Bart G. Dev...

So by now I'm sure you know of all the fun features the new iPhone provides, such as GPS, enterprise support, location detection, $199 price tag, 22 countries on July 11th (including Canada.. yey!.. eh), etc. There's a lot of new features available in Xcode for us, the developers and designers, and tools we use to build and improve our applications, but unfortunately, the WWDC NDA doesn't allow me to mention any of them, except for what was said during the keynote.

So instead I thought you could have some fun with something random, like Chemistry.

Enjoy!

Today is the first day that the Netscape browser will not be supported by it's founder Marc Andreessen, Netscape the company, or buyer AOL.

Why is this significant? It's the first time in the internet's history, as most end-users know it, that Netscape will not be officially supported. Netscape was the first big commercial internet browser when it came out in beta back in 1994. It made the internet available to millions of people, removing it from the restriction of the dorm-rooms, research labs, news-groups, and of course military. It gave the rest a new way of doing business, connect with others, share information, learn, discover, and yes, find porn.

Netscape's decline in popularity was set in stone a long time ago, when Microsoft bundled it's own browser, Internet Explorer, with it's operating system Windows. Their monopolization tactics are still costing them serious money in Europe. But Netscape's essence will continue to resonate through the growing popularity of Firefox, and the new kid on the block Flock, which are both based on Nestcape's original Mozilla code base. Mosaic (the original Netscape) left, but can be brought back from here to a computer near you. Opera is a powerful browser, and I encourage everyone to try it.

Thankfully for Netscape's many loyal users, support will still be available through the user maintained support on the net, which we've all become dependent on.

Netscape Skin for Mozilla:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/user/56836

Support:
Netscape Archive UFAQ
Netscape Community Forum

We're pretty excited about this one!

Hossein will be featured on the CBC's The Hour, and it's segment, Is this A Good Idea?. The idea is that The Hour will give some TV face time to projects which sound interesting and innovative. Then lets its viewers decide whether it is in fact, a good idea.

Coming up with a scheme to pay you to recycle, spreading joy through t-shirts, and others have been ranked by the viewers.

Well now it's our turn. I'm involved in a Mobile lab at Ryerson University in Toronto, which produces, well, mobile technology. One of the research projects we are working is a matching engine for ad-hoc networks and social interactions in such environments. One of the applications is the dating scenario which will be featured on the show, this Thursday, December 13, at 11:00 pm, on CBC. Make sure you check it out, then go online and give us the old yay or ney.

So would you consider dating using mobile devices, in a club scenario. would you like to find people with particular resources quickly at a conference, exchange information with people in a meeting, and automatically know who's the best match for your new start up, who's got the technical skills to make your project the next Google?

Researchers in Japan have found that chimps have better short term memory then humans. Most people, including some biologists and psychiatrists, believe that human cognitive skills are far better then that of any primate, but according to the research of Dr. Tetsuro Matsuzawa of the Kyoto University in Japan, this is not the case. Dr. Matsuzawa's results will be published in the Current Biology journal.

Check out Ali's page, the chimp in question, for some pretty cool videos of his memory skills.

Dr Lisa Parr of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, associates this to "to our increasing reliance on language-based memory skills." [quote]

If you have trouble believing that we might not be the smartest primates on this planet, you have to admit that we are at least getting dumber.

It blew me away, how the fuzzification and merging of other faces can approximate 3D images from 2D images. Even the Mona Lisa can gain texture, expressions, and a complete physical remodeling:

I've been discussing the difference between science and pseudo-science for the last few months with my theology, science, and sociology friends, and we've come up with more questions then answers. This is good news, because that is what good science dictates....

Anywho... I found an interesting article on the status of the "Hobbit" species found several years ago on the Island of Flores. They're about a meter long, and have human like features, except for the fact that they're about a meter long, and don't exhibit any signs of a disease to have stunted their growth. The small size is/was believed to be a necessity of the lack of food (scarcity of resources) on the island they were inhabiting.

I heard humans are adaptive creatures....

Now to my main point. I found this article on the BBC site, which on the side also has any relevant information about the current article. This feature gives the reader a great history of the developing story. This article is a science based one, and shows how the science of this discovery was viewed and reported at each new development. This article has the following trail:

• 'Hobbit' human 'is a new species' (29 Jan 07 | Science/Nature)
• New twist in 'hobbit' human story (31 May 06 | Science/Nature)
• Team widens search for 'Hobbits' (14 Oct 05 | Science/Nature)
• 'Hobbit' stirs scientific clash (19 May 06 | Science/Nature)
• More Flores 'Hobbits' described (11 Oct 05 | Science/Nature)
• New 'Hobbit' disease link claim (23 Sep 05 | Science/Nature)
• Hobbit was 'not a diseased human' (03 Mar 05 | Science/Nature)
• 'Hobbit' joins human family tree (27 Oct 04 | Science/Nature)

Notice the tone of each sequential news article.

