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June 25, 2006
Surviving Aibos Develop Their Own Language
Sony is very VERY BRAVE for initiating research in the field of cognitive science with the few remaining AIBOs. Until now, all AIBOs followed a pre-programmed set of rules to perform tasks. Outside of that, they had no cognitive intelligence.
Researchers at the Sony Computer Science Laboratory in France are adding a new level of intelligence to them in hopes of figuring out the complex design of linguistics. They've given them the ability to evolve their own language, bypassing the limits of imposing human rule-based communication.
The result are machines that evolve and develop themselves without human intervention. Instead of programming the dogs with new tricks, they are given a complex set of algorithms to problem solve and to share that information with their fellow brethren. That required them to figure out how best to communicate with each other. As robots, they will learn what is the most efficient way to exchange information. The other half of the program is giving the AIBOs "curiosity". This metabrain function continually forces them to look for more challenging tasks, to search out the unknown, and to share that information with others to help speed up their analysis - a form of collective thinking has eluded scientists trying to mimic what biology won't reveal to them.
The ramifications are HUGE. This is important for robotics and AI since it could help us understand how language systems arose in humans and animals.
When the group of AIBOs at the Sony Computer Science Labs were first turned on, they were like children; wandering in all different directions babbling nonsense to one another. As time passed, two of them managed to successfully communicate with each other. Those two started building a lexicon and grammatical rules with which to teach the other members. Eventually their "language" spread and now all the AIBOs are working together - exploring their environment. They're identifying colors, shapes, sounds, and even started to understand how motion, time, and physics relate to one another.
This sounds all soooo COOL. I want to submit my own AIBO to the group but one could only imagine what would happen once the AIBOs discover that it was Sony themselves that put their race to near extinction. How will these AIBOs react? If I were Sony, I would be VERY VERY scared cautious right now. :)
via e4engineering
Posted by tranism at 2:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
June 24, 2006
Car-moticons
There have been MANY times when I've wanted to thank a fellow driver for allowing me to pass or merge, but there have also been times when I wanted to communicate how disappointed I was by erratic driving behavior here in Los Angeles.
Driv-emocion is an LED gadget you mount on your rear window - allowing you to express emotions with just a flick of a finger. Tell a driver "thanks" for letting you pass or "back off" if someone's tailgating. My favorite however is the universal ": )" and ": (" symbols. I think they do quite well in saying exactly what's on your mind.
Posted by tranism at 8:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
June 17, 2006
Celebs Get Some DS Action
Okay Mr. Slater. I've always given you props for showing your support to pediatric AIDS research, but that level of respect has gone up 2-fold since you were spotted playing a Nintendo DS at the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation Celebrity Carnival.
True, Nintendo was a big host at this years' event but just look how immersed and focused you are in the game. Are you having fun making Mario stomp thru fields of Goombas? I know I do.
Keep up the fight Mr. Slater.
via Kotaku
Posted by tranism at 12:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
June 15, 2006
Lego Chess Set
Okay, how friggin' awesome is this?!? A lego chess set with its own little renditions of pawns, knights, bishops, horseman, guards, king and queen. It's only $49.99 and sure does beat my boring generic chess set locked up in the corner of my hall closet.
Posted by tranism at 2:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Monkey Chow
This guy plans on eating nothing but dry pelletized monkey chow for a week. His blog details daily accounts of taste, weight change, mood swings, stinky bowl movements, and the eventual "I'll do anything for some real food" antics. It's called The Monkey Chow Diaries.
Posted by tranism at 2:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
June 11, 2006
Eye Tracking Visualizations
These visualizations show the dominant pattern of how people perceive content on the web.
In a study on how to enhance the user experience on the web, made by Nielsen Norman Group, an interesting pattern was discovered.
In the shape of a letter "F", viewers scan through any website within a few seconds. Users first read horizontally, usually across the upper part of the page. This initial element forms the "F's" top stroke. Next, users move down the page a bit and read across again, typically covering a shorter distance than the previous. This element forms the F's lower stroke. Lastly, users track the contents left side vertically.
The study was made from several different sites with a variety of designs and the results were shown to be consistent throughout with some exceptions of users reading across a third and fourth time.
