False Positives

Via CBC we have the sad news that visionary Arthur C. Clarke has passed away at age 90. Best known as a Science fiction writer for the novel of the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey”, he wrote many, many, other fact and fiction novels.  I am most thankful for his short stories, (in particular :The Nine Billion Names of God) He also conceptualized geostationary satellites (known as Clarke Orbits) for use in telecommunications.

Also much quoted are his “Clarke’s three laws”:

Here is the BBC Obituary: Sir Arthur C Clarke, and this last message from Arthur C. Clarke- A Voice from Beyond.

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Via Mark Evan’s discussion of Newspapers Aren’t Doomed; It’s Their Business Models, (which is huge and juicy topic all by itself, I can across this TED video demo of Seadragon and Photosynth, by Blaise Aguera y Arcas.

It is Seadragon (acquired by Microsoft in 2006), the visualization technology that gives Photosynth its amazingly smooth digital rendering and zoom capabilities. Photosynth itself is a vastly powerful piece of software capable of taking a wide variety of images, analyzing them for similarities, and grafting them together into an interactive three-dimensional space. This seamless patchwork of images can be viewed via multiple angles and magnifications, allowing us to look around corners or “fly” in for a (much) closer look.

The TED Demo keeps getting more and more mind blowing. Semantic (the light “tagging” version), Social (sharing), Photographic (and other data) Meta processing. I’m imaging a visual Library (of Congress or enhanced Wikipedia), or Family Photo album.

Via the Photosynth home page you can try the Photosynth Technology Preview yourself ,on your XP or Vista pc in IR or FireFox (via the Photosynth Firefox plugin) Even cooler!

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• A vision of cheap space launches using lighter-than-air vehicles essentially balloons built specifically to carry light payloads to the stratosphere, from which a larger space-going vehicle could be launched.- first stage would use a lighter-than-air ascent vehicle to reach a stationary craft hovering above the earth at about 140,000 feet.

Remember : “slow is cheap, fast is expensive”
- space

• How to Wrap with a Furoshiki, a Japanese traditional wrapping cloth which is used repeatedly in a stylish way. - graphic from the (Japanese) Ministry of the Environment that shows how to wrap something with a traditional furoshiki cloth. The “Mottainai Furoshiki” as a symbol of Japanese culture to reduce waste.

- Japan

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