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Apps and Gadgets to Soothe the Baby: New York Times Article (video, links) -a little off-topic

Apps and Gadgets to Soothe the Baby: New York Times Article (video, links) -a little off-topic

Apps and Gadgets to Soothe the Baby: New York Times Article (video, links) -a little off-topic

Posted: 26 Nov 2010 07:30 AM PST

I came across a link to a recent NY Time's article, "The Pacificer Gets and Upgrade:  Apps and Gadgets to Soothe the Baby" on Nat Torkington's "Four short links" O'Reilly Radar post, and thought it was worth sharing, especially for my readers who are new parents or new grandparents! Here are a few of the links from the NY Times article:


iPhone Apps
White Noise   by TMSOFT  (Rated positive by new dad and NY Times writer Farhad Manjoo)
"White Noise provides ambient sounds of the environment to help you relax or sleep.  Includes high quality looping noises such as ocean waves, crickets chirping at night, and the soothing sound of rain fall."


MamaRoo "It moves like you do"

The following two apps/gadgets didn't seem to work as advertised, according to Farhad Manjoo:
Cry Translator "The iPhone App to Understand Baby Crying"
Why Cry Baby Analyzer


Baby Monitors
Philips Advent Basic with DECT Technology
Angelcare Movement and Sound Monitor
"Besides relaying your baby's cries, it has a sensor pad, placed under the crib or bassinet mattress, that alerts parents when a baby has not moved for 20 seconds. It does not go off incessantly (the machine is sensitive enough to detect breathing) and is well suited to parents like me who cannot shake the paranoia that can come with caring for a new human being." -Farhad Manjoo


Farhad discussed monitors that feature web connectivity,   such as the MobiCam Digital Wireless Video Monitor and the Home Digital Video Monitor. These systems enable parents to watch the monitor's video of the baby via a smartphone.  To make this work, the baby monitor must be connected to a laptop or computer, which in turn must be turned on continuously, something that might not bee too convenient for busy parents.  He suggested that new parents take a look at the Lorex Wireless Easy Connect Network Camera, which has a built-in Wi-Fi chip that enables it to  connect to a wireless network without a computer. The Lorex isn't a baby monitor, but since it doesn't require a computer to work, it might be useful to anxious parents on-the-go who might want to see if their baby is being treated appropriately by a caregiver in their absence.


OTHER
Voice Activated Crib Light with Womb Sounds (just $14.99!)
Itzben Baby Care Timer ($24.00 -keeps track of diaper changes, feedings, and sleep patterns)


Farhad Manjoo's comment about babies and gadgets is worth heeding:
"... but babies are a fickle, ever-changing lot, and what works one time seems hopeless the next. As a gadget fiend, I'm used to evaluating technology in controlled settings, but there is nothing controlled about life with baby."


RELATED
ThinkGeek:  GeekKids Newborn and Infant 
The Pacificer Gets and Upgrade:  Apps and Gadgets to Soothe the Baby
Farhad Manjoo, New York Times, 11/24/10


Cross-posted on the TechPsych blog
http://interactivemultimediatechnology.blogspot.com

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The Clock is Ticking: Duarte's thought-provoking video info-graphic about the negative impact of the economy in Long Island (via Innovative Interactivity)

The Clock is Ticking: Duarte's thought-provoking video info-graphic about the negative impact of the economy in Long Island (via Innovative Interactivity)

The Clock is Ticking: Duarte's thought-provoking video info-graphic about the negative impact of the economy in Long Island (via Innovative Interactivity)

Posted: 24 Nov 2010 06:25 AM PST


The Clock is Ticking from Long Island Index on Vimeo.
I came across the above video infographic on the Tracy Boyer's Innovative Interactivity blog. In a few minutes, it tells a story about how the economic downturn has impacted Long Island. 
My take-away from the video?   We are not provided an accurate or meaningful picture from traditional media sources about our nation's economic woes.  It is a good sign that the stock market is doing better, on balance, than in 2008, but the economic wounds run wide and deep.  These wounds need to be counted and presented in a way that makes sense to policy makers AND the rest of us!  If not, the cycle will repeat.  

