Blog of My Life

Google Desktop Search

Google Desktop Search allows you to search your computer.

More screenshots here.

Amazing Eyes

Computer Graphics (CG) has gone a long way.

The eye is the door to our souls. They finally made it look realistic.

This is absolutely amazing.

View pic here and video here.

Find out more here.

update: full movie here (via siqi)

Satellite Images of the N. Korea Train Blast on April 22, 2004

before

after

More pictures here.

Another set of interesting pictures here.

GOOGLE FILED FOR IPO!

Link!

Never Get Lost At Amusement Park with Location Tracking Wrist Band

At Legoland, you can now rent a wrist band electronic device, called Kidspotter, that allows you to locate and send text message to your child.

Kidspotters in LEGOLAND (R)!

Being a parent will be a little easier in LEGOLAND during this season, as the park is launching an electronic Kidspotter service in cooperation with the Tryg insurance company. Available for rent in the Information Office, a Kidspotter ensures that parents can always find their children whenever necessary. On entering the park, the wristband is placed on the child's arm. If parents lose sight of their child, they can send an SMS message to the Kidspotter system during their entire visit. They will then automatically receive a return message stating the name of the park area and the map coordinate of their child's position in the park. On their special Kidspotter map of the park, parents can easily see where to find their child. The Kidspotter kit consists of a small wristband with a tiny sender, plus a special Kidspotter map of the park.

via Slashdot

hmm... I think it shouldn't be named Kidspotter, because many parents/adults get lost too!

Building that Parks Your Car For You

A parking complex that automatically parks your car: view Flash Demo.

Other pics here and here.

For more info, visit WOHR Auto Parksysteme's website.

Via Echo.

They should build one here at UCI.

Holy Cow, First Person Shooter = 96kb!

This is truly amazing. The first person shooter game .kkrieger from .the .produkkt is only 96kb in size! That's dopely compact!

Click to Enlage.

Here's another, another, another, and another.

Moderately beautiful ... All textures are procedural and generated at startup.

Download the game here.

via /.

View your Windows XP desktop in 3D with SphereXP

View your Windows XP desktop in 3D with SphereXP like Sun's Looking Glass I posted before.

Click to Enlarge

View all screenshots here.

Sapphire (a.k.a Novec 1230) = Liquid That's Not Wet

A representative of Tyco Fire and Security displayed the amazing properties of the chemical that's called 'Sapphire.'

As part of a demonstration, Pelton submerged several items into a tank of Sapphire that was on the Good Morning America set. Books did not get wet. Electronics were not be destroyed. Items that were submerged in the liquid were dried in a matter of seconds, and showed no ill effects.

The computer was left on when they submerged this laptop into this fish tank of Sapphire.

The proposed application for this is to put out fire without damaging goods.

Read article here and view slide show here.

Brain Chip-Implants Enable Reading of Mind.

Cyberkinetics Inc. developed a tiny chip to be implanted in the brain which allows a person to operate a computer by thought alone. Earlier studies allowed monkeys to manuever cursors on screen, this one, however, allows you to move your arm in the 3d space.

In some studies, the monkeys eventually appeared to realize that they no longer had to move their arms to perform the tasks.

In a sense, this is a form of mind reading, scientists say. But in addition to passively letting its thoughts be read, the brain also learns to control the cursor actively, just as it acquires any new skill.

Check out the article at New York Times.

RSS AIM updated!

RSS AIM updated! Per users' requests, I've modified the user interface to RSS AIM. Tell me what you think. Thanks.

RSS AIM continued.

RSS AIM was a bad name, I must admit. A better name would probably be AIM Blog. Many people seems to be intimidated by the acronym RSS, which stands for Really Simple Syndication, Rich Site Summary, or RDF Site Summary (confusing, isn't it). It might be too late to rename this, but I'll try.

But, overall, the general response to RSS AIM was positive. That makes me happy. I've received several suggestions for improvements. Truly appreciated.

To all the people who helped me publicize this service, thanks again!

RSS Aim Released!

Check out RSS Aim. It takes your Blog to AIM, like this:

It works with LiveJournal, Xanga, and many other blog system! It's very easy to setup and improves your blog's readership. Give it a try, now!

By the way, thanks Siqi, for publicizing it for me!

Familiar Looking OS?

Click to Enlarge.

Take a look. That's not Windows, it's Linux! For those of you who never tried Linux because you're just too lazy to learn another user interface, here's something for you. The XPde team is working hard to make Linux look and feel like Windows!

