Technology

No, that Geek is not me, it's John Siracusa exhaustively reviewing (literally - the review is 23 pages long) Mac OS X 10.6 for Ars Technica: A major operating system upgrade with "no new features" must play by a different set of rules. Every party involved expects some counterbalance to the lack of new features. In Snow Leopard, developers stand to reap the biggest benefits thanks to an impressive set of new technologies, many of which cover areas previously unaddressed in Mac OS X. Apple clearly feels that the future of the platform depends on much better utilization of computing resources,…

Some turns of events in the technology world are truly surprising. Who knew that a couple of guys starting up Google would hit it as big as they did? Who imagined that Facebook or Twitter would turn into sensations? Who had any inkling about how successful the iPhone would be? OK, that last one... not so much. From the day it was announced, the iPhone was a pre-release sensation. One didn’t need one’s finger on the pulse of technology to see how popular it was going to be, and to predict that its popularity would go beyond even what Apple, despite its irrepressible optimism, expected when…

No matter how bad things get, there's always something trivial we can completely take out of its big picture context and blow up into something dramatic.   Mountains, molehills and all that. Sure, there are people starving in third world countries and the US may be on the verge of becoming one economically - wars are being fought, globals are being warmed, dogs and cats are secretly plotting against each other ... ... and even with all that drama on a macro scale, we have micro scale things, like Mike White's peer review blues, which inspired the name of this post; because nothing drives…

In February of 2010, Scientific Blogging, the flagship of Science 2.0, will turn 3 years old.   Yep, you all are getting old.   But by then it will have changed, even from what it looks like now (more on that in November). Nothing on the internet ever goes away, they say, but if you use the legendary Wayback Machine at web.archive.org, you won't find much on us.    Not on any of their dates.   They think we looked like this: Well, it was slightly better than that.   Yes, we didn't have customized logos for important holidays and events yet, but we had something…

A couple of years ago, I talked about some of the search terms that people have used when they’ve found my blog pages. In the comments, Donna was amazed at the information that’s available to the web sites you visit. My response to Donna’s comment discussed some stuff that’s available, but there are other issues too. Now, via BoingBoing, we hear about a new web site that’s trying to raise awareness about mechanisms that web sites can use to see what other, unrelated web sites you’ve visited. You had no idea, did you, that you could visit my blog, and I could find out whether you’ve also…

Stanford scientists say they will reinvent digital photography with the introduction of an 'open-source' digital camera. If the technology catches on, camera performance will be no longer be limited by the software that comes pre-installed by the manufacturer because virtually all of the features of the Stanford camera – focus, exposure, shutter speed, flash, etc – are at the command of software that can be created by inspired programmers anywhere. "The premise of the project is to build a camera that is open source," said computer science professor Marc Levoy. Computer science graduate…

Idaho National Laboratory engineer Phillip West holds a curious metallic device about as wide as a steering wheel. It looks a bit like a flat, stoic face, with two large circular holes for eyes, protruding cylindrical ears and a long, disc-ended snout.  "Are we ready?" he asks, then kneels and nestles the snout gently into the dirt. West flips a switch on one of the machine's handles, and for the next eight seconds a rising tide of sound waves, strong enough to shake your shoes, floods the earth underfoot.   West's machine, which he calls the Look-Ahead Sensor, or LAS, is probing…

Sherlock Holmes used a variety of tools  to deduce what he needed to know about people in general and criminals in specific.    It turns out he could learn a lot by how people act in a virtual reality setting playing a form of 'hide and seek', say two University of Alberta researchers.  Experimental psychologist Marcia Spetch and computer scientist Vadim Bulitko recently published an article in Learning and Motivation say they mapped the decision-making process involved in hiding and searching for objects, which could obviously lead to more realistic game environments and…

The secret is out; there's only one science blogging site out there with its name on a satellite and it is us. Well, so far it is us.    The commies in Star City were first into space but the good ol' US of A put a man on the moon and that's what gets remembered.    So we can't rest on our laurels just because we're the first to develop it - and commit money - if we're going to put Bloggy into space we need to get it done. What am I talking about?   Bloggy in space?    It's Project Calliope, the brainchild of our friendly Daytime Astronomer Alex Antunes.…

Someone recently sent me a Fox News article from about a month ago. It’s about risks of using public networks, specifically wireless ones — while the issue isn’t limited to wireless, few people wire themselves in any more. The newest trend in Internet fraud is “vacation hacking,” a sinister sort of tourist trap. Cybercriminals are targeting travelers by creating phony Wi-Fi hot spots in airports, in hotels, and even aboard airliners.Vacationers on their way to fun in the sun, or already there, think they’re using designated Wi-Fi access points. But instead, they’re signing on to fraudulent…