Yes, it’s Yet Another Meatspace Tag. This one requires a free membership to get the tags. Seems like a bit of a privacy hassle.
MYTAGO is a little different from QRCode or Shotcode. There’s no phone app. Instead, take a picture of the tag and use one of these methods to get the tag data -a bookmark and description:
Take a picture of the tag image. Next time you sync your phone to your PC, upload the jpeg image to the MYTAGO site to get the tag data.
Enter the URL of an online tag image and get the tag data.
Type the 12 digit code from a tag image into the MYTAGO site to get the tag data.
Install an Uploader Tool on your PC.
Email the tag image or the 12-digit tag code to yourusername@mytago.com with your PIN as the email subject line. The tag data will be available next time you log into MYTAGO.
We’ve been hearing about the $100 Laptop for months now. It seemed like a pipe dream. A laptop for children in third world countries? It would have to be an engineering marvel. The kids often live in houses with dirt floors. They often don’t have electricity. Internet infrastructure - or even telephone service - is non-existent in rural towns. They’ve probably never seen a computer before. They’ll have to learn the OS and the software without the a priori assumptions of a Westerner. Getting computer teachers trained has to be a logistical nightmare! How can this possibly work?
The answer is one that wouldn’t occur to most of us… Cooperation on a global scale!
It’s the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program. This program attempted to design, build and distribute laptops for under $100 to children in third world countries.
In December OLPC had a promotion where if you donated a laptop you could buy a second laptop. PLUS you get a year of free Sprint wifi access at places like Barnes & Noble, St*rbucks, etc. that you can also use with any other wifi devices you may own - laptops and PDAs. The Sprint access alone is worth the price of the laptop.
The XO has totally new hardware with VERY low power consumption. The XO has a very cool GUI called “Sugar” that’s usuable even by kids who can’t read yet, much less read English. Sugar is based on a trimmed down Linux OS with programs written just for it. Programs like a music synthesizer, Turtle Graphics, word processing, a web browser and that’s just the START of it!
Since The XO is intended for third world countries, it has wifi - no ethernet infrastructure is necessary. They’ll automatically connect at power up to other XOs that they find. This enables the kids to work on collaborative projects. Not just chatrooms, but writing music together in the music workspace! Collaboration is the key to the future.
The XO has two antennas and uses them to triangulate and display a 2D map of surrounding XOs and wireless access points. It took a while and I had to change some of my router settings, but I was able to connect to the Internet with my XO.
There is an available hand crank to charge the XO if you don’t have electricity in your village. I think they said there’s a solar battery charger available too. They also have wireless teacher access points that enable the kids to get on the Internet and see what’s going on in the rest of the world. This is a really ambitious project. I did what I could.
I’ll post an update if the Give One - Get One program runs again. Your donation is partly tax deductible. And you’re doing something good for less fortunate kids. It’s a win-win game.
I’m an electrical engineer and a born skeptic, but through the years the medical profession has shown a particularly unscientific streak when it comes to identifying and treating new illnesses.
I have been worried about the environmental and medical effects of nanotechnology. Nanotechnology is a catch-all phrase that describes microscopic man-made objects. These come in many shapes and sizes - soccer-ball-shaped cages made of 20 carbon atoms, nanotubes the thickness of a hair. These objects persist in the environment after they’ve been used and disposed of. There has been little, if any, investigation into the effect of exposure to environmental nanotechnology.
Please consider the possibility that some, if not all, cases of Morgellons are the result of exposure to tiny man-made objects. These objects can lodge almost invisibly in the skin, causing unexplained lesions. Larger nanotubes or groups of smaller ones may appear to be fibers. Many of these objects are so small that when inhaled they are carried directly into the brain using the same pathways as smells do.
Nanotechnological pollution is on the horizon. I think Morgellons is the earliest indication of what we can all expect from this technology.
It took many years for the Powers That Be to recognize the danger of asbestos. Nanotechnology is still in its infancy and not much investigation has been done into effects on the environment or on the human body. So far the environment isn’t filled with these things. The particles are molecular in size, much smaller than asbestos. In my professional opinion, this research must start *now* rather than after the technology is entrenched.
I also wanted to point out something. Everywhere I read about Morgellons online, sufferers of this mysterious illness were slathering themselves with lotions and creams to try to calm the itching. Well, nanotechnology is being used as a carrier for emollients and other cosmetic ingredients. Anywhere you see words like “microencapsulated” there is some kind of nanotechnology. Please consider creating a list of safe lotions (if there can be such a thing).
