I've been learning a lot about a cool new tool I found called
Yackpack.
So if you want to talk to me, you can go here:
I'm using this tool to communicate with my development team at Mefeedia, and it occurred to me that it might be fun to just talk to my readers in real time too.
It works like a walkie talkie. You press to talk and release to listen.
Anyone at this webpage can join in:
http://www.yackpack.com/walkietalkie/?lisarein
See you there!
I'm starting to find Tailrank's meme pages very useful.
They have a nice one going now about the
ABC 911 propoganda film controversy.
A couple weeks ago, I appreciated catching up on the
Amanda Congdon leaving/getting fired from Rocketboom controversy.
Speed of Gravity To Be Measured
Astronomers at the world's largest radio telescopes are gearing up to measure the speed of gravity.It is the first attempt to verify a key prediction of Einstein's theory of general relativity, which says that nothing, not even the influence of gravity itself, can travel faster than light.
No one has ever tested this prediction, even though the assumption that gravity travels in waves or gravitons with a finite speed underpins much of theoretical physics. The difficulty is that if light and gravity travel at the same speed, how can you hope to see evidence of gravity's speed?
The answer, says Sergei Kopeikin of the University of Missouri, Columbia, is by watching a distant quasar as the planet Jupiter moves in front of it and its gravity bends radio waves from the quasar. This event is due to happen over the weekend of September 7 and 8. "When I first gave a talk about the idea everybody got excited and said we have to do this," says Kopeikin.
Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992763
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Speed of gravity to be measured
12:34 05 September 02
Astronomers at the world's largest radio telescopes are gearing up to measure the speed of gravity.
It is the first attempt to verify a key prediction of Einstein's theory of general relativity, which says that nothing, not even the influence of gravity itself, can travel faster than light.
No one has ever tested this prediction, even though the assumption that gravity travels in waves or gravitons with a finite speed underpins much of theoretical physics. The difficulty is that if light and gravity travel at the same speed, how can you hope to see evidence of gravity's speed?
The answer, says Sergei Kopeikin of the University of Missouri, Columbia, is by watching a distant quasar as the planet Jupiter moves in front of it and its gravity bends radio waves from the quasar. This event is due to happen over the weekend of September 7 and 8. "When I first gave a talk about the idea everybody got excited and said we have to do this," says Kopeikin.
Together with Ed Formalont of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Kopeikin will get data on Jupiter's eclipse of the quasar from the NRAO's Very Long Baseline Array, a series of ten 25-metre radio telescopes strung between the Virgin Islands and Hawaii. The data will show the changes to the quasar's radio image to an accuracy of more than a millionth of one degree.
Astronomers usually assume that so-called "lensing events" convert a point-like source like the quasar into a ring, as the radio waves are bent round the edges of the lensing object - in this case Jupiter. But this assumes that the gravitational fields are static, while the light or radio waves move.
So in 2001 Kopeikin decided to develop a more realistic model. In this, as Jupiter moves, the changing gravitational field interacts with the radio waves coming from the quasar. The calculations show that if gravity has a finite speed, the ring-like image seen at Earth will be subtly warped compared to the shape expected if the gravitational changes propagate instantaneously.
It was a neat piece of work, but Kopeikin never expected to be able to test his idea so soon. "These lensing events only happen about once per decade," he says. The results from the experiment should be known within two months.
Eugenie Samuel
Here's where to get the TurboNet card and some Newbie Hacking Instructions from TiVo sTeVe-o.
Hey there's a Metaverse under construction over at SourceForge.
It's actually a direct result of some of the neat ideas going on over at Freality.
Speaking of Mac Mixing Apps, I hear that Final Scratch and Baytex Party are the bomb.
More specifics on Baytex, courtesy of Bart Cheever, CEO of DFILM:
"Any Mac DJ's out there I *strongly* recommend you check out Baytex Party - by far the best MP3 DJ player on the market, IMO. It's got great features like: Easy to use very natural feeling pitch control, Multiple sound outputs (so you can cue and beatmatch one MP3 while the other is playing), Rock solid - never ever crashes, Simple feature to count and enter BPMs (you can sort your entire MP3 library by BPM). I've tried most of the other MP3 DJ players out there and I haven't been this excited by a product since I bought my original 1200's 17 years ago!"
Bitzi has used my "Shake All Over" tune as an example of its Privileged Listings service.
If you can manage to hum a few notes of a song you heard briefly into the telephone, this new student-based software will find your song for you.
Read about it in an article Joanna Corman for the LA Times:
College seniors fine-tune music search
Computer program designed in a for-credit course identifies songs by just a few notes.
This is how it works. You sing a few notes of a song into a microphone or the phone. The software converts the notes into a wave and then extracts the notes and their duration. A database has snippets of 500 melodies. The computer calculates the pitch and rhythm and then compares that data to songs already stored. The top 10 closest matches pop up. Only the "main theme" or melody of the song is stored because it is most recognizable, said Yelinek, the team leader and a computer science major. The program accounts for various versions of the song, including those in different keys. Songs can be hummed, whistled, sung or played.
"You might harmonize it differently. You might have a club mix, but still it's recognized," said Huang, a computer science and music major.
The students' project was part of a program that dates back to the early 1960s. It allows companies, government agencies and nonprofits to approach Harvey Mudd students with problems to solve. Companies give the students, mostly seniors, upward of $30,000 for their research. There have been about 1,000 clinics since the program's inception and it covers computer science, engineering, physics and math. The software, which Seet said should be available later this year, has several uses, including copyright protection. It can be used for karaoke, which Seet called a "huge market."
Cool. I just generated a Bitzi Ticket for my song "Wander" using Bitzi's XML/RDF Ticket service.
