For those that are still listening, there is a something you should check out. Simply put, I am very impressed with some software, a web application, created by a small team of local professionals including a fellow UW graduate, Ilya Grigorik, the Chief Architect of AideRSS, Inc.

AideRSS may be the first tool I have found in a long while that has the potential to significantly improve on my Bloglines experiences. Bloglines has been my tool of choice for blog reading for years, but as past posts have detailed I have found some difficulties navigating and enveloping hundreds of feeds a day, many of which post a lot, some of which post rarely. I used to subscribe to almost 500 feeds, but I am now cut down to about 335.

After meeting Ilya I knew he was creating innovative and potentially important software. I met Ilya at my UW graduation ceremony a few months ago. We exchanged some of our experiences and entrepreneurial interests. Conversing with him before the ceremony confirmed my initial impressions that Ilya was a very interesting individual. We exchanged contacts and I actually added him to my LinkedIn, which is something I have never done with someone I have known for such a short time. Now, a quick glance at his LinkedIn profile shows he is linked to more than 100 very interesting people - I not surprised in the slightest.

I played with his site for a few hours one night after work and found it to be a very well designed web application. I explored the site throughly and found it be an exemplary example of modern web design. I imported my entire OPML feed of into the site and it performed flawlessly. The interface was clear and easy to follow. I especially liked the quality feedback it gives the user at the apprioriate times and places. Looking at the CSS confirmed my guess that it was a cleanly coded site. Without any hesitation I subscribed to the AideRSS blog.

I am also impressed with their technology, PostRank. In fact, I use a lot of the same ranking techniques myself and have
experience with most of the sites (Bloglines, del.icio.us, Technorati, etc.) that enable the AideRSS application. I still use a lot of these services to run what I call “tracking feeds” for myself, my company, and other key words I care about so that I can hear immediately whenever these terms are mentioned online. I used to love PubSub (if you remember of it… if not, research it). I wish it was still around. Wow, apparently it is coming back…

PubSub is undergoing redevelopment at the moment. We’ll be relaunching as PubSub 2.0 this winter with a host of exciting new features and services.

Anyways, I suggest you check out AideRSS.

So, what have I been doing? I have been very busy developing a new social networking site called Pokerspace.

Pokerspace is currently in its final stages of development for a demo release. If you would like to be one of the first few people to try out the site and help us improve it, you can submit your name and email address at Pokerspace.com.

We also recently launched the Pokerspace Development Blog, where you can stay up to date on the most recent Pokerspace development news.

That is all I have time to blog about for now, but as always, stay tuned to my blog for updates.

I now feel filled with energy, determination, and focus. I have been concentrating primarily on school for the last few years, so now I am primed to get into the workforce in a real way. I am ready to use my talents in the business world - where they will be tested much more throughly than they have been in the academic world.

I am also ready to jump into work because I am excited about the company I will be working with. I start tomorrow at a small start-up company called Suited Media Inc. Suited Media Inc. was founded in November 2006 to develop innovative online marketing solutions.

I will be working in a beautiful new building located on UW’s north campus, the Waterloo Accelerator Centre. I am quite excited be joining a small entrepreneurial software company at such a critical time in its young life. I feel ready to dedicate my attention to the continued growth and success of Suited Media Inc.

1 - Making space on the wall for my University of Waterloo Honours degree, Bachelor of Computer Science w/ Business Option
2 - Finding the Blog Influentials
3 - MyDensity maps 2 degrees of the social network around any URL
4 - Acoustic analysis shows how temple transforms echoes into sounds of nature
5 - Ning, a free social application playground
6 - iUpload blog coverage
7 - Mark Fletcher, CEO of Bloglines, shares tips on startups
8 - Mitch did notice my MyDensity post
9 - Advances in invisibility / stealth technology
10 - Cool Mind Hacks stories

I have had many exciting years at UW, but I am ready to leave the academic world and use my knowledge and experience to create real world innovation. The knowledge I have acquired at UW has been deep and wide, hands-on and theoretical, and current and relevant. And, I already have years of real-world business and software development experience thanks to the amazing co-op program at UW. The knowledge and experience I have acquired during co-op terms has been substantial. Furthermore, my personal research efforts span far and wide. The number of blogs on my personal reading list is extremely high and has been stabilizing (see Number of Feeds I Read) over the past few years. I can hardly believe I have been running this blog since 2003! The number of posts is now nearing 500.

