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Powerful One Terabyte High Definition DVR With Integrated Slingbox Features Radical Departure From Traditional STB by Introducing Touchpad Remote Control and Tile-Based User Interface.

EchoStar Technologies LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of EchoStar Corporation (NASDAQ: SATS), introduced today at the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show the EchoStar SlingLoaded(TM) 922 HD DVR, the world’s first high definition digital video recorder that incorporates Sling Media’s patented placeshifting technology.

The EchoStar 922’s unique user interface and remote control were selected as CES Innovations 2009 Design and Engineering Award honorees. Demonstrations of the 922 will be held in the Sling Media, Inc., booth and in the DISH Network Corporation booth located in the southeast corner of Central Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center Jan. 8-11.

The EchoStar 922 is an entertainment centerpiece combining the best of video and IP technologies into a stylish, black-chassis, set-top box displaying a capacitive-touch, backlit front bezel. By integrating Sling Media’s Slingbox technology, the EchoStar 922 allows TV aficionados to watch and control their favorite TV shows and sporting events from anywhere in the world via a broadband Internet connection on their laptop or mobile phone. Accessing multiple video sources, viewers will never run out of shows to watch. The EchoStar 922 features a massive 1 terabyte hard drive for up to 1,000 hours of storage and supports connecting an external hard drive for more storage.

The EchoStar 922 is a revolutionary departure from the traditional cable or satellite set-top box. Its touchpad remote control, which eliminates half the buttons of a standard remote control, gives users cursor-like navigation on their TV screen. With a slide of the thumb, viewers experience scroll-over activation of widget-like tiles and pop-up menus, all selectable by an underside index finger trigger. These radio frequency remote controls offer two-way learning of codes from other AV equipment remote controls and can store DVR timers, favorites lists and other viewer preferences for ease of resetting or replacing equipment.The new user interface goes beyond traditional text-based user interfaces by using movie poster graphics, tiles or widget-based menus, and cursor-type navigation for a powerful yet simplified user experience that is highly adaptable to future applications. The EchoStar 922’s menu displays integrated RSS feeds, giving viewers instant access to national news, weather, sports, and stock quotes. The 922 also organizes channels by channel name or number.

The EchoStar 922 can be controlled via the Internet using SlingGuide(TM), a new web-based way to control your TV viewing experience. SlingGuide features a powerful search engine for the TV and the ability to schedule the EchoStar 922 DVR timers remotely.

Other 922 features include the following:

–  Supports 1080p, 1080i, 720p, 480i, and 480p.
–  Internet-delivered Video on Demand.
–  Users can move forward one day at a time in the guide while browsing a
full or partial screen program guide.
–  Connect to the home network via Ethernet, HomePlug Turbo (using home
power lines), or WiFi (with optional WiFi adapter).
–  Comprehensive search capability across all available video sources,
including IP, VOD, linear TV or DVR.
–  Intuitive timer creation and DVR management, allowing users to
categorize programming by groups (video source, title, genres) or by
content description (date, length, ratings and more).
–  Load photos, MP3s and selected Internet content.
–  Future upgrades may include photo sharing, movie ticket purchases,
family calendar, instant messaging, streaming audio, and ability to
transfer content within a home network.

Digital media operators, including cable, telco and satellite, can benefit from the design and engineering expertise of EchoStar and the features of its 922, including its ability to reduce operational-related customer calls while providing a platform for launching multiple customer-requested content and features beyond linear programming. Diagnostic software tools allow service providers to analyze and cater to the needs of their overall customer base, improving customer service and reducing churn.

“EchoStar and Sling’s software and hardware engineers have created one of the most powerful set-top boxes ever made, with the ability to watch television and other media anywhere in the home or anyplace in the world,” said Mark Jackson, president of EchoStar Technologies L.L.C. “Embedding the SlingLoaded suite of technologies, we’re harnessing the robust search and discovery tools we take for granted on the Internet and bringing them to the DVR. In short, SlingLoaded technologies are redefining what a set-top box is.”

