R2-D2 Hologram: Science Fiction to Just Science

As reported by New Scientist a holographic image of Princess Leia was created by scientists at the MIT media lab:

"Bove's group started with an array of 16 low-resolution infrared cameras, spaced evenly along a metre-long line. Computer processing combined the images to generate the data needed for the 3D holographic projector at the rate of 15 frames per second.

The next step came in late December when they bought their first Kinect, and hacked the camera system made by PrimeSense of Israel, which records three-dimensional profiles by projecting a grid of laser light onto a scene. This approach, called structured light, yields resolution of 640 by 480 pixels, three times higher than each infrared camera. That was good enough to record the holographic Princess Leia scene shown here."

 The image quality of the projection is still fuzzy, but it's still pretty mind boggling.  Check it out for yourself!

Why Battery Life Needs to be a Key Spec for Phones

In a world with dual core processors, 4g, mobile hotspots, multitasking, retina, Super AMOLED, and qHD displays when will manufacturers start putting battery life up there as an important specification?  

A prime example of this was the release of the Evo 4g (sorry sprint).  This was the first "4g" (I do not think any carrier has earned the right to not have quotes up for 4g) phone released in the United States and had all the great features; 1Ghz processor, 8mp camera, 4.3 inch display, mobile hotspot, kick stand (surprisingly not battery powered!), front facing camera, and of course 4 connectivity.  And was it blazing fast!  The problem with it was, if you used 4g the battery would die faster than Jek Porkins in his X-Wing en route to liberate the galaxy, and if the 4g hot spot was on it was even faster.  

Now here is the real kicker, with the announcement of the HTC Thunderbolt, which is essentially the same thing as the Evo (4g, 1Ghz processor, same cameras, same screen size, both have a kickstand), except HTC decides to put in a 1400 mAh battery–100 less than the Evo.  Put one and one together and apparently we get 12.  This is incredibly stupid HTC, I doubt some new technology you imposed will dramatically decrease power usage.  This is basically the main reason I do not want this device.  I will never get to use it!  What's the point of having a phone that does all these cool things but only for an hour?  I do not want to sit by a wall socket all day that's for sure.  

Though there may be hope yet!  The Motorola Atrix and Bionic both sport over 1900 mAh batteries to help accommodate their dual core processors.  Hopefully it does the trick and we can have a phone that lasts a day without trying to squeeze a dry lemon.  

I think that battery life is just as important of a feature as a dual core processor.  I mean what is the one thing that you can definitely can not go without?  The Battery.  I hope in the near future that this can be just as an important specification.  

Why HP/Palm Needs to Step up Their Game

With the release of the Verizon CDMA iPhone, things could not be getting worse for the ever decreasing stock of Palm smartphones.  Even though Palm was bought out by HP there have not been any notable releases in the smartphone department.   I mean there was the Pre Plus and Pre 2....but those are not much of a change from its predecessor, and what HP/Palm needs is a refreshed and revamped hardware to meet its already well polished software.

HP/Palm is having a little get together on the 9th of February, one day before the release of the iPhone 4 for Verizon.  The even is supposedly marking the beginning of a new era for HP/Palm and could be the release of the ever so talked about PalmPad as well as the possibility for a Verizon LTE device.  With the new Pre's and Pixi's there hasn't been much to offer spec wise.  The Pre 2, which hasn't even release and may not even be released by Verizon, finally got a 1Ghz processor.  A new phone with WebOS on it needs a phone with a lot of kick and RAM.

Possible specs for a new webOS phone:

4" high resolution display
Same Gesture area
5-8 mp camera
1 Ghz Dual Core Processor
At least 700 mb RAM for all the multitasking webOS is capable, it needs a lot of RAM
Better battery life
1.3 mp front facing camera
none of the plastic it has used in the past which made it feel cheap

Star Wars: The Complete Saga on Blu Ray Pre-Order Today!

Coming Soon to a galaxy near you!  The entire Star Wars series is on Blu Ray and all together for the first time ever.  It was first announced at CES and will be available for 139.99 but Amazon is selling the series for 89.99! 

Merry CES a.k.a. Second Christmas!

The past two days have seen the release of some truly remarkable devices from Motorola, HTC, LG to name a few.  The field is pretty equal with a phones and tablets at this years CES.  Some ten devices for Verizon were announced today alone, notably the Moto Xoom, the first Honeycomb device in the world. 

