THIS WEEK IN TECTORIA

A community blog celebrating Victoria's booming tech sector

CONTACT THE TECTORIA BLOG

Got a cool story about technology and creativity in Victoria? Email stories, tips, pictures, links and anything of interest to Tessa Bousfield at: tectoria@viatec.ca

Innovation Elsewhere – DARPA’s May “Demo Day”

by

Fully-functional prosthetic arms. “Unhackable” helicopter drones.

Educational games that teach kids fractions while teaching scientists how to refine training techniques for soldiers.

An augmented-reality helmet with a see-through screen over one eye, showing the wearer which route to follow by superimposing it on the landscape.

All were on display earlier this month at the DARPA “demo day” in Washington.

And what was on display wasn’t just science fiction.

DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, has had a hand in many of the technologies we have come to rely on every day.

Siri and GPS all owe a lot to DARPA, as does the self-driving car, which appears to be just over the horizon.

The government research institute is also using Oculus Rift to help enhance cyberwarfare – they call it Plan X.

Plan X is supposed to train a cadet for an hour, so he or she can launch a cyberattack just as easily as launching a missile or as intuitive as playing as Angry Birds.

Most of DARPA Demo Day featured projects by the organization’s I2O unit, which has a software focus.

Some of the more interesting (or, depending on your point of view, more alarming) projects on display included:

MEMEX is an ambitious plan for a next-generation search engine that indexes the deep web.

Big Mechanism will enable computers to read journals and other sources of knowledge and extract intelligence about things like cancer, economies, and the brain.

Follow DARPA on Facebook, YouTube, or Google Plus.

Innovation Elsewhere – 3,700 Blu-Rays in a Single Cassette Tape

by

sony cassette

Sony has developed a new technology that can store 185 terabytes on good, old-fashioned magnetic tape.

For example, three Blu-Rays’ worth of data can fit on one square inch of Sony’s new super-tape. One of these new tapes will store the equivalent of 3,700 Blu-Rays’ worth of memory.

In fact, one relatively cheap tape would hold five more terabytes than a $9,305 hard drive storage array.

In order to create the new tape, Sony employed the use of sputter deposition, which creates layers of magnetic crystals by firing argon ions at a polymer film substrate.

Combined with a soft magnetic under-layer, the magnetic particles measured in at just 7.7 nanometers on average, able to be closely packed together.

Sony developed the technology for long-term, industrial-sized data backup – storage tape shipments grew 13% two years ago, and were headed for a 26% growth just last year.

Tectorian of the Week: Graham Baradoy

by

graham baradoy

“There is something in the air in Victoria that makes you want to climb a mountain.”

So says Kiind‘s Graham Baradoy. Baradoy, a developer by trade, is a relatively recent transplant to Victoria. After working remotely with Kiind and cousin Leif Baradoy, Graham moved from Alberta to Victoria about a year ago.

And the move to Victoria seems has changed Graham’s life.

The biggest change?

Graham has shed 70 pounds, with more to go. He credits this achievement to the magnetic attraction of summiting nearby Mount Finlayson, plus all the other outdoor things you can do in Victoria year-round to keep active.

“When I thought about life in Victoria, I knew I would be getting healthier and happier,” Graham writes on his excellent blog.

But the real reason Graham Baradoy is Tectorian of the Week is because, since arriving in Victoria barely a year ago, he has jumped right in as a leader.

A true Tectorian, Graham reaches out to help others connect the dots to help build community via Whiskey Oriented Development.

whisky

Whisky Oriented Development bills itself as comfortable place to meet other programmers from around town, learn what else is being worked on in Victoria, and pick up on some cool new technologies.

And the group drinks and discusses whisky along the way. Here’s what they got up to in April.

And there is still more to Tectorian Graham Baradoy.

Software developer by day, Graham recently received his Masters of Science in Kinesiology.

The topic of his thesis? “A Physiological Feedback Controlled Exercise Video Game.”

“I used a simple feedback loop in conjunction with a heart rate monitor and an active video game to control people’s heart rates,” Graham says on his blog.

“To a computer scientist, this is nothing overly special, but in fields like kinesiology which do not have the strongest relationship with computers, or the nerds who wield them, a few lines of code can change everything.”

So, Graham is well on his way to expanding Tectoria beyond the boundaries of coders and technologists. He is what community is all about.

So, if you’re thinking about a hike up Mount Finlayson, Graham is up for it.

Biking the Galloping Goose? Graham can do that too. If you like whisky and coding, Graham will introduce you to new friends.

He may inspire you to climb a mountain of your own.

Stand Desk: Automatic and Affordable

by

If sitting is the new smoking, we all have one foot in the grave. While many of us toiling away in the knowledge economy have to sit to get any work done, sitting for any length of time during the day may reduce our life expectancy.

So why not stand and work at your computer?

Stand Desk, a San Francisco-based startup, has an answer to that.

90fc34299a8d3a305a443f971b9bf459_large

Billed as the “most affordable automatic standing desk so far,” Stand Desk launched a Kickstarter campaign and reached its goal of $50,000 in 38 minutes. Indeed, still with over a month to go, 886 backers have already pledged a whopping $339,435, blowing the original goal out of the water.

What makes Stand Desk so popular?

First of all, the benefits of standing desks in general are pretty clear: increased productivity, energy, and reduced lower back pain.

Standing desks can also prevent or reverse carpal tunnel syndrome, and standing for part of the work day can also prevent metabolic syndrome.

However, standing desks typically sell for thousands of dollars. They’re expensive.

Stand Desk’s price?  $399, just a fraction of what other standing desks cost.

