Archive for the ‘technology’ Category
Sunday, March 7th, 2010
(Via Slashdot):
PCMAG.COM is reporting that YouTube has just released their automatic captioning system for public use:
The technology still isn’t perfect, but Google is also using YouTube, with its vast array of accents, languages, background noise, and other distractions to improve its technology.
But the closed-captioning also means that millions of users who are hard of hearing, deaf, or simply speak another language as their primary language can now have a greater access to YouTube videos, the company said. “A core part of YouTube’s DNA is access to content,” said Hunter Walk, the product team lead for YouTube. “From day one, that’s what we were hoping to do with video.”
It’s worth noting that as well as opening up information access for “hard of hearing, deaf, or [non-English speakers]“, it’s also another example of Google making the world more and more machine-readable. Google Books is another massive-scale example of this.
Edit: After requesting automatic transcription of one of my YouTube videos yesterday (which features pretty clear spoken English), I’ve received a “Transcription Failed” message today. No option to retry or suggestions why. I.e. this tech might not be so fantastically world-changing yet.
Tags: Accents, Array, Automatic Transcription, Background Noise, Closed Captioning, Distractions, Dna, English Speakers, Google, Information Access, Languages, Slashdot, Spoken English, Worth Noting That, Youtube Videos
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Monday, March 1st, 2010
I’ve just returned from the 5-day CitySwitch Architectural workshop in Newcastle organized by UTS lecturer Joanna Jakovich. The participants were asked to choose between four teams, each looking at architectural interventions of one kind or another. As well as team participation, I directed some energy into creating an online live map of the event, as an extension of my current research.
Renew Newcastle
This particular CitySwitch was conducted in collaboration with Renew Newcastle, which works to temporarily populate empty shopspace with galleries, teahouses, etc. to aid revitalization of the area. They work with a fascinating legal arrangement, non-threatening for property owners, which sets up a 30-day rolling “license to use”. The temporary occupier pays $20/week to cover insurance and minor upkeep. It is a framework that could possibly translate to spaces in Sydney.
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Tags: Afterglow, Current Version, Documentary Photos, Esumi, Flickr Photostream, Flipbook, Geocoding, Google, Google Maps, Help Forum, Hidaka, Interventions, Japanese Style, Kei, Kiyoshi, Legal Arrangement, Mapping System, Nishizawa, Occupier, Old Mcdonald, Project Proposal, Proto Type, Revitalization, Social Networking, Spinners, Strong Wind, Tea Ceremony, Tea Room, Teahouses, Team C, Team Participation, Time Line, Time Mapping, Time Space, Timeframe, Unanswered Questions, Uts Students, Venue Owners, Yahoo Pipes, Yamashiro
Posted in Architecture, art, technology | No Comments »
Thursday, February 18th, 2010
Real-time tracking of police presence would just require some friends
Recently I’ve been looking at the emerging humanitarian uses of collaborative micro-blogging, and in particular Project EPIC’s initiative to define a “folksonomy” of tweet formats to aid Haiti crisis response. I’m currently building a set of Yahoo Pipes feeds that process and locate relevant tweets onto an interactive map (I’ve been hampered by outages in Yahoo Pipes services). Yahoo Pipes is a sort of rudimentary visual programming, that will allow easy reconfiguration by non-programmers once these pipes have been set up. These tools are intended to be easily extendible and “mashable” into new uses.
I’ll post about the Yahoo Pipes work when it’s completed, but needless to say I am aware and involved in the positive potential of augmented reality and surrounding technologies.
I’ve been motivated to write about the negative potential after reading Augmented Planet’s “The Case Against Augmented Reality”. Although it gained some attention as a dissenting voice against the generally positive coverage AR gets, it was a little underwhelming, and even the comments failed (for me) to really go very deep into things. I’m effectively re-posting an annotated version of my comments on that page:
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Tags: Blogging, Contextualization, Crisis Response, Data Mining, Dissenting Voice, Folksonomy, Hugo, Initiative, Interactive Map, Landscape, Meaningful Results, New Experience, Page Nbsp, Participation, Patter, Police Presence, Programmers, Project Epic, Real Time, Reconfiguration, Social Networking, Tweets, Visual Programming, Visualisation, Yahoo Pipes
Posted in research, technology | No Comments »
Thursday, January 28th, 2010
You may be viewing this site with a new theme. Or you may not. Let me know what you think, and any suggestion, in the comments! Your feedback is much appreciated! Why the uncertainty? I am only testing the new theme on some visitors, so you might be lucky or not. Here is a discussion of the tech. setup behind multi-variant testing:
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Tags: Blog, Content Control, Conversion Code, Conversions, Footer Files, Free Web Statistics, Google, Google Analytics, Header And Footer, Lt, Metrics, Sophisticated Tools, Starting Page, Suggestion, Themes, Uncertainty, Url Parameters, Urls, Widget, Wordpress Blog
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Computer Aided Architectural Design
Sunday, February 7th, 2010(via Bruce Sterling’s Beyond the Beyond blog)
Recently, Bruce Sterling featured Voxopolis (below) on his blog. The project extends Conway’s Game of Life into the 3rd dimension in order to evolve a city design. It is one of six presented in the Helvepolis – Urban Design in Vitro! exhibition, showcasing the work of students at ETH in Zurick, studying Masters of Architectural Studies in Computer Aided Architectural Design:
voxopolis from Dino Rossi on Vimeo.
The ETH Masters program looks at “the use of current information technologies as an augmentation of concepts of architecture. [Exploring] new techniques and methods for design that incorporate scripting and programming languages.” As my interest in the use of computer technology in architecture lie in the areas of understanding inhabitants’ spatial practices to inform design, better engineering, and architectural modeling, I am generally quite cynical towards CAAD projects that look cool, but don’t serve actual human bodies. I have given some personal commentary to a few of the CAAD projects. I’d be curious to hear your views.
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Tags: 3rd Dimension, Abstract Rules, Aided Architectural Design, Architectural Modeling, Architectural Studies, Attractive City, Better Engineering, Bruce Sterling, Computer Aided Architectural Design, Dino Rossi, Game Of Life, Game Rules, Human Bodies, Human Habitation, Interactive City, Masters Program, Personal Commentary, Programming Languages, Rules Of The Game, Vimeo
Posted in Architecture, technology | 4 Comments »