Who? What? Why? Where? When? and How?
My socks just answered me back
Steve Rogerson’s round-up of last month’s news and events, including some that may have slipped under the radar
A
recent press release from Peratech made me feel a tad uncomfortable. The company’s sensors are being
used in a research project at the London College of Fashion to look at applications for wearable electronics including the monitoring of health signs by detecting odours coming of the wearer’s body. Now, I don’t know about you but I’m not exactly happy about the idea of clothes that can smell me. Imagine if this is linked to some kind of intelligence and voice technology. I can just see it first thing in a morning as I grab a T-shirt from the cupboard and it shouts back at me: “Don’t you dare put me on until you’ve had a shower!” And as to the potential conversations with my underwear, they just don’t bare thinking about. Every car owner has had that moment in the garage where the engineer shakes his head and takes in a deep breath ready to give the bad news about just how much it will cost to fix the vehicle. Apparently, software engineers do the
same, as I discovered at Mentor Graphics’ recent automotive forum at the Heritage Motor Centre in Gaydon. The firm’s product marketing director Nigel Hughes moaned: “Software engineers suck in their teeth when I change the requirements, tell me it is going to take three weeks and then do it the next day.” I suppose the car mechanic would do the same but add: “Next day? That involves special delivery. It’ll cost another hundred quid.”
At the same event, Hans-Juergen Mantsch, the company’s technical marketing manager, gave a compelling example of how to be certain about something. “I know that 100 per cent of car manufacturers do not offer rear seat heating,” he said. “How do I know that? Because 100% of car manufacturers do not offer rear seats.” There is no way to argue with that. I have been an Apple junky long before
it was trendy. Now I have the full set of desktop, laptop, tablet, MP3 player and
phone, all beginning with the letter “i”. It was thus a pleasant surprise to see the results of a recent survey that shows Mac users are actually more intelligent than Windows users. This information came from games company Picture Suduko, which analysed its online players and discovered that Windows users required two times more hints than Mac users, and Mac users with Safari browsers finished the games faster than any other hardware-browser combination. The slowest players were those still stuck with Internet Explorer and the ones needing the most hints were those on Firefox. I use Sea Monkey as my browser, and that didn’t even score in the survey at all. And I gave up suduko ages ago, unless the puzzle is in a paper and I’m on a train. The second part of that is important, as anyone who has tried to use a mobile device on a fast moving train will know. I never understood when the various companies built the mobile networks in Britain why they didn’t make sure there was good coverage along the main train routes. I can’t remember the last time I got 3G Vodafone coverage for anything more than a fraction of the time on journeys between Nottingham and London. But hopefully all this should soon change as the government is planning on funding
better access, which means you’ll be able to play suduko online and in the paper. But we’ll also all be denied that nasty pleasure of hearing people’s reactions when they get cut-off mid phone call. Then again, if people start talking with their clothes instead, we’ll be more than adequately amused.
Student sees orders for home-developed digital fish-eye camera
S
tudent Greg Dash from Mountain Ash, Rhondda Cynon Taf, created his own digital fish-eye camera in order to save money and
has now seen orders for the device coming in from around the globe. Built from old camera parts the 12 megapixel camera is around 4cm (1.5in) long and 2cm (0.8in) high and is able to shoot HD video. Unlike most digital cameras, the camera has no viewfinder or screen to view photos. Dash, who did his degree in Swansea and was a postgraduate in Cardiff, said he was driven to create the camera because he could not afford to buy a fish-eye lens for his film camera. He started fundraising in February via a business support website to put the camera into a production run of 500.
He said he has had a lot of interest from
aeroplane enthusiasts and extreme sports fans keen to put the device to work. According to Dash he’s sold 300 cameras so far and even taken one order for a batch of 50 from Taiwan, which considering the camera has only been promoted via word of mouth is pretty impressive.
42 April 2013 Components in Electronics
Care should always be taken with writing captions for pictures, a lesson that press body Newspress could well do with learning as according to its site this picture shows George Jenkins and Luke Archer, the winners of the Alfa Romeo Young Designer of the Year Award 2013. The postgraduate pair were presented with the award following a judging ceremony in St Andrews, Scotland, before their five-piece collection joined the other finalist designs on the catwalk at the 21st annual St Andrews Charity Fashion Show. And just in case you think I might be mistaken, another photo on the same site pictured the real George and Luke and, unless makeup technology has come on in leaps and bounds recently, those here are not they.
www.cieonline.co.uk
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