iblog

Virgil: Most of us will have heard of Google Earth, the neat application from search giant Google that lets you navigate around a 3D Earth, and zoom in to any point on the globe with impressive detail. Now Google have extended the same technology into the sky, providing amateur star-gazers with the best view of the heavens they’ve been able to get their hands on to date.

Google Sky is included with the latest version of Google Earth, adding a button to the interface which flips the camera up into the sky. Whilst the original Earth model looked down upon a sphere, the Sky model inverts this to look up onto the inside face of a much bigger sphere which the camera is inside. This inside face is plastered with thousands of images taken by agencies such as NASA, all compiled into a singular grand night sky. Dr John Mason, of the British Astronomical Association, praised the new application, saying:

“Light pollution and air pollution is now so bad in many areas that all you can see when you look up is a few dozen stars. If this helps people to realise just what they are missing, it is a jolly good thing.”

Whilst Google Sky isn’t the first program to offer stargazing, it appears to be all set to takeover the market. Whilst other options are also free, they do not provide the same interactive, free-moving camera that made Google Earth so popular, along with its rich integration of related data including routes and buildings. Sky offers clear views of over 300 million stars and galaxies, with various overlays to point out constellations and bring up further data relating to celestial bodies. Patrick Moore, the famed British astronomer, likewise sings the applications praises:

“This thing, Google Sky, seems to me the best way to learn your way around, and the stars become so much more interesting when you know which is which, and it’s a bloody good way to do it.”

The program goes alongside Google’s previous other forays into the heavens, Google Moon and Google Mars - I wonder how long it will be before we’re installing the seemingly inevitable Google Universe.

Virgil: Usually, if something you own has a better design, it’s more likely to be chosen as a target for theft. But new innovation and fervour from the Design and Technology Alliance, a government-backed group hoping to bring crime-prevention into the design process for products, hopes to turn this around.

A bike, for example, is usually sold separately to the security equipment (locks, etc.) that will keep it safe. This obviously raises revenue for the manufacturers. Indeed many companies profit from theft - mobile phone companies, for instance, simply make another sale when someone needs to replace their stolen phone. However, the Alliance hopes to encourage manufacturers to build stronger theft-prevention into their products, insisting that this will be of benefit both to customers and companies alike. David Kester, a member of the Alliance and Chief Executive of the Design Council outlines this aim, saying:

“The public want industry to be responsible, as with the environment, and they will put more trust in firms who they believe are interested in protecting them.”

With this in mind, lateral thinking going on at the Alliance-run Design Against Crime Research Centre has come up with two ideas to demonstrate how simple design features can be easily incorporated into products to help prevent theft. The first is a self-locking bike, which has a hinge down the main frame allowing it to fold in half, rendering the whole thing useless even if it is taken away. The second, and by far, I think, the more ingenious, is a chair which simply has two slots in the front. Women are able to hang their handbags from these slots, meaning that if someone tried to steal the bag, they’d be forced to put their hand between the lady’s legs. Lorraine Gamman, who works at the Centre, comments on this design, saying:

“The genital region is the most defended part of the body. If someone puts their hand down there, you notice.”

With any luck, we should soon be seeing more and more of this kind of simple innovation working to keep the things we’ve bought safe.

Caroline: Friends and family agree that it is totally out of character but since taking delivery of my new steam-cleaner on Thurs I have been cleaning like a woman possessed. With dodgy wrists and elbows I have not been able to have a good old clean for ages but with my new toy I am catching up on all the spring-cleaning that should have been done years ago. So far it has proved itself great for windows, kitchen floors, wall tiles, shower cubicles, taps, lime scale on baths and spots on carpets. It comes with an impressive array of attachments and is easy and light to use. I even took it to my son’s flat today where it proved equal to the task of some tough cleaning. It cost almost ninety pounds but so far it seems to be worth it, especially considering how much cleaners charge. There is a hand held model in the same make but I have heard that it is not terribly effective. It’s even good for the “green” conscience as you don’t need any chemicals. All I have used so far is some vinegar to get rid of some stubborn limescale. I’m not usually one for gadgets but as you can tell I am feeling positively evangelical about it. I’d better not mention the make in case I am accused of advertising but if you have a look on Amazon you can’t miss it as it is bright yellow!

Anna: At a recent trade exhibition in Monaco, French company Dotmobil unveiled a Renault Scenic. Nothing very earth-shattering you might think, but this was no ordinary model. In fact the car is potentially capable of finding its bearings in urban traffic without anyone at the wheel! The vehicle “feels” and “sees” the way using an onboard camera, laser telemeters to measure distances, a GPS receiver and a lot of clever computation. The prototype is also capable of detecting a traffic light, a pedestrian walking across the road and can anticipate the trajectories of other road-users.

So, is this the future of car travel? Given how many accidents result from human error due to recklessness, carelessness, tiredness, drink and drugs perhaps we should start putting out faith in computers rather than our own abilities as drivers…

Anna: Browsing a travel forum about essential pieces of kit to take on a long tour, I found myself reading about the Whiz Away. This gadget is described on the official website as “The World’s First Antibacterial and Hydrophobic Urine Director for Leisure Use and for Mobility Impaired Users”. In short, the device allows women to pee like a man! Remember that scene in The Full Monty? This is admittedly far more hygienic, but I hope I’m not alone in still finding it a bit of a weird concept!