Tracy discovered the video from a post on the Simple Complexity website:
The Clock is Ticking On Long Island: Infographic Video
Neal Levene, Simple Complexity, 11/22/10
"Simple Complexity: Making Simple Sense From Complex Data"
The video was created by Duarte, a company that focuses on visual means of information presentation. Duarte is known for supporting presentation literacy using VisualStory methodology.


Comment:  Wouldn't it be great if we could simply load data related to our own communities and regions and have it automatically feed into this sort of video info-graphic?!
http://interactivemultimediatechnology.blogspot.com

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Microsoft Surface Light and Physics App for Kids at the Smithsonian

Microsoft Surface Light and Physics App for Kids at the Smithsonian

Microsoft Surface Light and Physics App for Kids at the Smithsonian

Posted: 24 Nov 2010 04:01 AM PST

Microsoft Surface at the Smithsonian


The Surface is located in the Smithsonian's Castle,  and is part of "The Wonder of Light: Touch and Learn!" exhibit, which opened on Tuesday, November 9th (2010).  Microsoft donated the Surface unit to the Smithsonian.


Below is  slideshow of the interactive exhibit:



The video below provides a closer look at the applications created by Infostrat for the Smithsonian exhibit:


RELATED
New Interactive Exhibit Opens in Smithsonian's Castle, Bringing Light To Life
Smithsonian News Release, 11/9/20

Josh Blake's post, Microsoft Surface and Magical Object Interaction.
http://interactivemultimediatechnology.blogspot.com

First International Visual Learning Lab Conference: Background Info, Program, Abstracts, & Publication Links (Budapest University of Technology and Economics)

Posted: 23 Nov 2010 04:59 PM PST

Background:


I first came across the work of  Hungarian philosopher Kristóf Nyíri in 2003 when I was researching information related to a paper I was writing - "Thinking, learning, and communicating with multimedia".   I had the honor of meeting Kristof Nyiri when I presented my paper at a conference in 2004 at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, where Kristóf Nyiri worked at the time.  The conference, "The Global and the Local in Mobile Communications: Places, Images, People, Connections" was co-sponsored by T-Mobile and was part of the Communications in the 21st Century: The Mobile Information Society series of interdisciplinary conferences.


I recently learned that Dr. Nyiri was involved in putting together an upcoming international conference hosted by the Visual Learning Lab at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics.  This important conference is coming up very soon, on December 1st!


Visual and interactive media technologies have come a long way since 2004.  In my opinion, these technologies have the potential to create new, efficient, engaging, and meaningful ways for people to learn, remember, communicate, and share knowledge.  I'm not alone in my thoughts regarding this matter, as you'll see from the topics that will be discussed at the VLL conference.


For your convenience, I've shared some information from the Visual Learning Lab (VLL) website in this post.  I encourage you to take the time to read the VLL mission statement, selected publications of some of the members of the VLL,  and the abstracts of the presentations for the upcoming conference.  The abstracts include short bios of the presenters.   


Be prepared to do some deep thinking when you read Kristóf Nyiri's publications!


Mission Statement of the Visual Learning Lab
"Although we naturally think in both words and images, educational theory has focused overwhelmingly on the verbal dimensions of teaching and learning. This is in part a reflection of the rise of book printing: pictures receded into the background, even in spite of efforts by Comenius and others to integrate them into texts created for educational purposes. In today's networked digital environment, however, images are easy to access, and can be handled just as smoothly as words. In response to the new challenges hereby created, the Department of Technical Education in the Budapest University of Technology and Economics has established the Visual Learning Lab (VLL), with the goal of furthering the use of visual technologies -- including film, video, and interactive digital media -- in the teaching and learning process, and of engaging in high-level research on all aspects of visual education."