Impressed? Here's more screenshots.

Too bad Windows Longhorn's going to look different. LHde?

Surf the Net Right In Your Car

Are you both a car fanatic and computer fanatic? If yes, you might want to install a computer in your car, like this:

Click to Enlarge

Here's more photos.

Group Photo of the Backrub Team

This is the computer set that powered Google (formerly known as BackRub) back when it was at Stanford:

Click to Enlarge

More photos at the Web Archive.

Humanoid Robot Plays Soccer!

"Robovie-M", the programmable automonous humanoid robot, can do so many tricks:

Walking Stretching Balancing with one leg Side stepping Kicking a ball Bowing Waiving hands

Defencing Kun-fu Pick up a ball and throw it overarm Pick up a ball and throw it underarm

Getting up from lying on back Getting up from facing down Doing a handstand (I can't even do that!)

turning over turn over and get up step back turn circulate circulate in back ward fighting

shame defend hand shake clap nod lie down and get up

Souce

HP Unveils Always-On Camera

This camera is meant to be on 24/7 and records everything you see through out the day. Too bad this gadget is not for sale, yet.

Read more.

...moblog?

RSS Aim

I have been actively developing RSS Aim for the past few days. The back-end has been re-written and and modularized. The front-end has been developed, but not yet finalized. By the way, RSS Aim now supports Atom format. Makes me wonder if I should rename the service, since it hasn't gone live yet...

I plan to release this on April 4th, since my webhost is doing some upgrade.

Here's a sneak preview:

LiveJournal -> AIM

My Pet Project (continued...)

After doing some research, I found out there is a much faster way to process XML files. Apparently, there are two ways to read a XML file. One, you can read it the DOM (Document Object Model) way. Or, you read it the navigator (Foward-Only traversal) way. Currently, my pet project employs the DOM method and it's slow for techical reasons. It's said that the navigator way is 15%+ faster than DOM. That performance gain tempts me much to use the navigator way; in which I will. The drawback, however, is that its harder to implement and I'd have to rewrite the code.

My Pet Project

You have no idea how ANAL parsing XML can be, especially when dealing with the multiple versions of RSS. In any case, the pet project I'm working on will allow you to access your blog syndication in your AIM profile. I'm still working on it and don't plan to release to the public until I feel it's good enough. Some feature I've implemented includes:

1. Cache content in database for up to 1 hour (for faster access).
2. Automatically detect different versions of RSS (currently only 1.0 & 2.0)
3. Reformats html tags (i.e. img, li, ol, ul, blockquote, and etc)

QRIO Conducts Beethoven's Symphony No.5.

Per L's request, here's a blog about QRIO:

QRIO successfully conducted the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra at a concert... Utilizing its sophisticated motion control capabilities, QRIO waved its baton as it conducted Beethoven's Symphony No.5.

View the video clip (RealPlayer required) from QRIO's official website.

Sun Plays with 3D Desktop

Stack your windows sideways with Sun's 3D desktop technology: Looking Glass.

Click to enlarge.

Also, check out these demo videos:

• Real Media: [ Low / Medium / High ]
• Quicktime

Game Controlled Directly By Brain Waves

Here's a game that you can control directly with your brain waves.

To get their brain working with the game the player first focusses on two chequered boxes which flash at different speeds or frequencies...

via BBC

New Domain Suffixes Proposed: .xxx, .mail, .mobi, .asia, .jobs, .tel, .post and .travel.

.xxx for pr0n websites
.mail for spam-free mail
.mobi for mobile (shortened to be easily typed on mobile devices)

Imagine .exe gets proposed... how vulnerable our system'll become.

Hackers Hit Jackpot!

Ralph Gray, 18, and a friend, hacked into 9 e-commerce sites and stole credit card information related to 26,000 people in the United States, Canada, Thailand, Japan, and Britain.

Among those credit card numbers was Bill Gates'. However, the guy and his pay got busted by government authorities...

Details.

Hmm... I wonder what did he buy?

"Psychoacoustics of a Chilling Sound."

Nails on a chalkboard and squeaking of styrofoam are said to be universally irritating. For me, I'm only affected by the former. However, there's another thing that annoys the hell out of me, and that is CORN STARCH. Whenever I try to scoop a spoonful of corn starch, even though I can't hear it, I can FEEL it. It annoys me the same way how nail on chalkboard does. I suspect the friction between each fine corn starch particles generates the same annoying nail-scratching-board sound but at a higher frequency (like the different octaves of sound).

