BrainDriver - A Mind Controlled Car

Following his recent interview for the Robots Podcast, Raúl Rojas at the Freie Universität Berlin has released a video which shows a driver controlling his car using a brain interface. In the video, the driver is wearing an Emotiv EEG (Electroenzephalogram) primarily sold as a gaming device - for which it may not be an ideal fit. The work is part of the MadeInGermany project and follows previous projects such as Rojas group's Project AutoNOMOS. For more information on the "BrainDriver" and the "MadeInGermany" autonomous car, have a look at the autoNOMOS web site.

Source: http://robots.net/article/3109.html

iman cosmetics barney s version is natalie portman pregnant ricky gervais golden globes 2011

Telltale bringing Hector: Badge of Carnage to iPad, PC and Mac

The self-professed "not for kids" iPhone adventure game, Hector: Badge of Carnage, is getting a little boost from Telltale. The company's SVP of marketing, Steve Allison, confirmed a new partnership with Straandlooper, the Northern Ireland-based indie developer behind the well-received Hector game. Together, they will publish all three planned episodes of the slovenly cop's adventures on the PC, Mac and iPad through this fall.

Currently, the first episode of Hector: Badge of Carnage is available for iPhone on the App Store.

Continue reading Telltale bringing Hector: Badge of Carnage to iPad, PC and Mac

JoystiqTelltale bringing Hector: Badge of Carnage to iPad, PC and Mac originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 18 Feb 2011 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Source: http://www.joystiq.com/2011/02/18/telltale-bringing-hector-badge-of-carnage-to-ipad-pc-and-mac/

chris colfer baby doc belfor belfor restoration

Texas Lawmakers Want College Kids to Pack Heat [Bad Ideas]

Bing Trends: Top football search trends

Which player would you most like to watch the big game with? Who was the best looking player on the field this season? What are the odds that you’ll be eating Buffalo wings on Sunday? Which city’s team was searched most often?

Ahead of Sunday’s game, we delved into the search data and conducted a survey to find out.

What’s more, we created an infographic to bring the stats to life. Click on the image to see full screen and download.

Top Football Search Trends: We looked at the most popular search terms associated with pro football over the course of the season. Here are some the interesting trends:

  • If number of searches indicates who is going to win on Sunday, it looks like we’re going into overtime because the Packers and Steelers are neck and neck for total Bing searches.
  • Take heart Dallas. If making it to the big game was based only on Bing searches, we would be watching the Cowboys compete this weekend.
  • Brett Favre, Randy Moss and Michael Vick were in the top five most searched players. Looks like on- the-field success combined with off-the-field news can propel players to the top.

And the survey says:

  • While 39% said Tom Brady is the best looking NFL player, he came in second behind Peyton Manning in the favorite player category.*
  • When asked what player they would most like to watch the Super Bowl with, Peyton Manning received 55% of the vote.
  • 40% of people polled  rated Buffalo wings as their top football snack.

It’s been a great season. And hopefully Bing has helped you make the most of it with our line-up of features including player comparisons and stats, taxi fare calculator, weather, recipes, local restaurants and bars, parking lot finders and more. Head over to www.bingfootball.com to learn more.

- Danielle Tiedt, General Manager, Bing

Additional posts of interest:

Bing: Your ticket to fall football

Cast your vote for the "Most Decisive Super Bowl Moment of All Time"

 

Source: http://www.bing.com/community/Site_Blogs/b/search/archive/2011/02/01/bing-trends-top-football-search-trends.aspx

jean claude duvalier astrology rudolf elmer martin luther king day

DeathSmiles developer Cave announces New Games for iOS and Xbox 360

Japanese developer Cave gathered the press and the public alike in Akihabara on Saturday afternoon to reveal its lineup of games for the coming year. While the majority of the presentation was dedicated to Japanese-only software, there were a few items of interest to gamers around the world.

Cave is most famous for creating so-called "bullet hell" shooters, where enemy fire can nearly cover the entire screen. As it turns out, that reputation has reached the people at the Guinness Book of Records. Director Mikio Watanabe revealed that the company holds the record for "most prolific developer of danmaku shooters" ("danmaku" meaning "bullet curtain" -- how the games are known here).