VLL Publications (PDF)
Visual Learning Bibilography
A working bibliography compiled by VLL Budapest participants (Stand Jan. 31, 2010, )



Program for the December 1st VLL Conference


Written by Horváth Cz. János   
Monday, 08 November 2010 12:34

Visual Learning (1st VLL Budapest Conference, 2010)

Registration

09:30 –  09:50, Opening addresses

Plenary Session

10:00 – 10:20: Roger Murphy, The Visual Enrichment of Higher Education ()
10:20 – 10:40: Christoph Wagner, Visual Experiences in Art History ()
10:40 – 11:00: Petra Aczél, Enchanting Bewilderment: Concerns of Visual Rhetoric ()

Section A

11:10 – 11:30: Gabriella Németh, The Visual Rhetorical Figures of the Giant Billboard „ARC" (Face) Exhibition ()
11:30 – 11:50: Ágnes Veszelszki, Image and Self-representation ()
11:50 – 12:10: Anna Szlávi, The Image of Women: A Conceptual Analysis of Commercial Posters ()
12:10 – 12:30: Zsuzsanna Kemenesi, Selection by Personalization ()

Section B

11:10 – 11:30: György Molnár, Images, Charts, and the Flow of Knowledge ()
11:30 – 11:50: János Cz. Horváth, Pictorial Skills in the Service of Knowledge-Digging ()
11:50 – 12:10: Franz Dotter – Marlene Hilzensauer, "SignOnOne" – Visual learning for the Deaf ()
12:10 – 12:30: Jean-Rémi Lapaire, Visuo-kinetic Explorations of Grammar ()
12:30 – 14:00: Lunch

14:00 – 14:20: John Mullarkey, Cinema: The Animals that Therefore We Are (On Temple Grandin's Picture Theory, in Pictures) ()
14:20 – 14:40: Zoltán Kövecses, Contextual Images As Metaphors ()

Section A

14:50 – 15:10: Kristóf Nyíri,  Metaphor and Visual Thinking ()
15:10 – 15:30: Mikkel R. Haaheim, Metaphor is a Constellation ()
15:30 – 15:50: Biljana Radić-Bojanić, Mental Images as a Metaphorical Vocabulary Learning Strategy ()
15:50 – 16:10: Barbara Reiter, Visualizing Human Rights (movie) ()

Section B

14:50 – 15:10: Gábor Bencsik, The Image-Anthropological Approach to Historiography: Gypsies in 19th-Century Hungary ()
15:10 – 15:30:  Zsuzsanna Kondor, "World Picture" and Beyond – Representation Revisited ()
15:30 – 15:50: Daniela G. Camhy, Visuality and the Acquisition of the Concept of Time ()
15:50 – 16:10: Anna Somfai, Visual Thinking and the Creation and Transmission of Knowledge in Medieval Philosophical and Scientific Manuscripts ()

Plenary Session

16:20 – 16:40: Dieter Mersch, On Visual Epistemology: The Logic of "Showing" ()


16:40 – 17:00: Concluding discussion

RELATED
Visual Learning Lab's Partner Institutions
University of Nottingham
Universität Potsdam

Universität Potsdam
(GIB, Society for Interdisciplinary Image Science)
(Chair for Philosophy with Focus on Cognitive Science, Prof. Klaus Sachs-Hombach, Chemnitz, Germany)
(Chair for Art History, Prof. Dr. Christoph Wagner)
Universität Innsbruck
Center for Digital Culture Studies,
University of Pécs (Hungary), Department of Philosophy


http://interactivemultimediatechnology.blogspot.com

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Light Touch Interactive Projector; Holographic Laser Projection (HLP) "How it Works": Update on Light Blue Optics (Videos, links)

Light Touch Interactive Projector; Holographic Laser Projection (HLP) "How it Works": Update on Light Blue Optics (Videos, links)

Light Touch Interactive Projector; Holographic Laser Projection (HLP) "How it Works": Update on Light Blue Optics (Videos, links)

Posted: 23 Nov 2010 12:56 AM PST

It has been about a year since I wrote about Light Blue Optics, "a privately-funded company developing and supplying miniature projection systems for use in high volume applications in markets including automotive, digital signage and consumer electronics." Light Blue Optics is located in Cambridge, UK, and has a development facility in Colorado Springs.


