Gizmodo and the Building of Science and Industry, Chicago (MSI) are teaming up to accompany you something amazing this bounce - the 2011 Smart Home: Blooming + Wired exhibit. As the technology accomplice for the exhibit, We've taken the technologies that change the way we live, work, love, play, anticipate and feel and congenital them in this year's Smart Home to not alone accompany Gizmodo to the affectation but aswell baptize the home as acute living. The Smart Home, a fully-functioning, eco-friendly home congenital by MSI in 2008, aswell will affection an autogenous advised with re-purposed materials; absorption the past, present and approaching to redefine what makes a house, a Home.

The Deets


• What
2011 Acute Home

• Where
The Building of Science & Industry, Chicago

57th Street and Lake Shore Drive

Chicago, IL 60637

• When
April 22, 2011 - January 8, 2012

9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

Open every day except Christmas Day

• How Much
$25 (includes building admission)

Since the home's debut, MSI has been redesigning it anniversary year to highlight the a lot of cutting-edge in blooming living, technology and gadgets. Over 250,000 building guests accept toured the affectation aback its inception. This year the affectation will run from April 22nd (Earth Day, fittingly) until January 8th, 2012. You can acquisition added advice actuality about the Smart Home exhibit and MSI.

Gizmodo is accustomed to accept been called to advice aftermath this affectation and we're captivated to be able to affectation the technology that affects our circadian lives in this absurd Smart Home. For all data about the Acute Home affectation see the 2011 Acute Home page.

Media absorbed in accoutrement the technology featured in the Acute Home can acquaintance Gawker Media PR Manager Kevin Prince, kevin@gawker.com.

For accepted Acute Home media inquiries, acquaintance Beth Boston, Building of Science and Industry at Beth.Boston@msichicago.org.

MSI SMART HOME RE-OPENS ON EARTH DAY 2011

WITH INTERIOR DESIGN BY SCOUT AND TECHNOLOGY

COURTESY OF GIZMODO

Media arrive to examination the home on April 20, 2011




CHICAGO (March 31, 2011)-Past will accommodated approaching as the Building of Science and Industry, Chicago (MSI) unveils its 2011 Acute Home: Blooming + Wired on Earth Day, April 22, 2011. This year's affectation will get a absolutely new attending with the advice of two new agitative partners-Chicago autogenous capacity abundance Scout and technology blog Gizmodo. The Acute Home exhibit-a fully-functioning, eco-friendly home congenital on the MSI's grounds-will be redesigned with a brace and their 10-year-old son in mind, and address of Scout and its buyer Larry Vodak, the home will affection altered autogenous pieces that accept been repurposed in amazing ways-a altered and fun way of recycling in the home. "Since Scout's aperture about seven years ago, we accept been abnormally adherent to award and refurbishing baddest pieces from government offices, schools, universities, courthouses and libraries-and afresh alive on their scale, accomplishment and functionality to accord them new activity in today's homes," said Larry Vodak, Scout's buyer and the Acute Home's 2011 designer. "The ambition with the Acute Home is to add these affectionate of adapted pieces and actualize a amplitude that's added functional, added absorbing and memorable- bringing calm a altered mix of items that accompany a clean, around-the-clock utility; an burghal freshness; as able-bodied as a buzz abundance and warmth.



Because the Acute Home's autogenous will not be relying on newly-made items, but rather best and "gently used" finds, the amplitude that is ultimately created will be environmentally-friendly, while aswell alms accurate actualization and affluence of acceptance to tell. Examples of Acute Home architecture cover University of Chicago class cabinets, about the backward 1940s, that accept been refurbished to serve as affected and adult kitchen cabinetry. A ample commonsensical accumulator cabinet-that spent added than 50 years in a U.S. Post appointment in Springfield, Ill.-has been adapted into a one-of-a-kind belvedere for the a lot of avant-garde of collapsed awning TVs. As well, an contrarily accepted animate chiffonier taken from a cabin on Chicago's South Side has been anxiously bare of 60-year-old paint, absolute a actual abreast animate blah finish. Items from the Museum's all-inclusive accumulating will aswell accomplish an actualization in home, including photography from Margaret Burke-White and artifacts like a gramophone, about 1900, and a "Brownie" camera, about 1920.



The autogenous artful of the Acute Home, which does focus on items from the past, will be abnormally complemented by home technologies that are actual absolutely from the future. This year's Acute Home will affection an amazing home automation that can play your custom playlist if you airing in the door, lower the shades if it gets too hot, and more. In a adapted affectation in the admiral alley office, artifacts from the MSI accumulating will be assorted with the latest-cutting bend technologies of today, address of 2011 technology accomplice Gizmodo. In the adept bath, a preproduction archetypal of the Cybertecture Mirror can appearance you the weather, the latest account for the day and is programmable with assorted applications-it can even advice you adviser your weight. A solar besom uses electrons that acknowledge with acerbic in your saliva to apple-pie your teeth, afterwards toothpaste! And at the bedside, the Ping Lamp, which divides in half, lets the brace that's afar forward an "I'm cerebration of you" message, artlessly by axis on the light.



"From new means to play, to the accoutrement that will anon plan their way into our circadian routines, the articles Gizmodo called for the Acute Home are a glimpse into the abreast future," said Joe Brown, appearance editor with Gizmodo. "We're above aflame to be partnering with the Building of Science and Industry to appearance these cutting-edge technologies to the public."



"Scout and Gizmodo accompany a alluring new activity to Acute Home: Blooming + Wired 2011," said Anne Rashford, administrator of acting exhibits at MSI. "These ally action the home a altered alloy of the best altar and groundbreaking technologies that can advice our guests reside a smarter life."



The Acute Park mural surrounding the home, afresh created and maintained with the advice of the University of Illinois Extension, will affection built-in plantings, alembic gardening, a vertical garden, and "mound planting" of potatoes, which allows you to garden just about anywhere by mounding soil. A adapted affection this year will be a "pizza garden": A annular breadth of the mural will be disconnected into "slices" in which accepted pizza capacity are planted: tomatoes, onions, peppers, basil and more. The beehives will be aback in the Acute Park this year, bearing adorable honey and announcement pollination in the garden. The home's wind turbine, amid in the surrounding landscape, will aswell advice actualize ability for the home.

About the Acute Home
The fully-functioning modular Acute Home-conceived by the Building of Science and Industry, advised by artist Michelle Kaufmann Designs™ and congenital by All American Homes® of Decatur, Ind.-was opened to the attainable in May 2008 and due to its acceptance was redesigned for 2009, 2010 and 2011. It was accustomed the appellation "Chicago's Greenest Home" afterwards a absolute analysis of the home's plans, abstracts and architecture by the City of Chicago's Chicago Blooming Homes Program. Aback its opening, the Building has accustomed added than 250,000 guests on 20-minute guided tours that advertise the ways, big and small, that humans can accomplish eco-friendly active a allotment of their lives. Some of the blooming appearance that abide year to year cover cover rooftop solar film, a wind turbine, and an autogenous that has been advised to aerate ablaze and space.

Smart Home: Blooming + Wired is a must-see affectation for anyone who wants their home, and life, to be smarter, added able and added in tune with the ambiance than it is today. This affectation is not included in accepted acceptance and requires an added timed-entry ticket. Tour times alter and are accountable to change. The tickets, which cover accepted Building admission, are $25 for adults, $24 for seniors and $15 for accouchement 3-11. City of Chicago association accept a discount. Amuse appointment msichicago.org for added advice on schedules and to acquirement tickets in advance.

Smart Home: Blooming + Wired is proudly sponsored by ComEd.

To appear the Acute Home media examination on Wednesday, April 20, 2011 amuse acquaintance Marilyn Stein at (773) 947-3133 or marilyn.stein@msichicago.org.

About the Building of Science and Industry, Chicago
The Building of Science and Industry's mission is to affect the adroit ability in anybody by presenting arresting and acute adventures that are absolute and educational. Amid at 57 th Street and Lake Shore Drive, the Building is attainable every day of the year except December 25. Regular Building hours are 9:30 a.m. until 4 p.m. every day. Extended hours for bounce breach and summer, until 5:30 p.m. anniversary day, will be offered from March 19 – April 24, as able-bodied as May 27 to Sept. 5, 2011. The Building offers calm parking and is attainable by CTA and Metra. The Building is accurate in allotment through the generosity of the humans of Chicago through the Chicago Park District. For added information, appointment the Museum's Web website at www.msichicago.org or alarm (773) 684-1414 or (800) GO-TO-MSI alfresco of the Chicago area.

About Scout
From their aperture about seven years ago, Scout has been ambience trends in bringing yesterday's appliance and accessories into today's home. Re-use is the foundation of aggregate Scout shows in their affectionate boutique on Clark Street in Chicago's Andersonville neighborhood. Whether it is athletic animate appointment desks that are hand-stripped to acknowledge the aboriginal ablaze argent finish, or a august oak academy table that is acquiescently refinished to accompany out the aboriginal aureate grain, the attending consistently feels beginning and adapted for the acute home. Known for their clean, aloof curve and abrupt materials, Scout has become the accepted in best furnishings. Scout. Welcome Home. scoutchicago.com.

About Gizmodo

Gizmodo.com is the ascendancy on the technologies that change the way we live, work, love, play, anticipate and feel. From the apprehensive accoutrement in a mechanic's belt, to the cellphones that we analysis Facebook on, to the amplitude shuttles and submarines we use to analyze the unknown, Gizmodo's amount acceptance is that the ability of technology is at the amount of the humankind's evolution-for bigger or worse. Aback its barrage in 2002 the website has accumulated over 6 actor readers through its aggregate of reporting, assessment and explanations of how tech changes aggregate about us.

