Tag Archives: research

Apple Maps uses far less cellular data than Google Maps »

October 4th, 2012

Team Onavo:

“Our data experts performed an identical series of activities on Google Maps and Apple Maps that included searching for several US cities, addresses and airports and zooming in and out to locate specific locations. On Google Maps, the average data loaded from the cellular network for each step was 1.3MB. Apple Maps came in at 271KB – that’s approximately 80% less data! On some actions, such as zooming in to see a particular intersection, Apple Maps’ efficiency advantage edged close to 7X.”

“However, it seems that even in Satellite View, Apple has considered data usage. Our tests found Apple Maps uses only half as much data as Google Maps for the same Satellite searches and views (an average of 930KB for a single page load on Google Maps vs. 428KB for Apple Maps).”

Whether you’re on the iPhone 5 using LTE or on not… that kind of reduction in data will certainly increase the responsiveness of Maps when you need it the most. I can say that in my use of Maps over the last two weeks it has been all but flawless and blazingly fast. I’m totally happy.

/via Walt Mossberg on Twitter.

Souvenirs Entomologiques »

October 2nd, 2012

Jean-Henri Fabre, circa 1879 in Souvenirs Entomologiques:

We all have our own talents, our special gifts. Sometimes these gifts seem to come to us from our forefathers, but more often it is difficult to trace their origin.

A goatherd, perhaps, amuses himself by counting little pebbles and doing sums with them. He becomes an astoundingly quick reckoner, and in the end is a professor of mathematics. Another boy, at an age when most of us care only for play, leaves his schoolfellows at their games and listens to the imaginary sounds of an organ, a secret concert heard by him alone. He has a genius for music. A third—so small, perhaps, that he cannot eat his bread and jam without smearing his face—takes a keen delight in fashioning clay into little figures that are amazingly lifelike. If he be fortunate he will some day be a famous sculptor.

To talk about oneself is hateful, I know, but perhaps I may be allowed to do so for a moment, in order to introduce myself and my studies.

Reading just this first page of his now classic book of entomology was enough for me to grab the free ebook English translation.

/via Boing Boing.

Isaac Newton’s notebooks

December 13th, 2011

Speaking of Isaac Newton. The Cambridge Digital Library:

“Cambridge University Library holds the largest and most important collection of the scientific works of Isaac Newton (1642-1727). We present here an initial selection of Newton’s manuscripts, concentrating on his mathematical work in the 1660s. Over the next few months we will be adding further works until the majority of our Newton Papers are available on this site.”

Well, there goes the weekend.

Testing Wolfram|Alpha

May 19th, 2009

It seems that since the launch of Wolfram|Alpha people are generally testing it rather than using it. Although, I’m willing to bet, there are people out there that are using this amazing service for doing actual research and are finding it altogether indispensable already.

Dave Winer tested it on a Friday night. He ran some pretty interesting tests ranging from a vanity search to queries about movies. His queries were interesting but I don’t think they are inline with what Wolfram|Alpha was built for. His searches were just that, searches. They weren’t comparisons, questions, or equations of any kind. While Wolfram|Alpha is perfectly capable of letting you know what 2001: A Space Odyssey is – it does a much better job at telling you how much money the movie made at the box office, or the weather the night the movie was released.

Amber Simmons decided to try to make Wolfram|Alpha fail by asking it some questions that she’s wondered about since childhood. Her results surprised her.

When I initially tested Wolfram|Alpha it was immediately after I had watched the screencast explaining what Wolfram|Alpha was built to do. I did a comparison search on Viddler and Brightcove, a search to figure out my ideal body weight, and one to figure out how many calories I’ll burn running that 5K every other day.

The jury is still out on how I will use Wolfram|Alpha but I do not underestimate its abilities nor it’s teams abilities to adapt the tool for nearly anything you need. I’m very much looking forward to the future of this product.

Independent Lens – THE ATOM SMASHERS on PBS

January 28th, 2009

Atom Smashers PBS

Last night, somewhere between the hours of 2:00am and 4:00am (yes, I was awake, lying in bed, watching TV) I watched an incredibly good documentary on PBS called THE ATOM SMASHERS which is part of the Independent Lens series.

Being a fan of science, I found this documentary very educational and entertaining and it helped to catch me up-to-date on some of the developments of subatomic research. Many of us have seen the headlines about CERN – but there is more much to the story about the research they will be doing at CERN. People have been doing this research for years. Physicists at Fermilab, a government-funded particle accelerator, have been searching for the Higgs boson before the idea for CERN was conceived. THE ATTOM SMASHERS reflects on their journey, struggles, successes, and failures.

I found it riveting.

Source: PBS – Independent Lens – THE ATOM SMASHERS.
Photo credit: PBS.

Can you help cure juvenile diabetes?

April 22nd, 2008

This Sunday my friend Chris Fehnel will be helping out a few of his friends, by walking in the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation’s “Walk to Cure Diabetes”.  Chris is trying to raise just $100 through donations to “sponsor his walk” which will then be given to the JDRF as a donation during Sunday’s walk.

If you have anything to spare, please consider donating it to help further research into curing diabetes for these children.  I’m more than sure he and Blake, the child who has inspired many to walk on Sunday, will be most appreciative of whatever you can give.

Source: Just Bete It for Blake – Diabetes Walk.