Monthly Archives: May 2011

Learning on the Cheap

by Dave Jones
Leave a comment
Learning on the Cheap

This post brought to you by Flat World Knowledge. All opinions are 100% mine.   Why do college textbooks cost so much? Seriously. Even if you buy them used, you still pay an exorbitant amount of money.   New company Flat World Knowledge figures we have open source computer software, so why not open source textbooks? Check this out: Flat World uses a custom system called MIYO where professors and students can access their catalog of e-textbooks and then modify the books for their own use. Using Flat World’s system, you can take any book there and “Make It Your Own,” inserting or removing any text they want right down Read more »

PSN Returns – With Free Goodies

by Robin Parrish
Leave a comment
PSN Returns – With Free Goodies

In case you hadn’t heard, PSN is back. At least for North America and Europe anyway, nearly one full month after the online system was compromised and Sony was forced to pull its plug, most of PSN’s services have returned. (We’re still waiting on the PlayStation Store, but nearly everything else is back.) To encourage players to return and apologize for the extended downtime, Sony has put together a “Welcome Back” package that’s like a free goody bag, which will be given to all users (for now just in North America, but similar packages are being made for other regions). Here are the details. Read more »

Witcher II Easter Egg pokes fun at Assassin’s Creed

by Jayvee Fernandez
Leave a comment
Witcher II Easter Egg pokes fun at Assassin’s Creed

Just got my Premium Edition copy of Witcher II: Assassins of Kings. See you in 2 weeks. But before that, if you’ve played through the flashback, small time developer CD Projekt poked a bit of fun with a little easter egg from big developer Assassin’s Creed. During the stage where you’re supposed to align the ballista to break through the bastille, walk towards the gate and on the right you will find a corpse donning the attire of an assassin wearing the attire of The Brotherhood. If you missed it, here it is: “I guess they’ll never learn,” Geralt says. Read more »

Conversion Kit Allows You to Use a Typewriter as a Keyboard

by Noemi Twigg
Leave a comment
Conversion Kit Allows You to Use a Typewriter as a Keyboard

Sometime in April, news broke out that the last remaining typewriter factory was closing its doors. While the news was not all that surprising – who uses typewriters these days? – it still struck a chord in the hearts of many people. After all, many of us probably still remember the good old days of being bent over a shiny machine, happily listening to the clickety-clack of the keys and the mechanism that made the imprints on the paper. Alas, the news was apparently bogus. While that particular Mumbai-based company has indeed closed shop, one can still find typewriters made by other companies. In fact, a quick search on Google Read more »

FaceAccess. The $30 Portable Face Recognition System

by Jeff Cormier
Leave a comment
FaceAccess. The $30 Portable Face Recognition System

Facial recognition software is fascinating.  Software, be it on a computer, or as an app on a smartphone which can capture an individual’s likeness and recognize who the individual is, often is expensive, does not work, or the technology is owned by another.  Two Cornell undergraduate students, Brian Harding and Cat Jubinski, have just taken the wrap off their project which dispels the aforementioned notions associated with facial recognition systems.  Read more »

The 11 Supermen

by Robin Parrish
4 Comments
The 11 Supermen

With the conclusion of Smallville last week (did you see it?!), which hit all the right sweet spots for most Superman fans, I’m feeling nostalgic about the Man of Steel. Whose face do you see in your head when someone mentions Superman? Most people think of Christopher Reeve. An elder generation might see George Reeves. TV viewers probably think of Tom Welling. The youngest viewers might even think of Brandon Routh. But did you know there have been a total of eleven actors who have donned the cape and tights? Read more »

Moving Photographs

by Darice de Cuba
2 Comments
Moving Photographs

Remember how GIF animated icons used to be all that in the early days of internet? Then they became the bane of the internet. Even in these days I have had clients requesting to use GIF images on their website. Big and blinking still are the big no no that some people want. Photographer Jamie Beck has taken the GIF format and redeemed it completely with his photography work. Moving photographs, wherein a photography scene, one subject is repeatedly moving at a normal pace. When I see his photographs it makes me think, genius and why no one thought about it before. The fact that Jamie carefully chooses which object Read more »

Use Your Illusion and Have Fun!

by Noemi Twigg
Leave a comment
Use Your Illusion and Have Fun!

No, I am not talking about glam rock band Guns ‘n Roses (does anyone still talk about them today?). The winners of the 2011 Best Illusion of the Year Contest have just been announced, and boy, do you have a lot of material to waste your time on! This contest is held yearly, this year being the 7th installment. The purpose of the contest? The contest is a celebration of the ingenuity and creativity of the world’s premier visual illusion research community. Visual illusions are those perceptual experiences that do not match the physical reality. Our perception of the outside world is generated indirectly by brain mechanisms, and so all Read more »