Category Archives: Uncategorized
Unsend that unfortunate email
It turns out the word ‘unsend’ isn’t an actual word, but it might become one soon. Google is introducing long-functional but until now experimental functionality for Gmail that lets you recall an email before it is actually sent.
Some history: Google used to have a tab in Gmail known as Google Labs, where they would make available all sorts of experimental Gmail functionality ideas that their coders and designers were allowed to work on in their spare time. They were never made official, but people could try them out if they liked. It was closed down almost five years ago, however they had some neat stuff, my favorite being a plugin that used an ingenious method to prevent you from sending emails while inebriated, which would likely end in huge amounts of regret and apologies: When you hit send, you had to work out a mathematical problem before the email would actually send. The difficulty of the problem could be set by the user, and if you couldn’t work out the problem in a set time the email wouldn’t send. Brilliant. Also, full disclosure, I think it’s ingenious because it is, not because I ever had to use it (I don’t drink, so when I do something dumb I have no excuse).
Google is now implementing the big brother of the drunk email-preventer, one that lived in Google Labs for six years, known as “unsend.” The user can set a desired timeframe from a few seconds to 30 seconds, and during that time the email won’t send, giving the user time to stop the email from sending. There are many reasons someone may want this, just let your imagination run wild. (Not that wild, maybe you just neglected to attach a file!)
You’ll have to enable the function as it won’t be a default option, and now that it’s an official addition to Gmail, I suspect that other web-based email services will be offering it in short order.
8K video on YouTube
8K has been around for a while now, I’ve seen huge (108″) 8K displays at E3 for three years running. Even so, we’re too busy focusing on 4K these days, and two versions of 4K at that – true 4K (4096 x 2160) and UHD (3840 x 2160), although no TV you can by in a store is true 4K, that’s a cinema standard. *All* TVs that claim to be 4K are actually UHD.
Yet technology marches on, and just as we are seeing the very early development of new technologies such as quantum dot displays, so are we seeing the early attempts to move past 4K resolution towards an 8K consumer standard.
Henderson residents can now text 911
Normally I would mention something like this via the is301 Twitter account, but this is so important I’m going to announce it here instead (although since this site and the Twitter account are linked, I guess I announced it via both anyway!).
Henderson residents can now text a message to 911 instead of calling. Henderson is the only department in the state to offer this functionality, and it is carrier-neutral. This would be very useful in circumstances of, G-d forbid, a home invasion where you are trying to stay hidden, or if you wanted to avoid the appearance of making a call for whatever reason, or for people who are deaf or hard of hearing and are therefore unable to make emergency calls.
A Magna Carta for the Internet
Now this is a great idea. The British library has asked children aged 11-18 to suggest ideas that should be included in a Magna Carta for the Internet era.
Based on the responses, safety and privacy are the main thrusts of what was submitted. That’s interesting, because it shows that kids have the same concerns as adults when it comes to life in the digital frontier. Once all the submissions were collected, voting was opened to the general public to see which ones resonated most with the public.
Voting on the Internet Magna Carta
The idea of the Magna Carta is especially poignant since it was the document that held the King of England beholden to the same laws as the people. On top of that, and somewhat ironically, England is one of only a very few countries that has no written constitution.
Who knows? Perhaps this can serve as a beginning to creating an actual Magna Carta of some sort for the Internet and Online, to which people online would be expected to adhere and for which violations could result in actual consequences.
PixelSense display at the Mob Museum
A few weeks ago I went to the Mob Museum, and although I was skeptical I have to admit it was quite interesting. There were many displays, both static and interactive, including a Tommy gun you could fire (not real bullets, of course, that would end badly). You could sit in a replica electric chair, stand in a lineup, and they had the actual wall from the St. Valentines Day Massacre. Macabre, but this is the Mob we’re talking about.
It Begins
You may notice in the Twitter feed over there on the right side of the page, I recently sent out a Tweet stating a July 29 release date has been confirmed for Windows 10.
Ironically, I made that Tweet on my Mac. About an hour later, when I started up my Windows machine, I saw what many of you likely saw on your own machine – this little guy in the system tray!
Well hello there!
A brief comment about affect, technology, and the Uncanny Valley
By ‘brief,’ I apparently meant ‘very long.’
While researching another post recently, I came across several articles describing some research going on at MIT as “creepy.” There’s this one from Wired that discusses MIT’s research into probabilistic code, which reduces code by offloading the process of writing algorithms to a set of pre-written general algorithms. It’s described as creepy because it shows how this reduced code an still derive 3-D modeled faces from 2-D images.
3-D faces from 2-D images (source: MIT)
Impressive, and not terribly off-putting to me, although I can understand how some might skip the amazing development of the code structure in the first place and jump right to creepy.
New motherboards from ASRock will have DC-in
Two posts in a row mentioning power standards! I’m excited about it, anyway. Over on Anandtech (a great site for very technical reporting), they have a brief post about the upcoming Braswell motherboards from ASRock.
ASRock is one of the main motherboard manufacturers, and Braswell is a line of processors by Intel that are low-power and low-to-moderate performance, for use in inexpensive PCs and what are known as home-theater PCs (HTPCs), which usually are primarily for serving media. You wouldn’t use a system built on these components for hardcore gaming or graphics processing or piloting the space shuttle.
Jobs v. Gates: Go!
As a (virtual) card-carrying member of the Computer History Museum, I love anything that involves the history of technology or computing. Imagine my glee when I discovered the National geographic Channel has created a mini-series called “American Genius,” which focuses on famous rivalries throughout history. It also has a fantastic webpage you should really click over.
There are more than you might think: The series includes such rivalries as firearms manufacturers Colt and Wesson and publishers Hearst and Pulitzer. But the one I am most interested in is the one between computer luminaries Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.
Want to see a sunrise?
Instagram to the rescue, sort of. A coder named Michelle Chandra has created a few maps that give an interesting look at all the photos uploaded to Instagram with the…sigh…hashtag #sunrise or #sunset.
On top of that, the maps will show in real time as the uploads are being made, and the size of the dot representing the geographical location will be larger depending on how close to sunrise or sunset the person actually is, geographically speaking. In other words, if they wait six hours to upload the photo, the dot will be smaller.
There’s even a map showing what the author refers to as ‘synchronicity,’ in which one person uploads a sunset as someone else uploads a sunrise, and vice versa.
There are a lot of nice pictures, and fro all the hyperbolic prose on the site it’s a neat application and some of the pictures are stunning. If you just need a sunrise or sunset, especially from distant parts of the world, give it a look.
