The Hour of Code - WORLDWIDE

The Hour of Code is a global movement reaching tens of millions of students in 180+ countries.  It is a one-hour introduction to computer science, designed to demystify code and show that anybody can learn the basics. Anyone, anywhere can organize an Hour of Code event. One-hour tutorials are available in over 30 languages. No experience needed. Ages 4 to 104.  Last year 15 million students worldwide learned an Hour of Code.

The Hour of Code is organized by Code.org, a public 501c3 non-profit dedicated to expanding participation in computer science by making it available in more schools, and increasing participation by women and underrepresented students of color. An unprecedented coalition of partners have come together to support the Hour of Code, too — including Microsoft, Apple, Amazon,Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Linkedin etc.

JOIN THE LARGEST LEARNING EVENT IN HISTORY, DEC 8-14, 2014. SIGN UP to host an Hour of Code event here- http://hourofcode.org/ and start planning. You can organize an Hour of Code event at your school or in your community  like in an extracurricular club, non-profit or at work. Or, just try it yourself when Dec. 8 arrives.
 

Introducing slow Jo: The Slow Watch That Help Us Reimagine Our Relationship With Time

In a time when our phones are fast becoming our clocks and watches, and displaying the exact time, down to the minute, is just a click away, we're more aware than ever before that time is ticking away.

 But do we really need to always know the exact time, or does it just stress us out and keep us from living in the moment? According to Slow, because of our busy lifestyles, "we often forget that we actually have a choice of how to live," and their reinvention of the watch helps us put our own time in perspective.

 A different kind of wristwatch, the Slow Watch, aims to help us reimagine our relationship with time, by putting it into context and allowing us to visualize our entire day. First launched last year, and sold only online, the first of the Slow Watches (the Slow Jo) displays the entire 24 hour time cycle on the face of the device, and uses just a single hand to indicate the time, letting us focus on the moment, not the never-ending march of seconds.

 "The slow watch is a subtle reminder that time is the most precious thing we have so we should enjoy everything we do and stop chasing every minute. 

In order to be a true symbol of this idea, the slow watch has only one hand that rotates once every 24 hours. It actually moves at half the speed of a normal watch, but allows you to see the progress of your entire day at a glance." - Slow
   
LINK: https://www.slow-watches.com/the-product

Cloak App Helps You Avoid Social Contacts

Cloak App Helps You Avoid Social Contacts (via InformationWeek)

Meet Cloak, the antisocial media app that uses your friends' Instagram and Foursquare location feeds so you can avoid running into them. There's no shortage of social apps that help you connect with friends both in real life and over the web -- take…

 

Lessons from the World's Most Tech-Savvy Government

Estonia may not show up on Americans’ radar too often. It is a tiny country in northeastern Europe, just next to Finland. It has the territory of the Netherlands, but 13 times less people—its 1.3 million inhabitants is comparable to Hawaii’s population. As a friend from India recently quipped, “What is there to govern?”

What makes this tiny country interesting in terms of governance is not just that the people can elect their parliament online or get tax overpayments back within two days of filing their returns. It is also that this level of service for citizens is not the result of the government building a few websites. Instead, Estonians started by redesigning their entire information infrastructure from the ground up with openness, privacy, security, and ‘future-proofing’ in mind.

The first building block of e-government is telling citizens apart. This sounds blatantly obvious, but alternating between referring to a person by his social security number, taxpayer number, and other identifiers doesn’t cut it. Estonia uses a simple, unique ID methodology across all systems, from paper passports to bank records to government offices and hospitals. A citizen with the personal ID code 37501011234 is a male born in the 20th century (3) in year ’75 on January 1 as the 123rd baby of that day. The number ends with a computational checksum to easily detect typos.

For these identified citizens to transact with each other, Estonia passed the Digital Signatures Act in 2000. The state standardized a national Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), which binds citizen identities to their cryptographic keys, and now doesn’t care if any Tiit and Toivo (to use common Estonian names) sign a contract in electronic form with certificates or plain ink on paper. A signature is a signature in the eyes of the law.

As a quirky side effect, this foundational law also forced all decentralized government systems to become digital “by market demand.” No part of the Estonian government can turn down a citizen’s digitally signed document and demand a paper copy instead. As citizens opt for convenience, bureaucrats see a higher inflow of digital forms and are self-motivated to invest in systems that will help them manage the process. Yet a social worker in a small village can still provide the same service with no big investment by handling the small number of digitally signed email attachments the office receives.

Read More at the entire article in the link below..
http://www.eesti.ca/lessons-from-the-worlds-most-tech-savvy-government/article41332

Cicada 3301: The internet mystery that has the world baffled

One evening in January last year, Joel Eriksson, a 34-year-old computer analyst from Uppsala, Sweden, was trawling the web, looking for distraction, when he came across a message on an Internet forum.

The message was in stark white type, against a black background.

