Evan's Shared News
Cat sneaks on to train, gets lost, is reunited with owner via Twitter
Via the Submitterator, Boing Boing reader Johnny Meerkat says, A suburban cat wandered onto a city-bound train in Dublin, Ireland only to emerge at a city center station. Rail staff used CCTV to figure out which station the cat boarded at, and through Twitter, cat and owner were reunited. As a "reward," the cat was issued a rail pass. CCTV, in this case, stands for "Cat Catching TV."
Above left: Lilou, in repose. Look at her smug face. Top right, surveillance video that captured Lilou totally not paying train fare like other law-abiding citizens, and sneaking on to the platform as if she owned it. And bottom right, Lilou's new rail pass, which really does need a LOLWUT.
Who says cat-crime doesn't pay?
Full story plus larger size photos and two video reports (you'll need Real Player to view them, hahaha) at RTÉ News.
Reached for comment on the matter, Shocked Cat says:
Man watches his home being burglarized via his iPhone
The AP is reporting the story of a Dallas man who went out of town to visit relatives 1400 miles away in Hartford, Conn. While he was there, he got an alert from his iCam app, which was running on his iPhone, that motion had been detected in his house. It turned out to be two intruders that were trying to get in; they eventually threw a brick through a glass door to gain access.He called 911, and the next motion alert he received was the arrival of police officers with guns drawn. It isn't clear from the story if the burglars got away with any loot, but iCam certainly did work, and it relayed the important message to the owner of the house.
We've reviewed iCam before. I use it to keep an eye on the house and pets when I'm away, and for the cost of US $4.99 (plus the money for a couple of webcams), it really is a great low-cost security system. The software can be set to take a rapid series of still photos when motion is detected, so the police should get some shots of the burglars, which will help make a case when and if they nab them.
[via the Dallas Morning News]
TUAWMan watches his home being burglarized via his iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 24 Aug 2010 17:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
iPhone users may soon be putting on their Google Goggles
If iPhone owners are sometimes susceptible to a wee bit of Android envy, one reason might be Google Goggles. If you're not familiar with the Android app, Google Goggles uses pictures from your mobile phone to search the Web.
Point your phone's camera at a Russian restaurant menu, and it is translated for you. Take aim at a landmark, and find out about the history of the place. Take a photo of a book cover, and you'll get a summary of the contents, bookstores that carry the title, and pricing. Or there's always the feature shown above -- the Nearby Places Overlay -- where you pan your phone's camera on a street and see labels describing every business.
According to The Register, iPhone users won't have to wait very long to put on their Google Goggles. Google Staff Engineer David Petrou, speaking at the Hot Chips conference at Stanford University on Monday, mentioned in passing that the app could be released for iPhone by the end of 2010. That, of course, assumes that the app makes it through Apple's approval process -- that's never a sure thing, as the Google Voice team could share with their colleagues.
[via CNET Web Crawler]
TUAWiPhone users may soon be putting on their Google Goggles originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 24 Aug 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Patents hint at iMac Touch and touchscreen MacBooks
With the sweet glass-fronted, LED-backed displays on the newer MacBooks, Apple seemed a step closer to giving us touchscreen displays beyond the current ultra-portable devices. Patently Apple has recently unearthed a couple of Apple patent filings that seem to point in that direction, not just for MacBooks, but for a future iMac as well.Apple is clearly driving very quickly toward mass adoption and integration of its iOS software, and these patents certainly support that. As far as the "iMac Touch" patent, apparently you'd get the best of both worlds as far as Apple's OS offerings are concerned. Based on the orientation of the display, the iMac would switch between Mac OS and iOS. Lay it flat, you get iOS. Stand it up, you get Mac OS.
Obviously there are many Apple patents reported that never will see the light of day, but I believe this one has some meat to it. For an iMac refresh, this seems a very logical update. Though it makes sense we could see the same thing in a MacBook update, I'd say we'll see an iMac sporting this dual-OS first.
TUAWPatents hint at iMac Touch and touchscreen MacBooks originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 24 Aug 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Facebook iPhone app has 105m users?