I’m not affiliated with any skin cream manufacturers either. There is a list of products containing nanotechnology online somewhere, probably on the CRN. I leave it to you folks to look into it.
I do, of course, consider that Morgellons may not be due to nanotechnology at all, but to histological incompatibility.
BTW, talc is similar to asbestos in many ways. Talc is one of the hardest substances known to man. I’m a bit suspicious of talc too. I’ve long since switched to corn starch.
I signed up with a site called Outside.in a few months ago and they turned me down because I don’t have enough geotag info in my blog, i.e. I write about ideas rather than local coverage. I guess they figured out that nobody interesting is going to geotag every post.
Now Outside.in has changed things so that they can read a feed and include only items with geographical information in them.
Just wanted to wish you all a Happy Valentines Day.
Ok, I know that there are some valentines nasties going around. I even blogged it. This looks like them. It’s not. Despair.com is one of my favorite web sites.
It’s a candy heart slogan generator that creates a candy heart picture for you to send to your friends. Enjoy!
PandaLabs, Panda Security’s laboratory for detecting and analyzing malware, has detected two new worms, Nuwar.OL and Valentin.E, which use the topic of St. Valentine’s Day to spread. I suppose you could call them love bugs.
Both Nuwar.OL and Valentin.E arrive by email with Valentine-themed subject lines. They may even appear to have been sent by someone you know.
The first one of these worms, Nuwar.OL, uses an email with subjects like “I Love You Soo Much,” “Inside My Heart” or “You’re In My Dreams” to trick the recipient into opening the website that downloads it. The webpage is very simple - a romantic greeting card with a large pink Valentine’s Day heart. Surprise!
Once it has infected a computer, Nuwar.OL spreads itself by sending out a large number of emails to people in the user’s email address book. This activity can slow down both the infected computer and the local network.
Valentin.E also spreads by email. Watch out for messages with subjects like “Searching for true Love” or “True Love” and an attached file called “friends4u.scr.” If you run the file, Valentin.E shows a new desktop background to distract you while it makes several copies of itself on the computer and emails copies of itself to all your friends.
“Both cases are clear examples of social engineering techniques used to spread malware. They use attractive subjects - Valentine’s Day greeting cards, romantic desktop themes, etc. - to entice users to run [email] attachments or click links that ultimately download malware onto their computers,” explains Luis Corrons, Technical Director of PandaLabs.
My XO Laptop is almost here. Watch this space for a
technical writeup and demo video.
—– Original Message —–
From: OLPC Customer Care
To: banth@…..
Sent: Thursday, January 24, 2008 2:30 AM
Subject: Your XO Laptop
Dear Donor,
We wrote you several days ago to let you know that your donation is in our
shipping queue for the shipment of your XO laptop.
We are awaiting the arrival of new inventory so that we may ship your laptop
to you. We will send you another update in the next few days when we have
specific shipping information.
We appreciate your generosity and patience.
Sincerely,
OLPC Donor Services
Mr. Ratan N. Tata, Chairman of the Tata Group and Tata Motors, today unveiled the Tata ‘NANO’ - The People’s Car from Tata Motors that India and the world have been looking forward to. A development, which signifies a first for the global automobile industry, the People’s Car brings the comfort and safety of a car within the reach of thousands of families. The People’s Car will be launched in India later in 2008.
“I observed families riding on two-wheelers - the father driving the scooter, his young kid standing in front of him, his wife seated behind him holding a little baby. It led me to wonder whether one could conceive of a safe, affordable, all-weather form of transport for such a family. Tata Motors’ engineers and designers gave their all for about four years to realise this goal. Today, we indeed have a People’s Car, which is affordable and yet built to meet safety requirements and emission norms, to be fuel efficient and low on emissions. We are happy to present the People’s Car to India and we hope it brings the joy, pride and utility of owning a car to many families who need personal mobility.”
– Mr. Ratan N. Tata, Chairman of the Tata Group and Tata Motors, speaking at the unveiling ceremony at the 9th Auto Expo in New Delhi.
“Actually, it seems to me the life of a middle aged male is a race between hair falling out of its own accord and getting ripped out over stress and irritation. Women have it harder—they have to rip it all out.”
– John Walker, founder of Autodesk in The Hacker’s Diet, Electronic Edition, 1993.
ology
Morgellons
asbestos
microencapsulated
Both Nuwar.OL and Valentin.E arrive by email with Valentine-themed subject lines. They may even appear to have been sent by someone you know.
in The Hacker’s Diet, Electronic Edition, 1993.