“Hello,” it said. “We are looking for highly intelligent individuals. To find them, we have devised a test. There is a message hidden in this image. Find it, and it will lead you on the road to finding us. We look forward to meeting the few that will make it all the way through. Good luck.”

The message was signed: “3301.”

A self-confessed IT security “freak” and a skilled cryptographer, Eriksson was interested immediately.

This was, he knew, an example of digital steganography: the concealment of secret information within a digital file, most often seen in conjunction with image files.

A recipient who can work out the code — for example, to alter the colour of every 100th pixel — can retrieve an entirely different image from the randomized background “noise.”

It’s a technique more commonly associated with nefarious ends, such as concealing child pornography. In 2002 it was suggested that al-Qaida operatives had planned the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks via the auction site eBay, by encrypting messages inside digital photographs.


Read more in the original article at the link below..
The internet mystery that has the world baffled

Companies Could Start Using Brainwaves To Figure Out How Much To Charge You

Companies could start using brainwaves to find out how much customers are willing to pay. Bloomberg Businessweek profiled Kai-Markus Muller, a German scientist who is developing technology to "measure brainwaves and hit upon feel-good prices." According to Mueller, his studies showed that Germans would pay $3.25 for a small cup of Starbucks coffee-way more than the current price of $2.44.

Read More at the link here.. http://www.businessinsider.in/Companies-Could-Start-Using-Brainwaves-To-Figure-Out-How-Much-To-Charge-You/articleshow/23989479.cms

Phyto Kinetic: Green Roofs for City Buses and Improved Urban Ecosystem

Source: Urban Gardens
With his project, Phyto Kinetic, Marc Grañén aims to energize drab public buses with vibrant, gardened roofs that he hopes will contribute a bit to improving the urban ecosystem. Grañén utilizes a lightweight, 7-centimeter thick hydroponic foam which is much lighter than soil, thereby significantly reducing the overall weight of the Phyto Kinetic roof. The foam retains humidity and is extremely flexible, making it easy to install regardless of the shape of the bus roof. Read More..
Phyto Kinetic: Green Roofs for City Busesbr /and Improved Urban Ecosystem

Could the Government Get a Search Warrant for Your Thoughts?

Source: The Atlantic

We don't have a mind reading machine. But what if we one day did? The technique of functional MRI (fMRI), which measures changes in localized brain activity over time, can now be used to infer information regarding who we are thinking about, what we have seen, and the memories we are recalling. As the technology for inferring thought from brain activity continues to improve, the legal questions regarding its potential application in criminal and civil trials are gaining greater attention.
Last year, a Maryland man on trial for murdering his roommate tried to introduce results from an fMRI-based lie detection test to bolster his claim that the death was a suicide. Read More... http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/07/could-the-government-get-a-search-warrant-for-your-thoughts/278111/

Peru To Provide Free Solar Power To 2 Million Of Its Poorest Residents

Peru has initiated a new solar panel program that will provide electricity to more than 2 million of its poorest residents.

Currently, only 66% of Peru’s 24 million people has access to electricity, according to the country’s Energy and Mining Minister Jorge Merino. By 2016, the plan is to provide electricity to 95% of residents through The National Photovoltaic Household Electrification Program.

“This program is aimed at the poorest people, those who lack access to electric lighting and still use oil lamps, spending their own resources to pay for fuels that harm their health,” he said.  Read More..
http://www.the9billion.com/2013/07/18/peru-to-provide-free-solar-power-to-2-million-of-its-poorest-residents/

Scientists Develop Robobees to Pollinate Flowers as Bee Populations Decline

Honey bee populations around the world are in decline due to causes ranging from ‘super mites‘ to Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) and even cell phones – and if the insects disappear completely the planet’s ecosystems would be in peril. The issue has become so dire that now a team of Harvard and Northeastern University scientists are working on a swarm of miniature Robobee robots that could pollinate flowers and do the job of real bees if required.
Speaking to Scientific American, the team leaders said: “In 2009 the three of us began to seriously consider what it would take to create a robotic bee colony. We wondered if mechanical bees could replicate not just an individual’s behavior but the unique behavior that emerges out of interactions among thousands of bees. We have now created the first RoboBees—flying bee-size robots—and are working on methods to make thousands of them cooperate like a real hive.”

World’s First Algae-Powered Building by Splitterwerk Architects Opens This Month in Germany

(Source: Inhabitat)

We’ve all heard about buildings powered by solar or wind energy, but an algae-powered building? Splitterwerk Architects have designed just such a structure, dubbed BIQ, which will be the very first of its kind. Covered with a bio-adaptive façade of microalgae, the distinctive building has been designed for the International Building Exhibition in Hamburg and is slated to open this month!
Read more: World’s First Algae-Powered Building by Splitterwerk Architects Opens This Month in Germany

Megafactories Tesla Model S (English)- Video

National Geographic recently produced a 45-minute video on the Tesla Motors “megafactory” in Fremont, California. Of course, it’s also a video on Tesla as a whole, the Model S, Elon Musk, and a potential electric vehicle revolution. It’s worth a watch. Elon Musk the South African American entrepreneur and inventor is best known for founding SpaceX, and co-founding Tesla Motors and PayPal (initially known as X.com). The Tesla Model S is a full-sized electric four-door sedan produced by Tesla Motors.