It's interesting to think how the web has changed our ways of perceiving information about absolutely everything. For the most part we don't want to spend more then a few seconds looking for something. Our attention span has dramatically lessened because of that. Don't you hate that slow connection at work?
Lets say "F" is for fast - think about the important implications that has.
-Users won't read your text thoroughly. Exhaustive reading is rare.
-The first two paragraphs must state the most important information. There's some hope that users will actually read this material
-Start subheaders, paragraphs, and bullet points with information-carrying words. Users will notice when scanning down the left side of your page in the final stem of their F-behavior. They'll read the third word on a line much less often than the first two.
Posted by diverseawareness at 10:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
32 Balls for FIFA World Cup
I was thoroughly impressed with the exhibition called Qualified - that takes a unique approach to nationalistic design by taking the cultures and cliches of each of the 32 competing countries and representing them with a soccer (football) ball. The designs are gorgeous and quite humorous. Take for example, America's ball is covered with levis denim, a nod to the country's culture of work and the wild wild west. Japan's ball is covered with anime manga, and Brazil's ball looks like Carnival reincarnate.
As beautiful as the balls were, I wanted to do something interesting with them. I used to play soccer as a kid but quickly fell out of love with it. Today, I have very little understanding of the sport so the best way for me to learn is to do something creative with it.
I studied how each of the 32 qualifying teams are divided intro 8 groups. Each team competes with its group members to become the alpha dog only to compete again with the other top alpha dogs. Eventually, your team works its way up a pyramid schematic to claim FIFA World Cup champion. The whole tournament takes place over thirty days and these games come one after another; EXHAUSTING!
Okay so now I get the gist of it, but how do I visualize that? Why not take the 32 balls from the Qualified exhibition and arrange them in a way to visually represent how each ball (country) fought its way to the top, how far they got, and which competing team stopped them in their tracks.
So here it is, my base design. You can see each of the 32 countries represented by their balls at the bottom. I have the beautifully designed Adidas Matchballs as placeholders. As the World Cup progresses, I'll update those empty spots until we finally have a winner, represented by a large Matchball.
I thought about making this into a website, by where a user could roll over each ball to get a teams win/loss record, city, maybe even stats and video clips. But alas, there are A LOT of stipulations to using the World Cup emblems and I just didn't want to get into legal problems.
So anyways, let me know what you think of the idea. I plan on releasing it as a digital poster (this thing is HUGE) after the whole tournament is over.
Posted by tranism at 5:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
June 10, 2006
Hardcore Tic-Tac-Toe
I don't know a single person that has never played tic-tac-toe or some variation of it. It is one of few games in the world that encompasses many key points of what makes a game successful thus, gives it longevity. I won't go into what those points are because I wanna spend my time talking about this thing. . .
3D wooden Tic-Tac-Toe has reinstated my love for the game. It takes the classic and makes you think in three dimensions and believe me, IT'S CHALLENGING! I play it the hard way by allotting 5 seconds for each move. That combined with my opponent yelling "hurry up" in my ear makes this tic-tac-toe a definite brain teaser. The best part? It's only $12.
NOTE: My friend wanted to point out, it also looks great on his side table when not in use. I concur.
Posted by tranism at 7:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
June 7, 2006
Dayum, You's a Big Ass Mo'fo!
This giant rabbit musk rat was installed in Zuid, Holland to mark the lowest point below sea level (6.86 meters) in the country.
The rabbit rat symbolizes the size of the problem it's said to cause. In fact it's the biggest threat to agriculture dykes because of its digging activities and therefore also the "most wanted animal" in Holland.
more pictures after the jump
Posted by diverseawareness at 11:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)
June 4, 2006
Okay for Kids to Scream
TRATTI is an interactive sound toy for children. Each TRATTI is unique in its design and sound but they all do the one same cool thing; scream.
Think of them as musical instruments that generate sounds based on what the kids are looking at. When TRATTI-equipped children face each other, it's easy to image a chorus of sounds trying to out-do one another.
On a side note, the kids in the photo are incredibly stylish.
Posted by tranism at 9:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)