Wisdumb: Smart and Not-So-Smart

[please read as if singing the opening to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band]

It was 30 years ago yesterday
that Sony gave portable music a play
Maybe the technology’s gone out of style
But it was guaranteed to raise a smile

Ok, nevermind the singing. Anyway, just this morning I was complaining that I didn’t have enough room on my 30 gig iPod to load up some music I wanted. Currently, my iPod contains nearly 5000 songs and over 14 days worth of continuous music. Just imagine what we might be carrying around or have access to technology wise 30 years from now?

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The holy grail of the search engine technology is to basically create what people can do on Star Trek. Just speak out loud something like “Computer, to reach Rigel V in less than 12 minutes, what warp speed must the Enterprise travel” and have the computer respond “4.7″.

Well, two major players are well on their way to [pun alert] making it so. The one I just learned about is called Wolfram Alpha. It doesn’t have a public version yet - but I have requested to become a beta tester. I’ll let you know if they grant my request. BBC Story.

The other tool has been live for a long time. Check it out: START, the world’s first Web-based question answering system.�

The first Mac OS X botnet launching denial-of-service attacks has recently been discovered: Story here.

Can you say how bad/funny/stupid a movie is in 140 characters or less? If so, then maybe MuVchat is for you. Think “Pop-Up Video” for movies in real time with audience participation. Not too far from where I live, this concept is currently being tested.

I admit I am intrigued, but I wonder how long this idea goes before it gets tired. I guess it will depend on the movies chosen and how clever the audience is that participates.

Anyway, kudos to Rien Heald for the idea. Click for his Facebook group page to learn more.

Developed for “National Security” and other war-like purposes, this crazy-powerful satellite-like camera system would pay for itself in no time if they rented it out to TMZ, People magazine, etc. Just imagine, Britney, Brangelina, the whores from the Hills, they could never get away. Of course, you don’t need a 1.8 gigapixel camera to see Kim Kardashian’s ass from 15,000′.

A Wired article details the Top 10 Scientific Breakthroughs of 2008. As I read about amazing medical breakthroughs, new supercomputers than can perform more than a quadrillion operations per second, exciting new environment and energy related items, what is the item I am most intrigued by? New carbon nanotube technologies that can create incredibly light and strong materials such as a paper that is stronger than steel.  Why does this impress me so much? Because it means we are that much closer to being able to create an actual Iron Man suit!

UPDATE: I think this breakthrough - wireless electricity - certainly deserves to be on the list.

Twenty-five years ago today, the first cell phone made a call, from Chicago’s Soldier Field to Alexander Graham Bell’s great-grandson who was located in Germany. The “brick” phone, as it was known, cost $3,995, was 13 inches long, and weighed 1.75 pounds. Story here.

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A snippet from a facial expression video created by these guys. Pretty impressive stuff.

I claimed a “whole new magic” of printing technology was coming, and here it is.

A video review can be found here– I cannot find any USA video on it yet.

Anyway, I expect this to be very hot technology and I can’t believe they didn’t introduce this before Christmas. I am already checking Polaroid (PRD) stock prices.

This is a demonstration of Cicsco’s “Telepresence” technology:

Of course, in the real world you are unlikely to have a perfectly lit black room to create this Star Wars-esque experience they are demonstrating, but nevertheless, it is still pretty exciting technology.