Music file compressed 1,000 times smaller than mp3

PhysOrg.com
Researchers at the University of Rochester have digitally reproduced music in a file nearly 1,000 times smaller than a regular MP3 file. The music, a 20-second clarinet solo, is encoded in less than a single kilobyte, and is made possible by two innovations: recreating in a computer both the real-world physics of a clarinet and the physics of a clarinet player.

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Morris Miselowski’s thoughts

Over the next few years we are likely to see an increase in new storage formats and devices as we feed our insatiable appetite for more information on smaller more portable devices. My first computer in 1986 had a storage capacity of 640K and came with a guarantee form Bill Gates and my salesman that that would be more storage than I would ever need.

As of right now we have 118,611,866,492,777,897,092 bytes of information available on the web and growing every nano-second.

Hello, gorgeous! Meet the laptop you’ll use in 2015

March 26, 2008 (Computerworld) A lot has changed in the 20 years since the first laptop computers appeared, including gigahertz processors, colour screens, optical drives and wireless data. However, one thing that has stubbornly stayed the same is the conventional clamshell format with its hinged display lid that opens to reveal a mechanical keyboard.

That’s about to change. The rules of notebook design and the components that go inside are being rewritten to make the road a better place to work and play.

Between now and 2015, we expect to see a series of big changes that will redefine what a notebook is and what it looks like.

Read Full Article: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9070158&intsrc=hm_ts_head

 

Morris Miselowski’s thoughts:

Great article showcasing some of the possibilities of future notebook / laptop design. Keep in mind when reading this that the world of technology will have changed by 2015.

Portable devices will have become mainstream, acting as quasi personal assistants. They will be our portable media centres, information carriers, information gatherers, communication devices and work partners. For many they will be the portable office connected wirelessly to the Internet, boasting near instant downloads and uploads.

Never Mind the Singularity, Here’s the Science

Ray Kurzweil, the famous inventor, is trim, balding, and not very tall. With his perfect posture and narrow black glasses, he would look at home in an old documentary about Cape Canaveral, but his mission is bolder than any mere voyage into space. He is attempting to travel across a frontier in time, to pass through the border between our era and a future so different as to be unrecognisable. He calls this border the singularity. Kurzweil is 60, but he intends to be no more than 40 when the singularity arrives.

Read Full Article: http://www.wired.com/medtech/drugs/magazine/16-04/ff_kurzweil?currentPage=1

Morris Miselowski’s thoughts:

This is a fascinating article on the patriarch of the Singularity movement, a movement that believes that at some point in the very near technology and man will meet in capability and from that point forward life as we know it will be changed for ever.

Although Ray Kurzweil may appear an extremist, I do believe his view of the future are solid and that much of what he predicts will come to pass. I still remain a skeptic of his timeline, but perhaps because I can not be as brave as him.

This article is well worth the read as are his books.

Disney to Reap $1 Billion Online

The Walt Disney Co. expects to collect $1 billion in revenue from online content this fiscal year, a significant rise from estimates for fiscal 2007, CEO Robert Iger said Monday … Last month, Disney announced it had created a special studio to develop short-form dramatic and comedy series exclusively for broadcast on ABC.com and Google Inc.’s YouTube.

Full article: http://www.physorg.com/news124442746.html

Morris Miselowski’s thoughts:

On line content is the next big frontier and Disney has 1 billion reasons to believe this.

You Tube just announced that they were planning to provide a live stream service by the end of this year, which would allow us to broadcast our own content live to the Internet anywhere, anytime to an audience of billions. We know that people are now choosing to download shows and movies in preference to watching them as they are broadcast; and we know that there is an ever growing amount of devices on which and through which we can watch downloaded content.

One of the growing job categories of the future is definitely in the production, sourcing and dissemination of on line content.

Bringing Second Life To Life: Researchers Create Character With Reasoning Abilities of a Child

Troy, N.Y. – Today’s video games and online virtual worlds give users the freedom to create characters in the digital domain that look and seem more human than ever before. But despite having your hair, your height, and your hazel eyes, your avatar is still little more than just a pretty face.

