Wiretrend

Digital Treasure hunt: GPS Has Replaced the Metal Detector

25 May 2008

GPS isn’t just for finding your way to your friend’s swanky cocktail party anymore. It’s become a means for a new wave of treasure hunters working together over the Internet to plant, discover, and contribute to small caches across the globe.

Not having a GPS, I was entertained enough while playing with the various voices that my friend downloaded into his, switching from a German psychologist to a sultry female voice telling us to “turn right,” with unbelievable allure. But I thought that was it for GPS capabilities until the same friend asked if I wanted to go treasure hunting a few days later.

The point of GPS treasure hunting, or GeoCaching, is to hide a treasure box then upload the GPS coordinates online, telling others where to find it. You’d think that that takes the fun out of the treasure hunt, but the real fun is in getting to the destination. The directions aren’t always clear, either—you may have the coordinates, but that could mean that the treasure is in a tree or hidden under a table in a café (and you’d have to wait for other coffee drinkers to leave before making your discovery).

The treasure boxes themselves aren’t always great, but that’s not the point. The point is the feeling you get when you find one, and then contribute to it yourself. For my first treasure hunt I brought along an Italian Euro and a small military action figure that I found on the sidewalk. My friend and I drove to a park outside the city, climbed half a mountain, and found a small cigar box wrapped in tape, hidden near a rock formation. Inside were a poem, a pinecone, various notes and messages. But my favorite was a plastic frog that’d seen better days. I added my treasures to the box, my friend and I signed our names on the inside of the lid, and we re-hid it. I felt strangely satisfied. We’d not only successfully found treasure, but added to it.

There’s a whole world of hidden treasures cropping up around us, and the only way to find them is to plug in the coordinates and start the hunt. You’ll never know what you find but the fun is the community brought together over a sense of adventure, cheap plastic items, and the old fashioned idea of hunting for treasure.

Posted by Paige L.

Who Can Resist the Memristor?

15 May 2008

HP Labs™ has proven the existence of the fourth fundamental circuit—dubbed the “memristor”, short for "memory resistor"—and if creative speculation, nanotechnology and innovate science have anything to do with it, the darn thing could seriously change some lives.

Computers and other electronic devices with robust image memory, the ability to learn, even permanent memories: these are just some of the possibilities for memristor technology.

The memristor was predicted by UC Berkeley electrical engineer Leon Chua, way back in 1971, as the missing fourth fundamental circuit to go along with resistors, capacitors, and inductors. The memristor is distinguished by its ability to retrieve and store intermediate values—not just your old-school binary 1s and 0s of conventional chip design—as well as build super-dense memory chips the require far less power than the DRAM chips of today.

The upshot is that memristors function according to a more "biological" paradigm—one that can utilize vast arrays on non-binary values, allowing for functions that are more akin to the firing of a human synapse than the flicking on and off of a light switch. Once that leap has been made, it’s only a matter of time before entirely new realms of chip capability are discovered.

But that could take a little time—in human terms. Just like we had to wait 37 years from Chua’s prediction of the memristor to the proof of its existence by HP Labs, we will likely have to wait a few more years before practical applications are built from memristor technology.

Unless, of course, that time machine we’ve all been waiting for hits the market in the next few weeks.

Posted by Pete K.

Supercook

10 May 2008

The Internet can do almost anything, including, apparently, help me in my kitchen. Today at the office we had a heated discussion about the benefits of Cream of Tartar vs. Baking Soda. Of course I went straight to my favorite search engine to learn not only what Cream of Tartar is (potassium hydrogen tartrate), but also that Baking Soda actually has Cream of Tartar in it. This is what I always do—have a question, go online. But this never actually involved me in the kitchen, especially with an abundance of something that I have no idea what to do with, like Butternut Squash.

What do you do with that?

Well, now my questions are solved. SuperCook is this great site where you actually enter the ingredients that you already have, and it comes up with recipes.

Squash? Mmm… I just entered it in the search bar and voila! Caramelized Butternut Squash, Maple-Ginger Butternut Squash, and Roasted Butternut Squash with Balsamic Vinegar are just a few of the plethora of options that sprang to my screen.

And, even better, all of the recipes were simple, including regular condiments that I have anyway.

This is Internet engagement on a personal level. My life is changed forever.

Posted by Paige L.

Walking the Talk

3 May 2008

The Digital Connectors are young people from across the country who help low-income citizens get plugged into the Internet.

People talk and talk about "bridging the technological divide." But I want to talk about people that are actually doing it: the Digital Connectors.

The Digital Connectors are young people from across the country who help low-income citizens get plugged into the Internet. Not only that, they’re teaching people who haven’t had online access in the past about all the things they can do—in both their daily lives and in working toward big life goals—once they start using the Internet. That’s about as real as virtual empowerment gets.

I’m privileged. I’ve been online for a long time. My life would be quite a bit different without easy access to the Internet. But do I even give a thought to those who have been systematically blocked out of cyberspace? Hardly. Thanks, Digital Connectors, for waking me from my blissed-out nap.

There’s a firewall out there. On one side are those of us who can afford to go online, who have the cables and wires running into our residences and workplaces that actually give us the link to that big old behemoth of empowerment we casually call the Internet. On the other side are people who want—no, need—to get online, to submit applications and resumes, to learn, to send money, to pay bills, to schedule appointments, to do all the countless things people do who have guaranteed, unlimited access to the Internet.

In order to create truly equal online access, talk about "bridging the technological divide" just doesn’t cut it. You need actual people busting through the firewall, brick by brick, day by day. That’s what the Digital Connectors are all about.

Posted by Josh K.