A team of seven former rivals has won a three-year contest to improve Netflix’s recommendation system. They pipped another team to the million dollar prize by just twenty minutes. The contest involved the system the movie rental firm uses to predict which films a particular customer might like, based on how they’ve rated previous titles. […]
Sometimes it’s good to have some low-tech skills, like reading a map. Or asking for directions. The last time I was in New York City, I found getting to places to which I’d never been quite simple. All I had to do was ask whoever I was with to direct me to my next destination, […]
Every so often you’ll see a print-on-demand machine which is billed as changing the way publishing works. The dream is to be able to walk into a bookstore and quickly print off a copy of any book you like rather than be limited by what is currently in stock on the shelves. That’s likely still […]
Check out this absolutely amazing remote controlled LED-based hard drive clock build by a Polish tinkerer: Amazing little device isn’t it? And while I wouldn’t put it on display anywhere in my house, I can still appreciate the work that went into building it. [Via Gizmodo]
If you thought Google couldn’t possibly take control of every aspect of the internet, you were wrong. If you’ve ever tried to sign up to a website or post a comment, and been asked to type in a word or numbers that appear in a picture – or worse, try to figure out the difference […]
You may have seen photographs of the Stata Center at MIT. It was designed by Frank Gehry and looks more like a giant art installation than a building at a university. However, having spent quite a bit of time in computer science buildings at various universities myself, I’ve noticed that many of them tend to […]
Did You Know 4.0 is another official update to the widely popular Shift Happens video. This new version includes facts and stats focusing on the changing media landscape, including convergence and technology, and was developed in partnership with The Economist.
I honestly can’t remember the last time I bought a periodical. I’ve never had newspapers delivered to my house. I don’t have any magazine subscriptions. I completely avoid the local news. But I am a news hound, and I check multiple sites daily, even when their format isn’t great. For me, the appeal of online […]
The Xbox 360 is many things: games console, media streamer, DVD player (and, in some cases, an expensive paperweight with a shiny red ring.) But now it’s got a new role: predicting heart problems. Researchers in Britain are using the console’s graphics chip (pictured, courtesy of Flickr user avalonstar) to power parallel processing: splitting a […]
By Natania Barron Contributing Writer, [GAS] One of the biggest draws about steampunk technology, for me, is that much of it actually existed in some form or another. Last night, through the joy of Twitter, I discovered the endless wonder of GoogleBook’s expansive Popular Mechanics archive, and spent far too long ogling the various inventions […]