• 'Hobbit' joins human family tree
  - they're just like us.... we've learned so much about ourselves
  
• Hobbit was 'not a diseased human'
  - 000 more clues, they're sort of like us, but evolved differently
  
• New 'Hobbit' disease link claim
  - they're like us, but diseased... but still like us!
  
• More Flores 'Hobbits' described
  - oooo... even more clues... we can start classifying them much better now
  
• 'Hobbit' stirs scientific clash
  - scientists argue over the science involved in categorizing the 'Hobbits'... scientific rigor and review
  
• Team widens search for 'Hobbits'
  - more research is needed.. and we've learned so much in the process
  
• New twist in 'hobbit' human story
  - they had small brains, but were smart enough to make and use tools.. hmm.. interesting... very interesting
  
• 'Hobbit' human 'is a new species'
  - they don't fit a formula.. they must be a new species
  
• 'Hobbit' wrists 'were primitive'
  - oooo, more clues revealed through empirical evidence: bones, mass, motor skills, pressure, etc
  

Science by it's nature is open to criticism. It wouldn't be science if it wasn't. It's not exact all the time, but scientists realize it's a work in progress on most days. And if anything is true in the first principle and self-evident, such as

if (true OR false) then true 

The most important thing is that scientists are always willing to say, "this is what we believe", and it's never an absolute truth, unless it's an axiom, as appose to tautology.

To me it comes down to subjective and objective logic. Subjective conclusions are biased. Subjectivity is great for formulating hypotheses, but conclusions require a greater amount of empirical and logical proof; and that proof NEEDS to be objective. Otherwise you're playing politics by consciously pushing an agenda.

I don't know if you've linked into this yet but this "Leave Britney Spears Alone alone video, has been insanely popular. I'm not a fan of hers, or defending this guy's rant, and free speach says let him rant.. why not! I'm not particularly interested in spreading the video either.

The reason I'm writing about it, is that it's view count is going up incredibly quickly. This video was uploaded yesterday (Sept 11, 2007) When I first saw it on YouTube at 10:30am EST, it already had about 1.4 million views. I checked again now at 6:40 pm EST, and it has 2,317,638 views, with 41,266 comments been favorited 5,940 times, and 575 video responses. Keep in mind that YouTube's most popular video of some dude dancing has just over 36+ million views. Way to go Chris Crocker!

Check out YouTube's "YouTube :: Most Viewed Videos - Today" list.

The closest is Kanye West's breakdown, with a measly 834,663 views.

So to recap (approx as I don't know what it started with):

2,317,638 views in 24 hours
96,568 per hour
737,638 views in the last 8 hours
56 commnets per hour
100 favorited per hour

Wow! indeed...

You decide...

I do commend her for recognizing that there are two types of Americans, U.S. Americans, and non U.S. Americans. I guess what she was trying to say is that we should help each other. And after you finish laughing, I hope you see that it's the message that counts... eesh!

Thanks to artificial-artificial-intelligence.com for the video.

Do you like long walks on the beach, but not to feel the sand between your toes?

Do you like to be on said beach alone, and not because you're antisocial, but because you want to sort a problem out that's been bugging you for a while

Do you get annoyed when people see you in deep thought on said beach and ask you things like "What's the matter?" or "Are you all right?"

You might be a Introvert.

Nex3, thanks for the link.

I've been busy this summer working on a few commercial projects, and a few research related projects at Ryerson University, the dept. of Computer Science, so my posts have been a bit rushed. By rushed I mean not at all, or consisted of a place holder from xkcd.com

I wrapped up a video project for Athletes Video. A golf swing analysis application From the success of the site, I see golfers REALLY like that sort of thing. Check it out here (login: 'demo'). I'm working on a second one which is looking to be a first of it's kind (as far as I can see).

The Computational Intelligence Initiative lab at Ryerson has been keeping me pretty busy. That's what happens when you like what you do and the people you work with. It's hard to leave work behind. There's several things on the go, so here's a list of just a few:

ryePod - an Automated Mulit-Agent and Information Syndication
I mentioned this in more detail before, but now I have this fancy pic and poster.

3D Node Simulator (snappier name pending)
This application visually represents the current state of a network or a multi-agent system, tracks and records the progressive stages:

Ryerson's Women In Engineering (WIE)
The latest project to wrap up is part of WIE, where we had the opportunity to mentor three very talented and intelligent engineers-to-be from grade 11. We worked on several projects, one of which is presented here, and won 3rd place in the competition which followed the 6 week program. Nika, Nilanthy, and Susan did a great job, and were a pleasure to work with.

An honorable mention of a project which completed this summer that is not my own. Jeff Hardy and Cloves Carneiro Jr., with Hampton Catlin, published a Rails book, Beginning Rails: From Novice to Professional from Apress. From reading the TOC the book sounds well through out, but I'll picking a copy up for the lab. With the increase in web development our students our asking for, and the great implementation Rails has done implementing MVC, this will be a great addition to our texts for students. And Jeff is a great developer, who will teach me a thing or two.

One last thing. Apparently my nerd score is 89/100... a bit higher then I thought it would be, but oh well... life goes on.