All Shows

Show of 1-14-2012

Email and Forum Questions

  • Email form Eleanor: Dear Tech Talk. I am new to this digital photography. What are “RAW” and “JPEG”? What’s the difference? What do they do? When do you use them? Where do you find them? Love the show. Thanks, Eleanor
  • RAW format captures the raw, unprocessed data from your digital camera. And by raw and unprocessed, I mean the data captured by the photo sensors in your particular model of camera. Different camera use different sensors which capture light and color in different ways. The RAW format records that data in as close to its original form as possible. RAW format is not typically compressed.
  • JPEG, or often just jpg (still pronounced “jay-peg”), is a standard file format that contains an encoded and compressed image. JPEG itself stands for the Joint Photographic Experts Group, which created the specification for this standard format. JPEG is what’s called a “lossy” format. It uses the characteristics of the human eye, as well as the characteristics of photographs to actually remove some clarity from the image in order to achieve its compression.
  • For example, a RAW image format might save information that captures the camera’s exposure setting at the time that the photo was taken. Additional RAW data within the image than might allow you to (within limits) actually manipulate the effective exposure as it’s processed.
  • If you’re a casual photographer, JPEG’s probably just fine. The pictures that you take can be immediately shared with anyone and viewed anywhere without any additional work on your part.
  • On the other hand, if you’re a photo buff planning to tweak your photos in programs like Photoshop, or if you just want to archive the highest possible quality image, then raw might be the appropriate choice.
  • Unless your camera can save in both RAW and JPEG at the same time (some do), that you’ll need to process your RAW files into JPEGs in order to share them with others. That, in turn, will require software that understands the RAW format used by your camera.
  • Email from Mary Ann: Dear Tech Talk, I just got an iPhone 4S and am confused about backing up my phone to iTunes. Should I back up to my iTunes on my computer or use iCloud? Also what is PhotoStream? I am confused by all of this new technology? My husband won’t help me with these things. Thanks, Mary Ann
  • Tech Talk Responds: iCloud is a free backup service offered by Apple. You get 5GB of free storage for your devices. You can attach multiple device to iCloud and share pictures between them using PhotoStream. You will still have to connect to iTunes to backup and store up your purchased applications. You can use you same iTunes account name and password for iCloud. Once you select iCloud backup, you will not be able to back up to your computer. iCloud requires iOS5 on your iPhone and iTunes 10.5.
  • Email from Alley: Dear Tech Talk, I have a friend in New Jersey who sends me a prayer list for friends to pray for. I have not received any in two weeks. I called her and she has been sending them every day. Why haven’t I received any? What is the problem? I am using Gmail. Thanks, Alley
  • Tech Talk Responds: Usually missing email is being mistakenly labeled and disposed of as spam. While a prayer list might not sound like spam to you, especially because you appear to want it, there may be other characteristics of the email that cause it to be treated as such. When a filter evaluates a message as spam, it may also place weight on words and phrases that are common to spam, like free. There are literally thousands of such phrases that may come into play, and which ones (if any) that might be used in the determination will vary dramatically based on your email provider.
  • Google uses the wisdom of the crowd. If too many people get this email every day and click the “This is spam” button in their email program, then they could be preventing you from getting the email you want.
  • About the only thing that you can do is find the message in your email provider’s spam folder. If there is a spam folder, and if the message is there, absolutely mark it as “This is NOT spam”, or whatever your provider uses for that determination.
  • You might also consider letting the sender know that there’s an issue. Because so much of spam detection is about the sender and the messages being sent, you might not be the only person missing them.

Profiles in IT: Nicholas K. Sheridan

  • Creator of the first e-paper while working at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center
  • Nick Sheridan has BS and MS in Physics, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI.
  • He worked at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center from Aug 1979 to Jan 2001.
  • For the first nine years he was a Research Fellow. He was promoted to Senior Research Follow in May 1988.
  • According to his resume, he was the highest ranked non-management scientist at PARC, although I did manage research groups ranging in size from 2 to 10 people.
  • In 1974, Nick invented what would become a precursor to e-paper. He was working on a display for the Alto personal computer.
  • A Gyricon display consists of a highly transparent silicone rubber sheet in which a high density of 100 micron balls has been dispersed.
  • Each ball is black on one hemisphere and white on the other, and the two hemispheres have different, permanent electrical charges.
  • Each ball sits in an oil-filled cavity about 20 % larger than the ball, allowing the ball to rotate in response to an applied voltage.
  • Beneath the sheet, a circuit board applied an electrical current that rotated the balls, generating simple black-and-white patterns on the display.”
  • The balls stick to the cavity walls after they have rotated, providing long term (months, years) image storage without the continued application of voltage.
  • This new display technology was that it was thinner and lighter than a transitional display and required very little power. Power was only consumed when the balls were rotated.
  • He called the invention Gyricon. Gyricon is a Greek term for rotating image.
  • His patents are the earliest in the field of electronic paper.
  • The project was dropped because Xerox was not in the display business. They were in the copier business.
  • He went on work on many other projects at PARC including the first multi-function office machine (copier, scanner, fax, and printer).
  • He was one of the most prolific researchers at PARC and holds 93 U.S. Patents.
  • This technology was not pursued by Xerox and remained dormant until the mid-90s.
  • Joseph Jacobson, a research scientist at the MIT Media lab started working on a slightly different approach to electronic paper.
  • Jacobson and his graduate assistants developed microcapsules that were transparent and filled with blue dye and white titanium dioxide chips.
  • The then went to a mixture of black and white particles in a clear liquid.
  • Jacobson started the company e-ink to develop this technology.
  • Nick co-founded Gyricon in January 2001 as a PARC spin-off company.
  • He served as Director of Research from its inception to January 2006 when Xerox pulled the plug on it.
  • Gyricon focused on making displays for stores rather than e-paper technology.
  • The successful e-paper companies, such as E Ink, set out to be display media companies that let the customers invent the applications.
  • Nick is now consults and works on the next ideal e-paper technology in his lab at home.

