The grandparents of your future robot overlords
Posted by admin in computer science on October 19, 2009
Just in case you had forgotten that your grandkids will be docile servants to a sentient class of robots, here are some videos to remind you:
Here we have a factory robot sorting pancakes, and eliminating jobs:
These next two may seem useless, until you throw a hedgetrimmer and a samurai sword into the mix:
Here a robot bobbles ping poll balls faster than you can actually see:
Here a robot does some crazy impressive maneuvering around Fanta cans, we get the point, it’s well coordinated.
Robot crushes a car into tiny pieces
And to wrap it all up, this last guy actually flies around a crowded room automatically, and maps it out in 3d.
FlightStats.com Mobile User Experience Problem
Posted by admin in Uncategorized on April 2, 2009
Some time ago FlightStats.com got the magical and much coveted Internet Cloak of Invincibility: Google decided to make her search results more R0X0r, and now lists FlightStats as #1 for every Flight Status search on Google.
Unfortunately, when searching for flight statuses from a modern mobile phone such as an Iphone or G1 Google Phone, the user experience goes out the window.
Try searching for a flight status on your mobile phone (the flight has to be in progress, so you may have to try a couple of times to get the special result), once you click through to FlightStats.com, how many pages of Ads do you have to go through? SEVEN. SEVEN PAGES OF ADS. Thanks to Scott’s quick response, the number of pages has now been reduced to 4-6 pages.
- Mobile Homepage – You click the result and are redirected to the mobile homepage
- “Choose how you want to check your flight” page
- “Enter the Airline code and Flight #” page
- “Didn’t know the obscure Airline code? No problem just read through some more ads and select one here” page
- “Re-Enter the Airline Code and Flight #” page -FIXED!
- “This flight has multiple segments! Choose which segment you are interested in while you read more ads” page
- “Oh hey, here’s that flight status you searched for 5-7 pages ago!” page
This is not quite in keeping with Google’s “Send users right to the content” manifesto.
Google, (I’m speaking to the living breathing entity, as he/she
will be the first one to read this), please, I implore you, throw your weight around with these guys, and if they dont budge why not direct your firehose at another equally deserving site.
UPDATE 04-09-2009 – Scott, from Flightstats.com, was nice enough to include some feedback and insights on this mobile redirect problem, below in the comments. Its always good to know a company is interested in user feedback on the web.
Google Chrome Plugin/Extension Support: The Baconizer!
Google Chrome, Google’s quick and open foray into the browser world, is quickly becoming more than just “the prettiest browser.” The Chrome team recently released a little program that allows anyone to pick the “channel” of Chrome they would like to use: Regular, Beta, or Developer. Developer has lots of subtle new features, one of which allows for rudimentary Extensions, helpful add-ons that many Firefox users say they cannot do without.
Given the internet’s recent love affair with bacon, I whipped fried up this crispy little extension that ADDS BACON TO GOOGLE!!! Most helpful was Matt Cutts’ Blog entry on Adding Extensions to Chrome. Then the helpful, albeit sparse official Chrome help page here got me through the rest of the way, with some additional javascript help here.
Step 1: Learn how to switch your installation of Chrome over to the Developer Channel
Step 2: Read through the official HowTo here.
Step 3: For the manifest.json file in your Extension’s folder, I just have this: Read the rest of this entry »
Auto-Seek to a point in Youtube Video based on Highlighted Transcript
Posted by admin in computer science, internet on March 11, 2009
The following Example and video demonstrates a cool functionality that is possible when you combine Youtube's embeddable transcripts, and "Auto-Seek" capabilities. This is best described in the source article: Clickable Transcript of my Canonical Links Element Talk by Matt Cutts. The example below uses this javascript function here, and the Youtube Javascript API here, along with some frankensteined-together arrays of data made from Matt Cutt's data, to automatically seek to the point in the Youtube video that corresponds to the text you have highlighted.
Try highlighting some of the text below the video, it might take a second for the Youtube Video to load the first couple highlights you make, but it should speed up eventually.
note: you must highlight at least 10 characters of text to queue the video, if you are very careful, you might be able to confuse the page by highlighting text that occurs more than once in the transcript.
Hi everybody. Welcome back to another video. We’re doing this thing where when we speak at a conference and we talk about something substantial, not just questions and answers, we talk through our presentation later and put it up so people can follow along, watch the slides, and hopefully learn a little bit. So today I wanted to talk about the canonical link element. And that’s something that Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft all announced that they will support in the future at SMX West. So, the date that we had this announcement was February 12, 2009, and the funny thing about it is that Charles Darwin was born exactly 200 years ago that day.