Source: http://www.1up.com/news/deathsmiles-cave-announces-new-games-ios-xbox

rudolf elmer martin luther king day golden globes jets

Uprisings Continue Across the Middle East and North Africa [Video]

After killing protesters in their sleep, Bahrain's ruling monarchy says demonstrators can stay in Pearl roundabout and they've offered to hold talks with all opposition members. Yemen is still going off, and Human Rights Watch says 84 people have been killed in Libya over the last three days. Here's a look at what's happening across the Middle East and North Africa. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gawker/full/~3/1sF9ckgwSio/uprisings-continue-across-the-middle-east-and-north-africa

golden globes jets gervais chris colfer

Media Companies Must Divide To Conquer

Media_httpfarm1static_rgcst

The following essay is also

my Forbes.com column for August.

Media Companies Must Divide To Conquer

The media is something that for most, if not all, of our adult lives, we have taken for granted. Media giants form the terra firma of the marketing industry, both its paid and earned disciplines. They provide the lifeblood of services and bring us the audiences we need to do our jobs.

However, underneath it all, the harsh reality is that there's a new digital dynamic present today. This will mean that many media companies divide themselves into dozens of smaller independent operating companies if they wish to survive. Many won't.

First, there is some good news.

Over the last few years, to their credit, traditional media outlets have done an outstanding job adapting to new technologies, including social networks, mobile and tablets--and helping marketers do the same. Rather than see Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, the iPad, et al, as threats, most media companies have embraced them as potentially lucrative revenue opportunities. And they've innovated too.

Nevertheless, the media business, as anyone who is in it will tell you, is still reeling in pain. To paraphrase NBC head Jeff Zucker, analog dollars are not being replaced quickly enough by digital pennies.

There are at least three currents contributing to the pain.

First, there's the sheer ballooning of information. According to TechCrunch,Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently said that every two days we create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization until 2003. "The real issue is user-generated content," Schmidt said at the Technomy conference.

Despite Google's best efforts to organize it all, this is one of three new realities that will force us to make choices about what we consume and from whom.

This leads to the second current: time. Despite our Herculean efforts, time and attention remain finite quantities. And, increasingly, we are burrowing deeper into social sites. According to Nielsen, time spent on social networking climbed 43% since 2009. It now accounts for 27% of the time Americans spend online, and is the most popular online activity.

What this means for media companies is that, like it or not, social networks and social information networks are becoming their largest distributors of content, perhaps only second to Google.

Finally, and not least of all, we have mobile. According to Morgan Stanley, in just a few years digital content consumption from mobile devices will surpass the same from PCs. No matter how sophisticated these devices get, the rise of mobile will have a dramatic impact on how our global society interacts with digital information. The devices lend themselves more to pervasive media snacking over meals.

The upshot of all of this is that the era of one-size-fits-all media is coming to an end. Faced with infinite choices (and competition from people we know), finite time and attention and form factors that favor short over long, consumers are going to--as a coping mechanism--increasingly drill to find sources that align with their worldview and interests, and let the rest float by.

Media analyst Ken Doctor, in his outstanding book Newsonomics, makes a strong case that there will be only a dozen major global news players. This is down dramatically from the hundreds we have today. Given the above trends, the rest many not make it. But I am optimistic that they can if they see the light now.

To survive many media companies will need to divide themselves into dozens of smaller, independent units if they wish to survive. Although few will say so publicly, some are already moving in a direction of verticalization and specialization.

Consider, for example, ESPN. The juggernaut of sports news has been aggressively rolling out a network of local-interest sites, like ESPNNewYork.com and ESPNLosAgeles.com, in order to cater to rich sports towns. Now it's in the process of adding similar mobile apps to the mix.

This approach is smart. It slices and dices content into micro chunks that cater to diverse interests, rather than trying to be one size fits all. Granted, ESPN itself remains a whole, but others may not be as lucky.

Just as Ma Bell divided itself up into dozens of baby bells back in the 1980s - and arguably to the benefit of consumers and the telecommunications industry - many media companies will need to do the same to cope with the new digital dynamic.

Let's hope that they are just as open to structural change and verticalization as they have been to embracing new formats.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/steverubel/~3/Pwj3nLibz0I/media-companies-must-divide-to-conquer

barney s version is natalie portman pregnant ricky gervais golden globes 2011 new zodiac

A Devaluation of "Friends" May Be Driving Trust in Thought Leaders

Key points in this post..
  • There's been a decline in trust in "a person like myself" and regular employees, arguably because of "over-friending"
  • Trust in credentialed experts (70%) and company technical specialists (64%) is soaring
  • Informed publics (media consumers) need to hear things three to five times for it to effect a behavior change
  • To stand out and build trust, businesses must activate internal thought leaders across several spheres of media

Additional analysis...