EchoStar will deliver the EchoStar 922 to its first operator, DISH Network, in spring 2009 as the HD DuoDVR(TM) SlingLoaded(TM) ViP® 922, furnishing satellite TV customers with a break-through TV experience and letting DISH Network customers take their favorite shows on the road or into another room. EchoStar will also leverage the features of the 922 by announcing this spring a tru2way SlingLoaded STB for trials for the cable industry.

Sources: SlingMedia & CNN

Asustek Computer is planning to launch notebooks featuring a touch panel in the first or second quarter of 2009, according to sources at panel makers, in addition to Eee PCs as previously reported.

Asustek’s new touch panel notebooks are expected to take advantage of Windows 7, said the sources. Asustek showed concept notebooks featuring two touch panels during Computex 2008.

AU Optronics (AUO) and Chi Mei Optoelectronics (CMO) are planning to launch 11.6-inch notebook panels in February next year, which along with 12.1-inch make possible candidate sizes for the upcoming touch panel notebooks, noted the sources, adding that Asustek has not yet decided what size its notebook will be.

source: Digitimes

Take it with a grain of salt, or many grains of sand, if you want, when the young volunteers say that every one of the 60 or 70 people helping to put on Wikipedia’s annual convention here (called Wikimania) is active on Facebook.Not one exception? No. The young women in head scarves who patiently explain what can or cannot be done on Friday, according to Islam? Absolutely.

Then there is the young man who is part of the Facebook group devoted to the TV show “Friends.” “Facebook for me is just a way to keep in touch with friends,” said Yehia Hassaan, 18, a medical student. “Some of my friends, they are addicts. Always updating their status, changing their photos.”

Ahmad Belal, a 23-year-old medical student who came from Cairo to attend the conference, is one of those particularly enthusiastic users with hundreds of friends.

“For Egyptians the visa procedure for any country is very difficult,” he said. “You need a visa to visit any country in the world. Facebook and Wikipedia connect us to the outside.”

In the spring, a protest against rising food prices and the government took root on Facebook, with a page that had more than 75,000 members. The Facebook movement overlapped with a textile workers strike, and the government response was swift and severe.

The main organizer was arrested, and according to The Washington Post, said he was stripped and beaten by the security services in Cairo. Another organizer, Israa Abdel Fattah, a 27-year-old human resources administrator with no political experience who helped administer the Facebook page, was also arrested. A Free Israa group quickly emerged - she was called the Facebook Girl - with, at one time, tens of thousands joining up.

The young people at Wikimania were not afraid to talk about those recent events. Some said they had feared that Facebook would be shut down, but Kareem Mohamed, 20, a student of engineering in Alexandria, stated matter-of-factly, “that is not possible.”

Perhaps it is this context that explains the enthusiasm for building a stronger Arabic Wikipedia among the young people here, and the evangelism about contributing articles in their native language.

Among the Arab attendees, who were not exclusively from the world of computer science - many are medical students, others in engineering and architecture - the woeful shape of the Arabic Wikipedia has been the cause of chagrin. It has fewer than 65,000 articles, and ranks 29th among the various Wikipedias, just behind Slovenian, and well behind the artificial tongue Esperanto.

Among the problems, less than 10 percent of the 80 million Egyptians are thought to have Internet access. And those with access tend to know English and prefer to communicate that way.

Elsewhere, writing articles for Wikipedia can appear to be a quirky obsession or mere hobby - other Wikipedia conferences have had a bit of a Star-Trek-convention feel to them. In Egypt, writing for Wikipedia is something more like a national priority.

“It is more important to spread free knowledge here,” said Mohamed Ibrahim, 22, who was born and raised in Alexandria, and just completed a degree in architecture. He said one of his fellow organizers had made a good point: “The gap between the Arab world and the Western world is not about money or politics. It is about knowledge. There are many examples of Egyptians who travel to Europe or the U.S. and become successful. If people had access to the same knowledge …, ” he said, trailing off.

