All posts by Arun Jiwa

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Crowd Sourced Apps for the Mobile Web

Think of this as R&D in real time.  Says Nokia:

Spotting an opportunity to make their phones more indispensable to consumers, Nokia is investing in crowd sourcing. It sees the most promise in services that leverage global positioning system (GPS) technology, mapping and the mobile Web.

and furthermore:

People are using their cellphones to review restaurants, share their favorite hometown hangouts, discover new jogging routes, even dodge speeding tickets…”Mobile is about pushing that even further out to the ultimate edge: an individual, at all times, with his device.”  Such crowd-sourced applications point up the power of mobile networks to relay data in real time. “Nearly everyone has a mobile that they carry with them all the time,””Phones are perfectly suited for this type of automated reporting, and potentially a much more pervasive device than the online Web.”

How will they go about using crowd sourcing in developing smart applications?  Well, consider this:

Crowds are now being tapped to develop mobile applications before they reach consumers. Mob4Hire connects developers with new applications with tech-savvy testers around the world. Founder Paul Poutanen estimates there are 12,000 different cellphone models and 700 different wireless carriers globally, forming a byzantine system that can take two years to navigate. Mob4Hire’s decentralized system helps developers deliver new applications to consumers faster and catch bugs along the way.

Honestly, the coolest thing about this is the real time nature of the testing.  Crowd sourcing seems to be the most organic extension for testing out these so called smart applications, and it will be interesting to see what new projects come along, as more developers jump onboard.

 

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Walking the Walk

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WalkGet this, the next time you’re at the airport, security cameras could be watching your every step and feeding it into a computer, from where security officials could crosscheck your gait-type with CCTV footage to spot suspected terrorists:

A database of different gaits thus created may enable security officials to recognise the gait of individuals checking in at an airport, even before they entered the concourse. The researchers say that a comparison of such data with CCTV footage may also be used to track suspect terrorists or criminals who may otherwise be disguising their features or be carrying forged documents.

What about privacy issues?

They insist that gait recognition has a significant advantage over more well-known biometrics, including fingerprinting and iris scanning, in that it is entirely unobtrusive.

It seems like a workable idea, but when you consider how many people pass through airports everyday, and how long it would take to capture the gaits of enough people to have an unbiased sample size to work with, and the accuracy of the gait recognition, you start to override the practicalities that are initially presented. [image by chilling soul]

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Space Diver

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How does this sound for a headline:

A retired French army colonel is preparing to make a record-breaking attempt…to complete a 1000mph skydive from the edge of space.

So far, to my knowledge, he’s been unable to make this jump because of poor weather conditions, but you can’t blame him, considering how he’s going to go about doing it:

The mission involves ascending in a pressurised capsule suspended from a helium balloon for two and a half hours to the edge of the stratosphere.

and the risks involved:

A re-enforced crash helmet will protect his ears from the thunderous sonic boom he will create as he breaks the sound barrier.

I hope this turns out well, and maybe sets a precedent for astronauts and extreme sports adventurers.  If it does work out, it seems like a definite trend for the future.

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Time is A One Way Street…

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TimeThe June 2008 issue of Scientific American sets out to answer a very perplexing question:

Why does time only move forward?

To find the answer, according to Sci-Am and Mr. Sean M. Carroll, we have to start looking at a very unlikely place:

To account for it, we have to delve into the prehistory of the universe, to a time before the big bang. Our universe may be part of a much larger multiverse, which as a whole is time-symmetric. Time may run backward in other universes.

The article is filled with high-end physics and a bit of science jargon, but Mr. Caroll puts uses neat little analogies to explain difficult concepts:

The asymmetry of time, the arrow that points from past to future, plays an unmistakable role in our everyday lives: it accounts for why we cannot turn an omelet into an egg, why ice cubes never spontaneously unmelt in a glass of water, and why we remember the past but not the future. And the origin of the asymmetry we experience can be traced…back to the orderliness of the universe near the big bang. Every time you break an egg, you are doing observational cosmology.

All in all, it’s a very interesting article and well worth a read. Some of the concepts used in the article are highly science fictional and are prime idea fodder for stories about multiverses and time travel. In fact, for those who’ve read River of Gods, may recognize the inspiration for ideas in that novel presented in this article. [image by gadl]

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Low-Tech Solutions For Rural India

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Biogas generatorEver since I read Ian McDonald’s River of Gods, I’ve looked at India from a futuristic, economically oriented perspective to understand how the lives of millions of Indians are being changed by technology.  While the cosmopolitan metropolisis of Dehli and Bombay have undergone enormous growth in the last centry, the more interesting changes have happenned among the rural populations.  Now, with natural gas prices at an all time high, India is turning to Nature, and the sacred cow for a wholly low-tech solution to their problem. The biogas generator looks set to be the tipping point for cheap, renewable energy for India’s villages. [image by 1village]

Quite simply, a biogas generator is a system that utlizes the gas byproduct of the anaerobic digestion of organic materials for heat and/or flame. These generators, like the one featured in the picture above use manure and organic waste materials to produce methane, which is piped from a central tank via pipes, and can be used by an entire village.