Weird Wednesday: software that records your dreams?

Filed under: Photo, Weird Wednesday

Each Wednesday Download Squad takes a look at the weirdest software out there. From future tech being cooked up in the lab to bizarre shareware, we'll cover the offbeat and off-the-wall. If you have a suggestion for a strange application, leave it in the comments.

Scientists are working on ways to read your mind using software. It makes sense that if you know how to read brainwaves you'd be able to reconstruct what the eyes are seeing, right? But Yukiyasu Kamitani is taking it to another level: using a an MRI to scan your brain and recreate what you see in your mind on a computer screen. Ultimately the technology could be used to read your mind with enough fidelity to create a video of your thoughts or dreams.

As the article in New Scientist points out, all of this raises ethical concerns should the tech work from a distance. Do you want marketers to read your mind? What would Google do if they could put contextual ads in your life? Can you upload your brain to Flickr?

Of course, this is a long way off. Not only does the software need a lot of refinement, the hardware challenges of reading brainwaves with enough fidelity to recreate an image is a giant hurdle. In the meanwhile, keep buying Lightspeed Briefs to match your tin foil hats.

Weird Wednesday: software that records your dreams? originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 04 Feb 2009 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Weird Wednesday: Real websites making fake stuff

Filed under: Fun, Internet, Lists, Weird Wednesday

Until we can finally allow robots to craft everything via iPhone CAD/CAM apps, you'll have to get your fix of fake tombstones and dress-up robots online. Here's a roundup of some helpful tools -- maybe. Honestly, several are horrendous to use. Others are merely fugly. One frightened my hamster. Still, if you are looking for a way to express yourself on the cover of TIME magazine, this may be your thing. Please add more in the comments, I know I've missed a few decent ones among the junk.

Make these crazy things online:

Tombstone
Great for making a very specific point (see above). Etch directly into a tombstone and right-click to download the result. Dead simple.

Internet Diploma
We've covered My Internet Diploma in the past. We sorta wish we hadn't. Luckily, now that we have all graduated with honors and have mad ninja skills, we know better. My Internet Diploma is as fake as My Little Pony.

Magazine
Put your face or drunk/nude torso on the cover of numerous magazines. There are bunches of these, but I chose the one with lots of real magazine covers. The workflow is irritating. You upload a pic, which opens a useless (new) window. Close that window, keep following the steps. Each step spawns a new window. If anyone knows a decent version of this, leave it in the comments.

Robot
It's a dress-up doll with robot parts. A little part of me died while playing with this. Still, the owner of this domain will be rich... when the robots take over.

Signs
The link takes you to the classic Church Sign Generator, but there are others. If anything comes up as sign generator in the URL, however, you may have stumbled upon one of the vast linkfarms of the interwebs.

There are many other examples, like a place that claims to print fake pay stubs (for a fee). I'm not linking to that one, but you get the idea. With the right web skillz you can fake just about anything. But with great power comes great responsibility, so don't go throwing your doctorate of hyperlinking in our faces -- we saw your nude cover for Byte magazine.

Weird Wednesday: Real websites making fake stuff originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 11 Feb 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Weird Wednesday - a random assortment of weird

Filed under: Weird Wednesday

Everyone knows you can't swing a dead lolcat without finding weird stuff on the internet. Before the web, the internet was a haven for all sorts of crazy "underground" information that was difficult to get published and distributed.

Fast-forward to the present day and you can indulge your weirdness with the push of maybe 5 or 6 buttons, tops. You don't need a real name, address, phone number or functional frontal lobe -- you too can pollute the mindscape of hundreds with a janky little free site dedicated to whatever weird crap you're into.

But how to find the weird stuff? Digg, BoingBoing, Fark, and many, many sites are dedicated to culling the "best" of the oddball sites out there (although more often than not the sites themselves are merely bad, not "weird"). But what about those rarely-curated Frontpage-compliant hyper-niche zany sites out there?

There's no way for us to find them all (DARPA cancelled funding for that project long ago), but here's a sampling of what we could find in about 30 minutes of searching. Something you'll notice: most of these sites also fall under the "fugly" category. Most haven't been updated in years, either.

As always, leave your own in the comments. PG-13 please, we know there are plenty of adult and "other" sites that indulge strange stuff -- and there are plenty of sites covering those, so no need for us to do the same.

