Warping it up!

Cam Tracking: Wii Style

Fini Alring — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 13:49:32 +0000

CamSpace Creates a Wii For Everyone (Minus the Nintendo Console)

Denmark Protests OOXML ISO Certification

Fini Alring — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 11:03:47 +0000

“The rumors of a fourth OOXML complaint turned out to be true. Denmark has become the fourth nation to protest the ISO’s acceptance of OOXML, and Groklaw has a translation of their complaint. They now join India, Brazil, and South Africa. There are going to be plenty of questions about deadlines, because people have been given two different deadlines for appeals, and the final DIS of OOXML was late in being distributed and not widely available. In fact, that seems to be one of Denmark’s complaints, along with missing XML schemas, contradictory wording, lack of interoperability, and troubles with the maintenance of DIS29500. In other words, we should expect a lot of wrangling over untested rules from here on out, and Microsoft knows how to deal with that.”

The Association for Open Source Vendors [OSL] hereby lodges a formal complaint to ISO over the certification process after the meetings in Dansk Standard’s committee S-445 (former S-142/U34) as well as the decision to change the Danish vote to a yes in connection with the processing of DIS 29500. Thus I write to you in your capacity as vice president for ISO and as your capacity as executive director in Dansk Standard. I will send this complaint in English before the end of the month.

On the 22nd of May, the Association for Open Source Vendors made Dansk Standard aware that the Danish requirements for DIS29500 had not been fulfilled. We summarized our views in the following 5 main points (see attached letter)

1. Microsoft Office formats stand in the way of interoperability
2. XML schemas are missing
3. The finished specification is not available
4. Contradictory wording
5. The maintenance of DIS29500 has not been decided

Slashdot | Denmark Becomes Fourth Nation To Protest OOXML

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Vodafone acquires ZYB

Fini Alring — Sun, 18 May 2008 13:29:27 +0000

My former employee ZYB has been acquired by Vodafone Group, this is certainly is nice to see that all the hard work is finally beginning to fall into place with time and space. I worked there for seven months during 2007 and helped turning ZYB into a Web 2.0 social thingy, basically crunch time from start to finish - but I guess in retrospect it was well worth it! - I also initially made The official ZYB blog, so obviously has to mention that on my blog! Go go ZYB and the wonderful ZYB Crew!

Vodafone acquires ZYB « ZYB blog

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Flickr’s got video!

Fini Alring — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 20:23:44 +0000

Enjoy this nice video clip of a cute swimming penguin. Note that this type of video is very hard to compress properly at lower bitrates because of all the motion in the water. I will upload some of my own flickr vid’s soonish!

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The end of the universe?

Fini Alring — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 13:06:20 +0000

“In what can only be considered a bizarre court case, a former nuclear safety officer and others are suing the U.S. Department of Energy, Fermilab, the National Science Foundation and CERN to stop the use of the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) until its safety is reassessed. The plaintiffs cite three possible ‘doomsday‘ scenarios which might occur if the LHC becomes operational: the creation of microscopic black holes which would grow and swallow matter, the creation of strangelets which, if they touch other matter, would convert that matter into strangelets or the creation of magnetic monopoles which could start a chain reaction and convert atoms to other forms of matter. CERN will hold a public open house meeting on April 6 with word having been spread to some researchers to be prepared to answer questions on microscopic black holes and strangelets if asked.”

Slashdot | Large Hadron Collider Sparks ‘Doomsday’ Lawsuit

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Visualization Tools

Fini Alring — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 09:07:08 +0000

Just found a great review of different visualization tools for communities.

Visualization is a technique to graphically represent sets of data. When data is large or abstract, visualization can help make the data easier to read or understand. There are visualization tools for search, music, networks, online communities, and almost anything else you can think of. Whether you want a desktop application or a web-based tool, there are many specific tools are available on the web that let you visualize all kinds of data.

Also check out Visual Complexity for a huge source of visualized data candy

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String-Theory applied to Music

Fini Alring — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 15:03:18 +0000

I have always found the nature of musical tones interesting; this interest just increased! - We have a lot to learn from studying the maths and nature of waves in general, and applying the science to music might just be one of the greatest ways to do this. Go go string-theory!!

An anonymous slashdot reader notes a Time.com profile of Princeton University music theorist Dmitri Tymoczko, who has applied some string-theory math to the study of music and found that all possible chordal music can be represented in a higher-dimensional space. His research was published last year in Science — it was the first paper on music theory they ever ran. The paper and background material, including movies, can be viewed at Tymoczko’s site.

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Encyclopedia of Life - Initial Launch

Fini Alring — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 11:46:26 +0000

Slashdot: Encyclopedia of Life opened up to the public today with its first 30,000 pages in place — and, according to the AP, promptly crumbled even before being Slashdotted. (The site seems fine now.) We discussed this project last year when it was announced. The Telegraph has an overview of the launch, and reports that only 25 “exemplar” pages on the site are fully fleshed out to the extent scientists hope eventually to attain for all species; the other few tens of thousands are expanded placeholders. The project hopes to begin taking input from citizen-scientists late this year.

Slashdot.org: Encyclopedia of Life Launches First 30,000 Pages

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Ten Years Ago Today: Netscape Source Code Liberated

Fini Alring — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 17:15:30 +0000

Today marks ten years since Netscape Communications Corporation announced its intention to release the source code of the then in-development Netscape Communicator 5.0, heralding the beginning of what would become the Mozilla project. At the same time, Netscape stopped charging for Netscape Navigator 4.0 and Netscape Communicator Standard Edition 4.0.

On Monday 23rd February 1998, mozilla.org was launched to coordinate development of the open-source code. The actual release of the Netscape Communicator 5.0 source code took place on Tuesday 31st March 1998.

Mitchell Baker, who has been involved with the Mozilla project from the outset, is asking for ideas of how to celebrate Mozilla’s tenth anniversary year.

Ten Years Ago Today: Netscape Announces Free Communicator Source Code Release - MozillaZine

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Titan’s got the oil!

Fini Alring — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 14:51:27 +0000

Saturn’s orange moon Titan has hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth, according to new Cassini data. The hydrocarbons rain from the sky, collecting in vast deposits that form lakes and dunes.The new findings from the study led by Ralph Lorenz, Cassini radar team member from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, USA, are reported in the 29 January 2008 issue of the Geophysical Research Letters.”Titan is just covered in carbon-bearing material—it’s a giant factory of organic chemicals,” said Lorenz. “This vast carbon inventory is an important window into the geology and climate history of Titan.”

Photo rendering: Copyright Kees Veenenbos

ESA - Space Science - Titan’s surface organics surpass oil reserves on Earth

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