MIT and Harvard Medical School collaborators are producing a sophisticated engineering tool that electrically stimulates the retina to provide vision of a sort for people who are totally blind.
– Retina implant aims to help blind see – MIT News
Author: Hjalmar Gislason
Legged Robots, Mechanical Insects and a Robotrunk!
Wired article on how DARPA and the US Navy are looking at animals as models for building the next generation of war machines and spying gadgets.
– Wired News: Mobile Robots Take Baby Steps
Where’s the Spam?
I have only received one spam email today. By this time of the day I’ve on average over the last months received about 10-15 spam emails on my 3 web-exposed email addresses, sometimes more. I checked with some of my friends, and many of them have the same story.
I’ve jokingly commented before that I like spam, because it tells me that my email server is alive and kicking. Well today’s absence of spam had me run a few email checks to see if it was ok, and all the vitals indicate good health. Plus I’ve received quite a few real emails both newsletters and personal.
After all the criticism of the new Can Spam Act, I doubt that is the cause. But what else could it be? Are I and my friends just going through a weird statistical spam-void or is it something others have noticed as well.
P.S. Wise guys that take this as an invitation to spam me – don’t bother, I never read them anyway!
Drawings by an Artist on LSD
Series of drawings, done by an artist under the influence of LSD as a part of a test conducted by the US government in the late 1950’s. Most curious.
– Acid trip 1
Fish Save Energy By Swimming In Schools
New research explains how schools of fish use the turbulance from each other to minimize the energy needed for them to move around.
– ScienceDaily News Release: Scientists Pinpoint How Fish Save Energy By Swimming In Schools
The AI of the Mars Rovers
As the world watches the Mars rover Spirit at work on Mars, it’s interesting to get a glimpse of the artificial intelligence systems that control its behavior. These two articles from the NASA website scratch the surface of the subject.
– NASA – People Are Robots, Too. Almost
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Beyond Google: Narrow the Search
Wired is noticing search engines’ urge to evolve into something better. This article mentions several interesting products to effectively narrow searches including: Vivisimo, Grokker and TouchGraph.
– Beyond Google: Narrow the Search
The Top Ten Nanotech Products Of 2003
Forbes cuts through the nanotechnology hype and lists the best real nanotech products already on the market.
– The Top Ten Nanotech Products Of 2003 (via Roland Piquepaille’s Technology Trends)
Popular Science Cover Article on Mind-Machine Interfaces
The January 2004 issue of Popular Science has a cover article named “Linking Mind To Machine: Soon The Human Brain Will Control Robots – Just By Thinking“. I haven’t read it yet (issue has not arrived to Iceland), but it’s one of my favorite Wetware subjects so it should be interesting.
– Popular Science | Jan 2004 | Contents
Software Bots Will Take Over the Internet
We’ve had email spam, we’ve had blog comment spam, we’ve had lousy tricks to improve search engine rankings. Douwe Osinga has an interesting but not so pretty sight of what might be a next step in making our online lives harder: Software bots that combine a variety of methods to make a living.
– The Software bots will takeover the Internet
hjalli.com - Hjálmar Gíslason 