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Today, a few of you will vote. Sadly, there is no Beatnik Party applicant reppin' in Congress. So we've best out 5 geek-friendly politicians to accede abrogation a blind chad for.

We're not analytical whatever abroad they angle for, or allurement you to change your politics—we're just searching at a few candidates based on their Giz-friendly credentials. (And if you're apprehensive how to vote, analysis out our adviser to your bounded voting machine.)

What Tomorrow's Elections Beggarly for Science and Technology What Tomorrow's Elections Beggarly for Science and Technology What Tomorrow's Elections Beggarly for Science and

Tuesday's midterms could beggarly added than just a accepted reshuffling of the Abode and Senate… Apprehend added Read more

How to Vote: A Adviser to Every Voting Machine in America How to Vote: A Adviser to Every Voting Machine in America How to Vote: A Adviser to Every Voting Machine in Am

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Rick Boucher (D) Virginia Rep., 9th District

Rick Boucher could anticipate iPods were powered by brownie dust and we ability still anticipate he'd be a Giz-worthy candidate. Why? His enduring campaign to action the affliction accoutrement in the Agenda Millennium Absorb Act, that admirable section of legislation that makes it actionable to avoid archetype aegis mechanisms like agenda rights management. A huge backer of fair use, he alien the FAIR USE act a few years back, which would've accomplish the DMCA beneath antic by accouterment reasonable exemptions for accepting about absorb aegis and canonizing fair use as a law. He's aswell voted yes on net neutrality and announcement bartering flight, admitting he loses some credibility for voting yes to giving telecoms attendant amnesty for warrantless wiretapping.

Russ Feingold (D) Wisconsin Senator

Russ Feingold has his easily in a lot of pots—and is angry a hotly contested election, but his administration in Congress on two issues makes him the Giz choice: His efforts to action amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act a brace years ago, the legislation that accepted telecoms attendant amnesty for warrantless wiretapping and greatly airy rules for cyberbanking surveillance. Last year, Feingold alien the JUSTICE act, which aimed to strengthen aloofness safeguards by reforming the affliction aspects of the Patriot act. The added is that he's one of the biggest proponents of net neutrality in Congress, a assumption that seems added threatened by things like the backdoor accord between Google and Verizon.

The FCC Is Probably Bowing Down to Verizon and Google on Wireless Net Neutrality The FCC Is Probably Bowing Down to Verizon and Google on Wireless Net Neutrality The FCC Is Probably Bowing Down to Verizon and Goo

The FCC says it's now cerebration about authoritative proposed net neutrality rules altered (read:… Apprehend added Read more

Barbara Boxer (D) California Senator

Barbara Boxer gives geeks a lot to like, advance over a agglomeration of abate tech issues. She alien the Jumpstart Broadband Act of 2003, which allocated added wireless spectrum for broadband, she against the FISA amendments like Russ Feingold, she's co-signed legislation for net neutrality and is a huge booster of advance in blooming activity technologies.

Ed Markey (D) Massachusetts Rep., 7th District

Ed Markey has captivated a Congressional hearing in Second Life, the first time a Congressional audition was anytime around simulcast. He's one of the top telecom wonks in Congress, accepting proceeded over the Communications, Technology and the Internet console for about two decades afore his accepted gig as armchair of the Activity and Environment Subcommittee. He was one of the above customer advocates during the digital TV transition, accepting pushed to adjournment the alteration until it was assertive beneath humans would lose their signals. As one of the added Congressmen allusive for the better boner for net neutrality, he wrote the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009, the House's above net neutrality bill, and thought the Verizon and Google accord to alter wireless net neutrality stinks as abundant we did.

Rush Holt (D) New Jersey Rep., 12th District

Rush Holt has about as abundant accepted beatnik cred as anybody in Congress: An absolute scientist, he was abettor administrator of Princeton's Plasma Physics Lab and has a solar activity apparent of his absolute own afterwards years of researching another energy. If there's annihilation we charge added of in Congress, it's nerds. Oh, and he's won Jeopardy! 5 times. In agreement of absolute technology issues, he's voted yes on net neutrality, announcement bartering amplitude flight and nanotechnology analysis funding. Did we acknowledgment the dude's been on Jeopardy!?

Those are just 5 Congresspeople we apperceive that trumpet a lot of the beatnik ideals that band up with Gizmodo's—we'd adulation to apprehend which aberrant candidates you're voting for, and why.

Photo by flickr user neotint

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Dr. Raymond Soneira of DisplayMate Technologies has fabricated it his mission to suss out the best smartphone, tablet, HDTV, and multimedia displays from the affliction with his Display Technology Shoot-Out series. Here, he tackles the differences amid the displays of the top tablets out there.

Tablets are about ample carriageable displays—handheld screens advised for calmly examination agreeable and images anywhere you wish while untethered. For tablets the affectation is the alone a lot of big-ticket and important accouterments basic because it determines the superior of the beheld acquaintance for every appliance on the tablet. In this actual hot ultra-competitive class an outstanding affectation is the alone best way for manufacturers to accomplish their tablets angle out from the antagonism – decidedly for Android based accessories that accept about identical OS. On the cast side, acid corners, costs and superior for the affectation is a austere aberration because it after-effects in sub-standard angel and account superior for aggregate that runs on the tablet—we accept one archetype here.

In all of the Display Technology Shoot-Outs we yield affectation superior actual actively and accommodate all-embracing cold side-by-side comparisons of the displays based on abundant lab abstracts and all-encompassing examination tests. The abstracts and discussions in this assay commodity are fatigued from the alone online writing for anniversary book in our Affectation Technology Shoot-Out alternation starting with the iPad 2, the Motorola Xoom and Asus Transformer. We will be consistently abacus the best new book contenders – next up will be the Acer Iconia and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.

Results Highlights

In this After-effects area we accommodate abbreviate allusive Highlights for anniversary book affectation based on absolute lab abstracts and all-encompassing side-by-side beheld comparisons application assay photos, assay images and assay patterns. We aboriginal altercate some Common Issues and shortcomings and again accomplish some cold affectation predictions (and suggestions) for the next bearing of tablets including an assay of several accepted rumors. The Comparison Table beneath summarizes the lab abstracts in the afterward categories: Screen Reflections, Brightness and Contrast, Colors and Intensities, Viewing Angles, Display Backlight Ability Consumption, and Running Time on Battery.

Common Issues

First, all of these tablets accept ample shinny mirror-like screens that are acceptable abundant to use for claimed grooming. Think of it as one beneath affair you charge to backpack – but it's in fact a actual bad affection that requires college awning accurateness and added array ability to account the reflected light, and it aswell causes eye strain. The beyond book awning admeasurement makes it harder to position yourself and the awning to abstain ablaze reflections. Second, all of these tablets accept a bargain Blush Gamut that leads to images with bargain blush saturation. It's an advised tradeoff fabricated to access awning brightness, ability ability and array run time. Third, all of these tablets accept a aciculate abatement in Accurateness and Adverse with Examination Angle. This is a cogent affair alone if assorted admirers are watching a book but may aswell crave a alone eyewitness to anxiously acclimatize the book orientation. Fourth, all of the accepted 1280x800 Android 3.1 Tablets accept alone 1280x752 accessible pixels because 48 pixels are aloof for the arrangement bar with the aeronautics buttons. Finally, Android 3.1 continues with a abominable Gallery viewer for photos and images that provides 16-bit blush candy up to 24-bits with ailing implemented dithering. It's about time that gets fixed…

Apple iPad 2

The iPad 2 has an accomplished display, virtually identical in achievement to the absorbing iPhone 4 Retina Display, with a somewhat college pixel resolution but a abundant lower pixel body of 132 ppi due to its abundant beyond awning size. The iPad 2 IPS LCD affectation is adequately able-bodied calibrated and delivers ablaze images with accomplished contrast, analytic authentic colors and actual acceptable Examination Angle achievement with baby blush accouterment but a ample abatement in Brightness, which is the case even for the best LCDs. A aloft shortcoming is a bargain Blush Gamut, but the iPad 2 improves on-screen angel blush assimilation by steepening its acuteness arrangement – a simple ambush the added displays abort to implement.

Asus Transformer

The Asus Transformer aswell has an IPS LCD like the iPad 2. It's not as ablaze or as able-bodied calibrated as the iPad 2 but it still delivers actual acceptable achievement including actual acceptable contrast, analytic authentic colors and actual acceptable Examination Angle achievement like the iPad 2. But the Transformer awning has a 66 percent college ambient ablaze reflectance than the iPad 2. It has an 18-bit blush display, but produces 24-bit blush by application ambivalent (except in the Android Gallery eyewitness area there is 16-bit blush with ambivalent as discussed above).

Motorola Xoom

The affectation on the Motorola Xoom is a lower achievement LCD than on the added tablets, circuitous by poor branch calibration. Colors and blush assimilation were abundant worse than the added displays. The Xoom awning has 49 percent college ambient ablaze reflectance than the iPad 2 and the aberration with Examination Angle is awful. The Xoom aswell has a Dynamic Backlight that varies the awning accurateness in a appropriate appearance – it boring dims the awning based on the Average Account Level down to about 60 percent and again just stops. It makes dim images dimmer – it's counterproductive and just aberrant affectation behavior… The added Book displays accept accepted Backlights, which don't alter the accurateness with account content.

And the Champ Is...

For the accepted set of tablets the iPad is the ablaze champ in every category, which is somewhat hasty because it was the aboriginal book to barrage and the one that after competitors knew they had to exhausted – but as of yet none accept succeeded. Next is the Asus Transformer, which delivers actual acceptable achievement beyond the lath and comes in a solid second, all the added absorbing because it is $100 cheaper than the iPad 2 and $200 cheaper than the Motorola Xoom. And finally, the Motorola Xoom comes in a abroad third and endure abode – it's not a abhorrent affectation but absolutely decidedly beneath the affectation superior of the iPad 2 and Asus Transformer. This is all the added hasty because the Xoom is by far the a lot of big-ticket Tablet, and Motorola ahead included an outstanding affectation in the aboriginal Motorola Droid Smartphone – so they already knew how to bear a abundant display. This time it seems they just acclimatized for a bargain low-end ailing calibrated display. For data on all of the tablets see the Comparison Table below.

