Augmented Reality glasses

The other day in a Google Plus post, several Google employees from the Google X laboratory asked people for input about a new prototype called Project Glass.

The prototype was shown and the well designed glasses can stream information to the lenses and allow the person who wears them to send and receive messages through voice commands. Along with that there are built-in camera and apparently built in 8G storage.

The glasses will be Android based according reports, and will have 3G or 4G data connection, GPS and several sensors.

9to5Google said that: "The navigation system currently used is a head tilting-to scroll and click. We are told it is very quick to learn and once the user is adept at navigation, it becomes second nature and almost indistinguishable to outside users."

Maybe even in the future, there could be contact lenses doing the same thing. For now, some google employees say that the glasses will be available by the end of 2012 and will cost somewhere from $250 to $600.

Tweeting from 10 973 meters under the sea

James Cameron, who undertook a dive (10 973 meters) with Mariana Trench's Challenger Deep on 25 March. What was revolutionary about his dive, was that he was tweeting while there. He wrote: "Just arrived at the ocean's deepest pt. Hitting bottom never felt so good. Can't wait to share what I'm seeing w/ you @DeepChallenge".

He went to the bottom by himself to collect sample of the ocean's mud as well as taking a short video. Here is more information about the deep submarine

Smashwords vs Paypal - about censorship and money.

With the falling cost of technology and publishing, it is easier than ever to publish your own work online and distributed for free or for money. You can choose the format, the platform and whatnot. But the recent debacle with Paypal and Smashwords leave a bitter taste for the future.

Everything started in February 2012 when the e-book distributor Smashwords received an email from PayPal saying that if certain books with "obscene" content is not removed from their inventory, PayPal will ban their services for Smashwords.

According to Paypal, when users sing for the services, they sign the "acceptable user policy" and they effectively agree with the conditions that certain content is not allowed. This includes adult content.

PayPal spokesman told CNET that "We consider what's standard across the industry, our agreements with the card associations and banks that enable us to provide service to our customers, and of course, the laws governing the sale of adult-oriented content."

According to reports, Paypal was pushed to send the email to Smashwords because of its banking partners and credit cards associations with stance on inappropriate content.

Once Smashwords received the email, they contacted the authors and told them they have to remove the inappropriate content with words like rape, bestiality or incest.

Writers decided to take action and contacted Smashwords, Paypal and the rest of the institutions. While Smashwords and Paypal were in talks about the situation the Electronic Frontier Foundation with other free speech groups joined to stand against censorship.

Finally Paypal backed down, agreeing that books with images will be no longer demanded to be removed from the category. Instead certain books will be identified, the publisher then will be contacted to respond and either remove the content or challenge the decision.

Even though some people will think this is not a big deal, it certainly can turn into one in the future. Paypal is a middle man between people and businesses and what people do with their money is of no ones business as long as no laws are broken. Furthermore, banks, credit card institutions and Paypal receive transfer fees, so why would they need to but into people's decision what books to buy.

With more and more people buying online, we will become highly depended on services like Paypal and online payments, but we should not allow them to tell us what we can and cannot buy with our money.

Resources:
http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/03/14/44701.htm
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/50946-censorship-battle-catches-smashwords-in-the-middle.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57392939-93/paypal-demands-obscene-e-books-be-pulled/

Crowdfunding: part of the crowdsource movement

We are now entering an era when new set of paradigms challenge previously established ones. We talk about micro, scale and we are concerned about obtaining funds for new and creative endeavors. But we also have witnessed the rise of crowdsourcing as a business model.

In the case of crowdfunding, the goal is the financing of a project by a group of individuals. Raising funds by tapping the crowd is the most important element of crowdfunding. This is done generally by using social networks through the Internet and by it, consumers volunteer to provide financial backing for the development of a project, often purchasing a product that is not in the market yet.

Take for example Casey Hopkins, who submitted a project to Kickstarter for making a better dock for the iPhone. He asked for $75 000. Instead he received $1.5 million.

The project was successful not only because he wanted to make something useful, but also because he was able to leverage the community. He excited them with his idea, identified the key influences that were blogging about projects, along with spreading the news on Twitter. 

He used the social networking tools perfectly to generate a talk about his idea and raise the money. For example - just two hours after he kicked off the campaign on the social networking sites, he had over $25k. Along with that, he also engaged with his community, sending messages, updates and thank yous.

This is a new way of thinking about funding projects, embracing the crowdsourcing movement in a different way, but engaging nonetheless. And the best part: you have a build in customer base even before you've created your project and all of them want you to succeed cause they invested in your idea.

From Paper Mill to Data Center for Google

Google created in 2010 a data center from an unused paper mill in Hamina Finland.

According to reports, Google have paid app. $52 million for the mill, claiming it to be the perfect place to build their new data center. As usual, Google was thinking creative, deciding to use the environment and leverage on the already built in granite tunnels (450 meters deep) for pumping water from the Baltic and using it to cool the servers. But before they return the water back to the sea, they cool it down again by mixing it in a separate facility with cold water from the Baltic.

And if it becomes too hot in some of the data centers for the servers to even run, Google uses its propriatary and usually not talked about software tool called "Spanner" which from a presentation in 2009 is described as “storage and computation system that spans all our data centers and that automatically moves and adds replicas of data and computation based on constraints and usage patterns.”

It is interesting to see the decline in the paper print businesses and the closing of mills, newspapers only to be substituted by the new type of data distribution systems. Change and progress are incredible when creativity is used.



You can read more from Wired, The Registrer

or you can see the video from Google Efficient Data Centers Summit in 2009 giving more information about the technologies they use in their data centers.