Politics and Technology

Like many people, we too were glued to the TV on the US Presidential election night. While V actually watched the election coverage the entire time, I went missing for a while to my friend's place to watch an election movie Recount, which focuses on the 2000 election between Bush and Al Gore and the mess that was Florida.



I know CNN has been the frontier in the election coverage since past many months, going on and on, day after day, hour after hour - bringing panel of experts from all fields discussing each and every aspect of the campaign.

But on Election Night, I was bowled over by CNN - not by their extensive coverage or detailed analysis, but by the technology they have used. The "Magic Wall" in the CNN studio is a piece of technology art - a huge multi touch screen on which Wolf Blitzer and the rest where swiping maps just by a flick of a finger. Just by a touch they could pull our charts and numbers. And it was so smooth and slick.

But the best part of it all was when they went all sci-fi and Star War-sy by beaming up a hologram image of a reporter who was located remotely, right into their studio! My! That was impressive to say the least. They even managed to beam in Will.i.am!

Learn more in cnn.com about the Magic Wall and the Hologram.

My new iToy

Months of waiting, 3 stores, 1 Starbucks coffee, 1 free bottle of water (courtesy: Apple) and 5 hours later, I finally own it !!

Family time

I recently came across this new networking site, Geni.com and I am hooked!

What's so special about this site is that unlike other networking sites with focuses on friends or colleagues, this one focuses on family.

You can create your family tree and invite your family members who can help expand the tree. It is 'n' dimensional and can really grow! But even though the tree can grow humongously, it is so wonderfully maintained that you will not be overwhelmed by it.

Its not even been a week since I started my family tree and already it has over 300 members. Through the tree I now can easily remember my cousin's wife's name or remember their kids birthdays! Not only that, I got back in touch with a distant cousin whom I knew when I was a kid. Another good use me and V got out of it is that it is now easier to understand each other's family and the new relationships that we will both be getting into.

Well, like I said, I am hooked. Why don't you try it out too?
www.geni.com

Where the menu is an appetizer

I had to share this with you guys! I am a big foodie, I might not cook a lot, but I do enjoy trying out new cuisines in different restaurants. I just came across this article on cnet.com and was simply blown away by the chef's unique methods of cooking - creating a whole new technology in food!

Homaro Cantu is a Chicago based chef who uses tools like the ink-jet printer and Class 4 laser (normally found in an operating room or a welding shop) to create delicacies which look too good to be eaten!

Check out this link to see the innovative techniques he uses to cook food.

One of his dream is creating edible ads, where consumers can simply rip off and eat the advertizement in a magazine and get the taste of it!

What really intrigued me about him is that he is one of those few who have actually managed to dethrone chef Masaharu Morimoto in Iron Chef America. Iron Chef America is a popular action packed one hour show in Food Network where chefs from all over US challenge one of the four Iron Chefs. Among them, I consider Masaharu Morimoto to be one of the finest and I have never seen him lose to anyone, expect to one other Iron Chef Bobby Flay in the original Japanese Iron Chef show.

Find out more about Homaro Cantu and his technology here.

Now that's what I call innovation!

Startup company Emotiv Systems have developed a unique and very innovative technology that can connect human brain signals to computer hardware and software.

They have come up with something called as the Emotiv Development Kit which is basically comprised of three detection toolkits as explained below. These toolkits interact with their neuro technology based headset called Project Epoc to capture various brain signals and transfer them as electric signals that can be interpreted as different activities.

Expressiv: The first toolkit Expressiv identifies facial expressions, such as blink, smile, wink etc that will provide for more realistic virtual chatting.
Affectiv: The second toolkit Affectiv detects a user's emotional state such as frustration, anger, excitement etc which would be great for role-playing games. Another interesting use would be to unconsciously rate music in iTunes or videos in YouTube or likes.
Cognitiv: The third toolkit Cognitiv which sounds the most interesting of all, will allow users to manipulate virtual objects using mind control. It supports actions, such as lift, drop, rotate, push, pull, etc.

These kits are currently in alpha phase, so it still has a long way to go before it is ready for consumers like us. But it has certainly brought out an innovation that has a bright future.

You can get some more information here

Which Vista is right for you?

:)

What's my song?

How many times have you found yourself humming a tune or singing a song but to your frsutration dont remember the title of the song? How often I have tried to google the lyrics trying to search for the song but with not such a great result.

Well, we now have Midomi to rescue. This innovative search site allows you to sing/hum a tune and it will search for the song for you! How cool is that!!!

Can't wait to get home and try it out!!

Update: I tried this out and it works pretty good. It did return songs to the tunes (or mis-tunes :P) that I hummed. And yeah, when I sang a Hindi song (which I knew was 'based' on an English tune), it did return the English song. Now you can how which songs inspires our Bollywood songs!

Clothes with a secret

I was watching one episode of CSI:NY when I came to know about this website www.edoclaundry.com.

The whole concept of edoclaundry is pretty cool. This guy designs a series of t-shirts which has code hidden in the graphic. (scramble the letters 'edoc' and you get 'code' - hence the name). Once you have figured out the hidden code, you need to go to the website and enter the code. There's a series of t-shirts and you need to figure out the codes in all and eventually in the end, u apparantly get to know the deep dark secret behind edoclaundry.

Pretty innovative way to sell t-shirts, dont you think? And quite a pricey way to entertain one self!

Map My India!

Many of you might already be using it, but I just came across this site: http://beta.mapmyindia.com/

Do check it out...it's pretty neat! I hadn't thought this could be possible in India with its so many ambiguously named streets and addresses.

I tried out a few features....I guess it works better for bigger cities, for those are the ones where the data is most extensive. But I did find out that the road way from Pune to Gangtok is 2263.76 Km! They seem to be planning to add more cool features like mobile etc. Good going!

Bright and colourful

This is kinda follow-up to Saba's smiley post. I came across a lot of 'smile makers' this week.

The most exciting of all was a surprise email from a long lost friend. This friend registered in Batchmates.com and found me and sent me an email. It was such a wonderful surprise, so good to hear from her after this long (we were together till 10th std) and to catch up on each others lives. We have just exchanged a couple of emails and we still have loads to catch up on. Most surprising was to know she has been married since last 2 yrs and is now an expectant mother!! I am certainly getting older :(

I had given up on Batchmates.com long time back as no one wrote to me in all these years that I registered, nor did anyone respond to me. But my friend's email made me log-in and I found that another friend had registered a year ago. I sent her an email without much hope of receiving any reply...and lo! the very next day her email was nicely sitting in my inbox. Wat more can one ask than to be reunited to two long lost friends in such a short gap?

Well, my joys didnt end here. Another happy note was Michelin declaring that they are going to re-imburse the ticket money to all the spectators of the USGP 2005 :D. First, unexpected friends and next unexpected money! I love surprises!!!

Google has launched their new satellite mapping tool, Google Earth. I downloaded their free version and have been doing a lot of exploring since then. I am so amazed at the technology and the information they have. You can even view side view of the earth's terrain. I could see buildings in Chicago to Mount Everest and Mount Kanchenjunga. Do try it out..its awesome! I love Google!!!

Our plans for the long weekend has finally been finalised. As usual, there were people who wanted to join in and opt out..The count was finally fixed and yesternight we sat down armed with our laptops hunting high and low for car deals and hotel deals. After about 4-5hrs we finally booked the cars and the rooms. Fourteen and two 1/4th people are going to Mackinac Island, Michigan and places around it. Leaving on Friday eve...gonna be a night long drive. I love road trips!!!

Hope you all have a great weekend. See you all on Tuesday! I love long weekends!!!!!!