Teknovis

I had a very interesting discussion with somebody recently about infrared photography. I never understood why there were two very different types of infrared photos. It transpires that this is due to the differences between near infrared and far infrared.  For more about this see About infrared photography. The Coke bottle image is very impressive!

I also thought that How to make a webcam work in infra red was very interesting, and I am tempted to try it! The photo of the 5€ note is very interesting!

Tags: Infrared

The Irish Times has finally launched a mobile edition of its website! It is about time! Previously, I had to get all of my national news from RTE when I was using my PDA!

I read the news on it last night, and I thought that it rendered very well.

You can read more about it in ‘The Irish Times’ on your mobile, and you can view it here: m.irishtimes.com.

It is interesting, but not surprising, that The Irish Times chose not to use a .mobi domain.

Tags: mobi, PDA, RTE, The Irish Times

I heard about the Law of Demeter today! Actually, somebody told me about when he saw a piece of code that I had written!

I read yesterday that an Irish company called Cauwill Technologies won the Best Emerging Company category in the 2009 Seedcorn Business Competition. For more about the winners see Intertradeireland Seedcorn Competition Announces Winners.

Cauwill Technologies develop GPS based solutions for use with LBSs.

Tags: Cauwill Technologies, GPS

I just heard that Google has released a new programming language called Go! More information is available at The Go Programming Language.

My initial reaction is that I do not see the advantage of this new programming language.

Tags: Google

Delighted to read Threat to Eircom ‘three strikes’ plan. It will be interesting to see how Eircom reacts!

Tags: Eircom, ISP, P2P

I came across an interesting article on company names during the week – List of company name etymologies.

I was familiar with the reasoning behind a lot of the listed companies, but some really surprised me such as Adobe and Apple!

Tags: Adobe, Apple

Boston Dynamics have developed a really impressive two-legged robot called PETMAN! To read more about it take a look at First Video of Boston Dynamics PETMAN Biped.

To see a video of it “walking” see PETMAN Prototype. To see a video of one of the previous robots, known as Big Dog, see BigDog Reflexes. Both videos are best watched in high quality!

Tags: Boston Dynamics

I read a great quote in File under – ‘Silly comments by middle-aged university managers’ by Ferdinand von Prondzynski:

In his book, The Uses of the University, Clark Kerr, the late chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley, suggested that a university president has three key tasks that the institution’s main stakeholders will expect to see achieved: “sex for the students, athletics for the alumni, and parking for the faculty”. Only the last of these, Kerr suggested, presented a problem.

Ferdinand is of course, the President of DCU, so he should know what is is talking about!

I must use this quote in my Quote of the Moment!

Tags: DCU, Sex

A friend recently made me aware of a new child locating service called num8 by a company called Lok8u. The service is delivered using a child-friendly watch that contains a GPS receiver, and it uses Google Maps to display the child’s location.

The Lok8u website claims:

Now available.. the world’s first GPS locator that locates your child…not just the device.

And…

num8 is the world’s first GPS locator device that has been specifically designed with children in mind.

I am wary of these claims… For example, I think that Wherify would dispute these claims (if it was still operating)!

Wherify Wireless Watches

I am sure that there are many others also!

Tags: Google, GPS, Lok8u, Wherify