Click to embiggen chart. For added data details, measurements, all-embracing explanations and assay see advertence the links aloft at DisplayMate.

This commodity has been republished with permission from DisplayMate.com.

About the Author
Dr. Raymond Soneira is President of DisplayMate Technologies Corporation of Amherst, New Hampshire, which produces video calibration, evaluation, and analytic online writing for consumers, technicians, and manufacturers. See www.displaymate.com. He is a assay scientist with a career that spans physics, computer science, and television arrangement design. Dr. Soneira acquired his Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from Princeton University, spent 5 years as a Long-Term Member of the apple acclaimed Institute for Avant-garde Study in Princeton, addition 5 years as a Principal Investigator in the Computer Systems Assay Laboratory at AT&T Bell Laboratories, and has aswell designed, tested, and installed blush television advertisement accessories for the CBS Television Network Engineering and Development Department. He has authored over 35 assay online writing in accurate journals in physics and computer science, including Accurate American. If you accept any comments or questions about the article, you can acquaintance him at dtso@displaymate.com.

About DisplayMate Technologies

DisplayMate Technologies specializes in avant-garde algebraic affectation technology optimizations and attention analytic accurate affectation affection and calibrations to bear outstanding angel and account superior and accurateness – while accretion the able beheld Adverse Ratio of the affectation and bearing a college calibrated accurateness than is accessible with acceptable arrangement methods. This aswell decreases affectation ability requirements and increases the array run time in adaptable displays. This commodity is a lite adaptation of our accelerated accurate assay of smartphone and adaptable displays – afore the allowances of our avant-garde algebraic DisplayMate Affectation Optimization Technology, which can actual or advance abounding of the deficiencies – including college calibrated brightness, ability efficiency, able awning contrast, account superior and blush and gray arrangement accurateness beneath both ablaze and dim ambient light, and abundant more. Our avant-garde accurate optimizations can accomplish lower amount panels attending as acceptable or bigger than added big-ticket college achievement displays. For added advice on our technology see the Summary description of our Adaptive Variable Metric Affectation Optimizer AVDO. If you are a affectation or artefact architect and wish our ability and technology to about-face your affectation into a amazing one to beat your antagonism again Contact DisplayMate Technologies to apprentice more.

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Last year Gizmodo and the Building of Science and Industry, Chicago partnered up to abbey the technology for the Smart Home: Green + Wired. The display afresh re-opened for 2012 with new accoutrement and a few our admired new gadgets. MSI did an absurd job in 2011 creating a absolutely Smart Home that we admired we could reside in, and this year's brace is no different.

GIZMODO at 2011 Acute Home - This is it! GIZMODO at 2011 Acute Home - This is it! GIZMODO at 2011 Acute Home - This is it!

As you may accept heard, Gizmodo and the Building of Science and Industry, Chicago accept partnered to… Apprehend added Read more

The display isn't artlessly building items abaft glass; it's a adequate and absolutely activity house. Specifically, it was advised with a ancestors of three in mind— two parents and an astronomy-obsessed 10-year-old. From its energy-efficient acrimonious beaming subfloors and Low-E windows to its automatic concealment arrangement and AMX automation system, the Acute Home is an apotheosis of adeptness and intelligence. What's more, the 2012 Acute Home display celebrates revival, featuring a accomplished new set of re-used and refurbished accoutrement from Chicago home autogenous abundance Scout. This trifecta of ideals—efficiency, intelligence and revival—are illustrated in anniversary allowance and aspect of the Smart Home.

We adulation the abode itself, but what we're a lot of aflame about are the new gadgets.

In the kitchen resides the SousVide Supreme, a claimed admired amidst the home cooks at Gizmodo. Why do we adulation it? Because you can baker a steak with this machine, and it will be absolute every time. Using vacuum-sealed pouches, the SousVide cooks your aliment in a baptize oven captivated at a absolute temperature for hours—sometimes even days—which translates to authentic deliciousness. We labeled the SousVide as the microwave's high-tech successor, and for that we anticipate it's acute abundant for the celebrated countertop of this year's Smart Home exhibit.

SousVide Supreme Review: How To Baker From the Inside Out SousVide Supreme Review: How To Baker From the Inside Out SousVide Supreme Review: How To Baker From the Insi

Sous vide is French for affable in a vacuum, agreement closed meat or veggies in baptize captivated at an… Apprehend added Read more

We outfitted the home appointment with a Lytro Camera. Let's be frank: This apparatus feels like the future. It's not generally we appointment technology that's really, absolutely new, and for us the Lytro cam—with its adeptness to focus pictures afterwards they are taken—was just that. Alongside the Lytro Camera on the home office's board we've got something magical, a haptic acclimate diviner that lets you in fact feel tomorrow's temperature. The Cryoscope advised by Robb Godshaw was created from a calefaction sink, cooling fan, and a Peltier element. All the locations are encased in an glossy aluminum cube which heats up or cools down to reflect tomorrow's predicted air temperature. A simple web app lets you specify your location, and on the base of the cube a red and dejected black LED provides a beheld cue to the predicted temp.

Lytro Light Field Camera: This Is What New Feels Like Lytro Light Field Camera: This Is What New Feels Like Lytro Light Field Camera: This Is What New Feels L

It isn't actual generally we appointment technology that is really, absolutely new. PCs, cellphones, the… Apprehend added Read more

Haptic Acclimate Diviner Lets You Feel Tomorrow's Temperature Haptic Acclimate Diviner Lets You Feel Tomorrow's Temperature Haptic Acclimate Diviner Lets You Feel Tomorrow&#

The Sun? Clouds? Little bouncing lines? These cryptic icons acclimated by meteorologists alone serve to… Apprehend added Read more

• What
Smart Home 2012

• Where
The Chicago Building of Science & Industry

57th Street and Lake Shore Drive

Chicago, IL 60637

• When
April 19, 2012 - January 6, 2013

9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

Open every day except Thanksgiving and Christmas

• Cost

This display requires an added admission with a defined access time.

$8 adults/seniors | $2 accouchement (3-11)

There are a few added accessories we added to this year's Smart Home, but we don't wish to blemish the abruptness of seeing the display in person. If you're in Chicago stop by the Building of Science and Industry to see the 2012 Acute Home, but be warned they will not let you reside in the house. We already tried.

The 2012 Acute Home: Green + Wired display runs from April 29, 2012 through January 6, 2013. You can acquisition added advice actuality about the 2012 Acute Home exhibit and MSI, Chicago.

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Just accepting a job in this abridgement is difficult enough. Accepting one with a avant-garde arts amount is artlessly masochistic. Don't absorb bisected a decade and bags of dollars alone to accompany the blow of the English majors busking in a subway. Instead, brainwash yourself with these valuable, respectable, and absolutely chargeless online resources.*

MIT Opencourseware

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a allotment of the a lot of a lot of aristocratic and absolute universities in the US and has produced some of the finest abstruse minds of the accomplished century—from Buzz Aldrin to Wesley A. Clark. But MIT isn't all just Aerospace, Abstracts Science, and Electrical Engineering, apperception you. Its Humanities programs accept accustomed the apple the brand of Noam Chomsky, Steve Altes, and James Woods. And acknowledgment to MIT Opencourseware, you can accept the aforementioned top-flight apprenticeship as these brainy giants for chargeless after accepting to abide a Massachusetts winter.

Opencourseware offers added than 2100 absolute MIT classes in about every acreage offered by the university. Sure you've got the accepted "hard science" offerings like Civil and Environmental Engineering, Aeronautics and Astronautics, and Abstracts Science and Engineering but that involves lots and lots of math. Instead, you can besom up on some "soft science" like History, Women's and Gender Studies, or Political Science—even Athletics, Concrete Apprenticeship and Recreation. These courses about cover the all-important advisory materials, assignments, and exams, admitting it does alter by course.

iTunesU

Sitting in cartage during morning blitz hour gives a man time to think. It aswell gives a man time to accept to audio podcasts from the world's top bookish institutions on about any accountable imaginable. Accept to Yale assistant Shelly Kagan address on the Philosophy of Death, apprehend NASA boffin Nicholas Johnson address on Orbital Debris Management and Risk Mitigation, or sit in on Daniel Stokols from UC Irvine discussing the impacts of bottleneck during an Environmental Psychology course. These lectures are accessible in the iTunesU administration at the iTunes Store, and abounding aswell cover address notes.

Academic Earth

The best allotment about an Internet-based education? Not accepting to annoyance your ass out of bed to get to morning lectures. Instead, Academic Earth has teamed up with Yale, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, MIT, UC Berkeley, and Dartmouth to accommodate these Universities' lectures online. Accept to some of the nation's best advisers allege on Humanistic capacity like Anthropology, Communications, and Environmental Studies. Try concrete sciences like Biomedical Engineering, Systems Architecture, Astronomy, and Negotiations. Admitting not as complete in agreement of coursework accessories as Opencourseware, Bookish Earth's offerings accommodate a quick, on-demand education—like TED Talks but not as self-serving.

Khan Academy

As with any BA, afore you can activate focused abstraction on your major, you have to aboriginal complete your accepted education—introductory maths, avant-garde civics, and some accepted sciences. The Khan Academy offers these axiological courses—Algebra, Macroeconomics, Chemistry—as able-bodied as added avant-garde fare, like Cryptography, Cosmology, and Finance. The website even appearance educational assets that will get you into a absolute amount affairs with acquaint on how to ace the SAT, GMAT, and California Standards Test.

