AirSelfie

AirSelfie reports: [edited]

AirSelfie is a pocket-size flying camera that connects with your smartphone to let you take HD photos of you, your friends, and your life from the sky. Its propellers can carry it up to 20 meters in the air, letting you capture photos and videos on your device.

The anti-vibration shock absorber and 5 MP camera ensure high quality images. And its 61g form slips into a special phone cover and charger (available for iPhone 6/6S, iPhone 7/7 Plus, Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, Huawei P9 and Google Pixel).

Available to pre-order: £229.00
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Boston Dynamics' Handle

Boston Dynamics reports: [edited]

Handle is a research robot that stands 6.5 ft tall, travels at 9 mph and jumps 4​ ​feet vertically. ​It uses electric power to operate both electric and hydraulic actuators, with a range of about 15 miles on one battery charge.

​​​Handle uses many of the same dynamics, balance and mobile manipulation principles​ found in the quadruped and biped robots we build, but with only about 10 actuated joints, it is significantly less complex. Wheels are efficient on flat surfaces while legs can go almost anywhere.
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Svalbarði Polar Iceberg Water

Business Insider reports: [edited]

Harrods has a new product on its shelves: a bottle of 'luxury water' retailing at £80, harvested from icebergs in the Arctic Ocean.

The brand's founder, Norwegian-American businessman Jamal Qureshi founded the brand after collecting melt water from the Norwegian territory of Svalbard in 2013 as a gift for his wife. "Four years later," the company said in a statement, "the whimsical, selfless thought has transformed into an epicurean product, which is redefining the very notion of drinking water."

Qureshi collects batches of the water by chartering an icebreaker with the permission of the Governor of Svalbard and travelling to the icebergs of Kongsfjorden, which is 1,000km from the North Pole. Once 15 tonnes of ice is gathered, it is melted and bottled by hand in order to "capture the water in its purest form."

The brand says that the water has "an exceptionally light mouthfeel with a unique terroir – the taste of snow in air and evokes recollections of snowflakes on the tongue".
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Creative Commons Updates Its Image Search Engine

TechCrunch reports: [edited]

The engine pulls in photos from Flickr, 500px, Rijksmuseum, the New York Public Library and the Metropolitan Museum of Art as its initial sources.

In addition to having a more modern look-and-feel, the new CC Search lets you narrow searches by license type, title, creator, tags, collection and type of institution. It also includes social features, letting you make and share lists of favourite images, as well as add tags and favorites to individual items.

You can save your searches for quick access in the future and the engine also makes it easier to apply the necessary attribution, when available, by offering pre-formatted copy you can click to copy and paste.

The beta search engine is available here.
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London - Somerset - London, 11 & 12-02-17

London - Somerset 11-02-17
Music to Watch Girls By - Andy Williams
Rockit - Herbie Hancock
Heart Of Glass - Blondie
I'm Your Man - Wham!
What's Love Got to Do With It - Tina Turner
Just Lose It - Eminem
Each Time You Break My Heart - Nick Kamen
The Gambler - Kenny Rogers
Lean on Me (Ah-li-ayo) - Red Box
99 Red Balloons - Nena
You Make My Dreams (Remastered) - Daryl Hall & John Oates
The Reflex - Duran Duran
Mo Money Mo Problems (feat. Mase & Puff Daddy) - The Notorious B.I.G.
Build Me Up Buttercup - Foundations
i - Kendrick Lamar
Howzat - Sherbet
Maggie May - Rod Stewart
How Will I Know - Whitney Houston
Victim of Love - Erasure
Pharaohs (feat. Roses Gabor) - SBTRKT
Seasons (Waiting On You) - Future Islands
(TSOB) The Sound Of Philadelphia - MFSB
Us - Regina Spektor
C-H-E-M-I-C-A-L (Edit) - The Chemical Brothers
She Taught Me to Yodel - Frank Ifield
Beat It - Michael Jackson
Your Love Is My Drug - Ke$ha
Maneater - Daryl Hall & John Oates
The Blow Up - Blackalicious
Bat Out Of Hell - Meat Loaf
I Will Survive - Gloria Gaynor
I Bet You Look Good On the Dancefloor - Arctic Monkeys
History - Mai Tai
You Got It - Roy Orbison
Candyman - Christina Aguilera
Walk On The Wild Side - Lou Reed
I Beg Your Pardon - Kon Kan
All Right Now - Free
Dance Yourself Dizzy (7 Inch) - Liquid Gold
F*k Yeah Ace of Hearts - XXXChange
Fill My Little World - The Feeling
Wannabe - Spice Girls
Grace Kelly - MIKA
Cheesecake - Louis Armstrong
Listen to Your Heart - Roxette
Waiting for a Star to Fall - Boy Meets Girl
Pass Out - Tinie Tempah
Cheap Thrills - Sia feat. Sean Paul
Baba O'Riley - The Who
The Sound - The 1975
Spinning Around - Kylie Minogue
Up Town Top Ranking - Althea And Donna
She Drives Me Crazy - Fine Young Cannibals