Asia Challenges U.S. Innovation Leadership

  • A report released last week by the National Science Board concludes that U.S. global leadership in science and technology is declining as foreign nations – especially China and other Asian countries – rapidly develop their national innovation systems.
  • China is achieving a dramatic amount of synergy by increasing its investment in science and engineering education, in research, and in infrastructure.
  • The report, Science and Engineering Indicators 2010, is published every two years by the National Science Board, a 25-member expert council that advises the National Science Foundation, President, and Congress on science and technology policy.
  • Asia’s rapid ascent as a major world science and technology (S&T) center—beyond Japan—is driven by developments in China and several other Asian economies.
  • Governments [in Asia] have implemented a host of policies to boost S&T capabilities as a means to ensuring their economies’ competitive edge.
  • The United States continues to maintain a position of leadership but has experienced a gradual erosion of its position in many specific areas.
  • Asia has narrowed the gap due to the sustained annual increases by China.
  • U.S. investment in R&D as a ratio of total GDP has remained relatively constant since the mid-1980s, at around 2.7%,
  • The federal share of total R&D in US has been consistently declining. In contrast, Asian nations have rapidly expanded their R&D to GDP ratio.
  • Increasingly, governments around the world have come to regard movement toward a knowledge-based economy as key to economic progress.
  • Realizing that this requires a well-trained workforce, they have invested in upgrading and expanding their higher education systems and broadening participation.
  • The U.S. higher education system maintains critical strengths – especially U.S. research universities, which perform 56% of U.S. basic research and educate the majority of future scientists and engineers – but its position continues to decline in terms of S&E graduates.
  • US students earned only 11% of the world’s 4 million S&E first university degrees (equivalent to an undergraduate degree) awarded in 2006, compared to 21% in China and 19% in the European Union.
  • A large portion of these degrees in the United States are awarded to foreign students.
  • International students received 24% of U.S. S&E master’s degrees, 33% of S&E doctoral degrees, and 4% of S&E bachelor’s degrees in 2007.
  • Twenty-five percent of all college-educated U.S. workers in S&E occupations in 2003 were foreign born.
  • About half of all foreign-born scientists and engineers are from Asia, and more than a third of U.S.-resident doctorate holders come from China (22%) and India (14%).

Global Demographic Trends

  • Demographic Bonus in India and China
  • Shortage of Workers in the US over the next 20 years
  • Tightened immigration policy is making US less inviting.
  • Innovators are going back home to start their companies there.
  • US Education is respected worldwide, but is becoming less accessible to the international community.
  • US government taxation and spending policy is not focused on increasing our innovation advantage.
  • Our Innovation EcoSystem may be damaged in the long term.
  • Is the US passing the leadership baton to India and China?

Website of the Week: Foodista

  • Foodista: The Cooking Encyclopedia Everyone Can Edit
  • Web Address: http://www.foodista.com
  • Foodista is a collaborative project to build the world’s largest, highest quality cooking encyclopedia.
  • Foodista organizes cooking information into four linked categories:
  • Recipes: Combinations of ingredients.
  • Foods: The most basic of ingredients. Either as they are produced naturally, such as apples and eggs, or with minimal processing, such as salt or flour.
  • Cooking Techniques: Methods of preparing foods, such as baking, boiling, slicing, and braising.
  • Kitchen Tools: All the gadgets, appliances, and equipment you use to make meals, including saucepan, chef’s knife, blender, and cutting board.
  • The site uses pictures of food from Flickr Creative Commons and encourages uploading of photos from directly to the site.
  • Tools For Food Bloggers – The site has embeddable widgets that create automated links from Foodista to your food blog. These links will help you build traffic to your blog and improve search engine rankings. Foodista, Inc. was founded in February of 2008 and launched on December 17, 2008.
  • For instance: 684 fudge recipes, 961 pizza recipes, 828 chocolate chip cookie recipes.

Food Science: Chopsticks and Rice

  • Chopsticks
    • History of chopsticks
    • Types of chopsticks (crasftmanship, carvings)
    • Confucius and chopsticks (used to promote non-violence)
    • Non-chopstick countries
  • Rice
    • History and usage
    • Types of rice (rough rice, brown rice, white rice, wild rice)
    • Rice wine (sake)