National Repository of Online Courses

The NROC is an online database of coursework, contributed by arch US bookish institutions, with a able focus on the a lot of axiological architecture blocks of a academy education—that is, all the getting you forgot from top school. Algebra 1, Academy Prep Physics, and a account of AP courses are all accessible for free, as able-bodied as accepted apprenticeship capacity like Non-Majors Biology, Introductory Calculus I, and Statistics for Social Sciences. While you will not acquisition video lectures here, NROC offers complete and all-encompassing courses including addendum and homework.

Open Culture

Opencourseware and the Khan Academy may accommodate capital advance instruction, but Open Culture provides the borderline cultural acquaintance to transform you into a ample academic. Links actuality advance you to 500 chargeless courses in Literature and Philosophy, alongside Hitchcock movies and blur noir.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Can't acquaint your Cassirer from your Confuscius? Not a botheration with the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The SEP appearance expansive, up-to-date, and authentic entries maintained by experts in the acreage and vetted by the Stanford Editorial Board afore getting appear on all things Philosophic.

Internet Public Library

The website formatting ability be rough, but the assets that the Internet Public Library can bare are unparalleled. The IPL is a aggregate of the Internet Public Library (IPL) and the Librarians' Internet Index (LII) websites, hosted by Drexel University's Academy of Advice Science & Technology. From Gender and Sexuality to Python Programming—not to acknowledgment the all-embracing accumulating of newspapers and magazines from about the world—the IPL can absolute you to the advice you charge like a agenda librarian.

Teoria

Math may get all the celebrity for getting the "universal language," but its accordant acquired is a abutting second. Music theory, a basic of the avant-garde arts education, explores the automated underpinnings of music itself. Teoria offers a assembly of online tutorials, exercises, and assay of both avant-garde and classical agreement for anyone accommodating to listen.

*None of this plan will get you an absolute academy degree, which, in some job interviews, is still admired as a 18-carat credential.

Image: carroteater / Shutterstock

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I didn't apperceive Aaron Swartz personally. We never spoke, not in getting nor by email.

Yet, his suicide today has larboard a big aperture in the apple for me. I begin my own anguish baffling. I didn't apperceive the guy. Why did I, abysmal down, feel such a abandoned in the world? The acumen was: I acquainted a attenuate affiliation to Aaron because of his thoughts and actions. An airy affiliation that alone existed at the bookish level, not a amusing one, through his writing, technology, politics, and his alertness to appearance humanness.

Aaron Swartz's adverse afterlife didn't alone affect those who knew him personal, but aswell all of us accustomed with his activist efforts and plan at large. Mark Bao explores his own acknowledgment to Swartz's abortive departure.

His autograph and thoughts affiliated with me, abnormally his Raw Nerve alternation on how to become bigger at getting human. His autograph showed me that added humans were cerebration about the aforementioned things I was, in agreement of the "backstory" of getting human, the inner. I acquainted like I was on the aforementioned amicableness with addition animal that was cerebration and devoting time to these close pursuits.

His cipher and contributions to software were inspiring, in Python, RSS, and elsewhere. Relentlessly authoritative advance and cerebration about the macro bold of software and technology. Aforementioned wavelength.

His JSTOR incident? Not actually the aforementioned wavelength. But angry for accelerating behavior in government, liberating advice in science and law, application the closer-to-democracy apparatus of the Internet to do that? Absolutely.

His writings on depression showed that, like all of us, he was human, and, like all of us, he suffered. But few of us appearance vulnerability and humanity. Many of us adumbrate abaft facades of "how are you?" "great!", animated photos, and upbeat Facebook statuses, preferring not to allocution about what actually goes on central our heads.

Here's a guy who I acquainted a abysmal affiliation to, because we were on the aforementioned amicableness – through aboveboard assuming humanity, a adherence to convalescent oneself, application technology for change, and alteration the macro political environment. There aren't a lot of humans that I feel a multi-faceted bookish affiliation with, but Aaron was one of them.

And admitting not alive him at all, his afterlife larboard me activity a abandoned in the world. Because the apple absent a ablaze person, but aswell because the apple absent anyone whose account I believed so abundant in, whose adeptness to put those thoughts into activity was admirable, whose alertness to appearance vulnerability and humanness was something I feel like the apple badly needs added of.

But acceptable generally comes from bad. And the good, in this case, is the ability that we should aim to affix with added people, on a added wavelength. We should all be alive relentlessly to put our animosity into words and into action, and not be abashed to appearance that, yes, we are in fact human, and yes, we do accept things we actually accept in but haven't yet acted upon, and we do accept moments area we feel on top of the apple and aswell the moments area we feel actually hopeless.

And we should all be alive to accomplish the a lot of of our time in the world, to accomplish abiding we don't squander our a lot of bound resource, and instead aerate it, to affix to and affect added lives in this world.

We ability not all be socially connected, but the plan that we do connects us as a community. And our aggregate plan makes history.

Thanks, Aaron.

Image by Peretz Partensky/Flickr

Mark Bao is a 20-year-old startup founder, currently traveling the apple and alive on software that helps humans body habits. He writes about life, behavioral science, philosophy, design, and added capacity pertaining to technology, the brain, and altruism on his blog.

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"Cockroach Controlled Adaptable Robot" (Hertz, 2005)

Interview/Article by Jonah Brucker-Cohen

In today's rapidly alteration agenda world, the charge for beastly (or animal) action to ascendancy abstruse accessories and machines is acceptable outdated. With advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automatic sensor systems, we are abutting a approaching that ability actually be "out of our control" or "autonomous." Examining this approaching abnormality through the eyes of the planet's a lot of circuitous and abounding creatures: insects and amphibians, is Irvine, California-based, Canadian artist, Garnet Hertz. Hertz's plan explores the acceptance that admitting technology's accretion ability from beastly or beastly intervention, there is still a allotment of us that wants some control. From implanting a web server into a asleep frog whose limbs can be angry to "move" by participants over the Internet in "Experiments in Galvanism", to putting a reside Madagascan hissing Cockroach aloft a adapted trackball to ascendancy a three wheeled apprentice in "Cockroach Controlled Adaptable Robot", Hertz creates projects that attack to claiming and deconstruct these notions of abstruse advance over-stepping beastly jurisdiction. Gizmodo batten to Hertz about his intricate animal-machine-hybrids and his all-embracing appearance on whether or not abstruse determinism may be influencing the not-so-distant future.

Interview, images, and video afterwards the jump ...

Name: Garnet Hertz
Age:32
Education: MFA, Arts Computation Engineering - University of California Irvine, Critical Access Emphasis - University of California Irvine, In progress: PhD, Visual Studies (Media Access / History) - University of California Irvine.
Affiliation: Analysis Fellow, California Institute of Telecommunications and
Information Technology

Exhibitions: Ars Electronica (Linz), Siggraph (Los Angeles), ArtBots (Dublin), STRP (Eindhoven), Walter Phillips Arcade (Banff), Istanbul Contemporary Art Museum (Istanbul), La Biennale de Montreal (Montreal)
URL:http://www.conceptlab.com

GIZMODO: Your activity "Cockroach Controlled Adaptable Robot" puts a Madagascan hissing cockroach aloft a adapted trackball to ascendancy a three wheeled robot. Why is this transference of ascendancy from agenda / beastly apparatus to insect ability important to you?

GH: This activity was aggressive by a amount of altered things, including cerebration about biologically aggressive ("biomimetic") technologies and aswell seeing and cerebration about accurate and aesthetic abstracts in bio-hybrid/robotic systems. In acknowledgment to biomimetic technologies, putting a accurate insect at the ascendancy of a apprentice is meant to be a little bit of a antic or conceivably the analytic cessation of biomimetics. Biomimetic technology looks against biological systems as things that break circuitous real-world problems. Aural the acreage of robotics, the cockroach is a acceptable archetypal for a adaptable apprentice because it is robust, has no centralized brain, has almost low "megahertz," and is physically able-bodied engineered to cross difficult terrain. Because of this, the cockroach and added insects affect analysis in robotics: there are at atomic a dozen appear robotics-related projects that are aggressive by cockroaches. (An archetype can be apparent at http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/s...) Placing a accurate cockroach at the centermost of a robot, then, is array of like saying: "If the cockroach (and biology) is so great, why not actually use the absolute thing?"

"Cockroach Controlled Adaptable Robot" - video - (Hertz, 2005)

However, if actually application biology, you anon ascertain the aberration amid analysis and a archetypal of biology: analysis is unpredictable, lazy, and temperamental. Application analysis as a acting for a computer can highlight some key differences amid the two realms. I had aswell apparent the plan of Ken Rinaldo a while ago, and absolutely admired his projects application Betta angry angle to ascendancy mechanisms. Agnate to this, I like Stelarc's work, but don't accede with his basal apriorism that the physique is obsolete. I had apparent science-oriented works, like Holzer and Shimoyama's "Robo-Roach" project, in which they built-in stimulators into the antennae and cerci of cockroaches to acquiesce them to be accidentally controlled. However, instead of accepting technology ascendancy a cockroach, I anticipation it would be added absorbing to alter the arrangement and try to accept the cockroach ascendancy the technology... added forth the curve of Ken Rinaldo.

"Posthuman Arrangement #1: Cockroach with Wireless Video" (Hertz, 2003)

GIZMODO: The "Posthuman Arrangement #1:Cockroach with Wireless Video" attaches a video camera to the aback of a cockroach in an attack to appraise the abstraction of "Posthumanism" (or the transference of beastly anatomy through abstruse means). What was your ultimate ambition with this activity and why did you accept a cockroach as the carrier agent?

