| Tuesday, November 16, 2004 |  |
| Find waldo in this |
 Slashdot:
"Dutch research institute TNO has unveiled what it believes is the largest digital photograph in the world. The image contains 2.5 gigapixels or 7.5 gigabyte worth of data. It is composed of 600 single images shot by a computer-controlled pan-tilt unit in 7 second intervals. Afterwards, all photos where stiched together ... using the capacity of 5 high-end pc's in about 24 hours time." Now, what's really cool about that is the fact that you can look at the picture online, and you can zoom in. Unbelievably close. At first glance it is just a fairly boring picture of a city. You can see what's close by it gets unclear and foggy in the distance. But then you can zoom in, and clearly see what is there. If you go look at it, you'll find that you can go read the license plates on cars and the street signs, many blocks away. Way out in the distance in the middle is a tiny little blob, just a handful of pixels at first. If you zoom in, you'll see that it is a magnificant church, and you can see what time it is on the clock on the tower. So, how would that be for a webcam? One of those a day in all major cities. Or imagine when it becomes practical to capture live video like that. It will happen. [ Technology | 2004-11-16 22:32 | 6 comments | PermaLink ] More > |
| The desire to give |
Via SmartMobs. In a research paper published in the December issue of FirstMonday.org, Kevin McGee and Jörgen Skågeby attempt to answer the question "Could the ability to give be one of the central features that determines the popularity and success of computer–mediated "sharing" activities, communities, applications, and services?"...there is another dimension to the sharing phenomenon that is not as widely discussed — and which suggests an unexplored opportunity for developers, providers, and consumers of digital media: the strong human desire to give, whether it is advice/assistance (newsgroups), digital goods (music, literature, software), or other resources (bandwidth, processing cycles). Much sharing is almost certainly motivated by reciprocity in one form or another; many times people clearly do "give in order to receive." But there are significant indications that some acts of sharing are difficult to explain easily in terms of reciprocity: it seems that some people simply enjoy non–reciprocal giving. Should that really be so shocking? The joys of giving are of course not entirely one-sided. It is fun to give when one notices that it has a beneficial effect. Those effects are often bigger when one gives to do good as opposed to when one only gives to instantly get something else back. [ Culture | 2004-11-16 22:37 | 6 comments | PermaLink ] More > |