Archive for May, 2006

Apple, Nike exercise iPods to track workouts - May 24th, 2006

running shoes

USATODAY.com – Apple, Nike exercise iPods to track workouts
NEW YORK — Apple and Nike have unveiled an iPod gizmo to put more rhythm in your run: the Nike iPod Sports Kit, the first product coming out of a new partnership between the companies.
The wireless kit lets Nike’s new Air Zoom Moire shoes send fitness data to your iPod Nano – via a sensor you tuck inside the running shoe and a small receiver that attaches to the Nano. As you run, the sensor records your distance, time, pace and calories burned in real time and displays data on the Nano. At the push of a button, audio feedback is delivered through Nano’s earbuds.

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted: 5/24/06 11:26 am UTC by Add Your Comment
GD Star Rating
loading...

eBlocks: Enabling Design of Basic Embedded Systems by Novice Users - May 18th, 2006

The speakers at this week’s seminar will be Susan Lysecky and
Frank Vahid.

Abstract:

“The eBlocks project, at UC Riverside, is empowering regular
people, having no programming or electronics experience, to build basic
useful electronic systems around the home, office, store, etc. While
decreases in cost, size, and power consumption has led to the
integration of embedded systems into new emerging domains, including
RFID tags and ingestible pills, the design of even the simplest of
embedded systems, such a system indicating when a garage door has been
left open at night, still requires advanced engineering skills beyond
the reach of most users.

The Informatics Seminar is held in ICS2 136 at 3pm, followed by a happy hour at 4pm. See you there!

This talk will be videocaptured, broadcast live, and archived via this blog. 15 minutes before the live broadcast we will publish a multicast “.spd” file which will allow a quicktime client to tune into the event.

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted: 5/18/06 10:49 am UTC by Add Your Comment
GD Star Rating
loading...

Ambient Display Umbrella - May 6th, 2006

From:Inhabitat : WIFI UMBRELLA

“Chicago design group Materious has designed an interactive umbrella called Forecast which uses Wifi to get up-to-date weather information, and then glows to alert you when its going to rain. If your umbrella isn’t glowing, no need to worry – but if the handle is pulsing blue, its the umbrella’s way of saying ‘take me with you, it’s going to be a soggy day’ ”

Tags: , , ,
Posted: 5/6/06 4:47 pm UTC by Make the First Comment
GD Star Rating
loading...

Paul Dourish has a posse - May 5th, 2006

paul has a posse
Photo stolen from mroth, who could probably get in trouble for making a picture with Paul’s likeness anway, so we’re even.

Paul apparently made a splash at CHI.

Tags: , , ,
Posted: 5/5/06 3:39 pm UTC by Make the First Comment
GD Star Rating
loading...

Composition of Real-Time and Hybrid Distributed Computing Systems in High-Safety Ubiquitous Computing Societies - May 1st, 2006

The speaker at this Friday’s Informatics Seminar will be Kane Kim. This
week’s seminar will be a joint seminar between the Department of
Informatics and the Department of Computer Science. The Informatics
Seminar this week will be held on Friday at 3pm in ICS 432, followed by
a social hour at 4pm. See you there.

Abstract:

” Emergence of ubiquitous computing societies (UCSs) means enormous
increase in both the number of computing nodes connected together and
the number of distributed computing (DC) applications. That in turn
means enormous increase in the complexity of DC occurring. Without a
new-generation DC software engineering technology, application systems
such as next-generation multi-party video-conferencing systems,
real-time virtual reality systems, systems of cooperating autonomous
ground vehicles, and next-generation secure villages and towns, cannot
be constructed with sufficient economy, efficiency, and reliability. A
major part of a new-generation DC software engineering technology should
be a new-generation software building-block (BB). A substantial
percentage of new-generation DC applications are of RT computing types
which involve actions subject to relatively high-precision timing
requirements. Therefore, desired aBBs must be effective in constructing
RT DC application systems.

The TMO (Time-triggered Message-triggered Object) programming and
specification scheme is intended to facilitate RT distributed
programming and software engineering in a form which software engineers
in the vast business software field can adapt to with relatively small
efforts. It is also aimed for enabling system engineers to produce
certifiable RT computing systems for safety-critical applications in
cost-effective and sufficiently confident manners. Its support tools
can be based on well-established OO programming languages such as C++,
C#, and JAVA and on ubiquitous commercial RT operating system kernels or
even on MS Windows. In addition, the TMO scheme facilitates an
attractively simple approach to parallel and distributed RT simulation.
Experiences have shown that undergraduate senior students can learn the
TMO tools and methodology and become reasonably proficient in networked
embedded system programming. In this seminar, the underlying design
paradigm and the essence of the scheme, the tools (including middleware
supporting reliable execution of TMOs on various platforms such as
notebook, PDA, and single-board ITX PC, associated APIs, GUI-based
design aids, and analysis tools) and application demonstrations built so
far, and remaining research issues, will be introduced.”

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted: 5/1/06 9:15 am UTC by Make the First Comment
GD Star Rating
loading...