The Making of Windowfarms Finland (suomenkielinen tekstitys) from pixelACHE festival on Vimeo.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Monday, April 4, 2011
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Friday, February 25, 2011
NASA Space Shuttle Discovery's Last Launch
Space shuttle Discovery lifted off at 4:53 p.m. EST Thursday February 24, 2011 from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Commander Steve Lindsey was leading the STS-133 crew.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Samsung Galaxy Tablet Review | Adobe Flash Performance
Samsung Galaxy Tablet comes with Android OS version 2.2 codename FROYO, making it possible to run Adobe Flash applications. This addition makes it a powerful device that can display any flash based website on the Internet. Similar functionality is not available on the Apple iPad, the competing tablet device.
Samsung tablet successfully played flash based videos at CNN website. Here is an example video that it can play located on the CNN Sports Illustrated Swimsuit 2011 Website.
The Samsung Galaxy tablet plays all the flash based videos flawlessly.
It also loads complicated flash based websites like this one at 360cities showing a large picture of London that is made up of 80 Gigapixels. The flash based application allows to pan and zoom around the picture and shows a panoramic view of London. The following slide show displays some of the screen captured images from the panoramic view of city of London as displayed on the Samsung Galaxy tablet's screen.
Please use the arrow keys at the bottom of the presentation to advance the pictures
This is very impressive because something like this is simply not possible on Apple iPad. However, the performance of Flash player on this website was slightly problematic. It crashed many times while trying to pan around the image or when an attempt was made to zoom on a scene. The navigation through the scene was jerky using the touch controls. It is difficult to judge whether it was due to the slow CPU performance of the Tablet or due to the Flash player's performance. Flash has done a good job on desktops using mouse controls but it has not shown the same responsiveness with the touch controls. This definitely needs improvement if Flash wants to be a viable application development platform in the fastest growing segment of Smartphones and Tablets.
Fred Wilson of AVC blog writes
In his opinion in the changing tech landscape Laptops will be replaced by Tablets. It is easy to confirm that the Tablets are the future computing devices. Former Morgan Stanley technology analyst Mary Meeker supports this trend. In her presentation here she predicts phenomenal growth in the use of Internet across the world as shown in this figure below:
Source
She also predicts that smartphone+Tablet will overtake the PC shipment as shown below:
Source
These trends predict that Samsung Tablets have a bright future.
Fred Wilson also thinks that Flash will be replaced by HTML5 in the future. Flash has done well on the desktop. Flash applications are much more engaging along-with the availability of wide variety of tools to develop flash applications. HTML5 is a promising development as a web based technology but it lacks development tools. Currently, it is competitive at the lower end of the multimedia web development but flash still rules at the higher end of multimedia web development on the desktops like the example of 80 Giga pixels picture of London shown above. So far there is no HTML5 application like that on the web. This example shows that Flash is a much more mature multimedia application development environment as compared to HTML5 that is still in the developmental stage. This is the good part but the next generation of computing environment is migrating to smart phones/Tablets with touch screens and Flash development is not as robust as it is on the desktops.
Samsung tablet successfully played flash based videos at CNN website. Here is an example video that it can play located on the CNN Sports Illustrated Swimsuit 2011 Website.
The Samsung Galaxy tablet plays all the flash based videos flawlessly.
It also loads complicated flash based websites like this one at 360cities showing a large picture of London that is made up of 80 Gigapixels. The flash based application allows to pan and zoom around the picture and shows a panoramic view of London. The following slide show displays some of the screen captured images from the panoramic view of city of London as displayed on the Samsung Galaxy tablet's screen.
Please use the arrow keys at the bottom of the presentation to advance the pictures
This is very impressive because something like this is simply not possible on Apple iPad. However, the performance of Flash player on this website was slightly problematic. It crashed many times while trying to pan around the image or when an attempt was made to zoom on a scene. The navigation through the scene was jerky using the touch controls. It is difficult to judge whether it was due to the slow CPU performance of the Tablet or due to the Flash player's performance. Flash has done a good job on desktops using mouse controls but it has not shown the same responsiveness with the touch controls. This definitely needs improvement if Flash wants to be a viable application development platform in the fastest growing segment of Smartphones and Tablets.
Fred Wilson of AVC blog writes
When the tech landscape changes; from web browsers to mobile browsers, from flash to HTML5, from laptops to tablets, from typing on keyboards to typing on screens, from local storage to cloud storage, there are always companies that are started to solve the pain points that crop up from that technology change.