A group of researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is working to change that by engineering characters with the capacity to have beliefs and to reason about the beliefs of others. The characters will be able to predict and manipulate the behaviour of even human players, with whom they will directly interact in the real, physical world, according to the team.

Full article: http://www.physorg.com/news124368610.html

Morris Miselowski’s thoughts:

I know I keep going on about this, but this new study, other works being done that will allow avatars to move seamlessly between Internet sites  and our ever growing immersion in a synthetic on line world, all point to a rise of on line personal representation.

Within the next five years many of us will have a single avatar, just like we have a single mobile phone number, that will be our on line personal assistant and ambassador and that anthropomorphic avatar /figure will be a constantly evolving synthetic being that will learn about you as you interact with it and be able to, amongst many other things, conduct on line searches for you, communicate and answer rudimentary questions on your behalf and keep you up to date with your news, information and family events.

If water, sewage, gas and oil can be transported through underground pipelines, why not consumer goods as well?

Some Western European countries are getting serious about transporting consumer goods through automated subterranean networks – introducing a fifth transport mode next to road, rail, air and water. This rare combination of low-tech sense and high-tech knowledge could lead to a further economic growth without destroying the environment and the quality of life.

Full article: http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/02/a-world-without.html

Morris Miselowski’s thoughts:

It’s exactly this kind of thinking that we need to get passed the blocks of today. We all know that doing more of the same only gets us the same results, so why do we persist and insist on fixing the stuff we have now, and not put all this time energy and resource into new thinking and new paradigms. Whether this underground transport system works, is feasible, or even practical is not the issue here, what is the issue is that we are opening the debate to “what if’s” and “why-not’s” and it’s from this discussion that we are likely to find the medium to long term answers we need.

Social Networking Moves to the Cellphone

VICTORIA SHANNON, New York Times

Social networks may be nothing new to habitués of the Internet. Several years of competition among Facebook, MySpace and Friendster have generated tens of millions of members.

But now the market is teeming with companies that want to bring the same phenomenon to the cellphone. There are so many “mobile social networking” upstarts, in fact, that when New Media Age magazine in Britain tried to identify the “ones to watch,” it ended up naming 10 companies.

Full Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/06/technology/06wireless.html?_r=1&ref=technology&oref=slogin 

 

Morris Miselowski’s thoughts:

The line between computers, internet, technology,phones and our daily lives is ever blurring. Many of us don’t remember a time before mobile or cell phones were the norm – I bought me first mobile in 1988 for $AUS4,400.00 and it was perceived by most as a yuppy toy with no real purpose or use.

Haven’t we come a long way in 20 years?

Mobile phones and technology are now not only integral to our lives, but for most people a permanently attached umbilical chord without which they feel ill at ease.

In the next 20 years this portable device will morph into a true personal portable assistant that will communicate on our behalf with the outside world, guide us to where we want to go, locate goods services and people for us, shop and pay for us, offer us a myriad of recreation choices and interact with us as if it was a live anthropomorphic being.

I Need a Virtual Break. No, Really.

MARK BITTMAN – New York Times

I took a real day off this weekend: computers shut down, cell phone left in my work bag, land-line ringer off. I was fully disconnected for 24 hours.

….In short, my name is Mark, and I’m a techno-addict…thus began my “secular Sabbath” — a term I found floating around on blogs — a day a week where I would be free of screens, bells and beeps. An old-fashioned day not only of rest but of relief.

Full Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/fashion/02sabbath.html?_r=2&oref=login&ref=technology&pagewanted=all 

Morris Miselowski’s thoughts

Our fast paced madness is encroaching on our daily lives in ever greater ways. We are now a society that does not how to sit still and do nothing. We have to fill our quite and down time with music, video, internet, games and activity. Our leisure time has to in microwave bursts of hours or days with lot’s crammed in to them.

We were not physiologically built for this constant level of pace and frenzied activity and it is no wonder we have groups like “secular Sabbath” championing complete respite from technology.

Now that I’ve got that out of my system, I’m going to take a secular nanosecond to relax – – – there that’s about as long as I can go without technology, but I promise I will try to do better!