Isotropic is …
... my personal blog.
Unless otherwise indicated, anything I write here is simply my personal, probably ill-formed, opinion and does not represent the views, beliefs, positions, or opinions of any other person or entity.
Daily Archives: 2008-05-18
18 May 2008
Who’s got your number?
Shops secretly track customers via mobile phone (Jonathan Richards, Times Online). Using receivers deployed throughout a building. the system tracks handsets via triangulation. It’s accurate to within a few feet, enough to tell which individual stores are visited, and for how long. The system tracks phones by the unique IMEI code, so technically[1] no personal [...]
18 May 2008
Big and Small
The Etruscan Shrew is the smallest (by mass) mammal in the world, while the Blue Whale is the largest animal that has ever existed on earth, as far as we know. Click on the image for a larger view — note: NOT to scale.. Why this post? I happened to read the following two articles [...]
18 May 2008
Driver Buddy
Do you want to have a conversation with your car, or perhaps an invisible passenger riding shotgun (if a talking car freaks you out too much)? Years ago, Stanford communication and sociology researcher Clifford Nass wondered why some people treated their computers as humans, instead of machines, a question that led him down a path [...]
18 May 2008
Survivor Buddy
[Robin Murphy] envisions a robot that plays soothing music to trapped victims and features a monitor showing the faces of loved ones and rescuers trying to reach them. It will deliver water and transmit a victim’s vital signs to doctors. And it should be friendly, she said. –Shannon Colavecchio-Van Sickler, A USF professor plans to [...]