Light Touch Interactive Projector


Holographic Laser Projection (HLP): How it Works




RELATED
A Touch Screen Table
Brendan O'Brian, QSR 11/23/10

"Light Blue Optics, which rolled out the Light Touch in January, is working with several restaurant chains to put its technology on tables..."You can project menus onto the table so the customer can sit down and order their meal," says Tamara Roukaerts, director of marketing communications at Light Blue Optics. "They can also watch videos of the chef preparing their meal through a live video feed.""
Light Blue Optics turns KFC tables into touch screens
Roland Gribben, The Telegraph 10/11/10


HLP technology, and how it can be used for practical purposes, is further explained in the following white papers:
Buckley, E., Lacoste, L., Stindt, D. Rear-view virtual image displays. SID (Society for Information Display), Vehicles and Photons - 16th Annual Symposium on Vehicle Displays, 10/15/09
Abstract: "Light Blue Optics holographic laser projection technology can be utilised to create a virtual image display which, with a volume enclosing less than 700cc, exhibits a form-factor consistent with integration into a rear-view mirror. By combining the visual accommodation and concomitant reaction time benefits of a head-up display with the ability to present high resolution safety-critical information in a rear-view off-axis configuration with large eyebox, significant potential safety benefits can result."


Buckley, E., Tindt, D., Isele, R.  Novel Human-Machine Interface (HMI) Design Enabled by Holographic Laser Projection SID 2009 Symposium, 6/2/09

Abstract: "Despite the current proliferation of in-car flat panel displays, designers continue to investigate alternatives to flat and rectangular thin-film transistor (TFT) panels – principally to obtain differentiation by freedom of design using, for example, free-form shapes, round displays, flexible displays or mechanical 3D solutions. A perfect demonstration was provided at the 2008 Paris Motor Show by the BMW Mini Center Globe, a novel instrument cluster design which combines lighting, a circular flat panel and a holographic laser projector provided by Light Blue Optics (LBO) to redefine the state of the art in human-machine interface (HMI)...In this paper, the authors will show how the incorporation of LBO's holographic laser projection technology can allow the construction of a unique display technology like the Mini Center Globe, and how such a combination of technologies represents a significant advance in the current state of the art in automotive displays."
The Story Behind this Post
I was having one of my occasional vivid "technology dreams" just before my dog woke me up in the middle of the night tonight.  I was driving around in a futuristic car that had all sorts of cool technologies, including a holographic side-view mirror, similar to the one I blogged about in a 2009 post about Blue Light Optics.  This inspired me take a quick look at what the company is doing now.  


The dream that entertained me tonight was probably triggered by what I read just before I went to sleep- a call for papers posted by Albrecht Schmidt on Facebook: "Call for Papers - Theme Issue on Automotive User Interfaces,  for an upcoming edition of Personal and Ubiquitous Computing.   If you are curious,   here's an example of one of my blog posts that was inspired by one of my geek-tech-dreams:  "Last Night I Dreamt about Haptic Touch Screen Overlays".  
http://interactivemultimediatechnology.blogspot.com

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Raymond.CC Blog - Verify Active Directory FRS Replication using Ultrasound

Raymond.CC Blog - Verify Active Directory FRS Replication using Ultrasound

Verify Active Directory FRS Replication using Ultrasound

Posted: 23 Nov 2010 12:00 AM PST


FRS Replication is very important in Active Directory. If there is any inconsistency replication between any of the domain controllers, it may cause the Active Directory environment to become unhealthy, and it may also cause serious issues such as, cannot perform changes, unable to create objects in Active Directory, database between domain controllers is not [...]

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