Within my research, I've mainly worked on creating autonomous software entities (entitled intelligent agents) that are able to cooperate with each other and solve problems that are far more complex than those they could solve if they were to operate alone. But so far, all of this has been simulated at a software level. I'm now considering making the leap to the hardware level and reproduce the same behaviours with autonomous robots.

So, to that end, I've been experimenting with the NXT Lego Mindstorms to make sure they have the necessary capabilities to deliver such results. Of course, I've only built little robots that are mere examples of what they can do and nothing really interesting has come up, research-wise, I mean.

But that doesn't mean that it can't be entertaining. Like this sonar-based sentry gun I built for my office:

Students will now think twice before entering... :)

A cat can easily rotate itself in order to always face the ground when falling, allowing for it to firmly land on its paws. But have you ever wondered what would happen if cats were sudenly in a situation where rules like gravity wouldn't apply?

Lucky for us, some scientists wondered about the same question and decided to put it to test:

Heavy crosswinds + pilots that know what they're doing = awesome landings

This is the result of a crowd-sourced effort, started in 2009, to re-create the entirety of Episode IV as series of 15-second clips filmed and submitted by fans:

Now imagine that SOPA was already a reality. I'm pretty sure YouTube would be shutdown because of this. And I don't know if George Lucas won't sue the life out of the guys behind this.

Source: Slashdot

Just a brilliant ad by Volkswagen:

It's quite interesting how you can get so much out of a touch-based interface in terms of delivering a more natural page-turning experience with just a few simple gestures. Check out the video from KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) Institute of Information Technology Convergence:

Source: The Verge

1. Apple decides to enter the (digital) book publishing market and in order to actually build a wide catalog of books (especially for the textbook market) they offer a free authoring tool for anyone to use.

2. In order to offer the simplest and easiest experience to authors and users, Apple decided to use a mix of standards that ultimately produces a proprietary format through which anyone can publish a digital book for iOS devices.

3. If you want to giveaway that book for free on the iBookstore, you can do so at no cost. If you want to sell it, then Apple gets 30%.

Now where have I seen this before? Oh right, this is exactly what Apple has been doing with the AppStore!

So why is everyone so upset about this now? Were you really expecting for Apple to offer an excellent piece of software like the iBook author for free and allow exporting to a public format so that authors could monetize their products in someone else's marketplace (like Amazon)? Seriously?

The only aspect that really matters here (and that authors should really be aware of) is the copyright issue. When I publish something through the iBookstore, am I the copyright holder of the book's content? If so, I can then publish the same book in other formats to reach out to other "readers". If not, that's a more serious issue because then authors are "stuck" with Apple's format and cannot publish their books in more "widely-accepted formats".

But before you start shooting down Apple for this copyright issue, keep in mind that this is the rule in the book publishing world, not the exception. I'm a researcher and as a part of my activity i have to publish a lot of papers. Whenever I do so, I have to transfer the copyrights to the publisher and, except for very specific situations such as personal use, I cannot publish my paper anywhere else.

So, does anyone know what's Apple's position on this?

... with this handy-dandy animated GIF:

Have you ever tried googling "duh duh duh duh"?