it still has the groundwork for something that could be vital for communications or radar — we can imagine a stealth aircraft or ship in the far-flung future that could actively mask itself from radar signals. It’s not quite the optical illusion we’re looking for, but a refined version of the Duke project might be enough for a rare practical use of cloaking when fantasies are much more common.

Filed under: Science, Alt

Duke University creates ‘perfect’ one-directional microwave cloak, might lead to stealthier vehicles originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 12 Nov 2012 19:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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