Somerset to London 12-02-17
Fireflies (UK Radio Edit) - Owl City
Tonight's The Kind Of Night - Noah and the Whale
Give me some kind of sign girl - Brenton Wood
Barbra Streisand (UK Radio Edit) - Duck Sauce
Where the Light Gets In - Primal Scream
I Drove All Night - Cyndi Lauper
Teenage Kicks - The Undertones
Wow - Beck
Rockabye (feat. Sean Paul & Anne-Marie) - Clean Bandit
Jolene - Dolly Parton
The Boys Are Back In Town - Thin Lizzy
Don't Think I'm Not - Kandi
The Love I Lost (Single Version) - Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes & arranged by Bobby Martin
Rest of My Life (feat. Usher & David Guetta) - Ludacris
September - Earth, Wind & Fire
Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It) - Beyoncé
Don't Stop Believin' - Journey
My Sharona - The Knack
If I Had A Hammer - Trini Lopez
Life Is A Rollercoaster - Ronan Keating
The Favourite Band of a Dead Man - Man & The Echo
If You Let Me Stay - Terence Trent D'Arby
Babooshka - Kate Bush
Price Tag (feat. B.o.B) - Jessie J
Just Got Lucky - Jo Boxers
Evacuate The Dancefloor - Cascada
Don't Let Me Down (feat. Daya) [Illenium Remix] - The Chainsmokers
Bad Reputation - Avril Lavigne
Rum and coca cola - The Andrews Sisters
Airplanes (feat. Hayley Williams of Paramore) - B.o.B
I Should Have Known Better - Jim Diamond
Does Your Mother Know - ABBA
Bad Girls - M.I.A.
High - The Cure
Umbrella (Seamus Haji & Paul Emanuel Radio Edit) - Rihanna
The Ballroom Blitz - Sweet
Tilted - Christine and the Queens
My Favourite Waste of Time - Owen Paul
Save Your Kisses For Me - Brotherhood Of Man
It's Raining Men - The Weather Girls
Who's That Chick? (feat. Rihanna) - David Guetta & Rihanna
Smarty Pants - First Choice
FloriDada - Animal Collective
110% - Jessie Ware
Moves Like Jagger (feat. Christina Aguilera) - Maroon 5
Le Freak - Chic
Eye of the Tiger - Survivor
You're The First, The Last, My Everything - Barry White
Telephone - Lady GaGa & Beyoncé
Levels - Avicii
You Sexy Thing - Hot Chocolate
How Bad Do You Want It (Oh Yeah) - Sevyn Streeter
Your Drums, Your Love - AlunaGeorge
Stuck In The Middle With You - Stealers Wheel
Move It Like This - Baha Men
Dancing in The Moonlight - Toploader
On the Regular - Shamir
XXXO - M.I.A.
Black Betty - Ram Jam
Titanium (feat. Sia) - David Guetta
Go! (feat. Mai Lan) - M83
Here I Come (Broader Than Broadway) - Barrington Levy
Don't Stop Me Now - Queen
Don't Cha - The Pussycat Dolls
Mr Loverman (feat. Chevelle Franklin) - Shabba Ranks
Alive - Empire of the Sun
Call Me - Spagna
Dilemma - Nelly Feat. Kelly Rowland
Punching In a Dream (Single Version) - The Naked & Famous
Live And Let Die - Paul McCartney & Wings
Moving On Up - M People
Thunder In My Heart Again (Radio Edit) - Meck & Leo Sayer
Home - Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros
Don't Deny Your Heart - Hot Chip
5.7.0.5. - City Boy
Lo Sforzo (The Stress) - Ocelot
Total Eclipse of the Heart - Bonnie Tyler
Don't Talk To Him - Cliff Richard & The Shadows
It's My Party - Lesley Gore
Walking Back to Happiness - Helen Shapiro

