Tag Archives: Technology

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Shadow touch! – Media art that fools the senses – 7 February 2011

At the 14th Japan Media Arts Festival, an interactive artwork called Shadow touch!, which uses a Wii remote control, was exhibited as an award winner in the Student CG Contest. Shadow touch! uses media technology to fool the visual and other senses.

“The way it works is, you use this flashlight to search for shadows in empty spaces. Shadow Touch! enables you to play with the shadows, by touching, holding, and throwing them.The flashlight-like device used in Shadow Touch! doesn’t use actual light. It contains the infrared camera from a Wii remote control. The device measures which way it’s facing by using a recursive reflector, which can reflect light back the way it came. Through this means, Shadow touch! generates pictures synchronized with the device’s motion in real time, and displays them using a projector. In the mode where users hold and throw the images, recursive reflector caps are attached to the fingertips. They reflect infrared light, and the Wii remote control on the front of the system detects the position of the reflected light.

• Teruaki Tsubokura
• 14th Japan Media Arts Festival

Have posted about Google’s Picasa Face Search technology before.
Here’s what it came up with recently while browsing through the photo library on my computer .
Appears to be a new achievement honoree in there.

I recently installed the plugin clicktoflash for Safari in OS X. This plugin is awesome because it does not completely block flash but lets me decide when i want to run and download the flash file. I am already amazed at how fast the web feels with this plugin installed and still gives me the flexibility to run flash when I want. For example, earlier today, I browsed to www.engadget.com to check out the latest tech news and the page loaded so much faster than it has in the past. I then went over to www.winterbottomgame.com which has a large flash portion on the page. I was able to click the “flash” button and all the flash was there as expected. It also lets me pick H.264 or flash video on YouTube sites.

Here is a link to the site:

http://rentzsch.github.com/clicktoflash/

Some Notes after the break:

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Today I JailBroke my iphone… It’s like getting a whole new phone with lots of useless extra’s, but with some extremely useful. What I’ve done so far.

1. findmyi : Track the iphones exact location. Application runs in the background !!!

2. Qik : Streaming video to my qik account direct from my iphone.

3. Terminal : So useful, I just can’t explain.

Merry Christmas

Check it out. What I find most interesting about these guys is their integration with social networking sites. Turn your facebook page into a house. Have the music on your myspace page play from a jukebox and goto friends pages through doors in your apartment. Watch youtube videos with friends in a virtual theater. I think this plugin architecture has some great benefits over custom applications like secondlife. What do you think?

RFID for the rest of us. The tikitag . You can read about it on cnet but basically it allows for a number of custom applications to be activated when an item with a tag is swiped. Looks like they’re simplifying the RFID tag and action process to help blend the real and digital worlds. Seriously, if this works as advertised, i can see this being good quick and easy tool for prototyping. What do you think?

Check out the article here for more information and a video. These could be great for thesis installations that take up a large area so as not to have one large loud speaker. I think the picture explains itself as to how these work. There can be up to 20 speakers at a distance of 25 meters !!!

It’s ichat for PC’s and Mac’s. Now PC’s can join in free high quality video chat. The web page is http://www.sightspeed.com/ .

The mystical art of password hacking just isn’t as mystical as it once was. With a number of powerful free programs, a person can easily gain access to most computer systems. A number of articles claiming “Recover Lost Passwords” have sprung up recently claiming to help users do just that. I would like to argue that all these articles do is peek the interest of ordinary computer users and giving them the tools to do serious damage. A recent post on lifehacker.com is a great example: http://lifehacker.com/394039/recover-lost-passwords-with-free-tools

I urge everyone to read this so they understand just how vulnerable those passwords you lock away really are.

My lesson to you:

1. No computer is secure when a malicious user has physical access to the system.

2. Wireless networks are easily compromised.

3. Data going over wireless networks is not secure.

4. Think about your network (is it secure), the users on that network (do you trust them), and the application you are accessing (do you trust the app provider) before transmitting any sensitive information over the net.

And just for good measure an example:

I want to check my bank account, my email, and IM with a friend and i’m at my local starbucks. Starbucks has an open wifi network which you must be a subscriber to in order to access the internet. There are three other people sitting in the corner with laptops open.

1. Is my network secure? NO !!! Anyone can access the network and start capturing packets. All my passwords may become exposed if they are transfered in clear text.

2. Do I trust my fellow network users? NO !!! 3 strangers sitting in a starbucks hidden behind laptop screens. They might be doing something malicious, then again they might not.

3. Do I trust the app provider? Maybe !!! My bank encrypts the data transfer so it’s probably safe. But am i trusting them to encrypt all the information on each webpage? Maybe there is a targeted add or an account number is not encrypted? I would not check my bank account and instead wait until i was on a trusted network.

So what should you do?

Encrypt all the data going through your computer. You can do this by signing into a VPN (such as USC’s). It should be noted that USC wireless is also completely open and unsecured and ITS even recommends using their VPN client for any sensitive data communications.