Geek With Laptop » Offbeat

Modern Language Wars: A Look at PHP, Python and Ruby on Rails

Natalie — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 16:32:26 +0000

The world of programming has a wide variety of languages, as different from one another as English and Greek.

Sites such as Google and YouTube were built in Python, which dates back to 1991, while Twitter and Hulu were built on Ruby’s rails (1995) and Wikipedia and Facebook were constructed in PHP (also introduced in 1995). Twitter’s moved away from Ruby since and Facebook is not completely PHP anymore, but those were their basic building blocks, proving that if you get a programmer proficient in any of these languages, you can put together a heckuva site.

Each language has different things going for it: PHP is easier to learn for former C programmers, while Python is great for beginners.

This infographic from Udemy looks at the three languages, as well as how many job postings there are for developers fluent in each language. While PHP is extremely popular, there’s a lot of room for other languages.

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Apps to Save Your Sanity During the Holidays

Natalie — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 19:02:07 +0000

The last few days before Christmas can be among the most insane of the year.

Just try going near a mall today. I dare you. And Saturday? Did you know that the Saturday before Christmas long ago overtook the day after Thanksgiving as the busiest shopping day of the year? When that day is also Christmas Eve, I don’t even want to think how crazed shoppers will be this weekend.

Fortunately, Lookout is looking out for all of us and in this infographic offers its suggestions for apps that will help us all stay safe and sane through the rest of this holiday season and beyond.

What are your suggestions? Have you finished your holiday shopping yet? Are you in denial? I refuse to answer on the grounds it may incriminate me.

The New and Improved Honda Asimo Robot

Greg — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 06:47:37 +0000

The latest incarnation of Honda’s Asimo robot has been unveiled, with a better design, and new hand sensors for delicate tasks. Many of the new features have been designed to allow better coordination with the environment, using what Honda claim is the “world’s first autonomous behaviour control technology”.

The new autonomous behaviour control technology allows Asimo to move independently, although obviously this comes with limitations. There are also a number of improvements to the robot’s intelligence and physical features, with new and improved sensors allowing it to respond more readily to the surrounding environment.

“The design of [Asimo] is meant to make interacting with it easier,” said Ken Goldberg, a professor at University of California, in an interview with TechNewsWorld. “The biggest improvement to Asimo is in the hands, Asimo’s old hands were very crude, whereas the new hands … allow Asimo to [perform] tasks which require more dexterity.” said Goldberg.

The combination of new visual and auditory sensors will allow Asimo to recognise faces and voices, even when a number of people are speaking at the same time. The designers say the robot will even be able to predict the movement of people based on spatial information and past behaviour, which combined with the physical improvements, will allow Asimo to respond in a more realistic way.

Asimo’s legs have also been greatly improved, allowing the robot to walk, jump, run forward, and even hop. The hands are the biggest improvement however, with Asimo now able to perform subtle tasks through a tactile and force sensor in each finger. With these improvements, Asimo has become the clear leader in the consumer robot race, although Fujitsu’s EMIEW2 robot, Toyota’s humanoid robots, and Sony’s QRIO walking robot are not far behind.

Go Back to the Future with a New Electric DeLorean DMC-12 EV

Greg — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 04:03:21 +0000

The DeLorean Motor Company (yes, that right – straight out of Back to the Future) showed off a new prototype at an event last week. The electric DMC-12 EV will go into production in 2013, with details about its time travel capabilities not yet announced.

While you would be forgiven for thinking DeLorean were done and dusted, it seems they are very much alive and kicking. DeLorean currently maintain a service and parts warehouse for the restoration of existing DMC-12s, and are even capable of building new cars from 80 percent original parts.

The announcement of a new electric prototype is a big shift for the company however, who have been mostly dormant since Michael J Fox drove the original vehicle “Back to the Future” in the 1980s. Due to a new partnership with Epic Electric Vehicles, DeLorean are set to release a new 260 horsepower car with a top speed of 125 mph.