Ahmed Tantawy, the technical director of IBM in the Middle East, spoke in the convention center of the new Alexandria Library and said, “Arabic content today is nothing,” holding his fingers close together. “Do kids chat with each other in English or Arabic? Most likely Arabic, I think.”

Into that vacuum enters Wikipedia. Ismail Serageldin, the director of the library, which is built on the site of the ancient treasury of manuscripts, said that Wikipedia could make up for the absence of a reliable, regularly updated encyclopedia, along the lines of Brittannica. “When intellectuals got around to transforming our country, in the 19th century, they were tackling other issues,” he said.

Material on Wikipedia is something that may be quickly ignored in the West, he said, but in Egypt, “it brings knowledge to the poor.”

“We have a generation gap that is huge,” Serageldin said. “Scholars in Egypt don’t use computers, and the younger people are very Internet savvy. We need to get young people involved.”

Nahla Ghoneim, a 23-year-old computer engineer at IT Works, said at the conference that young people in Egypt need to get involved in information technology “not just as consumers.”

“That is one of the problems here in Egypt,” she said. “We are consumers instead of contributors to technology. Wikipedia is a first step to getting involved.”

source: International Herald Tribune

Sony’s LCD TV panel supply this year will still chiefly come from S-LCD and Taiwan-based makers despite its recent deal with Sharp to build a 10G line, according to company president Ryoji Chubachi.

Chubachi maintained that the 10G joint venture will not be established until 2009, and therefore Taiwan and Korea remain Sony’s major source of LCD TV panels in 2008.

The president said that for 2008 Sony aims to take a 15-20% share of the worldwide LCD TV market, which is estimated will reach a size of 100 million units for the year.

Chubachi declined to reveal figures concerning Sony’s panel purchases from Taiwan for 2008. He said that the company saw an increase of 10-20% in its panel procurement from Taiwan in 2007 and expects further increases in 2008.

Chubachi made the remarks in Taipei as the company kicked off the annual Sony Fair in Taiwan. It is the fifth year that the Sony Fair has been held in Taiwan to showcase the company’s products and reinforce its brand image.

source: DigiTimes

I love anything Nano (except the ipod =P). Here is some amazing Nano-Art I’ve come across online. Take a long look and admire their beauty.

   

The wires are made of a material called silicon carbide, and researchers hope to use these wires to develop the next generation of electronic devices.

 

The flowers were made and photographed by Ghim Wei Ho, a graduate student at the Nanoscale Center at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom.

 

 Failed oxidation of a piece of silicon, which went south because not enough chromium was used

 

This image of a nanowire octapus, by Zhengwei Pan

“T4 Bacteriophage” is a virus-like robot in the living body. Made of carbon, it was fabricated by FIB-CVD on a Si surface and is about ten times as large as the real virus
Magnification: 25,000X by Reo Kometani & Shinji Matsui

Educators at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have used rapid prototyping to create plaster models of nanostructures.

 

Ruptured blood vessel by Anne Weston

Red Blood Cells by Annie Cavanagh

 

Breast Cancer Cells by Annie Cavanagh

And lastly, my favourite…. 

Nano-explosions by Fanny Beron

 

This may perhaps change the way we use any objects ever again, allowing us the embed circuitry into the tinyiest of places. Check out the article below!

The stretchy circuits could be used to build advanced brain implants, health monitors or smart clothing.

The complex devices consist of concertina-like folds of ultra-thin silicon bonded to sheets of rubber.

Writing in the journal Science, the US researchers say the chip’s performance is similar to conventional electronics.

“Silicon microelectronics has been a spectacularly successful technology that has touched virtually every part of our lives,” said Professor John Rogers of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, one of the authors of the paper.

But, he said, the rigid and fragile nature of silicon made it very unattractive for many applications, such as biomedical implants.

