September 13, 2011
by stephen
Comments Off on Historic photos now in 3D
Miklós Falvay has used a series of historic photographs, and through the magic of software, has turned the images into a static 3D scene that the camera can explore. The whole process (modelling, texturing, compositing) was done with Blender 2.49, … Continue reading
September 11, 2011
by stephen
Comments Off on Gen Y plays, but Gen X pays
Flurry Analytics have published an interesting report on the different demographics for App revenue and App usage, “Mobile Freemium Games: Gen Y Plays, but Gen X Pays“: Players aged 25-54 account for 77% of the revenue, but only 44% of … Continue reading
September 11, 2011
by stephen
Comments Off on Moral hazards of plagiarism detection
In my earlier post, Unintended consequences of plagiarism detection, I discussed the relative merits of allocating scare resources to pursuing bad students, versus enriching the learning environment for the good students. David Harrington has written an interesting article, (Moral) Hazards … Continue reading
September 11, 2011
by stephen
Comments Off on Shopping centre now recording all licence plates
Westfield Bondi Junction in Sydney has just released a new iPhone App that lets shoppers find their parked car by entering the licence plate number. The App responds with an image of the vehicle, and directions on how to find … Continue reading
September 9, 2011
by stephen
Comments Off on iTunes U tops 25 million downloads per month
Apple: iTunes U tops 600 million downloads: In researching my recent story, iTunes U: Educating the world, Apple provided me with some updated figures for its free education portal on iTunes. According to Apple, iTunes U has had more than … Continue reading
September 9, 2011
by stephen
1 Comment
NYU Prof Vows Never to Probe Cheating Again—and Faces a Backlash: A New York University professor’s blog post is opening a rare public window on the painful classroom consequences of using plagiarism-detection software to aggressively police cheating students. The result … Continue reading
September 8, 2011
by stephen
Comments Off on How The Transistor Got Its Name
Adafruit have dug up a memo from Bell Labs dated 1948, running a ballot to name the new device that would eventually be known as the Transistor:
September 8, 2011
by stephen
Comments Off on Mobile Phone Patent Wars
Last March, Apple sued HTC over patent infringement in Android phones. Now HTC has counter-sued Apple, this time using 9 patents it acquired from Google on September 1, including some patents Google recently acquired from Motorola. Google makes the Android … Continue reading
September 3, 2011
by stephen
Comments Off on Happy 30th, HP 12C
The HP 12C calculator just turned 30. It remains the dominant financial pocket calculator, and is still the recommended calculator for most finance courses including CFA and CPA exams. In addition to the financial functions and RPN notation that make … Continue reading
September 3, 2011
by stephen
Comments Off on When will a competitor for the iPad arrive?
The iPad is completely dominant in the tablet space. With around 70% market share, it is the product that every competitor’s product is measured against. And those competitors have all been failures so far. So why have they failed: They … Continue reading