Of course it is inconvenient to be female when there is a dearth of toilets or even, in the outdoors, a lack of suitable cover behind which you might be able to crouch. I think it’s a great invention for women whose mobility is impaired, whether permanently due to disability or illness, or temporarily following an operation or because of a broken limb, for example. Excellent, then, that Whiz products are available on the NHS for those who need them. Also, because it allows you to expel urine while lying down and without undressing, I should think the Whiz Away is a hit with female high-altitude mountaineers. And the idea that this device “preserves Dignity and Liberty whatever the circumstances” is also commendable. But, personally, I’m not sure I’d have used a Whizz Away when cycling through Africa - perhaps it’s just me, but I’d rather hang on and wait until a nice big tree appears on the scene.

Rushda: Students have designed next generation mobile phones which have been put on display at the University of Dundee. The six phones have a certain “sensual” element to them. For example, a particularly interesting one is called Aware, a phone which sends a tingle down your back if a friend is nearby. The reasoning behind such phones was that students wanted to create a way of “interacting with each other on a new level”. Hmmm, I’m not sure about the whole idea of the phone sending a tingle down your back - I think that is a little too intimate, but the idea certainly got me thinking about how cool it would be to be able to know if someone you know is nearby with the use of your phone. Of course, it would mean little chance for chance encounters and so on, and it would inhibit your privacy a bit if you had it on all the time. But such a system would mean the world gets even more connected than before and the chance of meeting a friend you haven’t spoken to forever won’t just slip by while you remain unaware.

Virgil: “Typefaces control the message. Choice of font dictates what you think about something before you even read the first word. Imagine Shakespeare in large capital drop shadow. Our response would be quite different towards the content.” This interesting point made by a leading graphical designer captures why fonts are so important. If a bank’s logo was written in handwriting it might appear too fun and personal - whereas what you really want from a bank is reliability and security - so something less curly would be appropriate. The paradigm of such a font, Helvetica, recently celebrated the 50th birthday of its design. Little do you know it, but this simple clean typeface is seen almost everywhere everyday - it is the staple choice for businesses wishing to give a message of steadfastness - it doesn’t say too much or too little, being neutral and legible. The font is used integrally in the logos of companies such as Gap, Orange, Currys, Hoover, Panasonic and the Royal Bank of Scotland - the full list would go on for pages. However, as popular as it is among corporations, many find it utterly uninspiring and uncreative. Over the years, various campaigns have sought to ban certain fonts, including the Nazis trying to ban ‘Gothic’ fonts, whilst modern online petitions abhor the casual Comic Sans MS. It’s an interesting battle, because as arbitrary as typeface seems, we all have our favourite typefaces, and we tend to be quite particular about what we like to read and write in. A comment on the BBC article sums up the ridiculousness of it all: “Two fonts walk into a bar and ask for a pint, but the barman replies, ‘Sorry lads, we don’t serve your type.’”

Rushda: A new survey has revealed that more than one in five of us own electronic gadgets that we never use. Often expensive and high-end, much of our gadgetry goes to waste, being thrown away, collecting dust, or given to friends as a last resort. Apparently we collectively waste £1.25bn each year on everything from digital cameras to MP3 players to sat-nav systems. I think the findings are not very surprising as there are a number of reasons for this trend. First of all, technology is changing so fast that we often end up buying stuff that becomes nothing-very-special only months after and many of us find some better model to buy. Also, there’s the fact that something always looks so good when it’s new and sparkly, but once we’ve checked all the functions and used it a few times, almost anything becomes old news. We are just like kids in many ways with our attention waning after a bit of play. Too bad the toys we buy are a lot more expensive!

Virgil: There’s a little program you can download called Folding@Home, which runs only when your computer is idle and aids medical research. The research being done is into the process of ‘protein folding’. This is a process that takes place just before vital proteins do their vital jobs in your body - and many nasty diseases are the effects of proteins having ‘mis-folded’. Obviously, understanding protein folding will greatly aid our progress towards cures for these diseases, which include Alzheimer’s and Cancer.

However, analysing protein folding is a ridiculously computer-intensive process. In fact, so intensive that it needs thousands of supercomputers just to do a tiny bit, and this is why the labs need us to be folding at home. If you download the aforementioned program, then when your computer is idle it will work on folding a protein. When it’s done (a week of idle-time later, I find), it sends the results back to the research laboratories. In this way our PCs becomes tributaries to the computing power of the project. It’s a wonderfully good idea.

What’s this got to do with the PlayStation 3? Well, as you may know, the PS3 is the latest and most advanced seventh-generation computer games console, which incorporates no less than a revolutionary new processor, the Cell processor, capable of “supercomputer-like speeds“. All this technology is used to render video games with photorealistic graphics and plenty of Z-buffered anti-aliased anisotropically-filtered pixel-shaded particle-system spurts of blood as you murder yet another on-screen zombie. But you can now download Folding@Home for your PS3, and put some of that power to a better cause while your game is paused.

Rushda: Have you ever seen the TV show Dragons’ Den? It’s a surprisingly fun program to watch and consists of budding entrepreneurs trying to show off their inventions to millionnaire judges (”dragons”) in the hope of securing investment. Some ideas do win the hearts of the dragons and end up being successful but many are sneered at and practically shooed out of the studio.

It’s encouraging to see such inventions that did get laughed at actually do very well. One recent example is that of a plastic device named STABLEtable, designed to sort out the problem of wobbly table legs. The experts branded it “the most ridiculous idea” ever seen but Andrew Gordon, the proud inventor, didn’t give up and he is well on his way to making his first £1 million, having sold thousands with clients even including Kensington Palace. Goes to show that the dragons’ word isn’t law and they really aren’t as hot as they think.