October 2009 Archives

I’ve just stumbled across the legendary object from the famous Dylan song

Well, I see you got a new boyfriend
You know, I never seen him before
Well, I saw him
Makin' love to you
You forgot to close the garage door
You might think he loves you for your money
But I know what he really loves you for
It's your brand new leopard-skin pill-box hat

Image credit: Dawn Anderson Designs

Pavegen is a startup company developing a new kind of slabs for sidewalks. These hi-tech slabs “harvest” a little energy from each step and store it in a battery. If installed in areas with enough pedestrian density, the harvested energy can be used to power LED street lamps, bus stops etc.

Sounds like neat idea. Has a lot of nice green buzz-words in it. Sustainable. Green. LED. Lithium polymer batteries…

I am not an expert in this area but I am a little skeptical of such pie-in-the-sky ideas. Of course, it’s definitely good to power as much as we can with regenerable energy sources. However, I am not convinced if all of those hi-tech gadgets are as sustainable as they claim to be in the overall picture. How does the energy balance and the carbon footprint of such a device look like over the whole life cycle, including raw materials, production, distribution, actual use and recycling, of such “sustainable” inventions?

Don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to say that these inventions are bad. My point is that we need to make more informed decisions on such products before jumping on the hype band wagon.

Here is a video about Pavegen (Through Engadget):

I have found these awesome robots through Paul Lamere’s excellent post.

It’s interesting to see robots trying to mimic most basic human capabilities and how these capabilities can be used for interaction between robots and people in the future. I can’t help but wonder though, if this is strictly necessary. I can imagine robots equipped with text-to-speech capabilities speaking to people just as well.

On a different note, these robots conjure up scenes straight from Star Wars in my mind: imagine entering a sleazy bar on the corner to find “live music” made by a saxophone playing robot and a robot singing the blues. Jukebox v2.0?

What would happen if/when instrument playing robots could match humans? Could robots ever replace the fine musicians in Berliner Philarmoniker? What about robotic conductors? Should Sir Simon Rattle, who just got his contract extended till 2018, start worrying about his next extension?

This my new blog. It is not the first but it is the first one where I have an idea what I am going to talk about. I hope it will be long-lived as well.

I will be writing about whatever I feel like sharing. This is mostly going to be stuff I like a lot, I hate, or just make me say “wow”.

The expected spectrum of topics will include, programming (especially iPhone and Mac), science and technology (I’m doing a Ph.D. on things), photography, music and sometimes even politics and literature.

I will try to keep the posts in english, but I am living in Berlin/Germany and my native tongue is turkish. So expect a healthy cocktail…