Need for Speed 2 SE was the best ever high speed racing game ever made. Period. Many would argue otherwise. The sheer speed (375 Kmph) of the Mclaren F1 on the Australian outback was as close as I would ever get to such speeds. And what a feeling that was. The Mclaren was my favorite and also the most expensive road car ever built. That was until the Bugatti made the Veyron which broke the land speed record for a road car. Top Gear pits the Bugatti Veyron head to head with the Mclaren F1 on a 1 mile drag race. Ofcourse, I am not happy with the result. But what a ride this is.

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There has been an onslaught of new technologies for people to interact with computers off late. I wrote about some of them earlier like the 6th sense technology from MIT, Project Natal from Microsoft, Mgestyk hand gesture controller etc. Most of these technologies seem to have started after Nintendo released the Wii controller that took the next level of human machine interface to consumers with a product they could actually buy.

Today we look at another level of interaction between humans and machines in the form of an augmented reality shooter using a mobile phone like device powered by Nvidia Tegra. The player looks through the camera of the device at a two dimensional picture which looks 3 dimensional model on the device screen. He then goes on to interact with the 3D Model in ways that will blow your socks off.

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This is a mind-boggling new level of interactivity between humans and computers.

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I want one of these. On 2nd thoughts, make that 10!

For more details, check this.

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LCDs are so expensive and limit our ability to visualize and interact with technology at various physical scales. 6th Sense technology from MIT Media lab is all set to revolutionize the way we interact with the world around us. I can't wait for the day when accessing information this way would be the common place. It makes current touch based gestures on devices like the iphone obsolete.

Enjoy this amazing TED Video demonstrating the technology created by Pattie Maes and Pranav Mistry.

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I have been a skeptic of being able to achieve true AI as we know human intelligence. We are talking about humans designing artificially what evolution has taken billions of years to develop.

However, I am beginning to think that I might be wrong. Jeff Hawkins - enterpreneur and scientist has been working on what is called Hierarchical Temporal Memory that tries to model the brain and this just might be the best approximation of the brain behavior we have. This video lecture has him explain its functioning and at the end of the video I come out convinced that Jeff is onto something big here. I can't help but feel that there is an opportunity to build something much more capable than the human brain overcoming biological limitations of the human body and solve very complex problems by scaling the model across powerful computers.

Jeff Hawkins company Numenta is working on commercializing this technology and has released the Numenta Platform for Intelligent Computing (NuPIC) which can be downloaded from the Numenta website.

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Documentaries on Science and Nature are thrilling to watch. Many television channels produce fantastic documentaries that are mostly lost amongst all the soaps that people obsessed with. Nothing is more thrilling than knowing about how the world around you came into being and how things work. Without further banter, here are 3 Documentary series you have to watch before you die:

Planet Earth - The Complete BBC Series
Narrated by David Attenborough, Planet Earth takes us into all corners of the earth to show us the nature of the environment, its animals, plants, weather and much more in this series with mostly never before seen visual footage. 5 years in the making with 2000 days in the field, using 40 cameramen across 200 locations, Planet Earth is the ultimate portrait of our planet. There entire series is a 5 DVD set or a single Blu-Ray disc that you can buy from your local media store or online.



History Channel's Evolve
This series begins 100s of millions of years to when life first appeared and takes us on a series of journeys in which the evolution of a specific aspect of animal life is detailed. It talks about the evolution of eyes, sex, jaws, flight, communication, guts etc. This one is a must watch if you have any doubts about evolution. And the ability of scientists to put the puzzles together and figure out how things worked 300 million years back just by studying fossils is mind blowing.



BBC Horizon
A long running series from BBC, Horizon documents a wide range of topics from Einstein's life and times to How to plan the perfect murder. Learn about Nuclear weapons, their effects, nuclear accidents and how to survive a nuclear war. Learn about the Human brain and evolution.

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Apple's current OS 10.5 codenamed Leopard claimed to have added hundreds of new features to the Mac OS. Using Leopard gave me the feeling that the OS has most of what it needs (it could do with a better replacement for finder) but for one major aspect: Speed. The OS could have definitely done good being more efficient and faster. And this is exactly what Mac OS 10.6 codenamed Snow Leopard promises to deliver. While I don't agree, apple calls Snow leopard a Quantum leap (They should have made it efficient from the word go). To quote apple:

Since 2001, Mac OS X has delivered more than a thousand innovative new features. With Snow Leopard, the next major version of the world’s most advanced operating system, Mac OS X changes more than its spots, it changes focus. Taking a break from adding new features, Snow Leopard — scheduled to ship in about a year — builds on Leopard’s enormous innovations by delivering a new generation of core software technologies that will streamline Mac OS X, enhance its performance, and set new standards for quality. Snow Leopard dramatically reduces the footprint of Mac OS X, making it even more efficient for users, and giving them back valuable hard drive space for their music and photos.