History of Public Toilets. Joe the Plumber would be proud. The content is actually fascinating, even if the presentation leaves something to be desired. But there's no good way to dress up poop, really.

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Weird Wednesday - a random assortment of weird originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 18 Feb 2009 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Weird Wednesday: Windows 3.11 on a phone, gaming by brain waves

Filed under: Fun, Internet, Weird Wednesday

This morning, Brad wrote about one enterprising individual's success with getting lightweight Linux window managers running on an Android handset.

That's cool and all, but a user at Polish site FrazPC has taken things to a whole new level of nerdiness. His project: getting Windows 3.11 to run on the Symbian-powered Nokia N95 (link to site via Google Translate). Sure, the graphics look better on the Android hacks, but there's something cool about seeing the OS from my family's first non-Commodore PC running on a cell phone. At last you'll be able to bask in the horror of Hot Dog Stand conveniently, no matter where you are!

Speaking of which, there's retina-burning rendition you can see at Hot Dog Stand Tribute. Sadly (or perhaps not so much), the Windows XP theme download isn't working.

In another flashback - this time to something a bit more recent, remember Vic's item about software that records your dreams? How about a piece of hardware you can buy right now that can pull off headshots using the power of your brain? If you haven't seen OCZ's Neural Impulse Actuator, it's a whole lotta crazy.

You can check out a video of its creator utilizing the device in a head-to-head combat on G4. Sure, he gets schooled, but that hardly takes away from the cool factor. I'm not certain I want my brain controlling my computer directly just yet. I'm a tad worried about possible detriment due to random, misguided thoughts.

Weird Wednesday: Windows 3.11 on a phone, gaming by brain waves originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 25 Feb 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Weird Wednesday flashback edition: Tele Hypnosis

Filed under: Weird Wednesday

Before there was Weird Wednesday, we had Freaky Friday Find -- a crazy app every week. Nearly 3 years ago I wrote a piece on an app called Tele Hypnosis, and guess what? That app still exists. Yes, you too can remotely control whomever you wish, all for the low, low price of $99. Unlike those darned fairies, this thing has no rules; you can make someone love you, cheat at math, or get your kids off drugs.

What's incredible is Tifareth has actually grown in the past 3 years, and there's an entire suite of hypno applications. Try the Studio Pro app to "Be full protected of all types of black magick, sorcery, goetia and psychic attacks." There are also add-ons in the form of sigils and symbols. As an added bonus, Tifareth offers Tarot readings online. One more thing: a full Radionic Workstation! Priced to move at $599, but you do get the app customized for your good/neutral/chaotic needs.

Does it work? Unfortunately I'm unable to access the parts of my memory where all my thorough tests were conducted. And the research is strangely missing from my hard drive. But here's a link to the original post.

Weird Wednesday flashback edition: Tele Hypnosis originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 04 Mar 2009 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Weird Wednesday: Purplemonkeydishwasher.com

Filed under: Internet, Weird Wednesday

If you've tried to register a domain name in the last decade or so you're probably aware of the "cromulent word scarcity syndrome" (yes, I just made that up). In other words, most of the good names are gone. Scratch another off the list with purplemonkeydishwasher.com, a reference to a line in The Simpsons. As is my wont, I typed this random URL into my browser and was pleasantly surprised to see a modicum of functionality (as opposed to a placeholder site with nothing but keyword links).

Purplemonkeydishwasher.com is running a fortune-telling application. Not so much a real fortune-teller, actually, but a simple random text fetcher. As the site explains:

fortune is a program which displays random messages, quotations, folk sayings, and other verbal fluff. Historically, it dates back to unix systems, and is believed to have been used by software developers to help break tension, or perhaps it was simply just an early version of a 'widget'. Because it was originally created by software engineers, some of the older fortunes are programmer's jokes and make little sense to most people. Since then, however, the fortune database has grown and forked off to numerous differing versions. Some fortunes are well dated or make social comments now out of context, others make no sense whatsoever, but many are gems, offering truly useful advice or food for thought, and many are timeless with origins unknown.

What other random URL's have you found?

Weird Wednesday: Purplemonkeydishwasher.com originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 25 Mar 2009 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hexxeh updates Chrome OS build, now more kick-ass than ever

Filed under: OS Updates, Google

While the official release of Google Chrome OS won't be arriving for a few more months, Hexxeh continues plugging away at his Chromium remix -- and his latest release is better than ever.