In his opinion in the changing tech landscape Laptops will be replaced by Tablets. It is easy to confirm that the Tablets are the future computing devices. Former Morgan Stanley technology analyst Mary Meeker supports this trend. In her presentation here she predicts phenomenal growth in the use of Internet across the world as shown in this figure below:
Please Click on the picture for an Enlarged view
Source
She also predicts that smartphone+Tablet will overtake the PC shipment as shown below:
Please Click on the picture for an Enlarged view
Source
These trends predict that Samsung Tablets have a bright future.
Fred Wilson also thinks that Flash will be replaced by HTML5 in the future. Flash has done well on the desktop. Flash applications are much more engaging along-with the availability of wide variety of tools to develop flash applications. HTML5 is a promising development as a web based technology but it lacks development tools. Currently, it is competitive at the lower end of the multimedia web development but flash still rules at the higher end of multimedia web development on the desktops like the example of 80 Giga pixels picture of London shown above. So far there is no HTML5 application like that on the web. This example shows that Flash is a much more mature multimedia application development environment as compared to HTML5 that is still in the developmental stage. This is the good part but the next generation of computing environment is migrating to smart phones/Tablets with touch screens and Flash development is not as robust as it is on the desktops.
The flash player on Android 2.2 OS works but its operation is not as smooth as one would like it to be. This raises some doubts about Flash as a robust multimedia development environment on smart phone/Tablets, especially the newer upcoming tablets that will be based upon Android 3.0 OS Honeycomb built. Dan Frommer from BusinessInsider also has similar concerns about Flash Player
Motorola's Xoom tablet, the first serious Google Android rival to Apple's iPad, will ship without Adobe Flash support. Big shocker. (Not really.)This is surely a disappointment to Motorola, Adobe, and Google. But to anyone who has been watching Adobe fumble with Flash on mobile devices for as long as we have, it's hardly a surprise.
Flash on the desktop expects a mouse, not a touchscreen, so some Flash websites may not even work properly. And forget about using Flash on your Xoom to watch Hulu; the video site historically blocks Flash on mobile devices. Hulu wants you to pay for its Hulu Plus subscription, which has customized that don't rely on Flash.
Adobe needs to come up quickly with a workable Flash player on Android smartphones and Tablets to stay in the game on this fast moving growth area of next generation computing devices.
Also see REVIEW | Samsung Galaxy Tablet | Hardware
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Media Critic Douglas Rushkoff | Program or be Programmed
Program or be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age
At PivotCon 2010, Douglas Rushkoff made some extremely cogent arguments about why brands cannot go viral on social networks — even when there’s plenty of activity on companies’ websites and Facebook pages — and why it’s pointless to try to push brand concepts (such as mascots) around as memes in the expectation of driving actual product sales.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Saturday, January 22, 2011
REVIEW | Samsung Galaxy Tablet | Hardware
Samsung Galaxy Tablet is one of the first high quality Android Operating System based tablet that is positioned as a competitor to the Apple iPad. It provides the same openness of applications that is available on Android application platform.
Tablet Pictures
Please use the arrow keys at the bottom of the presentation to advance the pictures
A very nice commercial by Samsung showing most of the main features available on the Tablet
The sliding screens Tablet can be populated with favorite applications and android gadgets. The standard Tablet screen and the applications are shown below
Please use the arrow keys at the bottom of the presentation to advance the pictures
The first pictures show the screens on the Tablet and the others show the available Android applications. We see the icons for pre-installed applications first followed by the user installed applications.
The Setting application shows the tablet information
It shows that the Tablet is running the Android Froyo 2.2 version operating system. It also comes pre-installed with Swype virtual keypad. One of the best virtual keypad that makes typing on the Tablet's touch screen extremely easy.
The Tablet comes with a screen capture utility that works by holding the back button and then pressing the power button. This method works for some of the applications and fails for others where pressing the back button changes the screen. This was a problem therefore, most of the screen captures for this review are done by using the screen capture utility that is part of the Android OS System development kit. It requires some knowledge of Android SDK but is fool proof and works in all the cases. The utility screen looks like this:
The screen shots of the some of the selected Tablet applications are shown below
Please use the arrow keys at the bottom of the presentation to advance the pictures
All the screen layouts are very similar to what is on the Samsung Galaxy Fascinate smart phone. These applications works exactly in the same manner without any difference.
Some details about the Tablets internals are available through the standard "Settings" application. However, more details about Phone's internals can be obtained through another application "Android System Info" that is freely available on the Android market. Looking inside the Samsung Galaxy Tablet through this application provides some very useful information about the Tablets's hardware that includes information about its Battery, CPU, Memory, Camera and Sensor system as shown in these pictures
Please use the arrow keys at the bottom of the presentation to advance the pictures
The first picture shows different levels such as battery level, Internal memory, free space on SDcard and free space on RAM. The screen also shows all the hardware and software options for which the data is available through this application. The next screen shows the data about System OS and CPU that is an ARM processor running at 1000MHZ and few other details. There is one complete screen that provides information about the on board CPU.