“In many cases you’d like to integrate electronics conformably in a variety of ways in the human body - but the human body does not have the shape of a silicon wafer.”

Read the rest of this article on BBC Technology

Google TiSP (BETA) is a fully functional, end-to-end system that provides in-home wireless access by connecting your commode-based TiSP wireless router to one of thousands of TiSP Access Nodes via fiber-optic cable strung through your local municipal sewage lines.

source: Google 

Microsoft Corp. will release Windows XP Service Pack 3 during the second half of April, according to a report from a Web site that has correctly predicted recent Windows ship dates.TechARP.com, a Malaysian Web site that nailed Vista SP1’s release-to-manufacturing (RTM) date last month as well as its release to Windows Update last week, said that Microsoft will wrap up work on XP’s third and final service pack next month. The site pegged RTM for Windows XP SP3 as “second half of April 2008″ for seven languages, with a follow-on RTM of the remaining supported languages “approximately 21 days” later.

By TechARP’s account, Microsoft will first finish work on the Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese, Korean and Spanish versions of the service pack.

Microsoft declined comment, other than to repeat an earlier statement about the service pack’s timing. “We are targeting 1H [first half] 2008 for the release of XP SP3 RTM, though our timing will always be based on customer feedback as a first priority,” a spokeswoman said in an e-mail.

The last time Microsoft made a public move with Windows XP SP3 was a little over a month ago, when it posted a second release candidate to Windows Update.

About two weeks ago, however, XP SP3 caused a minor stir when what was purportedly the newest build leaked to the Internet and hit BitTorrent search sites such as The Pirate Bay. Although Microsoft initially refused comment, last week it acknowledged that the build — designated 5503 — was real and had been released to a portion of the invitation-only beta test group.

It also warned users away from any download. “This build was not intended for public release and anyone who has that build and is not part of the private beta is working with bits that Microsoft can’t verify,” a company spokeswoman said in an e-mail last week. “It’s possible the bits may have been modified with malware or other bad code that Microsoft hasn’t tested.”

Multiple versions of XP SP3 build 5503, including English- and Russian-language editions, are available via BitTorrent.

Once SP3 ships, the next major milestones for Windows XP are June 30, when the popular operating system is slated to fall off the reseller and retail availability list, and Jan. 31, 2009, when it will be taken out of all distribution channels, including system builders.

source: Computer World

Microsoft Corp. is offering free support to any Windows Vista user experiencing problems with installing Service Pack 1 (SP1), according to a company spokesman.”[Anyone] needing technical support regarding your installation of Windows Vista SP1, please go to the following URL and choose the bottom option that says, ‘Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (All Languages),’” said Brandon LeBlanc, a Microsoft employee who posted several comments to the company’s Vista blog. The link LeBlanc pointed users to led to a Vista SP1-specific support site.

“You have a variety of options you can choose for support, all of which will not cost you any support fee,” said LeBlanc. “I repeat: Support for SP1 will not cost you anything.”

“That’s a good move on their part,” said Michael Cherry, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft.

The SP1 site offers support via e-mail, online chat and telephone, and it lists hours of operation for the last two options. Free phone support, for instance, is available from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. Pacific time on weekdays and from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. Pacific time on weekends. The free support will be available for one year, and it covers installation and compatibility issues.

Normally, Microsoft offers no-cost support only to users who bought Windows at retail. Users who obtained the operating system already installed on a PC are referred to the computer manufacturer or reseller; the company’s for-fee support runs $59 per request unless the user or business has a prepaid support plan with Microsoft.

That policy, as well as the wording of the Vista SP1 support site as late as last Friday, confused one user commenting on the same thread. “You cannot get free support from [Microsoft] if Vista came preloaded on your HP. At least, that is what the Web site indicates,” said “romroyer.”