Facebook has posted some pretty impressive numbers regarding its mobile users recently, including a developer saying there are more than 150 million active mobile Facebook users. The site itself has more than 500 million members.
- 12 million are using the Android client
- Nearly 59 million are using the Blackberry client
- 105 million are using the iPhone client*
- The rest are using clients built for Palm, T-Mobile's Sidekick and more.
*Note these numbers were pulled at 11:20 a.m. EST and are updated frequently.
Wait a minute ... 105 million? Steve Jobs indicated at WWDC in June that the 100 millionth iOS device (spanning iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch) would be sold that month. With the flurry of iPhone 4 sales since then, it's no surprise that there's more than 100 million iOS devices out there in the wild. But are all of them really running Facebook?
You can log into multiple Facebook accounts from a single iOS device, and those probably count. The number provided by Facebook isn't the number of downloads the app has had, but the number of people actually using it. The client itself is still ranked among the top 10 free App Store apps. Even so, a penetration rate hovering somewhere around 90 percent -- if you take into account the number of iOS devices sold since June and the fact that there's not a Facebook app for the iPad -- is a little hard to swallow.
[via Mobile Entertainment]
TUAWFacebook iPhone app has 105m users? originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 24 Aug 2010 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Naturespace gets a welcome update for iOS 4
We looked at Naturespace Holographic Audio back in May of 2009. I liked it then, and I like it more now. Naturespace is a free iPhone app that plays back carefully recorded natural environments designed for listening on headphones. The recordings are created using the binaural technique, where two closely spaced microphones approximate the distance between your ears. When you put headphones on, the results can be dramatic and hyper-realistic.
The free app has no ads, and comes with six audio environments which are very relaxing and can simply transport you to another place. With good headphones (I use the B&W P5) you get a 3D illusion, at times even hearing things that appear to be above or behind you.
Gallery: Naturespace screen shots
TUAWNaturespace gets a welcome update for iOS 4 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 23 Aug 2010 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Google app gets updated with push notification for Gmail
After many months of users having to resort to third-party or jailbroken apps to get push notifications from Gmail, Google has finally released an updated version of its iPhone app that now handily does that all for you.The update -- which is now freely available in the App Store -- allows you to sign into one or several Google accounts and set up Gmail and Google Calendar push events, which work just as you'd expect. It's not yet clear how consistently quick the app is at alerting you of new mail, though it seems to have a significant delay upon initial testing. So far connectivity to my Gmail account using the Mail app responds much quicker.
As you can see from the screengrab of the update, you can specify quiet times for notifications, which could be handy if you tend to get a deluge of mail in the wee hours of the night. Google customers rejoice: push notifications are finally here!
TUAWGoogle app gets updated with push notification for Gmail originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 23 Aug 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Angry Birds: The Movie?
There's no questioning that the iPhone/iPad game Angry Birds is a huge success. The company is close to seven million downloads of the game, all without any direct advertising of their own.Now the company that developed the game, Rovio, is taking a serious look into more commercial avenues for the title, including movies. The company has already done a great job with the animation within the product, including a cinematic trailer released on YouTube (which I guess you could say is technically advertisement -- check it out after the jump). But is there enough to this to make for a good story?
According to Rovio, the company has been approached by several very interested parties, including movie studios, and they're giving all offers serious consideration. Chief exec Mikael Hed has grand ambitions to see the Angry Birds brand become much more than games, akin to Pixar with Toy Story, so games and movies would just be the tip of the iceberg.
Do you think something like Angry Birds could translate well enough to other mediums? Is there a potential story in there worth developing?
TUAWAngry Birds: The Movie? originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 22 Aug 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Germany To Roll Out ID Cards With Embedded RFID
An anonymous reader writes "The production of RFID chips, an integral element of the new generation of German identity cards, has started after the government gave a 10-year contract to the chipmaker NXP in the Netherlands. Citizens will receive the mandatory new ID cards starting from the first of November. The new card allows German authorities to identify people with speed and accuracy, the government said. These authorities include the police, customs and tax authorities and of course the local registration and passport granting authorities. There are some concerns that the use of RFID chips will pose a security or privacy risk, however. Early versions of the electronic passports, using RFID chips with a protocol called 'basic access control' (BAC), were successfully hacked by university researchers and security experts."