With the original DMC-12 only needing to go 88 mph in order to travel through time, perhaps the new model even has dimensional shaping capabilities. The electric motor on the DMC-12 EV will have a range between 70 and 100 miles and the batteries will have a life span of about 7 years. However, some critics have been vocal about the use of stainless steel on the car.

“I’m not sure you know the DeLorean – it is a very large, very, very heavy car and I couldn’t imagine making an EV version of it. $100 says the range blows,” writes AMouth, one of 294 comments about the car at slashdot.org.

The DeLorean EV will sell for somewhere between $90,000 and $100,000, a price tag that could easily be made up by going back in time and betting on sports events that you already know the results of. Just don’t tell the Doc.

Three of the Coolest Desktop Speakers on the Block

Greg — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 03:37:57 +0000

External speakers for your computers and gadgets don’t have to be boring any longer. We take a look at three of the coolest and most colourful desktop speakers, including the Gear4 Angry Bird Speakers, the i-Echo Eco-Friendly Stereo Speakers, and the Ion Water Rocker Speakers.

The Gear4 Angry Bird Speakers

Gear4 make a range of Angry Bird accessories, including cases for iPhones, iPads, and the iPod Touch. These inspired speakers are very colourful and very cute, and work with a range of computers and mobile gadgets.

While you may be sick are tired of the Angry Birds craze, these speakers may give it a brand new lease of life. There are three versions available – the Red Bird, the Black Bird, and the Helmet Pig. The Red Bird sells for $89.99 and works with any device through a 3.5mm jack, the Black Bird comes with a dock for iDevices and costs $129.99, and the Pig works with iPhone and iPods only and sells for $119.99.

The i-Echo Eco-Friendly Stereo Speakers

These earth friendly speakers are simple and cheap, and made from recycled materials. They are universally compatible with MP3 players, iPods, and iPhones, and even fold flat for convenient storage and portability. The i-Echo Eco-Friendly Stereo Speakers also sell for the rather attractive price of only $10.00.

The Ion Water Rocker Speakers

Have you ever wanted to rock out in the pool but not had the right gear on hand. No longer. The Ion Water Rocker Speakers are a floating, waterproof speaker system for iPods and iPhones, consisting of a transmitter for iDevices and other portable music devices. The transmitter works from as much as 150 feet away and each transmitter can support up to 9 additional floating speakers for full-floating-aqua-surround-capabilities. The Ion Water Rocker Speakers sell for $99.

An Airbag for your Smartphone, how about Jet Propulsion?

Greg — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 03:37:17 +0000

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has raised an idea that is either genius or completely silly – I’m really not sure which. He wants to put airbags on mobile phones, or use other safety technology such as springs or propulsion systems to help protect our gadgets.

This information comes from a patent application that was made public today, listing Bezos and Amazon as the inventors of “a system and method for protecting devices from impact damage.” A number of possible technologies are listed in the patent, including intricate detection mechanisms, airbags, springs, and expulsions of gas to reorient devices in the air!

This all sounds a little nutty that’s for sure, but things often do in the wild world of patent applications. The first idea involves using sensors such as a gyroscope, camera, infrared beam, or radar to detect motion, orientation, and distance from other objects. Supposedly, this will enable gadgets to ‘sense’ when they are in trouble, which is the first step in self-protection.

Once your favourite gadget is aware of its imminent collision with the floor, a number of possibilities open up. In the patent, some of the ideas raised include airbags, gas propulsion, and springs. In the case of airbags, they would be instantly inflated through embedded cartridges of compressed air or carbon dioxide. In the case of gas propulsion, the patent outlines a “propulsion element” to “cause a gentle or safe landing”.

While I can’t imagine an intricate sensor and airbag system on smartphones any time soon, stranger things have happened. Bezos and Amazon are obviously thinking about this issue, although whether they have any serious intentions to actually produce this technology is another question entirely.

Fake Apple Shop Discovered in China

Greg — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 06:50:28 +0000

An American man in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province in China, has discovered a fake Apple store. While visitors to Asia are used to seeing fake products for sale on a regular basis, no-one expects to see an entirely fake shop.