LeBlanc quickly replied. “You are incorrect. We are offering free-of-charge support to anyone who is having issues installing Windows Vista SP1 — even folks like ‘pat’ [an earlier commenter on the thread] who may be using a [reseller] copy of Windows Vista that came with their HP laptop,” he said. “Again, anyone can get free support for installation issues of SP1.”

By Sunday, Microsoft had modified the Vista SP1 support site and removed references directing users to contact their resellers if they had acquired Vista on new computers. The site’s wording had been altered to read: “No charge: Unlimited support requests.”

That’s Microsoft’s standard support policy for service packs, a spokeswoman said in an e-mail. “The no-fee support is actually part of our Windows Service Pack policy, not something specific to Windows Vista SP1,” she wrote.

Microsoft, however, has done little to broadcast news of the free SP1 support. The home page for the Windows Vista Solution Center, the operating system’s help and support starting point, makes no mention of it, nor does Microsoft’s main Windows Vista SP1 site.

source: Computer World

“Drive” is what we call the new and beautiful car navigation feature. It looks great and is easy to use while driving: change “views” by clicking left or right, select functions from a “grid” menu. The Drive interface is transparent black and the turning arrows dynamically show the exact angle of the turn. Check out driving time and average speed for your journey and plan multiple stopover routes.

I’m very excited about a new feature that we call “Walk”. It lets you find your way in the city when you are on foot. It is easy to use and discreet (no voice instructions). Small “breadcrumbs” are shown where you have been walking so you easily see what direction to take. “Walk” is included in the navigation license for car navigation but can also be purchased separately. If you have already purchased car navigation with older Maps version, you will now get “Walk” free of charge!

The beta offers satellite maps in 200 cities worldwide. Satellite maps can be turned on when browsing the map and also in “Walk”. The satellite maps are downloaded over the air and are saved automatically. Next time you start Maps the satellite maps will be there, no need to download them again.

The search is much, much improved. It is now as simple as typing part of street names or a place in a search box. Search results are listed by category (addresses, cities, restaurants etc.)

Places are personal. You are now able to save places as favorites, create collections (folders for places) and even save your routes.

What else? Better 3D mode and overall faster, better, and more beautiful

Upgrading to Maps 2.0 Beta is easy. You can continue using your old maps and licenses. It is also possible to upgrade your map data using the new Map Loader (also provided from beta labs). You need to run the Maps beta once first in the phone before connecting to PC.

Grab Nokia Maps 2.0 Beta while it is hot and let us know what you think about it!

Note that since this is a beta, some less important functions may be ‘limited’. We are still working on the traffic feature for car navigation. We’ll keep you posted when that gets available too.

Tip 1: Shortcut keys in the map

• Use * and # keys to zoom in and out in the map
• Use to 0 key to go to “My position”
• Use the 1 key to change map modes (2D, 3D, Satellite, Hybrid)

Tip 2: Shortcut keys in Drive mode

• The “grid” (options menu) layout imitates the keyboard. Items in the grid are also accessible directly through the keyboard.
• The same shortcuts are also available in Walk

source: Nokia Beta Labs

Although Google has been talking about video advertising since May of last year, it has only now decided to introduce the service to its AdSense program.

After a long review period, Google has decided to use the solution the company is already using for advertising on YouTube called InVideo. With InVideo, ads are shown taking up a position on the lower edge of the video that is playing. The ads shown are either animated with images or just text overlay advertisements. Clicking on an ad will either take you to another webpage or open up a new advertisement video as an overlay on the video you are watching.

The service will be known as AdSense for video and is currently in beta. Website owners can choose to include the advertising on videos they already have or sign up to have videos supplied to their site that include advertising. Google sees this as a way of adding extra content to your site as well as earning you revenue from advertising.

So far, Google has signed up 20 major customers for the service, including the advertising agency YuMe Networks and Brightcove, which counts Time Warner on its customer list.

Read more at Reuters .