GH: This was a adequately simple activity that began by cerebration about the appellation "posthumanism." Absolutely literally, my thoughts were that insects, abnormally cockroaches, were acceptable post-humans: afterwards we've asleep anniversary added in the war on agitation (or some added angelic crusade) bacilli like cockroaches would accomplish acceptable breed to humans. The activity was about just authoritative a baby hotlink amid humans, non-humans, and the appellation posthuman. Cockroaches are aswell something that bodies allegedly like to watch: a adopted species. Putting an insect in ascendancy of technology is, about speaking, absolutely absorbing to observe. In the case of the "Cockroach Controlled Adaptable Robot" I anticipate bodies are absorbed in watching the apprentice because it — like Natalie Jeremijenko's "Feral Robotic Dogs," conceivably — makes something clear that usually isn't legible. In Jerimijenko's work, baneful decay in accessible spaces is fabricated clear through the advancement of a robot. In my project, the intentions of an insect that bodies usually wish to anon drove is fabricated clear through a robot. Although Jerimijenko's plan is abundant added socially engaged, I anticipate concrete advancement of an article through absolute amplitude is a acceptable architecture to plan with: it's a architecture that's accepted by accouchement and grandparents. Bodies army to the abuse affair and assume to be absorbed in addition out whether the cockroach is in acquainted ascendancy of the robot, whether it understands its abstruse feedback/VR system, or whether it's getting controlled by the technology. It's a mini-diorama of the debates of abstruse determinism, perhaps.

"Experiments in Galvanism: Frog with Built-in Webserver" (Hertz, 2003)

GIZMODO: The "Experiments in Galvanism: Frog with Built-in Webserver" activity examines the astriction if analysis meets abstruse imperialism, as online visitors can actuate movements in the asleep frog's legs by beat on them through a website. Why is this affiliation important to you and what was the advised ascendancy allegory for online company interaction?

GH: This activity started by analytic at two things in parallel: the actualization of electricity and the actualization of the Internet. The advertising and abstruseness of electricity, as explored by Luigi Galvani and his abstracts with jumping frog legs, led to belief about electricity getting the "fluid of life." This ambiguity about the average of electricity led to assorted forms of speculation, arch to works like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein with electricity traveling as far as re-animating the dead. I see new media forms in a agnate fashion, including the Internet advertising of the 90s and all-over accretion advertising of this decade. In an attack to accompany some of this being together, I brought the Galvanic frog calm with the Internet in a "ubiquitous" anatomy factor. The aftereffect — hopefully — is something that plays up and downgrades abstruse advertising accompanying while stacking Galvani in a layered ambience of advice technology, i.e. the cyborg and biotechnology. An abreast affair in this activity relates to my longstanding absorption in arena with a bifold audience: online and in-gallery. In this project, online users physically actuate the in-gallery work, which is a affair I've been alive in back 1995.

"Fly with Built-in Webserver" (Hertz, 2001)

GIZMODO: "Fly With Built-in Webserver" re-examines the commonalities of the circadian housefly through amalgam a arrangement interface into its body. By abacus communications capabilities to this common insect and acceptance online visitors to ascendancy LEDs on the fly's body, you are putting a new circuit on the age-old "fly on the wall" anecdote. What was your ultimate ambition with this activity and how important is the fly as aerial agent in the equation?

GH: This activity began as a abstruse analysis into actual small-scale web servers. Afterwards some searching, I begin a cilia of developers that were aggravating to body "the world's aboriginal web server," and the declared champ was Fredric White, who congenital a web server application a matchead-sized dent from Fairchild. He had aswell congenital a potato-powered web server, and this beck of development began my thoughts into the abeyant of a web server as a concrete article aural a arcade installation. Afterwards a lot of headache, I assuredly got one of my own "world's smallest" web servers running, and back it was so tiny, I anticipation a domiciliary fly would be a acceptable attribute to backpack this atomic technology: it was a small, all-over pest. In abounding of my projects, I'm not aggravating to present "useful" technology to humans, [instead] I'm added absorbed in exploring how new technology could be fictionally accompanying with underdogs of the beastly kingdom: flies, worms, cockroaches, frogs, etc. Building fabulous technologies for beastly underdogs is a way to briefly abstain the human-based angle that permeates abstruse development. Although there are accessible slippages of ascendancy amid the animal, human, and technological, the underdog — at atomic — provides an alternating angle for examination sociotechnical change.

GIZMODO: What projects are you currently alive on? How are they agnate or altered than your accomplished projects?

GH: I accept been alive on accomplishing added autograph lately: artwork is the best at authoritative bull allegorical statements and accompanying exploring assorted fields of history, acquaintance and emotion. On the added hand, I see autograph added like accomplishing surgery: you can carve up a page into an altercation that can be added precise, positioned and articulated. I aswell see huge and absorbing caverns of history, access and art that abridgement a appear voice. Against this end, I'm because arrest the "Dead Media Project" — a activity manifesto'd by Bruce Sterling in 1995 in acknowledgment to the advertising and actual benightedness of the "new media" aberration of that age, abnormally columnist advantage of CD-ROMs, the Internet, and multimedia. The basal abstraction is to [examine] bootless or asleep forms of advice as a apparatus to attending at sociotechnological change and hype, i.e. to appearance "new" media as a connected process. Analytic at abandoned forms of media is a way to footfall about the accepted media-suspects (film, gramophone, telephone, television, Internet) and to access a area that is not usually explored. [This approach] has the abeyant to say a lot about amusing aspirations, advice and technology. This is a abiding project, and I don't apprehend annihilation that I do on this foreground will be arresting for a amount of years. In the meantime, I'm assuming my Cockroach Controlled Adaptable Apprentice and rolling out incremental improvements to it. I don't accept any big affairs for a new hardware-based activity appropriate now: I'm planning on starting plan on something this fall.

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A new hybrid ability plant to be congenital in Turkey will amalgamate a acceptable gas-fired beef agent with solar thermal ability and wind power, according to GE. It's a footfall against amalgam renewable sources into the acceptable ability grid, application beef and mirrors.

The solar basic is a acreage of sun-tracking mirrors that will focus sunlight on a belfry to aftermath steam, which will be fed into the beef agent to access the plant's output. A baby wind acreage affiliated to the bulb will accommodate addition 22 megawatts of power.

The bulb will aftermath 522 megawatts in total, with 450 of that advancing from the accustomed gas plant, so its renewable portfolio is not absolutely robust. But the absolute accretion may be in the affluence with which wind and solar are getting added to the ability grid. Instead of localized solar arrays, or abroad behemoth wind farms, the renewable sources are getting added to a traditional-style ability plant. The capricious systems can allotment a ascendancy centermost as able-bodied as access to the grid, which can accomplish them cheaper and easier to integrate. GE says it can cut the amount of a solar thermal arrangement in half, according to Technology Review.

The accustomed gas basic aswell smooths out the airheadedness problems inherent in wind energy. When it's not blowing, accustomed gas will accomplish beef to circuit the turbines.

The solar thermal technology comes from a baby aggregation alleged eSolar, which uses bags of small, pre-fabricated mirrors alleged heliostats to reflect sunlight against a receiver, which uses the calefaction to accomplish steam. Algorithms automatically clue and focus the sun's rays, according to a news absolution from GE.

The gas agent is a new architecture - GE apparent it endure ages - and the aggregation says the bulb will be 69 percent efficient, added than bifold the ability amount of added accustomed gas ability plants. The technology is advised for countries that use 50 hertz electricity, Technology Review credibility out - the US uses 60 hertz, so it's not bright whether this could plan on our soil.

GE is set to breach arena after this year and the bulb should be operational by 2015, the aggregation says. [Technology Review]

Popular Science is your wormhole to the future. Reporting on what's new and what's next in science and technology, we bear the approaching now.

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Prosthetic Ass (Latteier, 2000)

Interview/Article by Jonah Brucker-Cohen

In the apple of aesthetic interventions into accepted technology, projects that accomplish us catechism how we absorb and use agenda accessories are generally those that advance our attention. Application this assumption as a starting point, Toronto, Ontario-based artist, Amos Latteier creates plan that explores the lighter ancillary of technology. Poking fun at aggregate from accumulated software presentations with his PowerPoint performances to creating homebrew prosthetic limbs with the Prosthetic Ass , his plan examines the subtleties of DIY ability and the abeyant affecting appulse of simple devices. Re-purposing customer electronics in adroit ways, his project, Calculator Haikus , creates balladry from backward calculator displays to accent how a antic access can generally crop abrupt results. On the software side, his analytical PowerPoint lectures apply the banal presentation software to actualize cool relationships amid eyewitness and speaker. Gizmodo bent up with Latteier to altercate his aesthetic practice, aesthetic philosophy, and aim to animate balmy applesauce into affiliated teaching methodologies and banal software and hardware. Interview and photos afterwards the jump...

Name: Amos Latteier
Age: 35
Education: BA Brown University, alone out of a MFA affairs at SFSU
Affiliation: absolute artist
URL:http://www.latteier.com/

GIZMODO: How did you aboriginal become absorbed in architectonics automatic objects?

AL: I like to advise myself things and to experiment. That said, I am not a craftsman, and I'm not actual acceptable at architectonics things. Like a lot of people, I accept a lot of brainless ideas, but what makes me altered from a lot of humans is that I sometimes accept the time and activity to try and chase those account up. A lot of of the machines that I've congenital accept the acidity of amusing and low-tech top academy science projects. In accession to architectonics machines, I aswell do PowerPoint performances. In both practices I am fatigued to account of teaching and learning, humor, and an cool and optimistic inventiveness.

GIZMODO: Your project, "The Prosthetic Ass", (which uses a chainsaw motor as a walking aid) is an absorbing animadversion on the use of electrical accessories as beastly aids in accessible space. What were you aggravating to accomplish with the project?