Futuristic highways in Netherlands "Glow in the Dark" - Video

A futuristic highway that can save energy and improve road safety is set
to be installed in the Netherlands by mid-2013. Two companies, Studio
Roosegaarde and Heijmans Infrastructure, came up with the highway, which
includes: glow-in-the-dark road markings painted with photo-luminescent
paint which are charged during the day and light up during the night;
temperature-responsive paint which indicates slippery roads when
temperatures fall below zero; and interactive lights along the highway
that light up as cars approach. Wind lights that light up using the
draft produced by cars and priority induction lanes that can recharge
electric cars as they run along them also feature.

The luminous road markings and weather indicating roads will debut in
the Dutch province of Brabant in the middle of next year. The wind
powered and interactive lights along with the induction lanes are also
planned to go into service in the next years.

Scientists generate electricity with a virus

Painting Fool is no idiot - Video

The Painting Fool, a computer program which has been taught to recognize human emotion, has been building a reputation as an accomplished artist over the past decade. Its creator Simon Colton believes the Fool's future is as bright as some of the abstract artwork created by the program. He has big plans to extend the program into the area of literature.

Jetovator, Flying, water-powered bike

Introducing the most thrilling new aerial water vehicle; the Jetovator! Turn your standard high output personal watercraft into a power source for your Jetovator and get ready to reach heights up to 30 feet, speeds up to 25mph, dives down to 10 feet, and insane aerial tricks like 360 degree barrel rolls, and back flips. To get more info on the Jetovator visit www.jetovator.com.

Face-reading software to judge the mood of the masses

IF THE computers we stare at all day could read our faces, they would probably know us better than anyone.

That vision may not be so far off. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab are developing software that can read the feelings behind facial expressions. In some cases, the computers outperform people. The software could lead to empathetic devices and is being used to evaluate and develop better adverts.

But the commercial uses are just "the low-hanging fruit", says Rana el Kaliouby, a member of the Media Lab's Affective Computing group. The software is getting so good and so easy to use that it could collate millions of peoples' reactions to an event as they sit watching it at home, potentially replacing opinion polls, influencing elections and perhaps fuelling revolutions. More..

Face-reading software to judge the mood of the masses - tech - 28 May 2012 - New Scientist

TeleHuman:Life-Size Hologram-Like Telepods Revolutionize Videoconferencing

A Queen's University researcher has created a Star Trek-like human-scale 3D videoconferencing pod that allows people in different locations to video conference as if they are standing in front of each other. "Why skype when you can talk to a life-size 3D holographic image of another person?"

Forget WiFi and Radio Waves, LiFi Uses Lightbulbs to Connect to the Internet

Whether you're using wireless internet in a coffee shop, stealing it from the guy next door, or competing for bandwidth at a conference, you've probably gotten frustrated at the slow speeds you face when more than one device is tapped into the network. As more and more people - and their many devices - access wireless internet, clogged airwaves are going to make it increasingly difficult to latch onto a reliable signal.

One German physicist, Harald Haas, has come up with a solution he calls "data through illumination" - taking the fiber out of fiber optics by sending data through an LED lightbulb that varies in intensity faster than the human eye can follow. It's the same idea behind infrared remote controls, but far more powerful. More..

Forget WiFi and Radio Waves, LiFi Uses Lightbulbs to Connect to the Internet -- Science & Technology -- Sott.net: http://www.sott.net/articles/show/244434-Forget-WiFi-and-Radio-Waves-LiFi-Uses-Lightbulbs-to-Connect-to-the-Internet

University of Texas researchers design chip allowing mobile devices to see through walls

As unbelievable as it sounds, researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas have created an imager chip for mobile devices which would turn an ordinary cell phone into something which can see through walls, wood, plastics, paper, skin and other objects.

Using the terahertz (THz) band of the electromagnetic spectrum, the wavelengths of which fall between the microwave and infrared bands, the chip could signify a revolution in the surveillance capabilities of mobile phones along with new chips like Broadcom’s BCM4752 which is capable of providing ultra-precise location data.

Combine this with citizen spying applications and the techniques which gently push people to conduct surveillance without them knowing what they’re actually doing, patents from Google which would allow them to collect the data from such chips and the National Security Agency’s (NSA’s) new data center and you have the penultimate surveillance state. More..

University of Texas researchers design chip allowing mobile devices to see through walls - BlackListedNews.com