I suggest people should study more into this subject. If people are annoyed by a unique frequency, the military can possibly be able to create a weapon out of this. In this case, the weapon holder may use it to generate piercing sounds without annoying themselves.

A team of researcher has done a research on this and titled it "Psychoacoustics of a Chilling Sound." Here's a summary:

It appears that the sound (and certain other sounds at the same frequency) plays havoc with a middle ear muscle known as the stapedius. Normally, this muscle contracts just before we speak or chew, and helps to protect the inner ear. If something disrupts its function, the piercing sound goes right through to the sensitive eardrum.

Anyways, if you TOO feel the same way about CORN STARCH, please LET ME KNOW!

Orang-utan: Robot that can think (via AI Neural Network)!

Look at this Orang-utan named Lucy:

Sources say it is able to "make a difference between an apple and a banana." This is a big thing. If you've ever taken an AI course that teaches your Artificial Neural Network, you'd agree with me.

Read more about this creature here.

An AI specialization now seems really attractive. AI or Bioinformatics? Hmm...

DVD Drive Labels!

Pop in a blank DVD to your DVD+RW drive, what comes out is a laser etched DVD. Not the content, but the label on the top side! No more sticking some white circular sticker on those burned VCD/DVDs. All you have to do is pop them in and WALLA! This is great! Here's an article from PC World.

Today Our Voice, Tomorrow Our Thoughts!

Man. NASA has developed a technology that will allow us to hear words not yet spoken! Snooping the nerve commands from our brain to our vocal cords; that's how it works! I swear I was just wondering about this yesterday. How coincidental, since I don't think about this stuff often.

Anyway, just imagine the possibility...This technology will definitely be used in court as a lie detector. How hard can you keep a secret in your mind? I certainly find that very hard to do! But, I'm sure there are people out there who are able to control every part of their mind. Lucky for them, for the rest of us, who knows...

News Aggregators - The New Fad

Here's an exerpt from Wired:

Maniacally wired netizens who read a hundred blogs a day and just as many news sources are turning to a new breed of software, called newsreaders or aggregators, to help them manage information overload.

Many now say that their news aggregator is as indispensable as their e-mail client.

Interface with Blogger via the Atom API

According to Blogger's Developer Network, Blogger provides third party blogging clients to manage blogs via the Atom API. Man, to tell you the truth, I've had enough of it! After playing for hours and hours, I'm unable to get a sample C# code and its couterpart WSDL to post a simple entry to my Blogger blog. Hey, don't get me wrong, I've compiled the damn thing. According to the error message, my username/passworddigest was authenticated and all that, but it gives me this stupid error 400 message:

Malformed Atom API Request received.

I'm unhappy! After some googling, I found this post on Yahoo Group bloggerDev and realized someone else have also experienced the same problem. I tried sending this guy a email, however, his mail server bounce it right back indicating his email box is full! This is very disappointing!

I guess, I just have to let Blogger work on it a little bit more before I start working on it again.

Commeting System For Bloggers

I'm trying to design a commenting system for Blogger. As you can see, Blogger do not provide a commenting system. The lack of such feature really bothers me. An inspiration came to me when I was browsing Liz's AOL journal blog. What's interesting about AOL journals is that their comments are dynamically loaded via javascript & DOM. This idea will allow bloggers to embed a commenting system into their blog template. Unlike existing free services, the commenting system I plan to implement will not require comments to be viewed in a popup windows, on a remote server, or in IFrames; instead, comments will be seamlessly appended to blog entries. Hopefully, I'll be able to test this idea on www.HuPlus.com. =)

"Mind Over Machine"

An article linked by slashdot describes how scientists have discovered ways turn our thoughts into action, without physical movement! Truly amazing!

LiveJournal Provides Atom Feed

According to a blog entry on intertwingly.net,

LiveJournal, like Google/Blogger, now provides feeds in the Atom format. If you have a LiveJournal account, you may access your Atom feed via the following url:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/your_lj_username/data/atom/

And, in case if you don't know, the RSS version can be access via the following url:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/your_lj_username/data/rss/

Click to view my Atom and RSS feeds.

Free Atom 0.3 to RSS 1.0 Translation Service

If you are a user of Blogger and would like your journal to be syndicated into the RSS format, check out this link. It's a free service that allows you to transform your Blogger generated Atom XML feed into the more common RSS format.