Image by brook jordan
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AI conquers No Limit Texas Hold 'Em

Wired reports: [edited]

An AI built by two Carnegie Mellon researchers has defeated four top players at no-limit Texas Hold ‘Em — a particularly complex form of poker that relies heavily on longterm betting strategies and game theory.

Over the past twenty years, machines have topped the best humans at checkers, chess, Scrabble, Jeopardy!, and even the ancient game of Go. But no AI had ever beaten the best at such an extreme game of 'imperfect information', a game where certain elements, such as the cards on the table, are hidden.

Carnegie Mellon professor Tuomas Sandholm and grad student Noam Brown designed the AI, which they call Libratus, Latin for 'balance'. Across 20 days of play, Libratus topped its four human competitors by more than $1.7 million.

According to the human players that lost out to the machine, Libratus is aptly named. It does a little bit of everything well: knowing when to bluff and when to bet low with very good cards, as well as when to change its bets just to thrown off the competition. “It splits its bets into three, four, five different sizes,” says Daniel McAulay, 26, one of the players bested by the machine. “No human has the ability to do that.”
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The origin of ampersand

Medium reports: [edited]

The symbol “&” is an amalgam of the letters 'et', Latin for 'and'. The character is known as an ampersand.

It began with American children learning their ABCs. In the 1830s the alphabet started incorporating the symbol '&' as the 27th letter. Reciting the end of the alphabet would be confusing if it were 'X, Y, Z, and'.

So a couple of words of Latin were incorporated into the chant, 'X, Y, Z, and per se and'.

'Per se' is Latin for 'by itself'. Through routine repetition the phrase 'and per se and' transmogrified into 'ampersand'.

And it stuck.
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V for Wikipedia

Daring Fireball reports: [edited]

V for Wikipedia is an opinionated iOS app with nit-picky typography hailed by no less than Erik Spiekermann as the “best on the small screen yet.” It is a gorgeous app, and it’s amazing how much better Wikipedia reads when it looks good.

The map visualisation lets you explore nearby places. It is even usable on the Apple Watch.

Price: £4.99
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Human-powered centrifuge

Gizmodo reports: [edited]

Inspired by an ancient toy, researchers from Stanford University have developed a hand-spun centrifuge.

A centrifuge is an essential tool for hospitals and labs across the world, but they are expensive, bulky, and require electricity. In poor regions these instruments can be hard to come by, thus limiting the ability of point-of-care healthcare workers to do their work.

In demonstrations, the paperfuge was able to centrifuge blood at 20,000 RPM — a speed comparable to those exerted by conventional benchtop centrifuges. The paperfuge was able to separate pure plasma from whole blood in less than 90 seconds, and to isolate malaria parasites in 15 minutes.