Apple is huge in China, as they are in most of the world at the moment. Someone has obviously decided to cash in on their popularity, and set up a fake shop complete with signature Apple design, signs, and decor.

“They looked like Apple products. It looked like an Apple store. It had the classic Apple store winding staircase and weird upstairs sitting area. The employees were even wearing those blue t-shirts with the chunky Apple name tags around their necks,” writes the blogger.

However, everything is not what is seems, and cracks started to appear in the facade on closer inspection. The man called the store “A beautiful ripoff — a brilliant one — the best ripoff store we had ever seen (and we see them every day). But some things were just not right: the stairs were poorly made. The walls hadn’t been painted properly. Apple never writes “Apple Store” on its signs — it just puts up the glowing, iconic fruit.”

Apparently, some of the staff at the store were not even aware they were working at a “rip-off shop”. Apple have confirmed they do not have an authorised shop at this destination, only a reseller that looks nowhere near as authentic as the “fake shop”. Knowing Apple, now that they are aware of this outlet, you can bet they will be doing everything in their power to stop it.

Study Reveals 19% of People Have Dropped their Phone in the Toilet

Greg — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 04:25:12 +0000

Have you ever dropped your mobile phone into the toilet. If you answered yes, you are certainly not alone. A recent study suggests, at one time or another, 19 percent of people have dropped their phone in the toilet.

Plaxo’s research reveals people’s incompetence in looking after their smartphones, with almost 1 in 5 letting their beloved phone slip out of their grasp and into the waters below. When you consider a recent study by Google that 39 percent of people take their smartphone to the toilet with them, that means almost half of all toilet smartphone users have achieved “splashdown”.

It was not all about the toilet however, with the Mobile & Online Backup Trends Study by online address book site Plaxo Inc also revealing lots of other interesting facts about how we use and backup our mobile data.

One in three people responding to the study had lost their contact lists through lost and damaged phones, and more people were found to be using cloud and remote access as a way to backup their precious computer and mobile data.

About half of all respondents have increased their reliance on remote access during the last three years, 25 percent of all people currently use the cloud to backup their data, and 66 percent of people store professional and personal contacts in the same address book.

Australian Woman Offers Her Kids For Sale on eBay

Greg — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 02:22:00 +0000

A woman in Australia has escaped criminal charges after putting her children up for sale on eBay. The woman claims it was all a joke, but she did include a lengthy sales pitch and there were people bidding on the auction.

“Investigators from Geelong were notified last week that a mother was trying to sell her two children on eBay,” a Victoria Police spokeswoman said. “Photos of the children, a boy and a girl both aged under 10 years, were included in the sales pitch.”

The page was originally posted on Wednesday and remained active until late in the morning of the next day. “The mother wrote a lengthy sales pitch that was very interesting reading,” a police source said. “She said the page was created as a joke, but what worries us is the people bidding on the auction. Who knows who these people are. They could be paedophiles or anyone. It’s extremely disturbing.”

The auction included photographs of the woman’s son and daughter, both of who are aged under 10. While police have decided not to make any charges, there is still the chance that the woman’s kids could be taken into protective care.

“If there is a serious threat to the children’s wellbeing and the situation is so bad that the only safe option is for them to be taken from home, then that is definitely a possibility,” said a spokesman for the DHS. “This action could attract the attention of the wrong sort of people, whether it was a joke or not, and the family need to understand the risks and receive advice around that.”

“We will continue to engage with the family and assess if there are any underlying problems. We need to get to the bottom of why she did this. Is there a mental illness, is the mother not coping or was it simply a joke? I don’t recall another case like this.”

Stormtrooper Walks Across Australia for Charity

Greg — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 07:51:18 +0000

If you happen to be driving around Australia and see a Stormtrooper on the side of the road, don’t be alarmed – that’s just Jacob French. In an effort to raise money for the Starlight Foundation, French has put on a Stormtrooper outfit and taken to the road.

French is hoping to average about 40 km a day, and walk five days out of every week. He wants to walk all the way from Perth to Sydney, which is a distance of 4,110 km. Needless to say, this is a very long walk, whether you are a Stormtrooper or not.