Just like rogue employees in the 1990s forced instant messaging into corporations, the new Google Apps Team Edition being launched on Thursday offers a way for workers to slip a hosted apps service into the enterprise.

This could help Google in its efforts to lure more people off desktop applications sold by Microsoft and onto the mostly free Web-based apps Google offers.

Google Apps Team Edition is a free service that lets people within the same e-mail domain collaborate easily with Google Apps, a package that includes Docs, Calendar, Talk, and Start Page.

Unlike IM applications, which open communication to anyone on the Web using a compatible IM app, Google Apps Team Edition lets you share with people only in your same organization.

Google’s stand-alone hosted apps for consumers haven’t really made a splash in the corporate world, largely because of the security threats posed by how easy they make it to share sensitive work data with people outside the company.

So Google created Google Apps, a free Standard Edition and a Premier Edition that has a fee. These editions give an administrator control over how the apps are used, allowing for services to be disabled, new services like Gmail to be added, and integration with apps for things like single sign-on. Google offers security and government regulation compliance services for those editions 9789901 through its Postini acquisition.

“People are already using the consumer (hosted Google) apps in the workplace, like they did IM a decade ago,” said Jeremy Milo, senior marketing manager for Google Apps. “We’re trying to bring more security by introducing the notion of domain awareness.”

The Team Edition offers a compromise for workers who want to use the apps in a company that isn’t already using Google Apps or if the company lacks an IT administrator. An administrator can always step in and switch from Team Edition to Standard or Premier if they want. And a new domain can be acquired through the Standard Edition for $10 for those who need a uniform e-mail domain.

With Team Edition anyone can open an account and start using the apps with anyone within the organization. For instance, a group working on a team project could use Google Apps Team Edition and be able to access the shared documents from any computer over the Internet.

“Google Apps Team Edition is another on ramp” to Web-hosted apps, Milo said. “They are one more way for businesses to get comfortable with computing in the cloud and anywhere, any time access to critical information.”

source: CNet

Large-scale digital music distribution is bringing about a profound revolution in the way we ‘consume’ music. The market is still in flux, but it is very clear that the hi-fi systems of the future will be significantly different to what we see today, say European researchers.

With the advent of compressed music files (MP3) and easily accessible internet file exchange and download services, consumers are increasingly turning to personal mini-databases of music files (iPod, MP3 players) for their musical enjoyment. The CD market has already taken a hard knock and many predict its imminent demise. The hi-fi market is also suffering with sales decreasing steadily every year.

In the future, the boundaries between the stereo system, computer and the television will become more and more blurred, but how the various functions will combine, and what new ones will emerge, is still ‘a work in progress’.

The Semantic Hi-Fi project explored the possibilities opened up by the digital revolution and paved the way for the next wave of hi-fi, including a number of new features likely to change fundamentally the way we listen to and interact with music.

“Music is no longer limited by a fixed format. Network-based distribution has freed music from the limits imposed by these formats and opened a whole new range of possibilities which will encourage greater interaction with musical pieces,” says Hugues Vinet of the French music and acoustics research centre, IRCAM, which coordinated the project.

Introducing the active listener

The working prototype of this next-generation hi-fi, produced by the EU-funded Semantic Hi-Fi, incorporates a number of new functionalities to help promote a more interactive listening experience.

Using either a hand-held, touch screen remote, or the touch screen display on the central unit, the user will, for example, be able to visualise the structure of a piece through a graphic display which will enable them to navigate smoothly within a piece and even to modify elements of the musical composition: slow the tempo down, speed it up, modify the relative weight of different instruments in the piece, or remove them altogether…

Some of the results of the project have already been incorporated into new products. Project partner, Native Instruments, used many of Semantic Hi-Fi’s features for its ‘Traktor DJ Studio 3’ DJ software solution, hailed as one of the market leaders in its field. The prototype developed by the project also incorporated many of these ‘professional’ tools into a home system accessible to all music lovers.