 

Motorola kicked it off yesterday with the the Motorola Xoom and Droid Bionic for Verizon, and the Motorola Attrix destined for AT&T's LTE network.  

The Motorola Xoom is the first Honeycomb device ever and it will be launched later this quarter with 3g capabilities, upgradable to 4g, a 2 MP front facing camera, 5 MP rear camera, a 1GHz dual core Tegra 2 processor, wifi, and 32 GB of onboard storage. 

Information regarding the Droid Bionic can be found on my last post 

Thirdly for Motorola, the one phone to rule them all.  It sports a 4.3" display, 1.3 MP front facing camera, 8 MP rear camera, 1 GHz dual core tegra 2 processor, and a whopping 1GB RAM, froyo with MotoBlur skin on it, but the coolest/probably useless but still awesome feature is that it can be docked up to turn into a desktop or laptop computer!  The Attrix is regarded as the "Most Powerful Smartphone In The World"  and specs wise, it sure is!  

Next we move on to the world of HTC, which is just one phone.  But what a phone it is!  The HTC Thunderbolt.  This device is probably going for a March release in my opinion, and will be the first 4g LTE device release for Big Red.  It has a 4.3" screen, 1.3 MP ff camera, 8 MP camera with dual LED flash, Sense 2.0, Froyo with a promise to go to Gingerbread soon, a kickstand, 1 GHz snapdragon processor, and Super LCD Display.  

How will this monster fair against it's dual core competition?   

For your average user who will use this for messaging, email, web browsing, and some gaming I think it will not make too much of a difference whether you use a dual core or not.  It will only add to the flow of the software and drain the battery faster.  With 4g running I do not think that you will notice if you have a dual core, it will be super fast with or without one.  Now for people who are hard core 3d gamers on their phones it is a different story.  The dual core will help power any game you throw at it with ease, it can even support the some of the industry's most powerful games on your normal system.  That's pretty damn good if you're asking me!  

Though I still want to know how these phones will fair in a battery test as well as quadrant standard.  

Can't wait until these devices come out!  Hopefully I can review the Thunderbolt when it comes out.  

Droid Bionic Announced For Verizon

A mysterious new Verizon device shows up called the Droid Bionic boasting a huge 4.3" display, 8 MP camera, front facing camera,  either 512 MB RAM or 1GB the site says the latter while the announcement came out with the first. 


This may be the year for Dual Cores.  How will the battery drain on this bad boy?

UPDATE:  It's official that it is just 512 MB RAM the website was sadly wrong

The History and Science of R2-D2

Ok, so today we are going to get an in-depth look at the man, the myth, the legend.  R2-D2.  His rise to fame was quite a noble one, starting out as a hard working droid from the ghetto eventually gaining the friendship of several jedi warriors as well as scoring with a princess.  

In 32 BBY, R2-D2 was serving the Royal Engineers of Naboo aboardQueen Padmé Amidala's royal starship when the Trade Federationblockaded the planet. His maintenance work on the ship's hull while it was under fire allowed the queen and her crew to bypass the blockade and flee the sieged world, and R2-D2 afterwards directly served the queen, playing a decisive role in liberating Naboo and remaining with Amidala for another ten years, even as she transitioned to the role of senator eight years later. When attemptson her life were made in 22 BBY and the Jedi Padawan Anakin Skywalker was assigned to protect her, R2-D2 and C-3PO accompanied the two to Geonosis and participated in a battle that started the Clone Wars, a galaxy-wide conflict between the Galactic Republic and the Separatist Confederacy of Independent Systems. Amidala gave R2-D2 to Skywalker when he became a Jedi Knight, and the astromech droid faithfully served him throughout the war, often flying in the droid socket of Skywalker's starfighter or fighting next to him on the front lines.

Artoo's Technological Advances 

Artoo started out being a standard maintenance droid but was later tricked out to be much more sophisticated piece of machinery.  

• Rocket Booster 
• Cable Gun
• Oil Injecter 
• Claw Arm
• Fusion cutter
• Holoprojector Recorder
• Lightsaber compartment with ejector 
• Submarine Mode
• Collapsible Umbrella 
• Flea Remover
• Distractor 
• Computer Linking Module
• Electric Shock Arm
• Inflatable Mattress
•  Juke Box
• Confetti Maker

I mean who wouldn't want a confetti handy just in case one day you destroy an entire empire?  You pop one of those bad boys out and it would add to the moment fourscore!