AL: This activity is based on a animation depicting a automatic "prosthetic ass" in the 1978 book on cybernetics, "Robots On Your Doorstep: A Book About Thinking Machines". The animation bidding to me the action and applesauce of a walking cybernetic backpack. I aswell admired the pun of ass as donkey and ass as base . I capital to see if such a apparatus could be built, and what would appear if the pun was fabricated physical. It angry out to be a alarming and ungainly apparatus that couldn't absolutely backpack abundant weight. However it did accomplish a big burst at the science fair area I aboriginal demoed it. Happily it didn't aching anyone.

500 lb Potato Array (Latteier, 2000)

GIZMODO: With "500 lb. Potato Battery", you absorbed up 500 lb. account of the vegetables to a baby complete system. What was the catalyst abaft this activity and did it in actuality action the way you meant it to?

AL: For this project, I took a acclaimed brand academy science agreement and blew it up to a huge scale. Originally I capital to use the potatoes to calefaction oil to accomplish French fries, but I couldn't get about abundant activity out of them for that. I concluded up accepting them accomplish complete if a acquaintance offered to backpack my activity about in the aback of a U Haul truck. Accepting the potatoes accomplish complete angry out to accurately accompany the acquaintance of exploring the potatoes in the amid amplitude of the aback of the truck. One botheration with the activity was that the electrical access amid the potatoes were actual delicate, so if the barter hit a cavern I had to absorb a continued time award shorts and acclimation the wiring. Another sad allotment of the activity is that the potatoes were rendered inedible by getting acclimated as a battery, so I couldn't eat them at the end of the project.

Call of the Wild (Latteier, 2004)

GIZMODO: In "Call of the Wild", you were attempting to use the corpuscle buzz as an enabling technology for audio attributes tours. How important is the use of adaptable accessories in accustomed environments?

AL: This activity has added anticipation abaft it than some of the others that I've done. I adulation pigeons and added burghal wildlife and I capital to actualize a activity to advice humans apprentice about and acknowledge these animals. I aswell capital to abode the means in which humans and animals are affiliated by aberrant calm beastly history and accustomed history. Corpuscle phones were a abundant best for a few reasons. Corpuscle phones are actual agnate to audio bout machines. Abounding humans already accept them, so this activity fabricated use of technology after acute me to body anything. Finally, corpuscle phones are commonly acclimated to yield humans abroad from their surroundings, so it was fun to actualize a way to use them to affix humans to their environment. You can accept to the audio tours on my web site.

Calculator Haikus (Latteier, 2000)

GIZMODO: "Calculator Haikus" takes the simple affectation of the calculator and makes haikus from the upside down display. What are you aggravating to say about the artlessness of technology?

AL: This activity comes from my memories of spelling HELL (7734) and BOOBIES (5318008) application calculators in average school. I wondered what added words could be spelled, so I wrote a actual simple computer affairs to analysis the dictionary. It turns out that there are about 100 words. Given this aberrant and baby vocabulary, I wondered what could be written. The accessible best of argument was haiku, back they are so short. The activity explores what happens if you advance a brainless calculator ambush as far as it can go. I absolutely adore the fun means that humans can abusage accustomed technologies.

30 Minute Hovercraft (Latteier, 2000)

GIZMODO: 30 Minute Hovercraft was an agreement in architectonics a hovercraft from agenda and a exhaustion in beneath an hour. What was your catalyst for architectonics this project?

AL: This activity is basically just a top academy science activity presented as art. In fact, I didn't originally anticipate of it as art. At aboriginal it was just something fun do to with my roommate's boutique vac. At the time I lived in a barn so there was lots of allowance to ride a hovercraft. Then I bought a blade blower and started demography the hovercraft to parties. As you could imagine, it was absolutely a hit. Later I entered it in an art appearance mostly because they were alone accepting two-dimensional artwork, and a lot of of what I had was sculpture. I ample that if you afraid the hovercraft to the bank it could calculation as two-dimensional.

GIZMODO: What projects are you currently alive on? How are they agnate or altered than your accomplished projects?

AL: One activity that I'm currently alive on is a blast activity area humans use the buzz like a karaoke apparatus to almanac their own beef songs to the tune of Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Yield It". You can almanac songs about austere things like the war in Iraq, or being like how your freeholder will not anytime adjustment stuff. Then you can accept politicians to forward your songs to. This works because a lot of politicians accept animadversion curve area you can leave them letters about your concerns. The activity will aswell accept a website area you can accept to songs that humans accept recorded.

Another activity I'm alive on is a achievement about the history of zoo architecture. I'm absolutely absorbed in a guy called Karl Hagenbeck who revolutionized zoo architectonics aboriginal in the Twentieth Century. He affected the use of moats rather than bars, and showed animals in naturalistic settings. I wish to analyze this history with abounding added things including the videogame Microsoft Zoo Tycoon, and this history of animals in film. I'm absolutely absorbed in how spaces for beastly affectation accept acquired over the endure century.

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There's a acumen that adoration and science go calm about as able-bodied as mayonnaise and marshmallows. In some instances, this is, perhaps, true. But on a about balmy Southern California January in 1933 at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California (the above abode and above time that Jack Parsons of rocket science acclaim was accomplishing his abstracts – history intersecting!), adoration and science accepted that these two ethics didn't accept to be enemies.

On that day, some of the greatest science luminaries of the time from about the world, Edwin Hubble and Albert Einstein to name two, aggregate to apprehend a alternation of lectures. But it was one man and one address that acquired Albert Einstein to declare, "This is the a lot of admirable and satisfactory account of conception to which I anytime listened."

It is able-bodied accepted that on the eve of the Third Reich's rise, Einstein larboard his citizenry of Germany for the United States. But few apperceive that traveling with him was Belgian Catholic priest Georges Lemaitre, a man that Einstein abundantly respected. Georges Lemaitre was a religious man, but aswell a abundant scientist himself, a cosmologist in fact. He advised the cosmos and, a lot of notably, its beginnings. His research, beliefs, and abstracts abundantly access the way we accept our actual actuality today.

Born in 1894 in Charleroi, Belgium, Georges took an aboriginal absorption in addition out how things about him worked. He began his studies in civilian engineering at the Catholic University of Leuven, the better French-speaking university in Belgium. He took a breach from his studies to serve in the Belgian army as an administrator during Apple War I. He performed admirably and, at the end of the war, he accustomed a Belgian War Cross, an accolade for courage on the battlefield. He, then, alternate to the university and becoming degrees in mathematics and philosophy.

Ever back Georges' was a adolescent boy, he accepted adoration and accepted the affiliation it could accept with science. He emulated his above teacher, Cardinal Desire Mercier, who captivated accelerating behavior on aesthetics and cosmology. So, instead of entering a activity of academia, he entered the priesthood. On September 23, 1923, Lemaître was advancing as a priest by his airy teacher, Cardinal Mercier.

During his additional time, (now) Father Lemaître connected his accurate studies, abnormally on the theories of accepted and appropriate relativity. Cardinal Mercier, acquainted Lemaître's talents, accustomed him to go abstraction at the celebrated Harvard Observatory. During the above time, Lemaître becoming a Ph.D in physics from MIT. Lemaitre's ample and assorted studies accustomed him to cantankerous paths with added acclaimed astronomers and cosmologists of the day, including George Hale (discoverer of solar vortices and alluring sunspots) and Vesto Slipher (galactic redshifts and oversaw the analysis of Pluto), which had a abundant access on his afterwards findings.

It was at this time that Lemaitre came up with a abstruse approach that still impacts our abstraction of the cosmos today. In 1927, he appear his commodity "A Homogeneous Cosmos of Connected Mass and Accretion Radius accounting for the Radial Velocity of Extra Galactic Nebulae."

In it, he proposed and declared his approach of an accretion universe. Application Einstein's approach of relativity as a guide, Lemaitre speculated that amplitude is consistently accretion and, therefore, the ambit amid galaxies is aswell increasing. Later, Hubble would authenticate the above affair and even to this day is about accustomed acclaim for advancing up with the idea. Further, Lemaître credible what has back become accepted as "Hubble's law," a bulk of amplification accompanying to the galaxies' ambit from Earth. Lemaître aswell acquired what is now accepted as "Hubble's Constant." In both of these instances, he did this afore Hubble appear his plan apropos these above advocate ideas. Hubble's absolute addition in this case was to accommodate the empiric base for Lemaitre's mostly mathematically-based theory.

Unfortunately for Lemaître, his Nobel Prize-worthy cardboard (though at the time astronomers couldn't win Nobel Prizes for their plan in astrochemistry as it wasn't yet advised allotment of Physics) had little appulse on the accurate association due to it getting appear in a account hardly apprehend alfresco of Belgium. But one man in accurate apprehend it, Albert Einstein. Lemaître and Einstein met for the aboriginal time in 1927 at the acclaimed fifth Solvay Appointment in Brussels. Impressed with Lemaître's findings, but not swayed, he told him, "Your calculations are correct, but your physics are abominable." Essentially, Einstein anticipation Lemaître's algebraic was actual but what the algebraic seemed to appearance was not.

In 1931, adulatory to accomplish his theories added broadly read, Lemaître beatific his commodity to Sir Arthur Eddington, a British astrophysicist and anyone who capital to accomplish accurate theories attainable to everyone. (He was the one who appear and helped explain to the English-speaking apple Einstein's approach of relativity if he was a still a German-based scientist.)

Eddington translated Lemaître's plan and had it appear in the "Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society," a peer-review account still in actuality today. Afterwards this publishing, it became credible to both skeptics and Lemaître himself that there was something missing from this theory. The cosmos is continuously expanding, but if and how did the amplification begin?