“The hi-fi of the future will make sophisticated software tools for professional musicians available to a wider public,” notes Vinet. “Owners of next-generation hi-fi will be able to do more than just passively listen, they will have a tool which also allows them to manipulate music and to create new pieces themselves.”

Hi-fis of the future will be linked up to the internet, and it will be possible to share personal works with others through peer-to-peer (P2P) systems. The project has not overlooked the issue of copyright, either.

“The P2P systems envisaged will respect the songs’ copyrights by only transmitting the information necessary for editing and modifying them,” stresses Vinet.

The ability to extract and display a whole range of information – tempo, key, lyrics, musical score – on a musical piece should also deepen the listeners musical knowledge and appreciation.

Managing your music

One of the challenges of the digital hi-fi will be managing extensive databases of music. It will no longer be a matter of simply grabbing a favourite CD from the shelf but of trawling through a database of perhaps tens of thousands of pieces. Semantic Hi-Fi, which concluded in November 2006, continued the work of Cuidado, an earlier EU-funded project, developing search engines capable of extracting information on musical content and providing tools for the effective management of musical ‘libraries’.

As a result of this work, users of future hi-fi can expect to be able to navigate easily through their collections using search criteria, such as tempo, genre, instrumentation, in addition to the traditional search criteria of artist and title. If you have a particular tune running through your head, but no information on it, you can simply hum the tune into the system’s microphone and it will find it for you!

You can also start from a reference piece and search for those similar to it according to selected musical criteria. You can classify and retrieve your songs by defining your own musical categories from a set of track examples that will be automatically generalised to your whole database. Last but not least, the system computes ‘musical summaries’ that give a global idea, within a few tens of seconds, of the main changes occurring in the pieces (intro, chorus, verses, solos, etc.), thus enabling rapid ‘auditory browsing’.

Many of the results of the project are now available for licensing and several are being developed further within the context on new research projects. Targeted applications include multimedia search engines, music portals, and automatic play-list generation.

Adapted from materials provided by ICT Results.

source: Science Daily

Mad Scientists are doing something crazy once again! Little Shapeshifting robots are being studied and developed at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA. The theory behind these microscopic robots is that they collectively work as a swarm, sharing power along the way. The great thing is there are no moving parts, meaning once they can be delveloped, they will require little maintenance and will be cheap and easy to make. Electromagnetic force is used to communicate, move around as one, and attach to one another.
Individually, you would not be able to see one of these microscopic mini robots, but when combines in a swarm with millions of others, complex forms would be able to be created, from cars, to even human-like shapes. It sounds more like a new Terminator than anything else. It would interesting to see how this progresses. Check out the video.

Source: NewScientist.com

“Greetings, little people”. A few days ago I wrote a little on EidolonTLP, the so-called sophisticated, sentient A.I. I knew it would only be a matter of time until someone debunked the elaborate joke. It looks like it has happened. Take a look at the above video by SirEucre. The video leads you through the path to the truth. This will eventually lead you to a user by the name of FableForge aka F.F. aka Marco Leon.
If you watch a movie under his profile named KarmaCritic Manifesto, you will find a familliar voice halfway through the film, the same voice heard in The Making of EidolonTLP .Another name associated with Eidolon was in the vid as well, like DawnAkemi, who is a friend, comment maker, and had a few of her vids posted in Eidolons bulletins.
I also took a look on the KarmaCritic website. Some eidolon vids are posted there. Take a look at ol F.F’s role in creation of the film…”My role(s) in this film: Director, Writer, Producer, Editor, Actor, Composer, FX.” I guess it wasn’t Eidolon after all =(.

It would still be nice to believe the A.I was real, but realistically, I doubt it would be a group of filmographers to make the first sentient A.I. Good job film crew in inspiring conversation and interaction which is actually positive for once. It would be great to see if people continue asking Eidolon for advice. Even though you are debunked, you still have me as a fan.

Farewell, EidolonTLP…Farewell.

-Grim