The 20p 'paperfuge' can reach spinning speeds of 125,000 RPM, and exert centrifugal forces equivalent to 30,000 Gs. It’s a hundred times faster than previous non-electrical centrifuges, and is the fastest rotational speed recorded for a human-powered device.
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Lucky Knot Bridge

NEXT Architects reports: [edited]

The proposed steel pedestrian bridge in the Chinese mega city Changsha will be 185 metres long and 24 metres high.

The bridge is a key project in developing the area’s public space, and was designed with recreational, ecological and tourist activities in mind.

The bridge connects multiple levels at different heights (the river banks, the road, the higher-placed park as well as the interconnections between them). The final shape of the bridge is the result of - literally and metaphorically - knotting all these routes together.

The bridge will offer a spectacular view of the river, Meixi Lake, the city of Changsha and the surrounding mountain range. With its LED light arrays, the bridge is set to become a landmark attraction in the route that traces the path of the Dragon King Harbour River.
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Nintendo Switch

Trusted Reviews reports: [edited]

Nintendo Switch will be released in the UK on 3 March, priced at £280.

At home, the Switch sits in a "Nintendo Switch Dock" that's used to connect to your TV. Once removed from the dock, it transitions to portable mode.

The gamepad will be rechargeable through the console. The battery life can range from 3 to 6 hours depending on the game you're playing. The gamepad's screen is 720p. There is a stand provided.

Nintendo Switch will include two detachable controllers known as "Joy-Cons", which can be used as part of the portable tablet or during local multi-player. Just like the gamepad, these will be charged through the console.
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Alzheimer Treatment Allows Dentin Regrowth

Motherboard reports: [edited]

Researchers at King’s College released a study stating they’ve discovered a medicine that can prompt teeth to regrow over cavities or injuries.

Researchers realized that an experimental Alzheimer’s drug called Tideglusib had the side effect of encouraging dentin growth, which is the bony part of the tooth made of calcified tissue. It makes up most of the tooth, just above the pulp but under the hard enamel.

Tideglusib, used in clinical trials as a neurological drug as a way to encourage brain cell growth, encouraged the tooth to generate more stem cells and grow dentin over the exposed area, according to the report.

Normally, a tooth only grows a tiny layer of dentin over an injury — not nearly enough to save a tooth from needing to be drilled or removed to prevent infection. But when Tideglusib is applied to the injured spot on the tooth, it blocks the enzyme that usually stops dentin growth, glycogen synthase kinase (GSK-3), and the whole spot heals up by itself.
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weatherHYDE

weatherHYDE reports: [edited]

billionBricks is a Singapore based non-profit design and innovation studio providing shelter and infrastructure solutions for the homeless and vulnerable.

[WeatherHyde is] a life saving fully insulated, lightweight emergency kit that provides maximum privacy and protects the homeless and vulnerable from extreme weather. The only reversible tent that protects in both winter and summer, it is woman friendly and enables a single person, tool-less installation within 15 minutes and does not need any anchoring.

weatherHYDE has been awarded the Iron A' Design Award in the category of Social Design in 2016 by the grand jury panel of the A’ Design Award & Competition which consists of internationally influential press members, established designers, leading academics and prominent entrepreneurs.
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Somerset to London, 28-12-16