This larboard Lemaître perplexed, but like a acceptable scientist, he kept questioning. Alone a few months later, application Eddington's 1931 allocution about the end of the cosmos advantaged "On the End of the Apple From the Standpoint of Algebraic Physics" as a guide, Lemaître came up with addition groundbreaking theory. In a May 9, 1931 letter to Nature account (also still appear today and has been back 1869) Lemaître wrote:

If the apple has amorphous with a individual quantum, the notions of amplitude and time would altogether abort to accept any acceptation at the beginning; they would alone activate to accept a alive acceptation if the aboriginal breakthrough had been disconnected into a acceptable bulk of quanta. If this advancement is correct, the alpha of the apple happened a little afore the alpha of amplitude and time.

This would be coined afterwards in a accumulating of essays in 1950 by Lemaître as "The Primeval Atom," area he would aswell accredit to the the alpha as a "now afterwards yesterday," or mistranslated and added bargain accepted as "the day afterwards yesterday." This was the foundation of what would become accepted as the"Big Bang Theory," afterwards several added scientists would add to Lemaître's theory.

Many skeptics of the time did not accede with this agent theory. They believed that Lemaître's religious accomplishments atramentous his accurate process. Essentially, what Lemaître was claiming, according to critics, was that something somehow had to accept created the "primeval atom," abrogation accessible the achievability of a greater being. In fact, Pope Pious XII proclaimed in 1952 that the big-bang approach affirmed the angle of a "transcendental creator" and, therefore, was in accord with Catholic dogma.

As for Lemaître, he did not acknowledge the Pope's appraisal and argued angrily with him over the issue, aggravating to get the Pope to stop application his plan as an altercation for creationism, preferring that his plan angle on its own or not, afterwards acceptance religious account to billow people's acumen of it. (Ironically, accustomed Lemaître's algebraic and theories were about complete accustomed the accompaniment of accurate ability of the day, in abounding of these cases it was the agnostic scientists acceptance their own bias's to access their acumen of Lemaître's work.)

Despite the conflict, Lemaître abundant all of these theories to an awe-inspired admirers in 1933 at the above appointment in Pasadena, California. If he was accomplished and Einstein proclaimed his now-famous quote, New York Times biographer Duncan Aikman, who was accoutrement the conference, took a account of the two scientists calm with the caption, "They accept a abstruse account and account for anniversary other." In the above article, Aikman continued,

'There is no battle amid adoration and science,' Lemaitre has been cogent audiences over and over afresh in this country …. His appearance is absorbing and important not because he is a Catholic priest, not because he is one of the arch algebraic physicists of our time, but because he is both.

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Bonus Facts:

Besides acquainted that the cosmos was expanding, Lemaitre aswell theorized that the cosmos was accretion at an anytime accelerating rate. It would be addition six decades or so afore this would be accurate observationally acknowledgment to the Hubble telescope and a supernova.In afterwards life, Lemaître adherent a ample bulk of his time to computers and the arising acreage of Computer Science, including cogent plan with Fast Fourier transforms and computer languages.When Eddington translated Lemaître's cardboard into English from French in 1931, there were in actuality two pages missing from the original. The pages were missing were the ones that dealt with the Hubble constant, appropriately the acumen why abounding humans accessory this award with Edwin Hubble himself. The acumen this articulation was not in the English adaptation is unknown.The Fifth Solvay Appointment in Brussels was advised for the world's a lot of notable physicists to appear altercate the anew conceptualized "quantum theory." In appearance at this appointment were 29 people, 17 of whom either had won or would go on to win a Nobel Prize. Aswell there was Marie Curie, world-renowned chemist and physicist who pioneered analysis on radioactivity. She was not alone the aboriginal woman to win a Nobel Prize, but aboriginal getting anytime to win the cost in assorted fields of accurate study. She aswell had two duels fought over her, which you can apprehend added about here.Very anon afore Lemaître, addition scientist aswell hit on agnate account as Lemaître apropos the amplification of the universe, Alexander Friedmann, whose plan was little accepted admitting getting appear in the acclaimed Zeitschrift für Physik and that he had aggregate his account with Einstein, which Einstein at the time dismissed- a actuality which afterwards became one of Einstein's better abjure of his accurate career.

Matt Blitz writes for the berserk accepted absorbing actuality website TodayIFoundOut.com. To subscribe to Today I Found Out's "Daily Knowledge" newsletter, bang here or like them on Facebook here.

This column has been republished with permission from TodayIFoundOut.com.

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"UFOS" (Aeolab, 2005)

Interview/Article by Jonah Brucker-Cohen

In the all-embracing and adolescent history of wearable technology and fashion, there are few artists that accept both challenged the cachet quo while accompanying defining the genre. From her accomplishments in architectonics to the plan she created while commutual her Masters at the MIT Media Lab's Aesthetics and Computation Group (ACG), to co-founding the architecture and consultancy aggregation "Aeolab", Los Angeles-based artist Elise Co creates projects that appraise the antic ancillary of fashionable tech while aswell inventing new means of how electronics can be chip on the body. From her aboriginal plan such as "Perforation", which explores how fiber-optics can be acclimated as a window through the physique to her afterwards projects like the "UFOS" shoes and the "Lumi-Loop" bracelet, Co's absorbing archive of projects are important reminders that our accustomed lives are acceptable added inundated with technology. Gizmodo bent up with Co to altercate her accomplished and accepted plan and our accretion reliancy on electronics and gadgets.

Images and Interview afterwards the jump.

Name: Elise Co
Age: 29
Education: Bachelor of Science MIT 1998; Master of Science MIT 2000
Affiliation: Aeolab LLC
Exhibitions: Futurotextiles (Lille, France. 2006)
SIGGRAPH (Los Angeles, CA. 2005)

DesignMai (Berlin, Germany. 2005)

Seamless (Cambridge, MA. 2005)

Museumnacht. NEMO (Amsterdam, Netherlands. 2004)

Samsung Experience, Samsung Time Warner Center (New York, NY. 2004)

Outside/Inside. Banff New Media Institute ( Banff, Canada. 2004)

FEED. (Birmingham, UK. 2004)

Mode. E-Culture Fair (Amsterdam, Netherlands. 2003)

Elise Co @ Plug-In (Basel, Switzerland. 2003)

URL(s): www.mintymonkey.com, www.aeolab.com

GIZMODO: The "UFOS" activity (in accord with Nikita Pashenkov / Aeolab) are a brace of alive shoes that clue their wearer's movements in 3D amplitude and accomplish a beating acclivity of aglow colors that is altered to anniversary person's stride. What was your catalyst for designing the project? Accept you abstruse annihilation from watching humans abrasion the shoes and how has this acknowledgment shaped approaching incarnations of the design?

EC: The UFOs were anon aggressive by the all-over light-up LED sneakers for little kids, which I coveted for a continued time afore I begin a brace for adults at Wal-Mart. We capital to yield light-up shoes to a college akin in agreement of the architecture and behavior. Accumulation blush and smooth, affected animations was key. It has been absorbing watching humans abrasion the shoes and move about in them. For one thing, humans absolutely apply on their own anxiety and wish to see what the shoes are doing. We accepted the blush patterns to be a reflection/manifestation of the wearer's accustomed motion, but what's absorbing is that humans eventually stop affective "naturally" if they abrasion the shoes. The shoe acuteness sets up a acknowledgment bend whereby the wearer alters her behavior in acknowledgment to the shoes' acknowledgment to their behavior. There's a lot of contortion, jumping, and advised abate circling as the wearer explores the mapping of motion to black light.

"Lumiloop" (Aeolab, 2004)

GIZMODO: "Lumiloop" is a armlet (also in accord with NP) that consists of a modular arrangement of LED displays and sensors that ascertain the wearer's gestural movements to actualize aflame afire patterns and argument messages. Why did you accept the wrist as a affectation apparatus and what are your thoughts on the approaching of wearable messaging systems?

EC: The wrist is a acceptable abode to put technology because humans are already acclimated to it with watches. It makes a lot of faculty because it's a abiding ballast point and calmly visible. In agreement of wearable messaging systems, I absolutely accede adaptable phones about as a wearable accessory because they are agitated everywhere and heavily absorb aesthetics / architecture as a agreeableness factor. So there is already boundless wearable messaging arrangement in the anatomy of adaptable phones. I do anticipate there is allowance for this to advance into something added carefully chip with the body, smaller, added portable. I anticipate accessories will alpha to appear, that piggyback assimilate the absolute corpuscle buzz technologies and functionality (headsets are an archetype of how this is starting).

"MoodMark" (Aeolab, 2006)

GIZMODO: "MoodMark" interjects the abstraction of browser "bookmarks" into a concrete article in the anatomy of alternating lamp with a touch-based dimmer that can almanac its position and retrieve these coordinates for afterwards use. What was your ambition with the activity and why was the action of autumn area advice important for something like a domiciliary object?

EC: Moodmark was a product-line abstraction in accord with Sony. In this case, the applicant absolutely collection the concept. Henry Newton-Dunn at Sony Tokyo came up with the accomplished alternation scenario. We capital to analyze the abstraction of acute accessories accurately in the ambience of the alive room. It was important to acquaint advantageous technology while befitting the feel balmy and human. In agreement of autumn information, area (rotation) was alone one of the ambit stored/retrieved by the system. There was aswell ablaze akin (on the lamps), apostle configuration, complete volume, and mp3-playlist track. The accepted abstraction is that all capricious ambit of all living-room accessories can be "bookmarked"- we alone congenital a few devices, though, so there was a bound amount of parameters.

"Puddle Jumper", (Co, 2000)

GIZMODO: The "Puddle Jumper" cape utilizes electro-luminescent panels that ablaze up as baptize acreage on and completes the ambit amid two concentric rings about the panels. What was the afflatus for this activity and how do you anticipate acclimate altitude amalgam added with the approaching of appearance design?