The tablet did not have the functionality to make phone calls. It connects to Internet over 3G wireless network as well as through WIFI Wireless hot spot. It comes pre-installed with Skype but for some reason I could not make it work.
The camera support provides multiple options; the smallest supported picture size is 600x1024 and the largest supported picture size is 1536x2048 including the support for many different modes of operation including white balance support.
The screen resolution for the Tablet is 1024x600 pixels with 240 dpi. It supports OpenGL graphics. There are details about the available on board sensors.
We can also see the list of running applications. It is possible to monitor the running tasks on the Tablet to track down the bad applications who may behave erratically by consuming lots of memory and CPU cycles. Also, a detailed log file is available for any debugging of the device.
The Tablet came with Android OS Froyo 2.2 version. This should lead to improve performance in comparison to older Android OS versions, a claim by Google team. However, that us not the case with the Samsung Galaxy Tablet on the MIPS performance test. The figure below shows the comparison with Google Nexus One running the same version of Android OS
The linpack benchmark for the Samsung Tablet is 14.113MFLOPS. For Google Nexus One mobile phone it is 33.426MFLOPs. The Tablet under performs considerably in comparison to Nexus one on this test. These results are rather puzzling because both, the Tablet and Nexus One are running exactly the same ARM processor at 1000MHZ. Samsung Tablet needs some work to improve the performance on this important benchmark performance test. The good news is that having FROYO 2.2 it is possible to watch Flash based content on the Tablet that can not be watched on an Apple iPad.
The use of Galaxy Tablet feels like using a Galaxy Fascinate mobile phone with one major difference: the Tablet has larger screen size. Its seven inch screen is big enough to be a nice e-book reader but small enough to slide into a coat pocket. Smaller size makes it convenient to carry it and use it everywhere as a portable camera and video camcorder. I think this is an ideal size for a Tablet.
The Samsung Galaxy Tablet has all the options available on Android OS but it is missing the call making option. That in my opinion is a major handicap. Why should some one carry a four inch phone and a seven inch tablet while both have just about the same functionality? In this particular situation the smaller size phone has more functionality then its larger size cousin. I think this will be the problem with all the Tablets who have small form factor because of the direct competition from the mobile phones who offer more functionality at cheaper price.
The wireless connection was provided by Verizon. It worked flawlessly at every place I visited with the Tablet. The Tablet also gets connected very easily to a WIFI network.
Overall Samsung Galaxy Tablet Provides a nice user experience. For me it was a perfect e-book reader once I added the Kindle app, Google Book App and few others that allow to read the free e-books in Epub format.
Tablet Pictures
Please use the arrow keys at the bottom of the presentation to advance the pictures
A very nice commercial by Samsung showing most of the main features available on the Tablet
The sliding screens Tablet can be populated with favorite applications and android gadgets. The standard Tablet screen and the applications are shown below
Please use the arrow keys at the bottom of the presentation to advance the pictures
The first pictures show the screens on the Tablet and the others show the available Android applications. We see the icons for pre-installed applications first followed by the user installed applications.
The Setting application shows the tablet information
 |
| From Samsung Galaxy Tablet Miscellaneous pictures |
It shows that the Tablet is running the Android Froyo 2.2 version operating system. It also comes pre-installed with Swype virtual keypad. One of the best virtual keypad that makes typing on the Tablet's touch screen extremely easy.
 |
| From Samsung Galaxy Tablet Miscellaneous pictures |
The Tablet comes with a screen capture utility that works by holding the back button and then pressing the power button. This method works for some of the applications and fails for others where pressing the back button changes the screen. This was a problem therefore, most of the screen captures for this review are done by using the screen capture utility that is part of the Android OS System development kit. It requires some knowledge of Android SDK but is fool proof and works in all the cases. The utility screen looks like this:
 |
| From Samsung Galaxy Tablet Miscellaneous pictures |
The screen shots of the some of the selected Tablet applications are shown below
Please use the arrow keys at the bottom of the presentation to advance the pictures
All the screen layouts are very similar to what is on the Samsung Galaxy Fascinate smart phone. These applications works exactly in the same manner without any difference.