This morning in Davos our CEO Richard Edelman unveiled the key findings of the 2011 Edelman Trust Barometer - an annual survey. There's a lot to dig into here. However, I want to highlight three data points that underscore a critical theme that my colleague David Armano and I detailed in our recent trends deck.

The takeaway: to stand out in a very cluttered media world, organizations must increasingly activate their internal subject matter experts as thought leaders and do so across several spheres of media - traditional (WSJ, CNN, etc.), Internet upstarts (eg Business Insider, Politico), corporate/owned platforms and social.

Let's dig into the data.

First, over the last several years there's been a decline in trust in "a person like myself." It's down four percent in the last 12 months. Some 47% said they trust this group, which is down from 68% in 2006. An analysis: I believe the reason for this is that, as more of us join social networks, there's been a devaluation in the entire concept of "friendship." A separate survey found that people don't know 20 percent of their Facebook friends. Consider that "unfriend" was Oxford's word of the year for 2009.

Second, the Trust Barometer revealed rising confidence in credentialed experts (70%, an increase of 8%). This is a trend that began last year. In addition, for the first time we looked at the credibility of technical specialists inside a company. Trust in this group is off the charts (64%). This hits home the need to identify those with expertise inside a company who can engage across different channels, many of which today are digital - or will be soon. Note that this differs from trust in a regular employee, which is down to 34% from 42% in 2006.

Finally, our Strategy One research team looked at what's required to effect a behavior change in a cluttered media world. It's not pretty. 

The data found that informed publics (media consumers) need to hear things three to five times from just as many sources before it sinks in. In the most developed countries like the US and UK it's even higher - a staggering nine times or more. This means organizations must secure multiple impressions across a diverse array of media sources, some that we don't control, others that we increasingly do. Advertising won't cut it. It's the least trusted form of communication, according to the study.

Embedded below and on Scribd is a mini white paper that outlines the findings. I dig into this every year and use it to advise clients in how to develop integrated strategies that span both PR and digital engagement. This year the takeaway is clear: trust in 2011 requires activating credible thought leaders who can not just talk but act (what we call Public Engagement) and do so across this "cloverleaf of media."

Now it's your turn. We encourage you to join the conversation. Here are links to our various digital embassies ...

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/steverubel/~3/bF6eTVgjvcw/a-devaluation-of-friendship-may-be-driving-tr

trent reznor iman cosmetics barney s version is natalie portman pregnant

Forza 4 tuned up to take checkered flag, boosted by Kinect

In the unending competition to create the preeminent simulation racing game, Turn 10 Studios has kicked it into overdrive for this fall's Forza 4, reports MSN Autos. Let's run through some highlights from the development process (as documented by MSN), shall we?
  • 3-D laser-scan "select cars, including the Bugatti Veyron?" Check.
  • Obtain "proprietary performance data from tire manufacturer Pirelli" to create "the most up-to-date simulation of how modern tires grip or slip in a variety of racing conditions?" Done.
  • "[Isolate] the intake, exhaust and engine sounds from each vehicle" in the game to record realistic audio? You have to.
  • "[Rent] out each track that appears in the game for two to three days, [shoot] terabytes worth of video and photos, and [trace] the inside, middle and outside portions of the road surface with a commercial-grade GPS system?" They did that.
Of course, as MSN observes, "[few] players will notice this level of nuance mid-game." It's only through the endorsements of "the tiny, exacting minority of hardcore players and professional racers who train using Forza" (and other sim racers, like Gran Turismo) that we few can trust that the iterative updates over the years are actually bringing us closer to the the most accurate simulation racing game of all time.

It's worth a chuckle, then, that Forza 4's most marketable feature is "more gimmick than breakthrough," according to MSN, and is perhaps a mini-step backwards in the race to ultimate realism. That feature, of course, is Kinect support.

Aside from the "advanced ogling tool" (which allows players to walk around and inspect their virtualized cars; as seen at E3 2010), Forza 4's "Kinect-only mode" will also feature a "more interesting" head-tracking ability, by MSN's account: "when you lean to one side or the other, the driver's perspective edges with you, letting you peer around a blind curve or just slightly around a car before passing it." Still, even coupled with "the phantom steering wheel you can grip and steer," this experience is more "potential" than achievement.

"I think we're just scratching the surface," game director Dan Greenawalt told MSN.

JoystiqForza 4 tuned up to take checkered flag, boosted by Kinect originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 18 Feb 2011 16:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Source: http://www.joystiq.com/2011/02/18/forza-4-tuned-up-to-take-checkered-flag-boosted-by-kinect/

trent reznor iman cosmetics barney s version is natalie portman pregnant