The R2 unit is quite remarkable.  It is essentially a large box filled with gadgets and a human like motherboard that makes R2 able to think, come up with his own ideas, and even assess a situation and come up with a solution to benefit his friends in need.  This could be possible once Artificial Intelligence is invented in the future.  This unit could easily be made, the head would serve as the main hard drive, the brain, if you will.  The rest of the body would be used to store information, gadgets, the battery, and the motors for Artoo's transportation system.  

The one problem is, how can he take in so much data?  He has to know planetary systems, since he is the co pilot to ships, how to communicate with almost any computer, essentially talk, and all the information to his logic cortex.  It is unfathomable but the future holds many surprises.  

The little droid has gained the hearts of millions (including myself) and it is due to his personality and essentially being a walking, talking, animatronic Swiss Army Knife.  He is definitely up there in one of my favorite characters in the entire series!  (Which basically means like an hour of the third and then the entire Original Trilogy). 

Favorite tool Artoo has used?

Ever Wonder How Much Fido Really Costs You?

Ever wonder how much your dog, cat, rabbit, fish, or bird costs you?  Here is an infographic I found from the good folks at Visual Economics.  Enjoy!

Best Meteor Shower of 2011 to Happen Tomorrow Morning (January 4th) Before Sunrise

The Quadrantid meteor shower will reach it's peak at around 1.am. on the 4th but the best time to catch the greatest spectacle of this new year will be just before dawn tomorrow morning.  Just look towards the North Star for a fine showing!  

Chrome Keeps Gaining Ground As Internet Explorer Falls

Google's Chrome browsers started the year off owning 5% of the browser market share and at the end of the year doubles to a nice 10%.  On the other side of the spectrum, Internet Explorer keeps falling and falling down nearly 5% since the February of last year.  Chrome has also stolen some of the fire from Firefox, dropping just around 2% of its share.

Is anything going to slow down Chrome?  Or Google for that matter?

You Too Can Discover Planets Without The Hassle of Telescopes!

Peter Jalowiczor is a gas worker from South Yorkshire, England.  He is your average British guy, wakes up, has some tea, perhaps discover a few planets, brush his teeth, and go to bed.  What? You don't discover planets in your spare time too?  Well for those of you that want to discover things, particularly gaseous giants, then read what Pete has to say: 

"I look for faint changes in stars' behaviors that can only be caused by a planet or planets orbiting about them. Stars are incredibly far away and no telescope yet built can directly see their discs, let alone any planets going around them.

Astronomers therefore have to devise other indirect techniques of detection. If a planet orbits a star it causes a tiny wobble in the star's motion and this wobble reveals itself in the star's light. Special software works out the properties about the planet's orbit and precise measurements of the star taken over many years enable scientists to build up profiles of systems as planets are gradually revealed."

Great conversation starter!  

"What have you accomplished in your life?"

"Just discovered four planets nbd.  How about you?"

"I have a sweet stamp collection....."

The planets he discovered were carefully named HD31253b, HD218566b, HD177830c and HD99492c, which is the closest of the four, 58 light years away.

The Feasibility of Hyperspace

Since I had recently watched Star Wars, I have been put in a new phase which wants me to talk more about Star Wars stuff.  So we will!  This time we are going to discuss the feasibility of hyperspace:  the theoretical ability to go at or faster than the speed of light.  


