The arXiv According to arXiv vs. snarXiv

After more than 3/4 of a million guesses, in over 50,000 games played in 67 countries, the results are clear: Science sounds like gobbledygook.

arXiv vs. snarXiv has been live for 6 months now, and it’s time to take a look at the results. Here’s how the game works. The user sees two titles: one is the title of an actual theoretical high energy physics paper on the arXiv, and the other is a completely fake title randomly generated by the snarXiv. The user guesses which one is real, finds out if they’re right or wrong, and...

Lie Group Computations With Python

lie is a python module for computations with Lie groups, Lie algebras, representations, root systems, and more.

I based it on the computer algebra package LiE, written by M. A. A. van Leeuwen, A. M. Cohen and B. Lisser in the early 90’s. They chose to implement a proprietary scripting language as a wrapper for all the fancy mathematical algorithms. While this language is useful for interactive computations and short scripts, python is more expressive and powerful — definitely what you want when exploring your favorite exceptional group.

Here’s an example of using lie to do a...

Architectures for the Internet of Things: Presentation at Web of Things 2010 (PerCom 2010)

I have just had my presentation at Web of Things 2010 (Percom 2010) where I explored the different architectures for the Internet of Things and analyzed them under certain key factors. In this way, an Internet of Things designer can have a small guidance about which architecture fits better for his/her project depending on:
where to place the intelligence (at the object or at the cloud) the infrastructure required the busines model flexibility ... In fact, the exploration of business models for the Internet of Things is a new topic of interest for me, a to-be-discovered world that resembles the Web in the mid-90s. My...

Rafi Haladjian at Deusto

Some weeks ago I invited Rafi Haladjian, founder of Violet, and now at sen.se to give a speech at the Spanish national RFID Conference we were hosting at Deusto. Talking with him was very "epiphanic" in the sense that he explained the process behind the conceptualization and marketing of Nabaztag, as well as the final situation where Violet was acquired by Mindscape.
Funny enough, I think that the current position of Rafi about the Internet of Things can be summarized in two sentences:
The problem with the Internet of Things are the things.
I don't know what the Internet of Things is... but...

The snarXiv

The snarXiv is a random high-energy theory paper generator incorporating all the latest trends, entropic reasoning, and exciting moduli spaces. The arXiv is similar, but occasionally less random.[1]

Actually, the snarXiv only generates tantalizing titles and abstracts at the moment, while the arXiv delivers matching papers as well. Details of the implementation are below.[2] I’m the author, and I don’t remember exactly why I decided to do this. I did already have the framework lying around from a previous project, and I swear I spent more time doing research last weekend than implementing snarXiv.org.

David Rose on "Enchanted Objects"

I have just found a pill of knowledge by David Rose, founder of Ambient Devices and now CEO of Vitality, the company that created the GlowCaps. It was a talk at Lift 09 on "Enchanted Objects - How fiction foreshadows innovation".
He describes his past work in Ambient Devices, from the early prototypes to the final designs, presenting the audience with some of the challenges and decisions they were facing. Liked it a lot!

From the Internet of Things to the Internet of Hearts

Could you imagine all our hearts connected to the Internet?. Instantly and wirelessly transmitting our heartbeats to a central server, or maybe tweeting or pachubing? The first step has been taken through an innovative pacemaker that has been implanted to Carol Kasyjanski, becoming the first person to be monitored remotely.
It is a tremendous convenience for the patient from even interacting with a telephone to call the doctor.
On a larger scale it enhances our ability to pick up and evaluate any problems with their pacemaker and certain other rhythm disorders that could be potentially dangerous or life threatening in ways...

New books on the Internet of Things

A new book about the Internet of Things has been recently added to Scribd. The title says "Internet of Things. From RFID to Next-Generation Pervasive Networked Systems", and provides a good introduction to RFID-based solutions for IoT.
The only con is that it is too RFID-focused, scarcely mentioning the other side of the Internet of Things: embedded-connectivity mechanisms and protocols. In order to balance this aspect, a new book on 6LoWPAN (Amazon pre-order) "6LoWPAN: The Wireless Embedded Internet" is expected by the beginning of 2010:

And now... the tweeting house

After the tweeting plants, the tweeting home has arrived. It seems that the owner of the house, inventor Andy Stanford-Clarke, is using the Crossbow family of motes (maybe MicaZ from the images) to report tweets of information about windows, electricity meters and even... a mouse trap!
As so geek as this may seem, I am sure that we will witness in the next 2-3 years more and more things that tweet. In fact, Twitter has become a convenient communication channel for the Internet of Things: public information can be posted by objects, while other fellow followers may react accordingly. The only...

RFID-enabled pet doors

You will never stop finding new uses of RFID. Check this: a pet door that automatically opens in the presence of your RFID-enabled pet (obviously with the RFID tag in the collar).
This application has 3 remarkable characteristics that makes it good to demonstrate the power of RFID in different environments:
The RFID tag is located in a mobile element (your dog, cat, crocodile, ...) that wanders around without any control, so it is a perfect scenario for tracking. There is one point of control, the door, where you want to allow the authorized pet to enter, and at the same time deny...