Daily Bits

technology

Have You Ever Cussed at Your Computer? Be Honest!

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computerheadbangYes, be honest. Have you ever gotten so frustrated at your computer that you simply had to vent by uttering a few cuss words? If you haven’t – or have made yourself believe that you haven’t – then you are actually part of the majority. According to a survey conducted by Avira, 61 per cent of computer users have not cussed or even yelled at a computing machine that is failing to cooperate. Out of 14,284 users who took the survey, only 39 per cent admitted to having “lost it” because of a malfunctioning computer.

The survey included several other questions including the following:

  1. 39% – Cursed or yelled at the computer out loud?
  2. 38% – No! I would never yell at my computer, it is too sensitive. (I friendly try to encourage it working again…)?
  3. 11% – Thought Wished for catastrophe to strike the company that makes your operating system software or computer?
  4. 9% – Hit your computer with another object (fist, baseball bat, etc.)?
  5. 3% – Actually thrown the computer to the ground or against a desk or other piece of furniture?

I am not really surprised about the low numbers for the last three items. After all, computers do cost money, and unless you’re totally in need of anger management therapy, you would not want to throw money out of the window. Either that or you have a huge wad of cash stowed away somewhere and you don’t care if you had to buy a new machine.

So now, really, be honest – have you ever done any of these things above? I know have at least uttered a word of frustration or two!

Teens’ Brains, Technology, and Multitasking

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brain-mriMultitasking is a skill that not everyone possesses, and there is even this saying that men can’t multitask if their lives depended on it. (Now that is definitely something that is up for debate nowadays.) For teenagers, though, multitasking is an inherent part of their lives. Indeed, they might suffer if they are not able to multitask.

News Hour science correspondent Miles O’Brien took a look at this phenomenon and how technology plays a crucial role. What did he find out?

Basically, I think he just confirmed what many of us already acknowledge: multitasking and technology go together. At any given time that you are online, you probably have at least five windows open. You probably have at least one instant messenger account on. Add to that Facebook, e-mail, and your mobile phone (which you check every so often).

So what’s there to talk about?

What I found pretty interesting about O’Brien’s report is the “brain science” behind it. He took a look at how the brain lights up during an MRI when one multitasks. Yes, the lights are bigger and there are more of them – the brain gets more taxed with more input. No surprise there.

The significant point is the effect of these activities on a teenager’s brain. At that stage in a person’s life, his or her brain is still developing. It continues to learn and to improve according to how it is used. O’Brien’s question is one that should be considered by everyone: are the teenagers of today benefiting from the use of technology in such a way that their brains are being hardwired to perform better?

Watch the video report below and tell me what you think.

Photo via Dangerous Intersection

Technology: The Cheater’s Bane

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CheatingCheating (the kind that students do when taking tests) has existed for ages – perhaps the very day that man started to exist – and it seems that as time goes by, the methods used for this unscrupulous activity just gets more creative. Blame whatever you want for that, but technology does play a part.

Unsurprisingly, technology is also becoming a bane for cheaters. There is actually a company that specializes in technology that catches cheats. Caveon Test Security has been in operation for several years now and uses statistical anomalies to determine if students have been cheating. The algorithm that they use is not exactly public, but neither is it a secret.

As a matter of fact, using statistics as the basis for catching cheats is an age old trick – Caveon only makes it more advanced and accurate. The basic idea is that their algorithm checks for patterns that show up if test takers have been copying from each other (high number of the same incorrect answers). It also checks for illogical patterns such as people getting correct answers for harder questions and getting easy questions incorrectly.

It is easy to see that while those ideas do make sense, it may not be foolproof. Critics are actually pointing out that the methods used by Caveon may not be that accurate – and they may very well be right. Then again, it might be better than allowing cheating to go unchecked.

What do you think of Caveon’s premise? Is it logical or does it put too much faith in technology?