The computer role-playing game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic gives one of the more substantial explanations of how hyperspace travel works in the Star Wars universe. There are established safe hyperspace routes that were scouted out by an unknown species 25,000 years prior to the events in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977). These routes made interstellar trade and eventually the establishment of the Republic possible. New routes are almost never scouted out, mostly because the end coordinates might place the traveling shipinside some star or planet. For example, the Deep Core Systems are especially hard to navigate because of the high density of stars. A pilot's skill in hyperspace has a lot to do with how he or she navigates the tangled web of hyperspace routes that criss-cross the galaxy. According to George Lucas, that is why Han Solo brags about the Millennium Falcon making the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs when a parsec is a measure of distance rather than time: apparently, his real gift is as a navigator (although in the Star Wars IV: A New Hope novel by Lucas, published in 1975, Solo says "she made the Kessel run in less than twelve Standard Time measures"). This appears to make no sense within the context of the original dialogue, however, as Solo's statement about the Falcon making the Kessel Run in under 12 parsecs was in response to Obi-Wan Kenobi saying, "If it's a fast ship." However, to get to Kessel, a ship must pass near The Maw, an incredibly dense cluster of black holes. To achieve a shorter distance, the ship must be moving faster, to skirt the edge of a black hole without being sucked in. Traveling through hyperspace requires the aid of either an astromech droid (such as R2-D2 or R4-P9) or a navicomputer (navigational computer), althoughJedi are sometimes reputed to be able to travel through hyperspace without reference to navicomputers, astromech droids, or existing known routes. Traveling through hyperspace is also apparently quite complex as Han Solo tells Luke that "It ain't like dustin' crops, boy."


Now, this system clearly break's relativity because a crew going faster than the speed of light would in fact be going backwards in time.  That is, unless, the ships had some sort of protective shield around it to prevent this time travel, because who wants to travel through time any way?  Putting all that mumbo jumbo aside, it would take an enormous amount of energy to jump into hyperspace and an equal amount of energy to get out of it.  Possibly it is some sort of high end ionic thruster on both sides of the ship to blast the plethora of energy needed to initiate and terminate hyperspace.  


Symmetry of the universe requires that there exist one velocity which does not vary according to the observer's point of view. The nature of electromagnetism is such that light in vacuum only travels at this special speed, which therefore is called lightspeed. The numerical value of lightspeed is commonly denoted by the symbol c. (Its approximate value is 2.98 x 10^8 m/s.) No matter how fast a person is moving relative to any other observer, a beam of light is always seen to move at lightspeed by both observers. This basic fact gives rise to all of the time dilation and other effects associated with Special Relativity.  


Particles which bear mass can be either below or above lightspeed. The former are called bradyons and the latter are tachyons. (In the real world, detection of tachyons is practically difficult and has not yet been accomplished. It seems as if most of the matter in the universe is subluminal relative to Earth.) The fundamental particles of the tachyonic realm are the same as those of the bradyonic world, because the only difference is the velocity of an observer's point of view. From the vantage of a tachyon it is the rest of the universe which is moving at superluminal speed in a certain direction. However the interaction of tachyons with bradyons is in many ways unlike the familiar interactions of bradyons with other bradyons. 


For the purpose of superluminal travel in STAR WARS it is sufficient to choose the viewpoint of the galaxy at rest as realspace, and anything which is tachyonic relative to the collective of star systems is considered to be in a realm called hyperspace.

At rest the energy is at the mass-energy minimum. At lightspeed the energy becomes infinite. In the superluminal realm the energy becomes ever smaller for increasing velocity.[Tachyons, Monopoles and Related Topics]

At rest the momentum is zero. At lightspeed the momentum becomes infinite. For high hyperspatial velocities the momentum descends to a limiting value which depends on the object's rest-mass. [Tachyons, Monopoles and Related Topics]

The technologies used in the Star Wars series currently are impossible to yield for our own uses today and in the near future, but it is not entirely improbable thousands of years from now it may even be the norm by then!  I guess we will have to just sit and wait for this technology to come.  


Next week stay tuned for IG Droid's special on lightsabers!

The Coolest Lightsaber the World Has Ever Seen

This is the most beautiful saber I have ever seen.  It is so bright and exact to even the Star Wars universe!  Check out the link below.

iPhone

iPhone 4 accessories have started to show up on Offwire's website.  Now, could this be the mythical Verizon iPhone that has been talked about so much on the blogosphere?  Possibly.  Perhaps this means an announcement will be made sometime after CES by Jobs?  Maybe a February release?  Who is gonna sit out all night and get one?

Watch 7 Billion From National Geographic

This is a very well made info short about our world's growing population closing in on 7 billion.  Enjoy!

What Does the World do in 20 minutes on Facebook?

Ever wonder how many people like something? Or how many people upload pictures of their vacation or during that amazing New Years Eve Party?  Well neither have I.  But a study done by Democracy UK found out just what we do on Facebook.