Stand Desk is pretty cool. Simple motors automatically adjust the height of Stand Desk, meaning the desk can be used at sitting or standing height and adjusts at the press of a button.

Stand Desk is also smaller than other standing desks, which means it is easier to introduce into established office layouts.

Stand Desk made its product affordable by simplifying the mechanics that go into raising and lowering the height, with a range of 28 to 45 inches, which should accommodate people as tall as 6’3″. The desk top is made of bamboo or particle board.

Stand Desk founder Steven Yu and his Kickstarter campaign even made Hacker News, where there is a great thread with helpful hints about how to ease into using a standing desk full time.

New Twitter Layout

by

Twitter has been redesigned, and the new look and feel is said to resemble Facebook’s layout.

The Twitter blog announced the changes earlier this week, with the caveat that the redesigned profile pages are only effective for a select group of celebrity users for now, but will be rolled out globally in the coming weeks.

If you really can’t wait, you can sign up for a new account to take advantage of the new look.

While previously a user’s Twitter profile was a rather plain two-paned list of tweets, statistics, and hashtags, the new Twitter resembles a Facebook-style profile, with wide horizontal header images, bigger user pictures, and tabs for photos and videos, and followers.

Before and After

For example, here’s what Twitter’s design looks like right now for most users:

twitter before

And here is what Twitter’s interface is going to look like for everyone once the changes are rolled out over the next few weeks:

twitter after

There are several changes to how tweets appear on your user page, too. You can pin a tweet, forum-style, to the top of your Tweets as an extension to your bio, which is less visible under the left-aligned profile pic setup.

Your “best tweets,” defined by how much other users have interacted with it, will be enlarged to draw attention to them.

New accounts get the redesign straight away (so the best way to see what the new layout looks like might be to create a new Twitter account), and all other Twitter users will see their profile pages change in a few weeks.

Tectorian of the Week – EchoSec

by

tectorian_of_the_week.1_1_.2EchoSec, the brainchild of Karl Swannie and his Victoria-based team, is our Tectorian of the week.

Recently featured in a thought-provoking and somewhat alarming in-depth Vancouver Sun feature, EchoSec’s made-in-Victoria technology hunts for media that has been geo-tagged and is offered by open web servers, going beyond commonly used search tools to enable anyone to capture, curate, manage, process and visualize data in an entirely new way.

Combining geo-tagged location data with social media feeds

In a nutshell, EchoSec combines geo-tagged location data with social media feeds to learn just about anything about anyone online: where you live, where you work, what time you go to work, and possibly even what you were doing at work if you happened to be logged in to any number of popular social networks.

EchoSec aggregates all this information in a single search.

Indeed, the Vancouver Sun writer decided to randomly pick out a traveller at the Vancouver airport to see how much could learned from the traveller’s digital trail.

A completely unfiltered and real-time view of the world

Swannie and his team stumbled across their discovery by accident while working on a search engine to help urban planners determine how people use public spaces.

The EchoSec team is using their unique technology to demonstrate to police, governments, companies and even military organizations that they should be aware information is being shared that is timestamped, traceable, and can be “mined, followed and predicted.”

EchoSec’s unique way of harvesting and displaying dynamic and user-generated content from sites like Twitter, Foursquare and Instagram gives EchoSec a completely unfiltered and real-time view of the world.

Try out the free version of EchoSec and find out for yourself

The free, public version of the EchoSec search engine pulls from just a handful of feeds, while the full version will have close to 500 sources of information that can deliver everything from the risky to the risqué.

Try the EchoSec public app here.

Makerbot 3D Tattoo Printer

by

The days of terrible tattoo misprints caused by human error could soon be coming to an end.  Welcome to the do it yourself Makerbot 3D Tattoo Printer.

From a group of students led by Pierre Emm, the innovative idea grew from a competition called the “Public Domain Remix” hosted by the a The French Ministry of Culture.

Converted from a standard Makerbot 3D, original tests were done on an artificial skin material finding that it worked great!  The next step was to find a guinea pig that would allow them to test this procedure on a live human… surprisingly, there was no issue in finding a volunteer.

Want to build your own?  Here’s how to do it. 

[vimeo 89639653 w=500 h=281]

Tectorian of the Week

by

Chatterblock LogoChatterBlock is the social network for parents looking to connect with community organizations.  In a nutshell, they are the site with local community programs, events, drop-ins, schedules, and happenings.

2014 has already been an amazing year for the local tech company. This year to date they have launched to:

  1. Austin
  2. Lexington
  3. Omaha
  4. Nashville
  5. Oklahoma
  6. Little Rock Arkansas

Earlier this week ChatterBlock announced that they have embarked on a major product overhaul that is about 1 month away from launch.  What does this mean?  It means the website will be completely redesigned for mobile using responsive design methods using the Twitter Bootstrap web UI framework, and the site will be fully geo-localized as well.

What to stay connected with your community?  Visit the ChatterBlock website specific to your location, or follow them on Facebook.

 

 

Skirmos – Open Source Laser Tag

by

Skirmos Laser TagHave you ever dreamt of building your own laser tag course?  Imagine your favorite first-person shooter video game in real life. Welcome to Skirmos: Skirmish Open Source Laser Tag.

Skirmos is an open source laser tag system that can be used for any and every game possible. It has the flexibility to be played indoors or out; in small or large games. Its unique open source nature allows anyone to make their own creative gametypes. Whether it’s free-for-all or capture the flag, a realistic simulation, or a replica from your favorite video game, Skirmos can be played in any manner you can think of.

The Skirmos Kickstarter campaign has 13 days remaining.  Make your contribution today and bring this awesomeness to reality!