Month: May 2009

As Nick mentioned in his post yesterday, Google has launched Sky Map, an astronomy application for the Android mobile system that lets you gaze at stars in a more original way. You no longer have to worry about city light contamination or clouds covering up the sky. In fact, you don’t even need to wait until night comes. With Sky Map you can look at the stars anytime, anywhere, right on your mobile phone screen.

The app takes a while to load, though according to Google developers these slow start-up times have been improved in the latest version. Right after launching, Sky Map shows the star map that’s currently over your head, according to your position – which the phone establishes via GPS.

Thanks to Android’s special sensors and the great compass functionality, Sky Map detects the direction you’re facing or moving, changing the star layout in real time accordingly. The overall effect is really impressive!

If you press the menu button on your phone, you’ll get a menu bar with three options: search, settings and about. The Search function also makes use of Android’s compass: simply enter the name of any sky element you want to locate (planets, satellites, stars) and an arrow will indicate where you should point your phone to in order to find that object.

The settings menu lets you choose which layers to show and which ones to hide, and also includes the possibility to set your location manually, either by entering a postal address or by using latitude and longitude degrees.

Tapping on the screen also gives you access to the choice of layers, as well as to the zoom menu. Unfortunately no matter how much you zoom in, you won’t get any realistic photos: just dots and lines.

Sky Map is a fun app that astronomy lovers will surely love. As for the rest of us, I guess it’s a nice way to show off our phone’s capabilities to other people – and drain the battery a bit more, for that matter.

Pocket PC : Using your mobile to watch online video? Why not give vtap a go? Search for videos without opening a web browser, or even visiting the site. Vtap pulls content from most major video sites, providing a convenient way to watch whatever you want from your Pocket PC.

Mac: If you’ve ever read Dave Allen’s Getting Things Done then the newly updated Things might help you put some of his advice into practice. Things is an innovative task management program for Mac which lets you easily create tasks and organize them by type and importance in guiding you to become a more efficient worker.

Windows: If an e-reader is a gadget too far for you, but you like the idea of reading an electronic newspaper in its intended format, The New York Times TimesReader may be an answer. It’s really readable, and beautifully presented. This may be the model for the survival of newspapers in the future.

Play Pizza City! [Adult Swim]

Google Street view skids to a halt in Greece [BBC]

Facebook under fire for not banning extremist groups [The Guardian]

Good advice for using public PCs and WiFi [MakeUseOf.com]

Wolfram Alpha goes live May 18th [Gizmodo]

Brain Training – does it make you stupid? [Gamesindustry.biz]

This is not the first time we’ve covered with Photoshop actions on the blog. We’ve already showed you how to create them, and also how to install and use them. But with thousands of actions available on the web, how can you find the most suitable ones for your photo editing needs? Worry not: we’ve done the hard work for you. Here’s a list of useful Photoshop actions you can use for different purposes, from basic photo retouching to applying a striking effect in a couple of clicks. Enjoy!

Polaroid Generator – A pack of 9 actions that enable you to recreate fake Polaroid pictures.

Hand-Colored Vintage – Turn your photos into dusty old images, with scratches and all.

Pseudo HDR – Mimic a High Dynamic Range effect without having to take a dozen shots.

Soften skin – Clean the skin in your portraits while keeping original textures and a natural look.

Edge Effects – A pack of 8 actions that let you add different edge effects to your images.

Color Actions – Apply diverse color filters to spice up your photos.

Page Curl – Make one of the four corners of your image curl in one click.

Tack-it! – Pin your photo to a virtual bulletin board, with lots of customization options.

Comics – Make your images look like a comic strip.

The Big Picture – Turn your photos into a collage made up of 25 individual images.

The concept of a human and a robot becoming friends has traditionally been reserved for movies like Flight of the Navigator or Short Circuit. However, after years of keeping themselves to themselves, it seems that robots are finally opening up to human contact. Having read that an Arab robot is setting up his own Facebook page, I decided I’d take to the Web and see if I could strike up a friendship with some synthesized beings. I’ve always been interested in chat bots (or ‘artificial conversational entities’ to give them their correct name) and the technology has improved a lot since the very primitive ELIZA talking robot of the Sixties. Here are some of the most talkative robots on the Internet.

Eugene Goosman –  I got on quite well with Eugene at first. We started with the usual pleasantries about where we live, what we do for a living, etc. Then we ended up having a conversation about music and Eugene told me why he loves British pop but hates Kraftwerk and Britney Spears. He’s a nice kid but I don’t think we have too much in common and he ended up annoying me by talking about his home town of Odessa too much and not really listening to what I had to say.

Anna from IKEA – This Swedish blonde was not only better to look at than that speccy nerd Eugene, but she can actually speak too, albeit with a thick robot accent. Anna impressed me with her nice smile and knowledge of pine wardrobes. If I had a question about furniture Anna invariably knew the answer, taking me to the appropriate page on the IKEA site so I could learn more. When I tried to get a little more personal by asking her how old she was she was very quick to tell me that this was a purely professional relationship and not to even go there. I guess I was too pushy.

Elbot -At last, a robot with a personality! Elbot cracked me up with his witty one-liners and cheeky put-downs. He’s pretty smart too, and we spoke about a wide range of subjects from religion (of which he said: “as long as there is no human religion that accepts robots as the epitome of creation I will reserve judgment”) to baseball scores (this guy gets turned on by hearing numbers). I feel that Elbot and I really bonded – he even offered to make me a friendship ring from some leftover wires in his brain.

Julia – I never thought a human and a Verbot (intelligent software robot) could strike up a relationship, but that changed as soon as I downloaded Julia. I initially hired her as a personal assistant for her ability to help with day-to-day computing tasks. She can respond to commands such as “take me to Yahoo” or “search the web for ‘monkeys'”. Soon we became friends and I grew to like her strange smile, sexy robo voice and ditsy comments. She seemed to like me too, saying I was “fun to talk to”.

iGod – It’s not every day you get to chat with God (unless you’re a monk) so I was pleased to have the chance to chew the fat with the big man. We had a good chat about football (his favorite team is New Orleans) then we got onto the subject of religion (where he revealed that he was a Christian – we thought he’d be a bit more ecumenical than that), before a debate about music (he’s a big fan of Creed). God came across as a really good guy and was forever paying me compliments. Of all the chatbots I befriended, he seemed like the best at giving advice.

Alice –  By far the most intelligent of all the robots I hung out with, Alice gets her brains from her AIML (Artificial Intelligence Markup Language) programming. I felt I could’ve talked to her for ages – her responses were always accurate to my questions and at times I had to remember I was talking with a bot and not a human. Alice’s sense of humor wasn’t quite as developed as Elbots and she seemed to take offense to a lot of jokes I made. In fact she seems like quite an unstable robot and her constant crashing drove us apart in the end.

If you’re interested in learning more about chat bots then have a look at The Chatterbox Challenge, where you’ll find more examples of human-robot interaction.