Here is what is in store with Snow Leopard:

• Full 64 bit support to take advantage of more system memory
• Microsoft Exchange support to help integrate your mac to your office mail
• Grand Central Technology to make best use of multi-core processors
• Quicktime X supporting newer Codecs for better media playback
• Faster Javascript for upto 53% better performance in Safari with SnowLeopard
• Open Computing language to harness the massive power of Graphics Processors

Snow leopard is expected to launch Mid 2009.

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Change.gov, the official website of the Obama-Biden administration is live and kicking. Change being the key selling point of his campain, it is not surprising he chose change.gov as his domain. The website will be your source for the latest news, events, and announcements so that you can follow the setting up of the Obama Administration. And just as this historic campaign was, from the beginning, about you -- the transition process will offer you opportunities to participate in redefining our government.

You can apply for a job at the Obama administration in this website. Some jobs will require senate confirmation while other won't. The website is the quickest way to get you to be a part of the team that changes America and consequently the rest of the world. One of the best things about the Obama administration is how technology friendly they are. Now just go ahead and give NASA a ton of money to get man to Mars and beyond!

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Those of you who have seen the movie Minority Report were surely amazed by the hand gesture based computer interface shown in the movie. But you probably dismissed it as the heights of science fiction. 

Mgestyk is here to prove you wrong with their gesture-based control system. Mgestyk combines powerful software for hand-gesture language processing with an affordable 3D camera. The technology makes it possible to capture small hand movements and translate them into useful commands for controlling practically any Windows application - Itunes, games, photo slideshow softwares etc.

The Mgestyk control system is not available for sale yet but you can sign up in their waiting list for purchase. The system is expected to be priced at the cost of a high end webcam which should be around $200-$300. It will work with Windows XP and Vista. 

Check out this amazing demo video Mgestyk at work.

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Stanford University scientists have developed AI Robot helicopters that learn by observing other helicopters in motion.  The maneavours performed are not simple ones of just taking off but complex heart pounding motions that would make the passengers throw up.  Luckily for us, these are not full size choppers but an off-the-shelf radio controlled toy helicopter, with instrumentation added by the researchers.

Stanford's artificial intelligence system learned how to fly by "watching" the four-foot-long helicopters flown by expert radio control pilot Garett Oku.  This is no mean feat and is an indication of the world we are heading to - Super intelligent machines. Hopefully, it doesn't mean destruction of man. Visit Stanford's Autonomous helicopter website for related publications, pictures and videos of this project.

Source: Stanford Report

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Image Source: Wikipedia

3D Printers are machines that build mechanical parts given a design as input. You can now build physical objects by printing them in a 3D printer. Sounds too good to be true, doesn't? It is all real and quite impressive. Not only is it real, it is slowly becoming affordable. A day will come when we build common household items by clicking on the file menu and choosing Print 3D.

RepRap is one such 3D Printer. Founded by Dr Adrian Bowyer, a Senior Lecturer in mechanical engineering at the University of Bath in the United Kingdom, Reprap is an universal constructor that can build itself besides other things. The RepRap project is published under the GNU General Public License, a free software license, at no cost, allowing other investigators to work on the same idea and improve it. The device itself costs around 400$ to build.

RepRap has been used to build items like hanging hooks, fly swat, shoes, water filter, door handle and many more items. See images below:

Visit RepRap website for more interesting details and how you can build your own RepRap.

If you think the RepRap looks like an unprofessional project (Wait for it to grow!!), you might want to consider the 3D Printer from Desktop Factory. Coming in at $5000, the Desktopfactory 125 Ci 3D Printer is not as cheap as the RepRap but the finished products are of higher quality. You can check out the amazing finish 3D produts at their homepage.



If you liked this article, you should check out the article from Replicator about 10 things 3D Printers can build now including action figures, jewellery and functional objects like hearing aids.

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Image Source: Associated Press

The French are renowned for their great inclination to romance and not straying far away are their medical innovations with regard to the heart. CARMAT SAS, a company funded by EADS (European space and defence organization, the parent company of Airbus) has made the world's first fully functional artificial heart.

Looking like Wall-E, the artificial heart has been developed borrowing the latest from aircraft technology and functionally modelled after the real heart with pumps and sensors to monitor blood flow requirements.

At a very pricy $192,000 the artificial heart is not a temporary replacement for the real heart and is expected to last really long and be a permanent solution to ailments of the heart. So far, it has been tested only on animals and is awaiting approval for human use.

Article Source: CNN

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