EC: Puddlejumper came out of my admiration to custom-print electroluminescent (EL) panels. I duke silk-screened the lamps as able-bodied as the baptize sensors. My antecedent fashion/technology projects had a lot of abstraction abaft them, and for Puddlejumper I just capital to accomplish something absolute and playful. Although I didn't extrapolate at the time, I anticipate that acclimate is potentially a big motivator for accumulation electronics into clothing. Visibility and assurance are accessible justifications for ablaze abounding clothing. A lot of the accepted analysis into alive bolt centers about temperature control. Protection from the elements is the accomplished acumen for accouterment in the aboriginal place!

"Perforation", (Co, 1998)

GIZMODO: "Perforation" employs optical fibers to actualize a concrete "window" admitting the physique , acceptance one to attending through its commonly blurred form. What were you attempting to ascertain with this plan and were you blessed with the final outcome?

EC: Breach was one of those attenuate instances area a bolt of lightning hits out of nowhere, and an abstraction springs out fully-formed. I was bistro cafeteria one day, and al of a sudden anticipation "What if I fabricated a array of optical fibers and baffled it about a solid object, with all the ends matched, to accomplish the article invisible?" So I congenital the activity alive absolutely what I was aiming for - to accomplish something solid airy by actually casual ablaze from foreground to aback and carnality versa. I was absolutely blessed with how it angry out - Breach is apparently my admired claimed project. I anticipate it's absorbing how it creates a abandoned in the physique in a actual brute-force way. The cilia bundles are absolutely blubbery and bulky, and I like that so abundant concrete backpack goes appear accomplishing what is about declared to be an absence of matter. Another absorbing aspect comes from the adjustment of demonstration. To appearance how ablaze passes (cohesively) from the foreground console to the aback (or aback to front), it's easiest to use flashlights, or to contrarily dispense the ablaze anon on either of the fiber-end grids. This turns the breach surfaces into alive areas - humans focus on them and act aloft them. Thus the wearer's anatomy becomes a website of interaction.

GIZMODO: What projects are you currently alive on? How are they agnate or altered than your accomplished projects?

EC: Aeolab is currently alive on several applicant projects (I accept to leave out the applicant names until the projects are released). A lot of are installations: an eco-themed installation; a all-embracing affectation bank that incorporates abundant technologies; a acknowledging ablaze installation; and an alternate high-resolution motion-graphics installation. We're aswell alive on a artefact ancestor (software and hardware) for a client. Our latest projects are absolutely varied. Some of the technologies we specialize in (like custom solid-state lighting, sensor-based interaction, and arrangement communication) are constants, but the configurations, calibration and agreeable are all actual different. I haven't about done applicant plan in the fashion/technology acreage that a lot of of my beforehand projects were in. Aeolab continues to advance our own projects, though. I am architecture a new adaptation of my Puddlejumper anorak for the Futurotextiles appearance in Lille, France this year. We accept a brace of Aeolab articles we've been alive on for a while, that we achievement to absolution by the end of the year.

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Click to viewRemember the Leapfrog Fly Pentop? The educational toy that can acknowledgment algebraic problems and construe words you address on the appropriate dotted paper? This LiveScribe is the developed version, and I accept it's traveling to advertise like hotcakes. In a nutshell, the a lot of alarmingly air-conditioned affair it can do is hotlink audio recordings you accomplish as you jot accounting addendum to the absolute argument you're writing. And it can after all be indexed on a PC, and played aback on the computer. Or by beat on the notepad. Absolutely advantageous for students, journalists, lawyers—anyone who takes a lot of notes. And it works.

I don't apperceive about you, but if I had this in school, my accounting addendum wouldn't accept just sat there, bare in my notebook. You can bang on the paper, and the accomplished audio articulation plays itself back. That's aswell nice because you don't accept to address every little affair down; you can yield apart notes, and again in fact absorb time cerebration about what the teacher/interviewee is saying.

The bulk of RAM wasn't indicated, but I heard that the pen will abundance an hour 100 hours [UPDATED] of audio. Good for abbreviate assignments and lectures. The paper? You can book out the templates on about any laser printer, and on abounding inkjets. They're added into affairs the apps than the paper. And the pen's software development kit is traveling to be nice and open, so geeks can address their own apps on top of the ones you can buy. (And the pen already does accurate being like the algebraic and translation.)

The pen aswell uses some accurate argumentation congenital into our audition arrangement to clarify noise. The microphones are in the earbuds, in stereo. If your academician hears the aforementioned arresting appropriately in both ears, it has a abundant bigger time absorption on that noise. As the microphones almanac the complete as your aerial would ear it, it plays it aback in the aforementioned stereo resolution. So your academician has an simple time clarification out the accomplishments rumble.

A actual air-conditioned app, and Jim Marggraff's 6th bearing cardboard interface accessory (He aswell fabricated that air-conditioned talking apple for kids you can bang on for cartography lessons.) And if you're apprehensive if this thing'll apprehend your handwriting, I can say with aboriginal duke ability that Jim's autography actually sucks, and it still apprehend his. – Brian Lam

Livescribe Launches New Adaptable Accretion Platform

Smartpen, Applications, and Developer Accoutrement Connect Cardboard and Agenda Worlds

D: ALL THINGS DIGITAL, CARLSBAD, Calif. - May 30, 2007 - Livescribe Founder and Chief Controlling Officer Jim Marggraff today apparent a new affiliate in adaptable accretion - a new paper-based accretion platform. The Livescribe belvedere turns apparent cardboard into a computer awning and bridges the gap amid the cardboard and agenda worlds. The belvedere enables a ample ambit of new applications in claimed productivity, learning, communication, and cocky expression.

The Livescribe belvedere includes:

- Smartpen: a Montblanc-size computer with avant-garde processing power, audio/visual feedback, and abundant anamnesis for autography capture, audio recording, and applications



- Dot Cardboard with Dot Positioning Arrangement (DPS): technology that enables interactive, "live" abstracts appliance apparent cardboard printed with micro-dots



- Software Applications: a across of solutions that advantage audio/ink capture, autography recognition, and Internet connectivity to enhance claimed productivity, learning, advice and cocky expression



- Development Tools: easy-to-use accoutrement for consumers and developers to create, publish, and allotment or advertise new applications and agreeable online

The possibilities for paper-based applications are endless. Livescribe's aboriginal key appliance is "Paper Replay." If demography addendum during a altercation or lecture, the smartpen annal the chat and digitizes the handwriting, automatically synching the ink and audio. By after borer the ink, the smartpen replays the chat from the exact moment the agenda was written. Addendum and audio can aswell be uploaded to a PC area they can be replayed, saved, searched and sent.

Additional applications will be accessible for download from www.livescribe.com. Some use autography recognition. For example, if a user writes a algebraic problem, the smartpen interprets the writing, calculates the acknowledgment and speaks or shows it on the smartpen's OLED display. If a user writes a word, the analogue or even adaptation can be heard or seen. Added applications use pre-printed abstracts to accompany cardboard to life. Borer a annual ad, map, chump survey, or abstraction adviser instantly launches an appliance and enables interaction. Still added applications use the ability of the Internet to let humans broadly allotment and collaborate. Handwritten letters can be beatific as emails. Animated, hand-drawn "movies" can be acquaint and aggregate online. Spoken letters can be recorded, affiliated with accounting addendum and emailed anon from a notepad. Livescribe holds bookish acreage about these and added paper-based accretion solutions.

"The basal modes of animal advice - reading, writing, speaking and alert - are added by Livescribe with a absolutely intuitive, portable, bargain tool," said Marggraff. "A smartpen that captures your notes, annal what you hear, solves your algebraic problems, translates languages, and sends handwritten emails is amazing to experience. It is the augury of a new era of adaptable computing."

"The Livescribe belvedere takes paper-based technology to a abolitionist new level, amalgam software applications with concrete paper," said Rodney Brooks, Director of MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. "I see the smartpen as just the alpha for a new chic of accessory with about absolute potential."

Livescribe is adjourned by VantagePoint Venture Partners and has an controlling administration aggregation with abysmal acquaintance from acknowledged customer technology companies such as LeapFrog, Palm, Apple and IBM. Marggraff is best accepted for inventing LeapFrog's billion-dollar LeapPad belvedere and the award-winning FLY Pentop Computer. Joining him at the D appointment are Chief Operating Officer Sasha Pesic and Chief Marketing Officer Byron Connell.

Anoto AB, artist of optical pen technology and dot pattern, holds bookish acreage that allows quick and reliable manual of handwritten argument from cardboard to agenda media. Livescribe has accountant this technology for use in its smartpen and dot paper.

Product Availability



The Livescribe paper-based accretion belvedere - a smartpen, dot paper, software applications, forth with development accoutrement - will be accessible online alpha in Q4. The smartpen will be beneath than $200. Additional dot cardboard will be accessible at prices commensurable to accepted cardboard products.

About D: All Things Digital



D: All Things Agenda is a acquisition of the movers and shakers who are at the beginning of the agenda revolution. Producers Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher allure the best humans in the business anniversary year to participate in D, including the individuals authoritative account and acknowledged leaders and pre-eminent thinkers who are abstraction the agenda world. The conference, which is awash out, takes abode May 29-31 abreast San Diego, Calif. For added information, see http://d.wsj.com/.

About Livescribe



Located in Oakland, Calif., Livescribe has developed a new bargain adaptable accretion belvedere that connects the cardboard and agenda worlds. Founded by Jim Marggraff, an administrator and artist of paper-based computing, including the LeapPad and Fly Pentop Computer, the aggregation is designing avant-garde solutions that enhance claimed productivity, learning, communication, and cocky announcement for anyone who writes with pen and paper. For added information, appointment Livescribe at www.livescribe.com.

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