Some details about the Tablets internals are available through the standard "Settings" application. However, more details about Phone's internals can be obtained through another application "Android System Info" that is freely available on the Android market. Looking inside the Samsung Galaxy Tablet through this application provides some very useful information about the Tablets's hardware that includes information about its Battery, CPU, Memory, Camera and Sensor system as shown in these pictures
Please use the arrow keys at the bottom of the presentation to advance the pictures
The first picture shows different levels such as battery level, Internal memory, free space on SDcard and free space on RAM. The screen also shows all the hardware and software options for which the data is available through this application. The next screen shows the data about System OS and CPU that is an ARM processor running at 1000MHZ and few other details. There is one complete screen that provides information about the on board CPU.
The tablet did not have the functionality to make phone calls. It connects to Internet over 3G wireless network as well as through WIFI Wireless hot spot. It comes pre-installed with Skype but for some reason I could not make it work.
The camera support provides multiple options; the smallest supported picture size is 600x1024 and the largest supported picture size is 1536x2048 including the support for many different modes of operation including white balance support.
The screen resolution for the Tablet is 1024x600 pixels with 240 dpi. It supports OpenGL graphics. There are details about the available on board sensors.
We can also see the list of running applications. It is possible to monitor the running tasks on the Tablet to track down the bad applications who may behave erratically by consuming lots of memory and CPU cycles. Also, a detailed log file is available for any debugging of the device.
The Tablet came with Android OS Froyo 2.2 version. This should lead to improve performance in comparison to older Android OS versions, a claim by Google team. However, that us not the case with the Samsung Galaxy Tablet on the MIPS performance test. The figure below shows the comparison with Google Nexus One running the same version of Android OS
 |
| From Samsung Galaxy Tablet Miscellaneous pictures |
The linpack benchmark for the Samsung Tablet is 14.113MFLOPS. For Google Nexus One mobile phone it is 33.426MFLOPs. The Tablet under performs considerably in comparison to Nexus one on this test. These results are rather puzzling because both, the Tablet and Nexus One are running exactly the same ARM processor at 1000MHZ. Samsung Tablet needs some work to improve the performance on this important benchmark performance test. The good news is that having FROYO 2.2 it is possible to watch Flash based content on the Tablet that can not be watched on an Apple iPad.
The use of Galaxy Tablet feels like using a Galaxy Fascinate mobile phone with one major difference: the Tablet has larger screen size. Its seven inch screen is big enough to be a nice e-book reader but small enough to slide into a coat pocket. Smaller size makes it convenient to carry it and use it everywhere as a portable camera and video camcorder. I think this is an ideal size for a Tablet.
The Samsung Galaxy Tablet has all the options available on Android OS but it is missing the call making option. That in my opinion is a major handicap. Why should some one carry a four inch phone and a seven inch tablet while both have just about the same functionality? In this particular situation the smaller size phone has more functionality then its larger size cousin. I think this will be the problem with all the Tablets who have small form factor because of the direct competition from the mobile phones who offer more functionality at cheaper price.
The wireless connection was provided by Verizon. It worked flawlessly at every place I visited with the Tablet. The Tablet also gets connected very easily to a WIFI network.
Overall Samsung Galaxy Tablet Provides a nice user experience. For me it was a perfect e-book reader once I added the Kindle app, Google Book App and few others that allow to read the free e-books in Epub format.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Deconstruction of "Sarah Palin Responds to Tuscon Shooting" Speech Video
Sarah Palin is a potential 2012 presidential candidate. He responded to the tragic event in Tuscon Arizona with this Video
Here is an attempt to de-construct the speech with the technology tools.
Also a quick sentimentality analysis of speech shows it to be neutral. That is obviously not true because speech is highly sentimental
If one looks at the background picture it is surrounded by flag to evoke patriotic feelings.
I think overall it is a good speech it connects and communicates well except the reflection of teleprompter showing up on the glasses.
Here is an attempt to de-construct the speech with the technology tools.
The text of the speech is created using the speech to text program and provided at end of the post. It is a very moving speech. However if one looks at the wordle of the text of the speech.
The wordle shows the predominance of political words.
Click on the image for an enlarged view
Also a quick sentimentality analysis of speech shows it to be neutral. That is obviously not true because speech is highly sentimental
Click on the image for an enlarged view
If one looks at the background picture it is surrounded by flag to evoke patriotic feelings.
Click on the image for an enlarged view
I think overall it is a good speech it connects and communicates well except the reflection of teleprompter showing up on the glasses.