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Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Anti-Depressants Used Against StarCraft Addiction
dotarray writes "Hope may be at hand for the poor souls addicted to video games. Recent research from South Korea has shown that a common anti-depressant, Bupropion (sold as Welbutrin, Zyban and Voxra) can 'decrease craving for Internet game play' as well as the brain activity triggered by video game cues. This is a drug often used to help quit smoking, to lose weight or to recover from drug addiction, in addition to typical anti-depressant and anti-anxiety uses. And, with Korean scientists already on-board, how better to test this theory than to gather up a bunch of StarCraft players?"
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Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Google Wave and the Difficulty of Radical Change
cedarhillbilly writes "An article by Matt Asay in the Register takes on Google Wave from the perspective of visionary change versus incremental change. He suggests that visionaries should focus on smaller transformations of our day-to-day lives rather than leapfrogging. 'Much as it may want to radically change the world for users and developers, radical change generally happens over time, through a series of incremental, unexceptional edits to existing technology and processes.' Perhaps Google sensed this when they famously said they were worried about having too many geniuses. Asay revisits the point that the open source development model necessarily builds on a community of contributors and users, and not the mad scientist in an ivory tower."
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Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Lon Smith Worlds Dropless Routine.mov
I favorited a YouTube video: Lon Smith Quarterfinals Dropless Routine at the Footbag World Championships in Oakland, California
World Footbag Championships 2010 - Nick Landes Semi-Finals Routine
I favorited a YouTube video: Professional Freestyle Footbag Routine by Nick Landes. This semi-finals routine beat the current world champion, Vasek Klouda, and the former world champion, Damien Gielniski.
Asana Kitchen: Floating in Surya Namaskara
For this weeks post I'm introducing a new section called: 'The Asana Kitchen'. In it I'll explore the intricacies and problems related to asana and the physical practice. In order to make it more useful to you, I'd like to hear from you, write me or send me a video of a posture or a related aspect of practice that you would like some insight into. Recently I received this question: "I would like to be able to do that straight-leg jump to standing in Namaskara A and B, as shown but not really taught by John Scott in his video. You know how you and John Scott can finish the last part of the Namaskara by jumping to standing -with straight legs? I want to learn that. Do you have any advice or vid clip training?
Mahalo plenty as ever for everything,
Scott M
Redmond USA
Tokyo JAPAN
See the video and look at the review notes below for my answer. Enjoy! David
Written notes for 'floating and getting the classic ashtanga yoga flow look and feel in your practice.
1) Intensive regular practice is essential to building the type of strength necessary to 'float'. Really use the video exercises presented in this post. You may have to practice the rocking exercise over a period of months to gain the necessary strength to see results. Keep contemplating the concepts that the exercises are based on; concepts such as lifting up the belly to create a distinct uddhyana bandha action, and the role of rhythm and breath in creating flow.
2) While setting up your jump from down dog orient on stretching back (away from the direction you are going to jump) and orient on the out Breath. As you lengthen back and crouch, study the movement of the diaphragm and the connectedness between diaphragm and the accessory muscles involved in exhaling. These accessory muscles reach down into the legs, pass through your center deep within the pelvis, travel along the front of the spine, and up into the upper torso. When you crouch can you feel this network of muscles as web like, integrated, guiding your exhalation and preparing your body for dynamic action? Each breath can potentially bring tone to and activate your core muscles. Once activated these foundational muscles enable you create slow motion flow during practice.
Additionally, during the set up activate the upper body in opposition to the direction and action of the belly and hips. The hands press down into the earth and forward away from you. The arms lengthen and tone in order to make ready to bear your weight.
3) When you work with ujjayi during inhalation by narrowing the glottis, you create resistance to the in flow of breath. This resistance causes the breath to lengthen, become smooth, and to flow evenly. These are exactly the qualities you want to cultivate in your leap from down dog to standing. as you spring forward inhale and 'float' your legs and feet under you by creating just enough muscular resistance through the arms.
