- Indiepocalypse: Harlem Shake Edition (Andy Baio) — “After four weeks topping the Billboard Hot 100, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’s “Thrift Shop” was replaced this week by Baauer’s “Harlem Shake,” the song that inspired the Internet meme.”
- SplinterNet — an Android app designed to create an unblockable Twitter like network that uses no cellular or Internet communications. All messages are transmitted over Bluetooth between users, creating a true peer-to-peer messaging system. All messages are anonymous to prevent retaliation by government authorities. (via Ushahidi)
- Disposable Satellites (Forbes) — “tiny, near-disposable satellites for use in getting battlefield surveillance quickly […] launched from a jet into orbit, and within a few minutes […] provide soldiers on the ground with a zoomed-in, birds-eye view of the battlefield. Those image would be transmitted to current communications devices, and the company is working to develop a way to transmit them to smartphones, as well.”
- Native iOS to HTML5 Porting Tool (Intel) — essentially a source-to-source translator that can handle a number of conversions from Objective-C into JavaScript/HTML5 including the translation of APIs calls. A number of open source projects are used as foundation for the conversion including a modified version of Clang front-end, LayerD framework and jQuery Mobile for widgets rendering in the translated source code. A porting aid, not a complete translator but a lot of the dog work is done. Requires one convert to Microsoft tools, however. (via Kevin Marks)
"p2p" entries
Four short links: 22 February 2013
Indiepocalypse Continued, Unblockable p2p Twitter, Disposable Satellites, and iOS to HTML5
Four short links: 4 December 2012
Future is Burked, P2P Currency, Stuff That Matters, and Avatar Widget
- James Burke at dConstruct — transcription of his talk. EPIC. I love this man and could listen to him all day long. (via Keith Bolland)
- Mechanism Design on Trust Networks (CiteSeerX) — academic paper behind the Ripple Bitcoin-esque open source peer-payment digital currency.
- What If Money Was No Object (YouTube) — about finding your way to stuff that matters, and worth it just for the last lines. (via Rowan Simpson)
- photobooth-js (GitHub) — BSD-licensed html5 widget that allows users to take their avatar pictures on your site.
Four short links: 14 September 2012
Post in Translation, Comic Briefs, Fibre Optics, and Silk Road Financials
- Post Lingo — automatically transcribe incoming emails from foreign tongues. (via Brian McConnell)
- All Briefs Should Now Be in Comic Book Form — does wonders for mass audience acceptance of the arguments. (via Andy Lester)
- Magic Carpet Can Detect and Predict Falls (BBC) — Beneath the carpet is a mesh of optical fibres that detect and plot movement as pressure bends them, changing the light detected at the carpet’s edges. These deflected light patterns help electronics “learn” walking patterns and detect if they are deteriorating, for instance in the elderly. Neat use for fibre optics! (via Sara Winge)
- Travelling the Silk Road (PDF) — A measurement analysis of a large anonymous online marketplace […] A relatively small “core” of about 60 sellers has been present throughout our measurement interval, while the majority of sellers leaves (or goes “underground”) within a couple of weeks of their first appearance. We evaluate the total revenue made by all sellers to approximately USD 1.9 million per month; this corresponds to about USD 143,000 per month in commissions perceived by the Silk Road operators. (via Robert O’Brien)
Four short links: 28 June 2012
Bogan Ipsum, Disassembled and Deconstructed, P2P Commerce, and Android Sensors
- Bogan Ipsum — the Australian version of Loren Ipsum. (via Seb Chan)
- Microsoft BASIC for 6502 — reverse-engineering magic, this person has RE’d the assembly language for various versions of the BASIC interpreter that shipped on microcomputers in the 80s. This page talks about the changes in each version, the easter eggs, and the hacks. This, kids, is how real programmers do it :)
- The Sudden Rise of Peer-to-Peer Commerce (Casey Research) — Today, business are sprouting up around the world based on the idea of connecting individuals directly to each other to trade products and services. While the idea is very much in its infancy still, like the music business at the dawn of Napster, we’re beginning to grasp the potential. Something we are tracking at O’Reilly as well.
- The Sensor/itive Side of Android (Luke Wroblewski) — lots of details about sensors in Android, from a Google I/O talk. Sampling rates change between devices. The data has variance and static because it comes from cost-effective components for mobile phones not robust and industry-grade sensors.
Getting your book in front of 160 million users is usually a good thing
"Pirate's Dilemma" author Matt Mason on BitTorrent.
Pirating your own book may seem like an odd promotion strategy, but that's just what Megan Lisa Jones did with her new novel. Matt Mason, author of "The Pirate's Dilemma," says P2P platforms like BitTorrent are a great way to reach audiences and distribute content.
Four short links: 21 January 2011
Sensor Trojan, node.js IDE, Quantified Conference, and P2P Streaming
- Proof-of-Concept Android Trojan Captures Spoken Credit-Card Numbers — Soundminer sits in the background and waits for a call to be placed […] the application listens out for the user entering credit card information or a PIN and silently records the information, performing the necessary analysis to turn it from a sound recording into a number. Very clever use of sensors for evil! (via Slashdot)
- Cloud9 IDE — open source IDE for node.js. I’m using it as I learn node.js, and it’s sweet as, bro.
- The Quantified Self Conference — May 28-29 in Mountain View. (via Pete Warden)
- Bram Cohen Demos P2P Streaming — the creator of BitTorrent is winding up to release a streaming protocol that is also P2P. (via Hacker News)
2011 Watchlist: 6 themes to track
Data will be in the driver's seat, social tools will become ubiquitous, and the meaning of privacy will be debated.
Mike Loukides says Hadoop, real-time data, the rise of the GPU, the return of P2P, social ubiquity and a new definition for privacy will all play important roles in 2011.
DC Circuit court rules in Comcast case, leaves the FCC a job to do
The DC Circuit didn't tell the FCC to turn back. It has a job to
do–promoting the spread of high-speed networking, and ensuring that
it is affordable by growing numbers of people–and it just has to find
the right tool for the job.
Innovation Battles Investment as FCC Road Show Returns to Cambridge
Opponents can shed their rhetoric and reveal new depths to their thought when you bring them together for rapid-fire exchanges, sometimes with their faces literally inches away from each other. That made it worth my while to truck down to the MIT Media Lab for yesterday’s Workshop on Innovation, Investment and the Open Internet, sponsored by the Federal Communications Commission. The event showed that innovation and investment are not always companions on the Internet. An in-depth look at the current state of the debate over competition and network neutrality.
Vendor Relationship Management workshop
Nobody knows you as well as you do. Or do they? Let's run a test. Do you
know what percentage of your food bill went to processed products? Or
what type of coupons (store coupons, newspaper coupons, etc.) is most
likely to get you to switch brands? I bet someone out there knows.This kind of data mining is the modern companion to Customer Relations Management, which is the science of understanding customers and trying to get repeat business. CRM can offer many valuable benefits, but ultimately the control lies
with the vendor. A Vendor Relationship Management workshop at
Harvard looked at what it would take to leave control with the
customers.