Informatica Information Systems » Science and Technology

Visual Mobile Translation: Word Lens

Sharif Al Motawally — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 20:55:12 +0000

Word Lens has just been released on iOS (iPhone, iPod touch, sorry iPad comeback when you get a camera). The app introduces visual mobile translation. It currently works only on English-Spanish and Spanish-English but the concept is very promising. Just use your phone camera to look at signs in the other language the translation replaces it with you desired language. That simple and that amazing. Watch the video and you will see for yourself.

YouTube – Introducing Word Lens.

3D Video Capture with Kinect

Sharif Al Motawally — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 19:24:32 +0000

Human ingenuity never ceases to amaze me. in mere days after the Microsoft Kinect is hacked to be connected to a PC a genius has been able to use it as a 3d camera. Watch and learn that there is no limit to what one bright mind can do. let alone an internet of minds.

Grand Challenges in Global Health | Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Sharif Al Motawally — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 19:41:31 +0000

Grand Challenges in Global Health

“The Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative is focused on engaging creative minds to work on scientific and technological breakthroughs for the world’s most pressing health problems. Grand Challenges Explorations is a grant program within the initiative that fosters innovative, early-stage research to expand the pipeline of ideas that can lead to those much needed global health solutions.”

via Grand Challenges in Global Health | Grand Challenges Explorations | Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Laurie Santos: A monkey economy as irrational as ours

Sharif Al Motawally — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 21:42:29 +0000

Laurie Santos presents an intriguing TED talk on human/primate behavior, psychology and economics. A must watch.

Henry Markram builds a brain in a supercomputer

Sharif Al Motawally — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 05:09:37 +0000

Don’t be fooled by Henry’s very calm speech patterns and intonation. This is one hugely exciting TED talk. very inspiring on many levels

Polymorphic Nature of Knowledge

Sharif Al Motawally — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 00:51:36 +0000

“Knowledge is a polymorphic concept” (Moteleb & Bakry 2004). Knowledge, information, and data are different facets to the same thing. One thing could mean data in a certain context and the same thing could mean information or knowledge in different contexts.

Full article at the source: Polymorphic Nature of Knowledge.

Ontology of KMS Elements

Sharif Al Motawally — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 00:49:20 +0000

Knowledge management often refers to various theories and definitions. However, there is a lack of consensus on what exactly knowledge management is and what constitutes a knowledge management system.

Full Article at the source: Ontology of KMS Elements.

Stanford Offers free online courses

Sharif Al Motawally — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 14:45:00 +0000

Stanford has followed MIT (previously posted here just search) and is now offering a wide variety of engineering courses that include computer science, and artificial intelligence. See below for their original announcement:

Welcome to Stanford Engineering Everywhere (SEE)

For the first time in its history, Stanford is offering some of its most popular engineering classes free of charge to students and educators around the world. Stanford Engineering Everywhere (SEE) expands the Stanford experience to students and educators online. A computer and an Internet connection is all you need. View lecture videos, access reading lists and other course handouts, take quizzes and tests, and communicate with other SEE students, all at your convenience.
This fall, SEE launches its programming by offering one of Stanford’s most popular sequences: the three-course Introduction to Computer Science taken by the majority of Stanford’s undergraduates and seven more advanced courses in artificial intelligence and electrical engineering.
Stanford Engineering Everywhere offers:

Anytime and anywhere access to complete lecture videos via streaming or downloaded media.
Full course materials including syllabi, handouts, homework, and exams.
Online social networking with fellow SEE students.
Support for PCs, Macs and mobile computing devices.

Stanford encourages fellow educators to use Stanford Engineering course materials in their own classrooms. A Creative Commons license allows for free and open use, reuse, adaptation and redistribution of Stanford Engineering Everywhere material.

Get Started

Great science and technology podcasts

mrn — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 06:36:00 +0000

These very informative podcasts have broadened my horizon and helped me through the long and boring traffic (and sometimes boring days at work)

You can either download them manually or subscribe to them on iTunes or zune and it will download new podcasts regularly.

Have a great listen!

The naked scientists (60min.) : Weekly show, discusses various scientific and technological topics, and has a weekly “kitchen science” segment which you could try at home.
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/

Tech Weekly (30min.) : Discusses contemporary science topics.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/series/techweekly

Material Matters (30min.)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/podcasts/material/

Science in Action (30min.)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/podcasts/scia/

Science with Dr. Karl (60min.): Dr. Karl answers all sorts of itchy science questions from all over the world
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/podcasts/drkarl/