Military Police officials from Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro have been given demonstrations of how the device works Photo: AFP/GETTY
Smart Traveler, developed jointly by IBM, Caltrans (California Department of Transportation) and UC Berkeley, is designed to personalize traffic update service to lower the amount of time commuters are stuck in entirely avoidable gridlock.
Erik de Bruijn, co-founder of 3D printing company Ultimaker, working on his 3D printer.The Penrose Triangle is as elegant as it is impossible—much like M.C. Escher’s drawings, it presents a two-dimensional illusion that the eye interprets as three-dimensional. The task of effectively creating this illusion in three dimensions, without resorting to hidden openings or gimmicky twists, seemed daunting until a Netherlands-based designer named Ulrich Schwanitz succeeded in printing the object recently. But Schwanitz, who posted a YouTube video of his design achievement in action, wouldn’t share his secret with the world. Instead, he made his “impossible triangle” available for purchase through Shapeways, a company that fabricates custom 3D designs, for $70.
Netflix is paying between $75 million and $100 million for the streaming rights to seven seasons of Mad Men, the WSJ reports. That's around $1 million per episode.
The deal is with Lions Gate, the studio that makes the show, and not the network, which is something Netflix is increasingly doing.
Netflix is continuing its aggressive strategy to go after great content. Good for them.
What if you could track everything you do in life? That is the idea behind self-tracking, a new method of tracking daily tasks, whether by using a health monitoring product, gauging employee productivity, or just finding out if your workers are happy.
Charlie Belmer spends anywhere from 15 minutes to several hours each day tracking everything he does in his job. His goal: to figure out how to be more productive.
You may soon own a talking car, though the open shirt will be optional
Remember the Knight Rider car? The one declaring "scanner indicating danger ahead", "your reflexes are slow" or "I shall activate a turbo-boost"?
First, Facebook helped get Rodney Bradford out of jail; later, it threatened to send him back.
In 2009, the social networking site helped exonerate Mr. Bradford after prosecutors charged him with a robbery in Brooklyn. Mr. Bradford countered that he was at his father’s home in Manhattan at the time. He even had posted a joking complaint on Facebook about breakfast. Subpoenaed records from Facebook backed up Mr. Bradford’s alibi, and the charges against him were dropped.But a year later, while Mr. Bradford, 20, was out on bail on a charge that he had assaulted a relative of his girlfriend, prosecutors hauled him back before a judge to explain a disturbing message that had appeared on the girlfriend’s Facebook account. The posting, written by a friend of the woman, warned her that Mr. Bradford had evil intentions.
Adding live sports broadcasts may help YouTube expand revenue by keeping viewers on its site longer to woo more advertisers. YouTube’s contract to show cricket from the Indian Premier League, which gives the Google unit a share of ad revenue from games and the league’s website, brought in 55 million visits from more than 250 countries, Anand said
Suzanne Elizabeth Lee
Director, The BioCouture Research Project
Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, LondonIf Suzanne Lee's work catches on, one day we may exchange clothing recipes the way we swap casserole concoctions:
Mix bacteria and yeast.
Add mixture to a large tub of sweetened green tea (any sweet solution will do.)
Let sit undisturbed for two to three weeks.
A "mat" will form on the surface. Remove and let dry.
Discard the solution.
Use the mat to sew a traditional garment.Lee, 41, is a British fashion designer and the driving force behind BioCouture, a method she created for growing clothes from a bacterial/cellulose solution that may be the ultimate eco-friendly operation requiring few environment-taxing resources to produce.
New York City’s Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg today announced the use of Quick Response or QR codes (which are something like a smartphone-readable barcode) on building permits, to provide New Yorkers with easy access to information related to buildings and construction sites throughout the city.
Smartphone users who scan a QR code on a construction permit in New York, according to a press release from the mayor’s office, will get “details about the ongoing project – including the approved scope of work, identities of the property owner and job applicant, other approved projects associated with the permit, [and] complaints and violations related to the location.”
The QR codes will link users to a mobile version of the Department of Buildings Information System, and will give them the option to click a link that will initiate a phone call to the city’s 311 phone service, where they can register a complaint about noise, safety or other concerns.