Photo via Instructables

Ad-hoc Mesh Networks as the Future of the Internet

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The FCC spectrum auction recently took place this year. The big boys (AT & T and Verizon ) were competing with the new boys in town (Google). There is a great article at ZDnet throwing light on the inefficient manner in which spectrum has come to be treated.

A quote from the ZDnet article:

The bottom line is that thanks to one clever grad student, and one small charity, Houston’s poorest will soon have better broadband than you and I, free. This is due to the magic of WiFi, of unlicensed wireless broadband.

Yet instead of expanding that miracle we have chosen to treat spectrum as property, first as government property and then as the private property of the Telecom Trust.

The research by the Rice university student is indeed worth pondering upon. The internet is no more a luxury but the superhighway to information. There is much that the internet can do that books and libraries may not have accomplished in all ages.

From this perspective the developments at a firm – Meraki Networks are worth noting. An offshoot of the MIT Rooftnet project, the company that empowers users to collectively host wireless networks.

Mesh networks work on a peer-to-peer model with the data hopping from one node to another till it reaches its destination. It is this model to internet connectivity that Meraki Network seeks to create. The project has immense potential with even city-wide span being planned.

An excerpt from Ars Technica

In a nutshell, MIT’s Roofnet allows people in and around Central Square in Cambridge to gang together their wireless access points into a kind of wireless cloud that anyone with a WiFi device can access if they’re in range. There are some specifics I’m leaving out—you have to use a particular model of router, and you have to sign up for the program—but you get the general idea.

The project allows for a simple plug and play solution to enable sharing of bandwidth over Wi-Fi. There are several technical and legal challenges in the adoption of such a model on a wide scale. Nevertheless it presents one great avenue for the network to indeed become ubiquitous.

A switch-over between technologies could perhaps be the future direction of such networks. Based on the strength of available network options in the vicinity, the device could automatically configure access to internet ( such as switch from WiFi to UWB or WiMAX).
And yes, the firm has received backing from Google and several investors including Sequoia Capital, DAG Ventures and Northgate Capital. Its a great way to spread broadband access among the masses.

Google Files Patent to Extract Text from Images

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Image search poses a relevant technological challenge, not being mastered to the extent that text processing has been. A search engine has definite reasons to develop robust image search and image computation software for the Web is burgeoning with pictorial media.

In the light of the above developments, the recent patent filed by Google for interpreting text from images goes a long way in bringing more relevance to indexing media from the Web. Seo By the Sea mentions several of the applications that such a technology can be put too.

A logical extension from the above technology would be to expect the same on the video side. Having a roster of applications such as Google Earth, Blogs etc under their belt means that Google’s innovations have several segments of the web to focus on. Already, one of the most fascinating features with the text from image technology is the means to pin point the location of a place on Google maps from the image !

Not to forget the great advertising value such technology brings to Google. More data images translates into more relevantly targeting ads around images and also a better pitch to get marketers to be more involved with online advertising.

The research also goes to prove that there’s a lot of room for innovation on the purely technological side of the Web. Its all about the content and there’s a lot waiting to happen to make content more accessible and indexable and in the end more retrievable.

Fuzzy Logic to Help the Elderly

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Technology improves life. While mostly it is the efficiency of our performance and our recreational domains that get a vital boost, technology also goes beyond these to aid in empowering those who are different from the mainstream.

Research at Leicester’s De Montfort University (DMU) and the University of Missouri is progressing to incorporate the advances in Fuzzy logic technology to make the lives of elder folks simpler. Fuzzy logic is that branch of mathematics that deals with computational representation of inexact values. Human beings often measure quantities in approximate degree ( such as hot, very hot etc), while computers have a hard time estimating values approximately.

The Fuzzy logic technique is being deployed in sensors that measure several characteristics about the habits of elderly people and provide vital feedback on their health. While it may seem too high-tech to be part of everyday life, the day is not very far when the benefits of miniaturization in technology become really affordable.

Sensors can be put to several uses but the importance of this latest development is the reduction in false positives and the use of sensors in an un-intrusive manner.