If you’ve been thinking about getting started on the rocket project that’s been on your mind for ages, now is a good time to get serious. Next week, NASA will release a massive software catalog with over 1,000 projects. It’s not the first time the space agency’s released code, but it is the first time they’ve made it so easy.
The breadth and variety of the software projects that NASA’s about to give away are difficult to express. It’s not just a bunch of algorithms and star-finding software, though stuff like that is in there. The crazy geniuses that land rovers on Mars are actually releasing code for ultra high-tech NASA stuff like rocket guidance systems and robotics control software. There’s even some artificial intelligence.
And did I mention it’s all free? Read more: NASA’s About To Release a Mother Lode of Free Software | Gizmodo.
See also: NASA Technology Transfer Portal
“Sync” is a bit of a stretch to describe what Mod truly offers, which is a pre-paid, mail-in scanning service for its notebooks. For $25, you get a blank book (designed to be exactly the same size as an iPad Mini) and a Netflix-like pre-paid envelope. When you’ve filled up the notebook, you mail it back to Mod. They scan all the pages, and within five days all the content is replicated digitally in your Mod account. (You can have the notebook returned to you, but that costs extra; by default, the paper book will be destroyed by the scanning process and recycled.)
Read more: Handsome Paper Notebooks Come With Digital Backup | Co.Design
Researchers at Yale have developed a method of reconstructing faces locked in the memories of other people. Read more: ‘Mind-reading’ technology can reconstruct faces from the viewer’s brain | CNET.
Scientists working on a two-way dolphin communicator have made a breakthrough — their device may have translated a single whistle in real time. Read more: Dolphin translator chirps out first word | CNET.
Microsoft’s Terry Myerson today announced that Microsoft is “all-in” with the desktop. Indeed, while he wasn’t quite ready to announce Windows 9, he did show off how Windows 8.1 will soon get a new version of the beloved Start menu back.
When Microsoft removed the Start menu, quite a few of its users were upset, and this move did indeed make Windows 8.1 harder to use for many. The new Start menu will combine live tiles and other Metro-influenced UI elements, as well as most of the features still available in the Windows 7 menu.
In the future, all of Microsoft’s Universal Windows apps will also run in a window. That sounds like the company is backing off a bit from its Metro interface on the desktop.
It’s unclear when exactly Microsoft will launch these features, though. As far as we are aware, it will take another update to Windows 8.1 and it’s unclear when exactly this will happen. Read more: Microsoft Will Soon Bring Back The Start Menu In Windows 8.1 | TechCrunch.
This is great news! I provide volunteer computer coaching at my community library and I groan every time a patron comes in for help with Windows 8 (which is often!). The interface is problematic, so bringing back the start button (and hopefully making the metro interface optional) is a very welcome improvement.
[T]hose interested in exploring the wonder of Angkor don’t need to make a trek to Southeast Asia—and risk contributing to the damage of the site—to enjoy what the ruins have to offer. For the first time ever, Google Maps is granting users an up-close view of Angkor, through Google’s Street View project.
The move is an extension of Google Maps’ mission to make sure that its maps are the most accurate, comprehensive and useful available to users. While to most people, this might materialize in the form of directions—using Google Maps to get you from Point A to Point B— the company doesn’t see this as the limit for the product’s technology.
“Increasingly, if you look at the amount of power we have in our cellphones, the ability for those phones to know your location and customize an experience around you, they are becoming fairly good at making sure that people are able to explore the world around them,” says Manik Gupta, Google Maps Product Manager. “We want to make sure that we have the ability to share all these places with users all over the world.”
Read more: For the First Time Ever, Explore Angkor Wat With Google Street View | Travel | Smithsonian.
Andrew “bunnie” Huang and Sean “xobs” Cross want to sell you a laptop you can completely trust.
Earlier this year, the two Singapore-based engineers fashioned a laptop made almost entirely from open source hardware, hardware whose designs are freely available to the world at large. They called it Project Novena. Anyone could review the designs, looking for bugs and security flaws, and at least in theory, that meant you could be confident the machine was secure from top to bottom, something that’s more desirable than ever in the post-Edward Snowden age.
The original idea was simply to encourage others to build their own open source laptops at home. But now the pair are taking the project a step further. Starting today, you can order your own pre-built Novena laptop through the crowd-funding site Crowd Supply, and it will ship out in the coming months. Much like Kickstarter, Crowd Supply is place where you can put up money to help fund a company and then get a product in exchange.
The project is part of larger movement towards open source hardware. Open source software has become a mainstay across the web and inside many businesses, and now, open source hardware is beginning to find its own place in the world, not only among hobbyists but inside big companies such as Facebook. The idea is not only to improve security, but to help spur innovation. If you share designs, others can make them better. The new, commercial version of the Novena does include some parts that are closed source, such as the processor, but Huang and Cross have tried to minimize these as much as possible.
Read more: The Almost Completely Open Source Laptop Goes on Sale | Enterprise | WIRED.
I have renamed this website to infophile from The Modern MLIS. The new name better aligns with being an established information services professional rather than the library and information services student I was when I first started the blog. I am an infophile (a person who loves information). Personally, I love advising, amusing and informing others about the stories, research and information I have come across. Professionally, I manipulate information for news monitoring purposes and to create classifications and taxonomies. It’s pretty amazing and validating to be able to do something you love every day…and even get paid for it!
I took a hiatus of a few months to decide whether I wanted to continue reposting future librarianship and technology-related news and resources to the LIS community. It can be challenging juggling the work/life balances thing, but I think I have it figured out now. So going forward, I will only be highlighted the coolest, most unique, worthy and must know news to the blog. I hope you will continue to follow me.
A new iOS app called FireChat is blowing up in the App Store. But it’s not the app itself that’s causing such a stir, it’s the underlying networking technology it taps into.
The idea behind FireChat is simple. It’s a chatting app. After registering with a name — no email address or other personal identifiers required — you’re dropped into a fast-moving chatroom of “Everyone” using it in your country. The interesting aspect, however, is the “Nearby” option. Here, the app uses Apple’s Multipeer Connectivity framework, essentially a peer-to-peer feature that lets you share messages (and soon photos) with other app users nearby, regardless of whether you have an actual Wi-Fi or cellular connection.
Read More: This Little-Known iOS Feature Will Change the Way We Connect | Gadget Lab | Wired.com.
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