Read the rest of this entry »Blip.fm Project: Top 30 Blip.fm Users by Number of Props
Posted by admin in Uncategorized on March 2, 2009
| username | props | blips | listeners |
|---|---|---|---|
| GR8FL | 11915 | 8013 | 5337 |
| adbert | 11784 | 10366 | 7743 |
| abarbosa | 9425 | 3312 | 3841 |
| ladypn | 9246 | 8623 | 4381 |
| by_starla | 9245 | 9863 | 6984 |
| Diordan | 8430 | 6704 | 6391 |
| threebears | 8302 | 7860 | 9236 |
| melodyofyourlife | 7945 | 6648 | 9532 |
| santamistura | 7239 | 5437 | 4747 |
| patita | 7129 | 4799 | 3613 |
| mammara | 6882 | 10029 | 9194 |
| gigia | 6847 | 6749 | 7061 |
| briangreene | 6708 | 7700 | 11442 |
| formalhaut | 6623 | 8120 | 9194 |
| evablue | 6400 | 6997 | 8276 |
| luiz_com_z | 6327 | 6804 | 3808 |
| tubilino | 5893 | 4685 | 2616 |
| daretoeatapeach | 5829 | 5487 | 8691 |
| davidwatts1978 | 5612 | 5940 | 8663 |
| antenaweb | 5206 | 5217 | 5446 |
| sheryonstone | 5131 | 3923 | 2621 |
| bendrix | 4969 | 2737 | 2920 |
| Aluciel | 4937 | 5670 | 3940 |
| Aluciel | 4937 | 5670 | 3940 |
| calamari | 4923 | 2837 | 9561 |
| DownLow | 4902 | 3248 | 5332 |
| SevenTenths | 4721 | 4327 | 2404 |
| Figgywithit | 4715 | 4276 | 3686 |
| driczz | 4580 | 3949 | 5755 |
| clarkowitz | 4440 | 4825 | 10940 |
Digg Users: The Daily Telegraph is NOT a Legit News Source
- "Man pulls out 13 of his own teeth with pliers " - Daily Mail
- "How we became powerless to stop the huge growth in lap-dance" - Daily Mail
- "Woman fails driving test 771 times" - Daily Telegraph
- "3,000 Year Old Egyptian Vase Left in Garden For 20 Years" - Daily Telegraph
In the next post I'll show you how you can rid your Digg.com of this scourge!
“Hang in there Jack” not quite hangin at all.

Hang in there Jack!
Visionary User Experience – First Despised, then Accepted
Posted by admin in Uncategorized on December 11, 2008

FUTURE FTW!
Hundreds of thousands of facebook "traditionalists" showed their disdain by creating and joining "WTF I HATE THE NEW FACEBOOK", and "GET RID OF TEH STALKER-FEED" groups in Facebook. But Facebook persisted, and now everything on Facebook revolves around this feature, and Facebook certainly hasn't lost any of its appeal.
Today, the feature has sparked a new industry, and has become so ingrained in youth culture that people have used it as a form of storytelling. "Social Media Aggregators" such as Friendfeed, have made a business out of creating "News Feeds" for users activities across multiple sites.
People have even recreated the Genesis Story as a Facebook News Feed.
2. Gmail Targeted Advertising
Just the idea of an email client from the same wunder-company that indexed the web was enough to get most geeks excited. But, when word got out that Google would be "reading our emails" and serving us targeted ads based on what they say, privacy advocates and regular users alike were up in arms. Most of the anger came out of ignorance, as non-tech savvy people found it hard to understand that computer programs would be scanning the emails, and humans would never see it. But nevertheless, it generated a great deal of press and debate, and certainly kept concerned users away.
But after the market had time to get comfortable with this new HAL-9000 advertising system, its unobtrusive display, frequent usefullness, and rare humor made it a welcome alternative to other email systems giant blinking banner ads. Gmail places targeted text ads that are often directly useful to a users immediate needs. (example below)
Also, when you purchase an item online, and the retailer might include a UPS tracking number. Voila! A link to the UPS page tracking your package shows up in the sidebar!
On the humor side, this author has a funny list of Ads that Gmail served over a year in his life.
3. Google Search-Wiki
Google recently made a famously rare change to its search results by adding "all these #$(*@ing buttons" as some disgruntled users have described it.
These #$%*ing buttons allow users to move search results around, comment on results, and even add and remove search results from a page. The changes users make are only shown when they are logged in, and they arent applied to other peoples results, but comments on results are shown publicly.
So far comments are mostly just test comments and spam, or confused Iranians, as the SearchWiki for Yahoo Mail below illustrates:
Many people are wondering: What is the point?
Good question my friend, but to that, I answer: Be Patient, let it grow on you, see what happens. This has the potential to yet again change the way we use the web. Film Galaxy Project
Posted by admin in Uncategorized on November 4, 2008
The FilmGalaxy displays data around Films, Actors, Writers, and Directors using a 3-Dimensional "Galaxy" layout. This allows for users to quickly understand 4 dimensions of data, using color, 3-axis position, and size. Explore the FilmGalaxy here.
This was created using Processing, an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions.
The data for FilmGalaxy is coming from numerous sources on the web. 