Bring Back That Leroy Brown [2011 Remaster] - Queen
Black Or White - Michael Jackson
Mary of the 4th Form - The Boomtown Rats
Two Hearts (2016 Remastered) - Phil Collins
Here Comes Summer - The Undertones
Two Doors Down - Mystery Jets
Beds Are Burning - Midnight Oil
Always On My Mind - Pet Shop Boys
He's Gonna Step On You Again - John Kongos
The Way You Make Me Feel - Michael Jackson
Rehab - Amy Winehouse
The Golden Path (ft wayne coyne) - The Chemical Brothers
This Is the Remix - Girl Talk
Hey Ruby, Shut Your Mouth - Ruby and The Party Gang
Brændt - Lis Sørensen
Smooth Criminal - Michael Jackson
Too Young - Phoenix
Gasoline - The Airborne Toxic Event
You Got The Dirtee Love, feat. Dizzee Rascal - Florence + The Machine
Bagboy - Pixies
Stuck On Repeat (Edit) - Little Boots
Bruises - Chairlift
It's A Sin - Pet Shop Boys
King Creole - Elvis Presley
Try - Nelly Furtado
You & I (feat. Shara) - Ellusive & Telykast
Just Like Paradise - David Lee Roth
What You Know - Two Door Cinema Club
Eyes Without A Face - Billy Idol
In The Air Tonight (2015 Remastered) - Phil Collins
Electric - Melody Club
Standing In The Shadows Of Love - The Four Tops
Bad - Michael Jackson
City Of Blinding Lights - U2
Best of Friends - Palma Violets
One More Night (Cutmore Club Mix) - Maroon 5
Good Night Moon - Shivaree
Kiss With A Fist - Florence + The Machine
That's Not My Name (LA Riots Remix) - The Ting Tings
Easy Lover - Phil Collins & Phil Bailey
One Nation Under a Groove - George Clinton/Funkadelic
My Pretty One - Cliff Richard
Break Away - The Beach Boys
TVC 15 - David Bowie
I Wanna Prove to You - The Lemon Twigs
Hammer To Fall [2011 Remaster] - Queen
Common People - William Shatner
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London to Somerset, 26-12-16

What Have I Done To Deserve This? - Pet Shop Boys
Boom! Shake the Room - DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince
Frozen - Tegan and Sara
You Can't Hurry Love - Phil Collins
Sigourney Weaver - John Grant
Lady Marmalade - Labelle
There's A Guy Works Down The Chip Shop Swears He's Elvis - Kirsty MacColl
O.N.E - Yeasayer
Inhaler - Foals
Where The Streets Have No Name (I Can't Take My Eyes Off You) - Pet Shop Boys
Tilted - Christine and the Queens
Birmingham Blues - Electric Light Orchestra
Suburbia - Pet Shop Boys
Monkey Wrench - Foo Fighters
Rolling In The Deep [Explicit] - Adele
Rhythm Is a Dancer - Snap!
Hey Mama, Close to Me, For Your Love - Black Eyed Peas vs the Cure vs The Zombies
She's a Rainbow (Radio Edit) - World Of Twist
Chinese Rocks - Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers
Get What You Want - Operator Please
Friday On My Mind - The Easybeats
Going Under - Evanescence
Heartbreak Hotel - Elvis Presley
Apache - Micheal Viners Incredible Bongo Band
When The Haar Rolls In - James Yorkston
My My My - Armand Van Helman
On Your Radio (Radio) - Richard Lanham
Green Light (Radio Edit) - Roll Deep
Save The Last Dance For Me - The Drifters
Opposites Attract - Paula Abdul
Superstar - Aeroplane
Pop Culture - Madeon
Hold on to Love - Peter Skellern
Testify (feat. Crystal Waters) - Hifi Sean
Use It Up And Wear It Out - Odyssey
Your Love Alone Is Not Enough - Manic Street Preachers
Sussudio (2016 Remastered) - Phil Collins
These Boots Are Made For Walking - Nancy Sinatra
Private Idaho - The B-52's
High Horse - The Jim Jones Revue
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Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II Review

Digital Photography Review have published a full review of Olympus' flagship Micro Four Third camera.

Snippets from the conclusion follow:

"The Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II is befitting of the term 'flagship,' and performs every bit as quickly as such a title implies - and it should, given the $2000 MSRP (body-only). In terms of outright speed, the E-M1 II is unmatched in the world of Micro Four Thirds cameras, and gives many higher-specced cameras with larger sensors a run for their money. But the fact remains, the sensor in the E-M1 II is only a quarter of the size of a full-frame, 35mm-sized sensor, and you can purchase a camera with one of those larger sensors for less money."

