Hasta La Gadget!

The internet is a mighty big place that’s only growing larger each day. That makes it a perfectly unwieldy thing to measure, but the traffic it generates has nonetheless been subjected to a rigorous estimation project by a group of UC San Diego academics. Their findings, published online this month, reveal that in 2008 some 9.57 zettabytes made their way in and out of servers across the globe. Some data bits, such as an email passing through multiple servers, might be counted more than once in their accounting, but the overall result is still considered an under-estimation because it doesn’t address privately built servers, such as those Google, Microsoft and others run in their backyards. On a per-worker basis (using a 3.18 billion human workforce number), all this data consumption amounts to 12GB daily or around 3TB per year. So it seems that while we might not have yet reached the bliss of the paperless office, we’re guzzling down data as if we were. Check out the report below for fuller details on the study and its methodology.

Our annual data consumption estimated at 9.57 zettabytes or 9,570,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 07 Apr 2011 04:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What happens when a robot with immaculate dexterity comes to grips with a notorious board game from our childhood? Just ask Johns Hopkins University students, who successfully removed the wish bone from an Operation board using the da Vinci Robot. If you’re familiar with the game, you’ll know how incredibly difficult it was to prevent that ear-piercing noise from occurring– even with our tiny fingers. Of course, we should have expected that a robot — especially one capable of folding a tiny paper airplane — would be able to accomplish this feat with such ease. Be sure to peep the pseudo-surgery in video form below the break.

Continue reading da Vinci Robot pwns Operation, deems our childhoods forlorn (video)

da Vinci Robot pwns Operation, deems our childhoods forlorn (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 06 Apr 2011 09:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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No matter how hard Skype and others try to convince us otherwise, we still do most of our web communications via text or, if entirely unavoidable, by voice. Maybe we’re luddites or maybe video calling has yet to prove its value. Hoping to reverse such archaic views, researchers at the MIT Media Lab have harnessed a Kinect’s powers of depth and human perception to provide some newfangled videoconferencing functionality. First up, you can blur out everything on screen but the speaker to keep focus where it needs to be. Then, if you want to get fancier, you can freeze a frame of yourself in the still-moving video feed for when you need to do something off-camera, and to finish things off, you can even drop some 3D-aware augmented reality on your viewers. It’s all a little unrefined at the moment, but the ideas are there and well worth seeing. Jump past the break to do just that.

Continue reading Kinect used to make teleconferencing actually kind of cool (video)

Kinect used to make teleconferencing actually kind of cool (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 04 Apr 2011 03:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft’s own OneVision Video Recognizer may be novel, but if the folks in Redmond are seriously looking to take things next-level, they should probably cast their gaze across the pond. Zdenek Kalal, a researcher at the University of Surrey, has just created what may be the most sophisticated vision system known to the civilian world. In essence, it takes the mundane task of tracking objects to an entirely new platform, enabling users to select an object on the fly and have the algorithm immediately start tracking something new. Within seconds, it’s able to maintain a lock even if your object twists, turns, or leaves / returns. Furthermore, these “objects” could be used as air mice if you force it to track your digits, and if you teach it what your staff looks like, you’ll have a fully automated security scanner that can recognize faces and grant / deny access based on its database of white-listed individuals. Frankly, we’d rather you see it for yourself than listen to us extolling its virtues — vid’s after the break, per usual.

Continue reading Zdenek Kalal’s object tracking algorithm learns on the fly, likely to make next 007 flick (video)

Zdenek Kalal’s object tracking algorithm learns on the fly, likely to make next 007 flick (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 31 Mar 2011 23:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Okay, so maybe Ludovico Cademartiri will be forced to share the good news on Facebook (or ConnectU, if he’s into playing the role of rebel), but at least he’s bound to see over a couple of hundred hits. According to The Harvard Crimson, the aforesaid physicist and a smattering of other researchers have stumbled upon a novel way to extinguish flames: electricity. The idea is eventually enable firefighters to squash fires without having to douse a home or object with water and foam — if hit with a beam of juice, there’s at least a sliver of a chance that something can be salvaged. While the specifics of the project are obviously far above our heads, the gist of it is fairly simple — flames contain soot particles, which become “electrically charged during combustion.” Given that those very particles react to electrical fields, a strong enough beam can twist things until it’s extinguished completely. Quite honestly, it’s a hands-on experience we’re desperately trying to arrange, but till then, it looks like another round of Harry Potter will have to do.

Harvard physicist puts fires out with electrified wand, hopes to share on HarvardConnection originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 30 Mar 2011 17:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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