1 million links are shared, 1.32 million photos are tagged, 1.48 million event invitations are sent out, 1.59 million wall posts are published, 1.85 million status updates are posted, 2.72 million photos are uploaded, 4.63 million messages are sent, and 10.21 million comments hit the site.


Wow.  Just wow.  That happens every 20 minutes, that means that 44,400,000 status's are updated every day!

Just How Big Was the Death Star? And How Powerful is the Laser Onboard?

So over this past couple days I watched the original Star Wars trilogy and it got me thinking: just how big is the Death Star? Well....let's try to find out!

I found a scaled print of the Moon of Endor and the Death Star II

The Moon of Endor according to Wookipedia is 4,900 km in diameter.  The size of the planet in the picture is around 7.4 cm putting that into km it is .000074 km in diameter.  In proportion to the reported size of the planet, which is 4,900 km, dividing the two together would give you the scaling.  The answer I came up with is 1/66216216.2 km scale (approximately).  If the Death Star II was only .6 cm in this picture it means that it would be .000006 kilometers in diameter.  Multiply that by 66216216.2 and you have our diameter of just around 397 km in diameter.  

The accomplishment of the complete disruption of an Earth-like planet sets a lower limit to the destructive capability of the Death Stars' prime weapon. The gravitational binding energy of a planetary body is the minimum amount of energy required to eject all of its material with sufficient force that it will not fall back together. (It is also the total energy which would be released as heat if the entire substance of the planet were gathered together from free space.) For an object of a given mass the gravitational binding energy is increased when a greater fraction of the mass is concentrated near the centre. The density of a planet tends to increase with depth from the surface, because the weight of overlying material causes pressure to increase with depth, and heavier materials tend to sink towards the core when a planet forms.

Alderaan is probably a typical habitable planet, with much the same dimensions and composition as our Earth. An approximation for its gravitational binding energy can be obtained according to the density structure profiles of the Earth or Venus. An approximate figure for the binding energy of Alderaan, assuming Earthlike composition and mass of 5.9 x 10²⁴ kg, is:


U = 2.4 x 10³² joules.

This is just the minimum amount of energy required to destroy the planet, the Death Star could, in fact, have a much, much greater than what I have collected.

HTC Thunderbolt: Or Why I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Rumors

HTC is known for some great phones but if what some rumors I've heard were true, this new 4G Verizon Phone dubbed by sources as the "Thunderbolt" this phone seems like the messiah of phones.  Here are the alleged specs:


-1.2 GHz Dual core MSM8960 Snapdragon Processor 
-Gingerbread (Android 2.3)
-An 8 megapixel back camera with a dual LED flash
-A 5 megapixel front facing camera 
-16 GB onboard storage
-1800 mAh battery
-4.3 inch screen


If this were to be true it would hands down be the best Android phone to date.  But that is the big word, IF it is true.  I have serious doubts about one thing: the 5 megapixel camera on the front.  If the Droid Pro needed a hump for it's back camera, I'm sure it'll be a chore to put one on the front of this giant.  Though, I am still keeping my fingers crossed until we all find out at CES on the 6th.

Why Google Needs to Step Up It's Game

At CES last year, Google unveiled a revolutionary device that was lightyears ahead of the Android's at the time.  The Nexus One had an AMOLED display screen, a unheard of 1GHz Snapdragon processor, and most of all Froyo (Android 2.1).  This was almost twice as fast as the OG Droid's (600 MHz OMAP processor) processing speed, which at the time was already blazing fast.  After the showing of the Nexus One, it completely and utterly destroyed the Motorola Droid in a speed test.

The Nexus S's release was not so emaculate.  It basically was basically an attempt to catch up with the rest of the Android Armada.  The specs were not so impressive.  There were just two specs that were truly revolutionary like it's older brother:  an NFC chip and Gingerbread (Android 2.3).

So what does this mean?  If there is going to be a Nexus Three or a similarly named device to come that I believe will be made by Motorola as a way for Google to spread the Google Experience love.  First HTC and now Samsung, it should be Motorola which is a device I truly look forward for its unveiling possibly later this year.  For the next Nexus it should be revolutionary like the first, blowing all the competition out of the water and not just a chance to pay for the next Google Experience.  If the Nexus series phones are supposed to be used for (mainly) development, then why not give developers a chance to keep their phone at it's "high end" status for longer than the average android life-span of about three months.