Sorin Adam Matei
Analysis, research, maps, and essays from Sorin Adam Matei.
Do you buy into this explanation? Xbox effect: Dinner bells that summoned children from the great outdoors have long gone silent, and youths and young adults are spending more time on indoor pursuits involving high-definition TVs, gaming consoles and computers. That,…
In the context of the Snowden and Prism scandal, Google released a transparency report, which discloses the number of judicial requests for disclosing information about Google service users by country over a period of three years. Data has been released in the…
According to Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency (NSA) leaker, the US government has recruited several major Internet corporations, especially Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, to help it harvest emails, videos, and web traffic from unsuspecting US and foreign citizens through…
Image by wolfgang.wedenig via Flickr The patent claims that a belt connecting to a network device “creates a sensation for a user similar to having guests in a remote location to be physically present as virtual guests,” allowing people to “concurrently experience the…
Swiss students at the The Flying Machine Arena at the Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control ETH Zurich re-purpose Xbox hand gesture controller Kinect for remote controlling a helicopter. Related articles 7 Mind-Blowing Xbox Kinect Hacks [VIDEOS] (mashable.com)
A 2011 E3 Video news roundup E3 is the Electronic Entertainment Expo at which major video and PC game vendors present their new products. This year’s event promises a number of long expected events and products. Here is a line up of…
We are finally getting somewhere… Cloud computing, though, is more than a hyper-efficient means of distributing digital services. The cloud model is animated by a set of Internet technologies for juggling computing workloads in data centers far more efficiently than in the…
Walter Alvarez teaches geology at Berkley and his main contribution to the history of science is the theory that the dinosaur era was brought to an end by a giant asteroid that landed on Yucatan peninsula 60 million years ago. The footprint…
Image via Wikipedia The Dataverse Network is an open-source web application supported by Harvard University, which offers a free and flexible framework for dataset citation, curation, and management. It allows researchers to deposit their datasets and to share them with persistent, unique…
David Pogue, the technology columnist/blogger for New York Times believes that the announced Apple tablet, the so called iSlate, will contain at least one element of surprise and will not be just a tablet. Or so we can hope. But my gut…
Image via CrunchBase In major setback, CrunchPad, the touch-only computer tablet that wanted to be what the much rumored Apple Tablet should’ve been, is killed on the launchpad. The tablet was developed as a challenge launched by TechCrunch, a popular geek blog,…
How do you convert a MediaWiki xml dump (using Special:Export) into a human readable file? First, I expected to find a simple, Microsoft Word import filter. What I initially found, namely Wandora, was interesting enough, but it only gave me repeated headaches,…
A sophisticated browser, which straddles the desktop/server divide has been launched by Google. It aims to create a better platform for its webapplications, which need to be faster and more secure to compete with the local desktop, currently dominated by Microsoft. The…
A mashup utility good for everything. For now, only in command line. Mozilla Ubiquity, Microsoft IE8, and the fracturing of Web pages | Webware : Cool Web apps for everyone – CNET
The Apple Iphone Jobs Video. Highlights: Microsoft Exchange and VPN support EBAY interface Loopt support – Location Aware Social Networks: We make serendipity happen Native TypePad support (blogging) Apple – QuickTime – WWDC 2008 Keynote And a list of things Apple…
Until recently, Bill Gates has been viewed as the villain of the tech world, while his arch rival, Steve Jobs, enjoys an almost saintly reputation. But these perceptions are wrong. In fact, the reality is reversed. It’s Gates who’s making a dent…
Microsoft’s cooking something really cool. The Photosynth project aims to organize large collections of photographs, especially those funnelled through aggregator sites, such as Flickr, using geographic models of real spaces. They have a demo collection of Piazza San Marco of Venice and…
Imagine a computing environment which interacts with objects physically. Put a camera in it and the pictures are downloaded on the fly. Microsoft says it has unlocked the mystery of ambiental, portable, devices. Microsoft unveils revolutionary device – Today: Money – MSNBC.com…
They might even get married.
Idea of paid entries roils Wikipedia – Tech News & Reviews – MSNBC.com BOSTON – When a blogger revealed this week that Microsoft Corp. wanted to pay him to fix purported inaccuracies in technical articles on Wikipedia, the software company endured online…
Authority and expertise has changed. Weinberger’s chapter on “The Hyperlinked Organization†in The Cluetrain Manifesto (2004) and his chapter on “Knowledge†in Small Pieces Loosely Connected (2002) both talk about how authority no longer means what it used to mean. There are…
The man really is on the list… But so is Michael Gorbatchev, Henrik Ibsen, Albert Einstein or Michael Jordan… Silicon Valley Sleuth: Gates inducted into the Stalinist hall of fame Gates inducted into the Stalinist hall of fame Microsoft chairman Bill Gates…
Spaceaware is a research project I started a couple of years ago, which looks at how people make sense of information delivery experiences similar to the “hailing billboard” scene in Minority Report. (Remember the scene in which Tom Cruise is greeted by…