4) When you approach the landing, The ability to 'float' is enhanced by sensing the arrangement of your bones. Use your mental power to kinesthetically orient your self within and feel the support of your skeleton. From the set up in down dog through the feather light landing with straight legs, sense that the skeleton has it's own unique rhythm. Cultivate movement that flows from your skeletal rhythm, movement that enables your bones to better support your posture.
5) Don't underestimate the power of imagery for helping you to achieve physical results; experiment with the idea: 'if you can picture it clearly you can do it'.
info@davidgarrigues.com (David Garrigues)
Mahalo plenty as ever for everything,
Scott M
Redmond USA
Tokyo JAPAN
See the video and look at the review notes below for my answer. Enjoy! David
Written notes for 'floating and getting the classic ashtanga yoga flow look and feel in your practice.
1) Intensive regular practice is essential to building the type of strength necessary to 'float'. Really use the video exercises presented in this post. You may have to practice the rocking exercise over a period of months to gain the necessary strength to see results. Keep contemplating the concepts that the exercises are based on; concepts such as lifting up the belly to create a distinct uddhyana bandha action, and the role of rhythm and breath in creating flow.
2) While setting up your jump from down dog orient on stretching back (away from the direction you are going to jump) and orient on the out Breath. As you lengthen back and crouch, study the movement of the diaphragm and the connectedness between diaphragm and the accessory muscles involved in exhaling. These accessory muscles reach down into the legs, pass through your center deep within the pelvis, travel along the front of the spine, and up into the upper torso. When you crouch can you feel this network of muscles as web like, integrated, guiding your exhalation and preparing your body for dynamic action? Each breath can potentially bring tone to and activate your core muscles. Once activated these foundational muscles enable you create slow motion flow during practice.
Additionally, during the set up activate the upper body in opposition to the direction and action of the belly and hips. The hands press down into the earth and forward away from you. The arms lengthen and tone in order to make ready to bear your weight.
3) When you work with ujjayi during inhalation by narrowing the glottis, you create resistance to the in flow of breath. This resistance causes the breath to lengthen, become smooth, and to flow evenly. These are exactly the qualities you want to cultivate in your leap from down dog to standing. as you spring forward inhale and 'float' your legs and feet under you by creating just enough muscular resistance through the arms.
4) When you approach the landing, The ability to 'float' is enhanced by sensing the arrangement of your bones. Use your mental power to kinesthetically orient your self within and feel the support of your skeleton. From the set up in down dog through the feather light landing with straight legs, sense that the skeleton has it's own unique rhythm. Cultivate movement that flows from your skeletal rhythm, movement that enables your bones to better support your posture.
5) Don't underestimate the power of imagery for helping you to achieve physical results; experiment with the idea: 'if you can picture it clearly you can do it'.
info@davidgarrigues.com (David Garrigues) Routine Finals - 3rd - Damian Gielnicki - 2010 World Freestyle Footbag Championships
I uploaded a YouTube video:
Routine Finals - 2nd - David Clavens - 2010 World Freestyle Footbag Championships
I uploaded a YouTube video:
Routine Finals - 1st - Milan Benda - 2010 World Freestyle Footbag Championships
I uploaded a YouTube video:
A Glimpse of the World Footbag Champs
I uploaded a YouTube video: Ken Somolinos performing in Circle Qualifications. Day 1.
DAVID CLAVENS East Coast Footbag Freestyle Champion 2010
I favorited a YouTube video: A very solid run by East Coast Footbag Champion David Clavens (the first trick, which I missed filming, was a genesis - I was a bit slow on the trigger).
Blues Festival Fireworks Finale
I uploaded a YouTube video: Taken at Waterfront Park in Portland, OR
Ashtanga Yoga Instructor,
Photographer, Web Designer, Outdoorsman, Fire Spinner & Spitter, Juggler, Footbagger, Disc Golfer, Avid Beer Lover, & All Round Nice Guy.