Codenamed Flow (I'll assume because of the epic Vanilla Ice line "Flow like a harpoon, daily and nightly"), the new version adds loads of new functionality. The automatic update feature which was recently beta tested is now baked-in, more hardware is supported (including full NVidia ION acceleration), battery life is improved, webcams are now supported, and numerous bugs have been squashed.

Perhaps the biggest addition is the customizable menu, where you can now add, delete, and organize your favorite web-based applications. It's a significant step toward making the Chromium OS feel like a real desktop replacement.

Right now, Flow is only available as an image file for writing to a physical drive (the download link is at the bottom of this page).

If you want to test it in VMWare, give Hexxeh a few more days -- he'll no doubt have a prepackaged VM you can play with very soon.

Hexxeh updates Chrome OS build, now more kick-ass than ever originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 17 Feb 2010 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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S^3 smartphone OS gets the video preview treatment

Filed under: OS Updates, Symbian, Mobile

With all the hubbub over Windows Phone 7 Series at Mobile World Congress this week, you'd think it was the only upcoming mobile OS previewed at the event. And you'd be wrong for thinking that, because the folks at Symbian gave us the first look at the upcoming Symbian S^3 platform as well.

Symbian S^3 will be the first version of the platform to be fully open source. Any handset maker will be free to license the software for use in their phones.

But it's not just the licensing agreement that's new. Symbian S^3 also features a completely revamped user interface. It's very multimedia-centric, and like most mobile operating systems on the market today, the OS supports multitouch gestures and finger-friendly actions such as pinching and flicking.

Symbian S^3 also supports 1080p HD video playback and HDMI output. Phones running the operating system won't hit the streets until the second half of the year. But you can get a good idea of what Symbian S^3 will look like by checking out the video at the top of this post.

[via Engadget]

S^3 smartphone OS gets the video preview treatment originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 18 Feb 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ubuntu live CDs now boot 33% faster!

Filed under: OS Updates, Canonical

How to convince a Mac OS X or Windows user to try GNU/Linux? Installing the desired distribution in a Virtual Machine? Read them all those FAQs about partitioning your hard drive for a dual-boot system? No, no - there's an easier way: live CDs or DVDs! Almost every distribution (like Ubuntu, Knoppix or Fedora) are capable of booting into a fully functional desktop right from a burned disc. Simply download the .iso image file, burn it to a CD or DVD with your favorite disc burning application, and reboot your machine!

But one big disadvantage, especially on older hardware, is the slow startup time. Jamie Bennett, blogger and one of Canonical's Ubuntu Mobile developers, has explained the difficulties of speeding up the process. Tweaking and speeding the boot time is only possible if you find out why it was slow:

There are two broad steps in the process of booting a live CD. The first is preparing the environment for the session and the second -- you guessed it -- is actually booting into the session. Initial hunches were that the first step (setup) was the major cause of slowness.

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Ubuntu live CDs now boot 33% faster! originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 18 Feb 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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D-Day for Windows 7 RC approaches

Filed under: OS Updates, Windows, Microsoft

Microsoft spent much of 2009 testing Windows 7 before officially launching the operating system. And that test involved thousands of beta and release candidate testers, who downloaded pre-release copies of the operating system which they were effectively able to use for free... for a limited time. Now that time is coming to a close.

If you're still running Windows 7 RC, starting March 1st your PC will shut down automatically every 2 hours. Your work will not be saved. But you can still use the OS, as long as you're willing to put up with periodic interruptions and reboots. It'll be kind of like using Windows 98 all over again.

Come June 1st, the OS fully expires. That doesn't mean it will stop running altogether. But in addition to the automatic shutdown every 2 hours, your desktop background will change to solid black and you'll have a message on the desktop letting you know the RC has expired. Windows 7 RC will also fail any Windows Genuine Advantage tests at that point, meaning you won't be able to validate software that requires a "genuine" copy of Windows and you won't be able to get Windows 7 updates from Microsoft.

You can avoid these issues by replacing Windows 7 RC with another operating system. We'll leave it up to you to decide whether that means Windows XP, a fully licensed copy of Windows 7, or something else altogether. ReactOS, anyone?

Update: Looking to figure out how to upgrade from Windows 7 RC to a full version of Windows 7? We've got you covered.

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D-Day for Windows 7 RC approaches originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 25 Feb 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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