"The E-M1 II's build quality is top-of-class. The body is made of aluminium and magnesium alloys and feels sturdy. Everything is weather-sealed and the camera proved itself in the continuous rain and cold weather in Iceland."

"Ergonomics are about as good as its gets. The grip is just right, allowing for one-handed shooting with lighter lenses, and the front and rear dials are perfectly placed. The camera is a customisable to the point where it's over-the-top. Twelve buttons and dials can have their function changed, with separate settings for still and video shooting."

"Its biggest feature is undoubtedly its in-body 5-axis image stabilisation. It can reduce shake by a claimed 5.5 stops. We've been able to take handheld 2 second exposures."
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Neural Network-based Image Colorization

Satoshi Iizuka, Edgar Simo-Serra & Hiroshi Ishikawa report: [edited]

We provide a service that uses AI to automatically colorize black and white images based on "Let there be Color!: Joint End-to-end Learning of Global and Local Image Priors for Automatic Image Colorization with Simultaneous Classification" Iizuka and Simo-Serra et al. SIGGRAPH 2016.

[Here's some I made up earlier, Ed.]

Thanks to Brook Jordan for the link.
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'Conventional' Digital Camera Sales Plummeting

Statista reports: [edited]

“The best camera is the one that’s with you”. This phrase, attributed to photographer Chase Jarvis, explains the impact that smartphone cameras are making on the world of photography. The cameras built into our phones may still be inferior to dedicated digital cameras, but they keep improving and have the advantage of being part of an item that we already carry around with us.

When the first touchscreen smartphones arrived in 2007 and 2008 members of the CIPA, an association of the world’s camera makers, shipped almost 120 million digital cameras.

In 2015, CIPA members shipped 35.4 million digital cameras, down more than 70 percent from peak sales in 2010 – the year that Instagram was launched.
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Google Music Using Big Data To Build Playlists

Wired reports: [edited]

Google knows where you are, what you’re doing, what you’re thinking and watching and searching for and chatting with your friends about. Which means nobody should be better equipped to soundtrack every second of your life than Google Play Music. The company’s taking advantage of its smarts to deliver you the sounds [it thinks ed.] you want.

Next time you open Google Play Music on any device, the first thing you’ll see is a list of playlists you might like, plus a short description for why the app made any given selection. It’s a bit like Google Now, the predictive feed of everything you probably want to know about right now, except fully focused on music. Think of it as a super-smart, hyper-personalized set of radio station presets. Just open the app, tap one, and go.

To do all this, the Play Music team is tapping into the full Google Data Machine for the first time. It’s choosing playlists by looking at the music you’ve listened to before, of course, but also your search history, your YouTube plays, even what’s in your email and calendar. It considers that data alongside things like time of day, location (a bar is different from a library is different from your office), the weather, and more. So you like classical at work, but you need a boost because it’s raining and you’ve been in meetings all day, plus it’s almost time to get to the gym? Play Music might show you Epic Movie Scores, followed by your favorite workout jams.
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Moley Robotic Chef

Forbes reports: [edited]

In 2018, Moley will launch the world’s first integrated cooking robot — a robotic kitchen that has access to a number of famous chefs and their recipes. And it will clean up after itself as well.

Two articulated robotic motion capture systems record each movement of the master chef. Among the hundred dishes included in the beta version is Tim Anderson’s crab bisque, a particularly difficult recipe that requires striking the right balance between tomatoes, crabmeat and spices. It took Anderson five attempts to make this soup with the motion capture system.

Once the movements have been recorded, the user can choose the number of portions, type of cuisine, dietary restrictions, calorie count, desired ingredients, cooking method, chef, etc. from the recipe library, before placing pre-packaged containers of measured, washed and cut ingredients on designated spots, and pressing 'start'.

Price: $92,000.
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