Tech Stream
Archive for the ‘ Research’ Category
Moon Landing
17 July 2009
As you can imagine there’s an incredible amount of overage online for the anniversary of the first lunar landing. On the 20th of July 1969 Neil Armstrong took his giant leap for mankind and 40 years on its the perfect time to discover more about that incredible event.
ABC Science have a wonderful resource of stories and programs devoted to the moon landing. You can find them all at abc.net.au/science/moon and Radio Australia has a special feature online on the latest space-race in Asia at radioaustralianews.net.au
The Smithsonian and NASA themselves are of course covering the anniversary, the latter has a feature on the Apollo 11 mission to the moon and newly restored HD footage of the first step (much better than the youtube version above!). The Guardian UK also has excellent coverage, as does the BBC with their special report on the moon landing and access to their archives. And CNN Tech has a story on how private firms are getting ready to offer flights into space. A new frontier indeed.
Tech Stream 021
10 July 2009
Listen and download: MP3
With more smartphones featuring GPS, maps and navigation applications what does the future hold for dedicated sat-nav devices? Photo from Flickr by tripu.
We hit the wide open road in the Tech Stream this week with some of the latest GPS satellite navigation applications for mobile phones.
Technology journalist Adam Turner has had a chance to try an Australian sat-nav mobile maps application for the iPhone called Sygic (you can read a full review on his blog). But it seems we shouldn’t be throwing out our dedicated sat-nav devices just yet.
Plus we ask, what exactly is GPS and where did it come from? We have an expert in the field with us to answer our questions: Professor Chris Rizos, Head of the School of Surveying & Spatial Information Systems at the University of New South Wales. You can also read more about GPS – the Global Positioning System – on ABC Science Online.
We also briefly mention the news about Google launching its own PC operating system called Chrome OS. Details are still sketchy but the company has posted this FAQ and blog-post about it.
And finally to gaming and EA’s Sims 3 – the latest in the world’s most successful computer games series. Bajo from Good Game on ABC TV in Australia reviews it for us and says its strongest selling point is the way if fosters an active online community who can use the game to create their own content, including videos.
You can listen to the full Tech Stream program with the MP3 link above or the “Listen Now” link on the right. Feel free to comment on any of these stories or suggest something we can follow up in future programs. You can also subscribe to the podcast too!
Augmented Reality
26 June 2009
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We caught a glimpse this week of some mobile applications that allow you to look at the world around you and see an overlay of virtual information. Point the phone’s camera at a building and a dialog box pops up on the screen with what it is, when it was built, how far away it is from you etc. You can still see the physical world but now virtual content has been added on top. This is an example of augmented reality. More after the jump…
Broadband growth driven by Asia
18 June 2009
The ICT expo CommunicAsia is taking place in Singapore this week and their daily newsbrief (pdf link) has some interesting stats on the growth of broadband take up in the region. Their figures indicate that broadband lines topped 429.2 million globally as of the end of the first quarter of 2009 with most of that growth being driven by Asia.
Serious Games
11 June 2009
Listen and download: MP3
A serious game is computer or video game that is designed primarily for a purpose other than entertainment. And the X Media Lab in Sydney is holding Australia’s first ever conference on Serious Games this week. It kicks off tomorrow (Friday) and I had a chance to speak with two of the conference participants:
Noah Falstein, who is often referred to as the ‘father of serious games’. Noah has worked for Dreamworks Interactive among many other places and is a Board Member of the Serious Games Summit in the United States and President of The Inspiracy.
And Dr Ian Bogost a videogame designer, critic, and researcher. He’s an Associate Professor at Georgia Tech in Atlanta and Founding Partner of Persuasive Games.
I spoke with both men separately about serious games and general trends in interactive entertainment. They have some truly fascinating things to say. To listen just follow the MP3 at the top of this post.
Good Game on ABC TV are currently running an initiative with Screen Australia to develop a serious game. More about it here.
Sunday Profile interview with Stephen Wolfram
1 June 2009
Listen and download: MP3
The announcement last week of Bing, Microsoft’s new search engine, certainly took our focus away from another, far more interesting search engine which came to life in May. It’s called Wolfram|Alpha and its ultimate goal is to:
“make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. We aim to collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything.”
Wow, that sounds easy! At the moment its very good at dealing with any queries related to numbers, but not so great on things like popular culture, history, places or people. Yet.
Monica Attard from Sunday Profile on ABC Local Radio and Radio National spoke with the man behind the venture – Stephen Wolfram.
Tech Stream 015
29 May 2009
Listen and download: MP3
In the Tech Stream this week: Dr James Chon from Swinburne University in Melbourne discussing their research breakthrough in optical disc storage. As reported on ABC News Online, the new technique uses gold nanorods and could potentially allow storage of up to 1.6 terabytes of data on a single DVD disc.
We also meet Professor John Hullet who, along with his colleagues from the University of Western Australia, invented a solution to broadband congestion called “Early Packet Discard” without which the internet as we know it would not function. They are now working on new ways to minimise delay in real-time communications online. You can also read more about their recent award on our Radio Australia program Innovations.
Simon Goodrich from Portable Content joins me for breakfast and we discuss a service called oDesk and trends in digital outsourcing in the region. And finally Bajo rockets in from Good Game on ABC TV to review the new Quake Live browser game. Fragadelic!
The future of copyright in a digital age
29 May 2009
Phillip Adams interviews Lawrence Lessig, author of Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy. Lessig says says that in this digital age where young people’s culture is the media, they are being criminalised because copyright laws haven’t kept up with digital technology and the way it’s being used. You can download the MP3 radio interview and there is more on the Late Night Live website.
There are some great resources on copyright and fair use at the Centre for Social Media including the video below:
War tech: from science-fiction to battlefield reality
29 May 2009
The US Air Force Predator B, an unmanned aerial vehicle.
Serious moral and legal dilemmas are posed by the increasing use of machines to replace soldiers in battle. Michael Rowland reports from the United States for ABC News Online. Watch the video.
Tech Stream 013
15 May 2009
Listen and download: MP3
In the Tech Stream this week we’re at CeBIT Australia 2009, which is a massive information and communications technology (ICT) event in Sydney. I’ve been posting, tweeting and filing audio from the conference all week, and today we catch up with Dr David Skellern from NICTA; Peter Harrison from Austrade; Geoff McQueen from Hiive Systems; the Australian and New Zealand web development teams battling in the FullCodePress competition; and finally Christoper Hire from 2ThinkNow who sums up some of the ideas and discussions that took place at CeBIT.
We’ll have more from the conference and exhibition next week as well. Thanks to all the people who helped organise interviews for me, or gave up their time to speak with me during the week.
You can listen to the full Tech Stream program with the MP3 link above or the “Listen Now” link on the right. Feel free to comment on any of these stories or suggest something we can follow up in future programs. You can also subscribe to the podcast too!