The complete text of the speech is below
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Like millions of Americans I went to the tragic events in Arizona on Saturday and my heart broke for the innocent victims no words can fill the hole left by the death of an innocent but we do mourn for victims families as we express our sympathy I agree with the sentiment shared yesterday that beautiful Mass held in honor of the victims that will hopefully help begin the healing process for the families touched by this tragedy and for our country for exceptional country so vibrates with ideas and passionate exchange and debate of ideas along to the rest of the world Congresswoman Giffords and her constituents were exercising their right to exchange ideas that date to celebrate a republics core values and peacefully assemble to petition our government inexcusable incomprehensible why a single evil man took the lives of peaceful citizens that day and the bittersweet irony that the strength of the American spirit shines brightest in times of tragedy we saw that in Arizona without the tenacity of those clinging to life the compassion of those who kept the victims alive and the heroism of those who overpowered a deranged gunman like many I spent the last few days reflecting on what happened praying for guidance after the shocking tragedy it was at first puzzled them with concern and now with sadness to the irresponsible statements from people attempting to apportioned blame for this terrible event president Reagan said we must reject the idea that every time the laws broken societies guilty rather than the lawbreaker it is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions accept monstrous criminality stand on their own begin and end with the criminals who commit them collectively with all the citizens of his state not those who listen to talk radio in swing districts use by both sides of the aisle now the law-abiding citizens who respectfully exercise their First Amendment rights at campaign rallies now with those who proudly voted in the last election the last election was all about taking responsibility for our country's future president of mom and I may not agree on everything that I know you join me in affirming the health of our democratic process to years ago his party was victorious last November the other party one in both elections the will of the American people was hurt and the peaceful transition of power proved yet again the enduring strength of our republic putrescence spirited public debate during elections are among our most cherished traditions and after the election we shaking and then we get back to work and often both sides find common ground back in DC and elsewhere you like a person's vision for the country are free to make that vision if you like your ideas are free to propose better ideas that especially within hours of the tragedy unfolding journalists and pundits should not manufacture of blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence that they purport to condemn that is reprehensible. Those who claim political rhetoric is to blame for the despicable act of this deranged apparently a political criminal and a claim political debate has somehow gotten more heated just recently but when I see bacchanal calm days when political figures literally settle their differences with dueling pistols in an ideal world all discourse would be civil when all disagreements cordial but our founding fathers knew they were designing a system for perfect men and women mainly men were angels there would be no need for government are founders of genius was to design a system to help settle the inevitable conflicts caused by our imperfect actions in several ways so we must condemn violence if our republic is to endure as I said while campaigning for others last March in Arizona during the very heated primary race-we don't violence isn't the answer when we take up our arms were talking about our vote yes for debates are full of passion but we settle our political differences respectfully at the ballot box as we did just two months ago and has a republic enables us to do again next election and asked and that's who we are as Americans and how we were meant to be public discourse and debate in a sign of crisis much of our enduring strength is part of why America is exceptional no one should be deterred from speaking up and speaking out in peaceful dissent and we certainly must not be deterred by those who embrace evil and call it good and we will not be stopped from celebrating the greatness of our country and our foundational freedoms by those who mock its greatness by being intolerant of differing opinion and seeking to muzzle dissent with shrill cries of imagined insults just days before she was shot Congresswoman Giffords read the first amendment on the floor of the house and it was a beautiful moment and more than simply symbolic as some claim to our Constitution granted by our Congress and confidentiality reading our sacred charter of liberty was more than just symbolic of a week after Congresswoman Giffords reaffirmed our protected freedoms another member of Congress announced that he would propose a law that would criminalize speech he found offensive in any hour when our values are challenged that we must remain resolve to protect those values recall how the events of 9/11 challenged our values and we had to fight the tendency to treat our freedoms for perceived security and so it is today let us honor those precious lives cut short in Tucson by praying for them and their families and make cherishing their memories less pray for the full recovery of the wounded is pray for our country in times like these we need God's guidance in the PC provides we need strength to not let the random acts of criminal turn us against ourselves or weaken our solid foundation or provide a pretext to stifle debate in America must be stronger than the evil we thought displayed last week we are better than the mindless finger-pointing we endured in the wake of the tragedy we will come out of this stronger and more united in our desire to peacefully engage in the great debates of our time to respectfully embrace our differences in a positive manner and teammates in the knowledge that your ideas may be different and we must all strive for a better future for our country yes may God bless America
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Fertility Rate vs Life Expectancy Chart over Time for different Countries | Bubble Chart Data Visualization
Use the play button to see animated display and move mouse over the circles to see the name of the country
Overall trend is the falling fertility rates and higher life expectancy.
Original Source
Overall trend is the falling fertility rates and higher life expectancy.
Original Source
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Eleven Digital Trends to Watch in 2011
Eleven Digital Trends to Watch in 2011
View more presentations from Edelman Digital.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
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