jaginsburg.com
  • home
  • journalism | science | tech
    • sci | tech
  • exhibitions
    • introduction
    • mickey pallas
    • News art
  • children's media
  • photography
    • photography
    • book covers
  • blogs
    • Medium
    • better
    • PechaKucha
    • TrackerNews (archive)
    • archived faves
  • DNG Archives
    • Fields

Big Pictures from Little Pixels: Zooming In on GigaPan; iPhone Fun with SeaDragon and 3-D Pictures

12/27/2008

0 Comments

 
masthead
If a picture is worth 1,000 words, then surely a GigaPan is worth a million. For a little over a year, a team at Carnegie Mellon University has been promoting a camera robot — originally developed by NASA to snoop around Mars — for home-planet use. The unit, which can be used with almost any digital camera, costs just under $300, but the “stitching” software that creates the signature zoom & pan panoramas, is free. Also, unlike Microsoft’s Photosynth, it is compatible with both Mac and Windows. (National Geographic partnered with Microsoft Live Labs to create Photosynth images of global landmarks, which, unfortunately, cannot be viewed from my MacBook.)

The images are stunningly addictive. Like Peter Parker-turned-Spiderman, you’ll find yourself able see farther, deeper and with more clarity than you’d ever imagined. Surprisingly, it doesn’t take long to get past the realization that privacy as we knew it is gone. With police cameras at every intersection, surveillance cameras everywhere else (including the new 5-eyed wonder from Scallop Imaging that takes up about as much space as a light switch) and Google Earth, perhaps we’ve known it’s been gone for while. Now, at least, we get to share the pictures.

Read More
0 Comments

Hi Tech / Low Tech: Lab in Cell Phone, Origami Diagnostics and Looking for the Unknown Germ

12/23/2008

0 Comments

 
masthead
Bio photonics. Until yesterday, when a story on Wired magazine’s website about a “MacGyveresque” cell phone lit up Twitter universe, I hadn’t a clue. This particular cell phone, developed by Aydogan Ozcan’s lab at UCLA, doubles as a cytometer that can analyze blood cells for disease based on the cells’ light diffraction signatures. In short, rapid diagnostics literally at the speed of light in a portable package that fits in the palm of one’s hand. And as a cherry on the good news sundae, all the physical parts — an LED, a webcam, the phone itself — are off the shelf and cheap.

The implications for public health, particularly in poor developing countries, are, of course, enormous. This also has the potential to be a game-changer across the board, putting a “lab” in every doctor — or community health worker’s — pocket, dramatically reducing the time and cost of tests. Imagine: health-care costs that go down.  (Although, as my colleague Ed Jezierski at InSTEDD points out, if it turns out that proprietary component of the test is expensive, the bargain disappears.)

The Wired story was grouped on TrackerNews with a Technology Review article providing a more detailed explanation of the imaging system (which can also be used for testing water):

Read More
0 Comments

Thanksgiving in December…

12/6/2008

0 Comments

 
masthead
The search for good links for TrackerNews has been an adventure. Why should “bots” have all the fun crawling the web for tasty content? Those over-achiever algorythmic bits of code will catch on to what I’ve been doing soon enough. For now, there is room for all in the cyber-universe.

TrackerNews could be described as a sort of artisanal aggregator. Content isn’t driven by datelines, but  contextual relevance (a nod to Alta Haggarty for that wonderful phrase). It is about creating an interesting mix and match, grouping stories (breaking news, research, blog posts, websites, book reviews, e-books, in print, audio, video) to deepen understanding and/or make it easier to see connections.

TrackerNews is also not limited by RSS feeds. No matter how many feeds one gathers, there is always much more to be mined from the web. Also, most feeds skew toward breaking news, or what’s popular. Tracker mixes it up a bit more, often featuring lesser-known stories (research abstracts, for example, or a flashback to an older article). This isn’t to say that I don’t scan RSS feeds early and often – they’re darn useful. But Tracker is trying to do something a little different.

Read More
0 Comments

Free Press?

12/5/2008

0 Comments

 
masthead
Last night, I posted a record 12 links on a single topic on TrackerNews: a dozen stories from around the world about efforts to thwart a free press. I could easily have posted more. Here is what made the cut:
  • A story about Russia’s efforts to recast Stalin as a hero. In a recent raid, computer hard-drives full of inconvenient documentation to the contrary were carted off from the offices of a human rights group. Also, a new treason law that not only threatens media, but any NGO that maintains an office in Russia.

Read More
0 Comments

Matchmaking: On Soil, Lost Ideas, Terra Preta, Carbon Sequestration and Amy B. Smith

12/2/2008

0 Comments

 
masthead
A few days ago, I posted a suite of “green bar” links on TrackerNews about soil health and farming that includedNational Geographic piece— “Our Good Earth” —by Charles Mann.

Mann starts out describing in great detail just  how stunningly bad things are: 7.5 million acres degraded worldwide from compaction, erosion and deforestation (according to the most comprehensive report of its kind, which is now 17 years old…). From America’s breadbasket in the Midwest where $400,000 satellite-guided tractors literally take the breath out the soil by squeezing out all the air, to wrong-headed one-size-fits-all Maoist farm policies turned the Loess Plateu, one of the most fertile places on the planet, into “arguably the worst soil erosion in the world,” it is a devastating picture of agricultural folly.

Read More
0 Comments

    background

    The TrackerNews Project was a demo aggregator I developed for InSTEDD, an independent spin-off of Google.org's humanitarian practice. It covered health issues, humanitarian work and technology.

    archives

    November 2013
    November 2011
    October 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010
    April 2010
    February 2010
    January 2010
    December 2009
    November 2009
    October 2009
    September 2009
    August 2009
    July 2009
    May 2009
    April 2009
    February 2009
    December 2008
    November 2008
    October 2008

    Categories

    All
    Agriculture
    Architecture
    Big Data
    China
    Climate Change
    Communications
    Conferences
    Cyber Security
    Deforestation
    Demographics
    Disease Surveillance
    Earthquake
    Energy
    Environment
    Food
    Food Aid
    Free Press
    Haiti
    Health
    Hunger
    Innovation
    Instedd
    Land Mines
    Lighting
    Microfinance
    Mining
    Nuclear
    Oceans
    Philanthropy
    Pollution
    Probiotics
    Recycling
    Sanitation
    Social Enterprise
    Solar
    Tech
    Terrorism
    Transportation
    Travel
    Trees
    Vaccines
    Water
    Water Borne Disease
    Water-borne Disease
    Weather

    •
introduction
Picture
sci / tech
blogs
children's media
Picture
exhibitions
photography
Website designed by 
J.A. Ginsburg