February 18, 2007
Killer Security Cameras
Oh boy! The Korean government is building armed security cameras to replace their human counterparts. It's designed to protect "major military base[s] and national strategic site[s]". They also say that "perfect guarding operation is guaranteed"... somehow I doubt that.
Here are the specs that jumped out at me:
- EM-CCD
- Un-cooled IR Camera
- Max. detection range: 4km (Day)- 2km (Night)
- Laser range finder
- Rubber Bullets / Teargas
- Rifle or Light machine gun
Joy. Telerobotic killing. If this trend continues video gamers are going to become a valuable commodity.
[ Link via Alex Barton. Thanks Alex! ]
Public Traffic Cams - Power to the People
Reader Tetsu Yatsu sent me this:
Sousveillance hopes to balance the power struggle between Big Brothers and citizens by bringing cameras to the street level, but many of those camera systems are either publicly available, or, with a little effort and some time, obtainable. The classic 'bird's-eye-view' surveillance cameras can also be yours. Locally, I gained access to the pure 25fps streams from the Department of Transportation, but I know the University has over 600 security cameras that may be accessible from somewhere. Don't disregard these valuable resources!
He also did a very geeky writeup of how he accessed (not hacked) the cams. Very interesting stuff, would like to see more utilization of public information sources.
[ Link written by Tetsu Yatsu. Thanks Tetsu!]
Ghetto Institute of Technology
Open-courseware is awesome. RoBo and I are involved in this independently run, non accredited, geek collective class on "Information and Entropy" based off MIT's freshman level class. I <3 Los Angeles.
The class is invitation only, but you can email and request an invite. If you're in the area and interested in probability, errors, inference, and entropy, check out the site and give em a shout.
[ Link ]
Just In Time Watch
I'm extremely interested in the User Interface side of wearable computing, as well as the push / pull relationship between the devices we wear. It's one thing to be able to have a wearable computer (cellphone, PDA, wearcomp) that allows you to see your calendar. It's another thing to have that calendar remind you when an event is coming up. It's a whole other thing when the wearable computer tries to make intelligent decisions about the event and your surroundings in order to push more information to the user, especially in a simple and easy to understand way.
This video communicates exactly what excites me about wearable computing. Sure it's great that I have a cellphone that can look up movie times. It's a whole other thing to have a device that allows you to simply find out what movies are playing in the immediate vicinity that you can reasonably get to on time. Simply put, "Just In Time" rocks.
(watch the entire video and note the gesture user interface.... it's worth it)
[ Link via Ordaos. Thanks Ordaos!]