French is calling his mission “Troopertrek 2011″, and fans can follow his progress through Twitter and Facebook. Supporters can donate directly to the Starlight Foundation from the website www.everydayhero.com.au/troopertrek.

His target is $50,000, and his current total is $4,435 – so he needs all the help he can get. The Starlight Foundation is an amazing charity that has brightened the lives of seriously ill and hospitalised children in Australia, and their families.

One in Ten British Pets have their own Social Networking Profile

Greg — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 13:20:38 +0000

In a surprising statistic, one out of ten British pets have their own social networking profile. According to a study by the UK pet insurance provider PetPlan, and published in the London Daily Telegraph, there are more Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook profiles for pets than you may have thought.

While it might seem strange that there are so many pet profiles even out there, some of them are actually very popular. For example, Boo, one dog on Facebook, has been liked by nearly 1.4 million people. The king of social networking, Mark Zuckerberg, has also set up a profile for his dog Beast, which has over 146,000 fans.

The adventures of Maru the cat is another very famous pet profile, which has attracted more than six million views and almost 140,000 subscribers on YouTube since 2008. Who knows, maybe your dog or cat could be just as famous if you set up a social networking profile for them.

The study was commissioned by insurer PetPlan, with director Neil Brettell saying that “animals are more popular than celebrities on Facebook and other social networking sites.” While this phenomenon may be a mystery to many of us, Stephen Davies, a social media specialist, thinks he can shed some light on what is going on.

“As social networking plays an increasingly important role in our lives, it’s only natural that our pets become part of the phenomenon, too. We use sites like Facebook and Twitter as an extension of our real-world selves, and when we think of our pets as part of the family, we want them involved too.”

Advances in Rubik’s Cube Science

Greg — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 02:25:14 +0000

Erik Demaine, a computer scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has discovered an algorithm for solving a Rubik’s cube with any number of sides. For all those people out there struggling with their 11×11 cube, this nifty piece of math may offer some clues.

Firstly, just in case you didn’t know, Rubik’s cubes are made in lots of variations. While the classic 3×3 configuration is more than enough for most of us, some people have moved on to much more complex puzzles.

Earlier this year, Tomas Rokicki of Palo Alto, California, showed that all standard Rubik’s cubes could be solved in 20 moves or less. While this might surprise some of you who have struggled for hours with a standard 3×3 cube, this “God’s number” has been proved.

While “God’s number” may have been a big breakthrough in Rubik’s cube science, it doesn’t shed any light on the bigger and more complex puzzles. Demaine’s approach differed from Rokicki’s in that it didn’t rely on brute computing force.

Instead, Demaine and his colleagues found a short cut. Because each individual square or cubie has a particular path that will place it in the correct position, it is possible to look for cubies that all need to go in the same direction, then move them at the same time. “We found that instead of solving one cubie [individual square] at a time, you can parallelise that process and solve several,” Demaine says.

While this short cut approach may work great on a computer, it has limited direct applications for flesh and blood Rubik’s puzzle solvers. However, “It gives me a couple of ideas how to solve this thing faster,” says Stewart Clark, a Rubik’s cube enthusiast and physicist at Durham University, UK, who owns an 11x11x11 cube.

Amazing Solar Powered 3D Printer and Cutter

Greg — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 07:48:29 +0000

Industrial designer Markus Kayser has been playing around with some very fascinating technology over the last year. During that time he has created a solar powered light cutter and a solar powered 3D printer that melts sand to create objects out of glass. Very cool indeed!

The Sun Cutter is a low-tech light cutter that uses a large ball lens to focus solar energy. It is guided be a camera system, and is able to cut objects like a laser using nothing more than the power of the sun. This project was tested for the first time in August 2010, when Kayser used plywood to create the parts for sunglasses. While many people might have stopped there, Kaysar had an even grander vision in mind.

