Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Vodafone's Otello search engine uses images, not text

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/245518835/

We've certainly seen some clever methods of searching from one's mobile, but Vodafone's latest idea is quite the stroke of genius. Showcased at CeBIT, the Otello search engine simply uses images as input; in other words, handset owners just snap a picture of anything -- a landmark, DVD case, unidentified flying object, etc. -- and Otello then "returns information relevant to the picture to the mobile phone." Reportedly, Vodafone is expected to conduct a trial with German paper Bild in which readers can "find out more about specially-marked articles by photographing them with their mobile's camera and sending the image to [the aforementioned paper]." Unfortunately, the carrier is being tight-lipped with its plans for Otello beyond the trial, but if this stuff functions as advertised, we can't see it remaining a secret for long.

[Via Pocket-lint]

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AMD demonstrates 45nm quad-core processors at CeBIT

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/245580181/

Filed under: Desktops

In a woefully unstimulating press release, AMD has meekly trumpeted the fact that it's demonstrating its "first 45nm quad-core chips running multiple operating systems and a range of processing intensive applications" at CeBIT. Unfortunately, little is known beyond that -- aside from the fact that the processors showcased ("Shanghai" for servers, "Deneb" for desktops) were produced in Germany at the firm's Fab 36 300mm manufacturing facility, that is. Still, AMD managed to reiterate that "this milestone" would be "the first of many" as it moves toward the release of 45-nanometer products later this year. Huzzah?

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Martian avalanches

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/245516139/martian-avalanches.html

This incredible photograph depicts avalanches near the north pole of Mars. Snapped by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, it's the first ever image of active avalanches on the Red Planet. From NASA:

"It really surprised me," says planetary scientist Ingrid Daubar Spitale of the University of Arizona who first noticed the avalanches in photos taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on Feb. 19th. "It's great to see something so dynamic on Mars. A lot of what we see there hasn't changed for millions of years..."

The full image reveals features as small as a desk in a strip of terrain 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) wide and more than 10 times that long, at 84 degrees north latitude. Reddish layers known to be rich in water ice make up the face of a steep slope more than 700 meters (2,300 feet) tall, running the length of the image.

"We don't know what set off these landslides," says Patrick Russell of the University of Berne, Switzerland, a HiRISE team collaborator. "We plan to take more images of the site through the changing Martian seasons to see if this kind of avalanche happens all year or is restricted to early spring."

Link (Thanks, Paul Saffo!)

Make a Wish List from del.icio.us with del.ishli.st [Del.icio.us]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/244831353/make-a-wish-list-from-delicious-with-delishlist

Having an easily-accessible wish list means not having to be unpleasantly surprised at your friends and relatives' ... creativity when a birthday, holiday, or plain old surprise rolls around. Rather than creating separate, often hard-to-find wish lists on sites like Amazon or Newegg, del.isili.st can pull any sites you've tagged on social bookmarking site de.icio.us with the phrase "wishlist" and display them on a clean, white page of links. The main drawback is that you have to keep the del.icio.us links public, so anyone could potentially see your material goods fixations, but most wish lists are public on other sites anyway. Del.isihli.st is a free site and requires no sign-up.

del.ishli.st [via etc.]

Definition Inspiration from Visual Thesaurus [Webapps]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/243994096/definition-inspiration-from-visual-thesaurus

View the relationships between words using webapp Visual Thesaurus which displays synonyms, antonyms, adverbs, and adjectives for any particular search word. Enter a phrase in the search box. Your search term will appear in the center of the screen and additional nodes will crop up to indicate related terms. Click on any of these nodes to dig deeper and get more word associations. Mouseover any node to get a quick definition. Visual Thesaurus is a powerful tool that quickly builds vocabulary. The only downside is that the application runs for a limited amount of queries and then you're prompted to pay the $2.95/month fee. (Tip: Reopen the Java application and you can run additional searches.) Previously mentioned VisuWords does nearly the same thing (albeit slower) and is completely free.