Nov
13
Spark 91 – November 15 & 17, 2009
Posted by Dan Misener under Episodes
On this episode of Spark: CAPTCHAs, data visualization and romancing the phone. Click to listen (runs 54:00):
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- Luis von Ahn fights spam and digitizes books with CAPTCHAs and reCAPTCHA
- GWAP: Games With a Purpose
- Jon Lee plays matchmaker for mismatched shoes with unevenfeet.com
- Daemon Fairless investigates texting and dating, or in other words, “romancing the phone”
- Nora mentions her full interview with MIT AgeLab director Joe Coughlin (full interview)
- December’s issue of Esquire magazine has an augmented reality cover
- Hannah Classen wonders why we don’t have robotic butlers
- Rehman Merali, PhD student in Autonomous Space Robotics
- Fernanda Viegas visualizes data with Many Eyes
- Lawrence Lessig explains the perils of openness in government (full interview)
This episode features Creative Commons music and sound effects:
- “Butta Fly’s Jazz Handz” by KCentric
- “Wadidyusay?” by Zap Mama
- “At Last” by Glenn Miller and His Orchestra
- “Rest (For A While) (Demo)” by The Orchestral Movement of 1932
- Clips from Dating: Do’s and Don’ts (1949)
- “acclimate” by General Fuzz
- Clips from Leave It to Roll-Oh (1940)
- “Toboggan” and “Sunday Morning” by Podington Bear
You can download this episode as an MP3, or receive Spark automatically by subscribing to any of our totally free podcast feeds:
- Free weekly podcast (Subscribe in iTunes)
- Free weekly podcast + additional blog-only content (Subscribe in iTunes)
- Free weekly podcast (low bandwidth version)
For more information (and instructions) visit cbc.ca/podcasting
[Original image by D Sharon Pruitt]
November 13th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
[...] week Radio Berkman gave a hand to our pals at Spark in their interview with legal scholar, Berkman friend, and author of the recent article Against [...]
November 16th, 2009 at 6:51 am
Hang on a minute! We DO have multi-tasking kitchen robots!
Listening to the piece about robotics in the home — past and future — I kept wanting to interject. So here I go now:
Remember the Cuisinart? Well of couse you do – because it never went away! It's here now in our kitchens, standing loud and proud on our counter-tops, ready to fulfill our every impulsive food-processing whim. But before it became ubiquitous, it was known and marketed as the "Robot-Coupe"… an unheard-of "robotic" appliance that acted as a culinary assistant for enterprising chefs and home cooks. The road from drawing board to almost every kitchen was long, but well deserved.
And today, we have the Thermomix. Not well known in Canada (yet!), but a "kitchen robot" so popular in Europe that it's on every wedding registry list and has earned the endearing nickname of "the Bimby". The marketing literature calls it "The world's smallest, smartest kitchen" and proud owners will agree this is no exaggeration.
The Bimby's abilities as a prize-wining, multi-tasking, time-saving, lifestyle-altering kitchen tool has spawned more than one study at the University of Lisbon in Portugal that scrutinized "The Bimby Phenonmenon" in European culture.
It's a simple appliance in appearance but it does a lot and it does it extremely well. Think "German engineering" and Mercedes-like quality construction. It boasts an ergonomic design that doesn't make sense until you try it, live with it, and then realize you can't live without it. Think "several innovative world-wide patents". It has a reluctance motor that goes backward in half a blink, and all the safety features of a Volvo. Think "excruciatingly high price tag" and an unabashedly adoring fan base of adventurous adrenaline-charged cooks of all ages and all walks of life.
Oh and… one of its most alluring habits is that it washes itself. But only when you tell it too. Like the roomba, it doesn't think for itself — which is probably a good thing.
The newest Thermomix model fits North American voltage (110v) requirements and is finally, (FINALLY!!!) available in Canada.
C'mon Sparkies, we DO have robotics in the kitchen worth celebrating!
Don't believe me? Think I'm exaggerating? Find out for yourselves. Lots of videos to watch on the (new!) Canadian fan blog at http://www.thermomixbimby.com. The techies won't wanna miss the category under videos called "just for fun!".
Cheers,
Helene Meurer
(absolute Thermomix fan)
November 16th, 2009 at 8:41 pm
I wonder if as the huge demographic moving into the retirements years we'll see an ad campaign that parallels the Real Beauty campaign where beauty was portrayed in all of its many facets with Age as the subject….
November 17th, 2009 at 12:19 am
Very true, as technology gets better and we age, we all demand more.
November 18th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
I need to know, where can I get a robotic chicken that sings ring of fire? Great show! Seriously though, where?
November 19th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
No kidding!
November 19th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
The robot chicken was a Valentine's Day present from my mom, and has gone down in history as the best present I have _ever_ received. She found it at the Home Hardware in Lloydminster, SK. Totally worth a trip to Canada's border city. Thanks, Ma!
November 19th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
[...] that he was right. Consider a question Lawrence Lessig recently posed during an interview for this week’s Spark – CBC podcast: “How do we deal with a world where we need to convey information for an attention span [...]
November 20th, 2009 at 1:22 am
I don't understand the CAPTCHA idea of helping with the words, whenever I have encountered such a security question, the computer has to already know the answer in order to approve my typewritten answer. Or am I missing something?
November 20th, 2009 at 1:49 am
Andre, here's how the reCAPTCHA site explains it:
"Each new word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is given to a user in conjunction with another word for which the answer is already known. The user is then asked to read both words. If they solve the one for which the answer is known, the system assumes their answer is correct for the new one. The system then gives the new image to a number of other people to determine, with higher confidence, whether the original answer was correct."
November 20th, 2009 at 2:06 am
Thanks Dan,
Now « je comprend »
November 20th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
I had the same question! It was in the original interview, but we had to cut it for the final show.
November 20th, 2009 at 8:57 pm
[...] CBC:n Spark jakso 91. Much love [...]