The Solar Sinter is a 3D printer that is able to melt sand and create new objects out of the glass made. This technology has also been tailor made for desert environments, where there is more sun and sand than most people know what to do with. On his website, Kayser explains this amazing technology:

“This process of converting a powdery substance via a heating process into a solid form is known as sintering and has in recent years become a central process in design prototyping known as 3D printing or SLS (selective laser sintering). [...] By using the sun’s rays instead of a laser and sand instead of resins, I had the basis of an entirely new solar-powered machine and production process for making glass objects that taps into the abundant supplies of sun and sand to be found in the deserts of the world.”

Not only is this device totally innovative and sustainable, it is also capable of creating some beautiful objects that totally fit into their local environment.

Gamer Plays Online in a Crate on a Trailer going to an Art Show

Greg — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 14:44:24 +0000

An American gamer/artist has decided to live in a crate on the back of a trailer for seven days, while playing Lord of the Rings Online. While you would be excused for thinking he was a little nuts, he is actually on a mission to raise awareness for post traumatic stress disorder.

Jordan Long is the man behind this performance/stunt, a 28 year old who recently graduated from the Cranberry Academy of Art. He has suffered from post traumatic stress disorder in the past, and says that this project is his way of highlighting how he coped with this condition.

Jordan Long’s journey will start on July 1, when he begins a 3,500 kilometre journey from Bald Knob, Arkansas to Portland, Oregon. When he gets to his destination, he’ll go on public display while continuing to play games online at the Fourteen30Contemporary art exhibition.

“This is something that means a lot to me but I’m just bringing up the subject,” Long said. “I’m not setting a positive or a negative light on it; that’s not what I’m going for in what I’m doing. I’m just interested in that dialogue getting out there and, sure, you could call it awareness, but for me it’s just putting it out there to allow people to think in a different way.”

“Obviously a big concern is laying in one place for that amount of time” said Long, with the toilet also being another obvious concern. “That will kind of become evident throughout the journey… it’s something that the audience will follow on the way to the gallery. It is all located within the crate. But exactly what it looks like and how it functions is something that everybody will find out as it unfolds.”

Long will blog about his journey at jordanwaynelong.com, and assures us that “these things are just my normal for me. I don’t feel crazy.”

Mobile Phones can Cause Cancer!

Radu — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 22:14:39 +0000

Suspicion that mobile phones could cause cancer has been around for many years, but the World’s Health Organization (WHO) has recently published an unsettling discovery to this regard: mobile phones can indeed cause cancer, actually a form of brain cancer called glioma, to be more exact. This type of cancer is malignant which means it cannot be cured.

Until recently, both the WHO and other organizations and commissions (FCC, US Food and Drug Administration, CTIA) claimed that mobile phone did not cause cancer. They used to say, in an ironical manner that mobile phones were just as dangerous as coffee or pickles and that there was absolutely no connection between mobile phone radiation and cancer.

The situation has changed because no less than 30 WHO specialists from 14 countries have taken part in the study and have been gathered solid evidence for eight years that allowed them to come to this conclusion.

„The pilling evidence is solid enough to prove that mobile phone usage can lead to cancer” – WHO officials have stated.

The results of a recent study have shown that mobile phone radiation increases the risk of cancer by 40% given the fact that the average talking time is of 30 minutes. The study suggests that the first symptoms could appear after ten years of mobile phone usage. WHO has also compared mobile phone radiation to other agents that could potentially cause cancer such as gas vapors and a pesticide called DTT.

However, the same organization suggests that other studies are necessary to clearly observe the effect mobile phone radiation has on the human body. One of the biggest challenges of such studies is the time frame: several decades have to pass for scientists to evaluate the effects certain environment agents have on the human body. The WHO recommends that we take the study results as a warning and advices us to use hands-free devices or communicate via SMS instead or holding the phone to our ears.

Mobile phone manufacturers also recommend that users maintain a certain distance between the handset and their body. Usually, the minimum distance is 15 mm but unfortunately, few users actually read the user’s manual and the majority ignoring this recommendation.

This news will definitely cause unrest among mobile phone users but very few will actually change the way they use their handsets, therefore manufacturers and carriers have nothing to worry about. This piece of information will probably be forgotten by tomorrow.