This term should be quite enjoyable. I am taking a number of interesting courses, including two 4th year CompSci courses. CS 480 - Information Systems Management is right up my alley, covering many of the topics under my personal research umbrella. CS 498 Image and Vision Computing seems even more cool. So much of what we have covered in the first few lectures is actually making sense to me primarily due to my experience with audio and synthesizers. Low-pass filters, sampling rates, Fourier transforms, and so on, are topics I already know about from on my on going quest to learn as much as I can about audio/sound/music.

I have been quietly building a lot of posts lately, gathering more information for each post before I make it. I figure that my previous posts show a lot about what I am interested in already. In future posts, I will try to add more value to the blogosphere by combining more sources, over more time, with more of my personal comments added. I would like to focus more on emerging synergies from different personal, academic, and business niches — with less posts about a single cool idea. More perspectives = better information.

I have not even started my graphics assignment which is due Tuesday. And it is the creation of a ray tracer! That is also going to take forever. I am guess the blog posting will be slow for a while longer. In the meantime, here are some cool graphics related stories I had noted a few days (probably weeks) ago.

CMU scientist honoured for novel method of using computers to simulate collisions of objects

Dr. Doug L. James, assistant professor of computer science and robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, has developed new methods to make computers simulate collisions a thousand times faster than previous methods.

In a computer, the shape of an object is typically represented by tens of thousands of tiny triangles. In conventional programs, when an object collides with something, the shape of each triangle is recomputed, based on physical principles.

“In most cases, things don’t touch each other all over their surfaces,” he explained. So, using what he calls “bounded deformation trees,” the computer does detailed computations only for those triangles that are touching. That reduces the amount of computing drastically and thus speeds up the entire process.

SwiftShader Software Renderer

TransGaming’s SwiftShader technology provides the world’s fastest pure software 3D renderer with DirectX 9.0 class features, according to the company, including support for Pixel and Vertex Shaders. SwiftShader is built to provide the same APIs that developers are already using for their games and applications. This makes it possible to directly integrate SwiftShader into applications without any changes to source code. Direct3D 8 and Direct3D 9 compatible APIs are available immediately.

HDR (High Dynamic Range) Technology

HDR, or High Dynamic Range, is a lighting process that’s been designed to emulate in-game or artificially generated lighting to closely mirror the changes we see in the real world.

In simpler terms, HDR allows you to make the objects brighter by allowing them to use the full brightness capabilities of the monitor and not just the brightness level at which they have been shot with (or rendered with) in the scene.

The UW DJ club is hosting a charity party in the Student Life Centre (SLC) on campus at UW. I will be playing a live breaks/DnB set from 2:30PM-4:00PM. I am quite excited. I have never played on campus before, nor with the UW DJ club. It should be quite fun. I will probably be hanging out in the SLC with my gear in case anyone wants to play, learn, or teach. Just look for a guy with a small midi controller keyboard.

I am guessing most of the other DJs will be playing some popular records with the tables, but I am just going to freestyle it with my laptop and midi controller for an hour and a half. As long as I can keep some beats and breaks going down the without overloading my computer with crazy effect chains I should be good. This will be my second live performance. At an hour and a half long, I just hope I can find enough cool material to draw from to play it out smoothly.

Here is the DJ lineup for today’s FSA Charity Event:

11:30am -1:00pm DJ Tin Lok (Andrew)
1:00pm - 2:30pm DJ Colin Bell (Colin)
2:30pm - 4:00pm The Inner Space Cowboy (Jason)
4:00pm - 5:30pm DJ Laika (Hunter)
5:30pm - 7:00pm DJ soulpepper (Jen)
7:00pm - 8:30pm DJ Adrian (Adrian)
8:30pm - 10:00pm MixMasterAlan (Alan)
10:00pm - 11:30pm DJ Karts (Kartik)

Why I blog this? It is a charity event, so if you are around the Waterloo area today please come out and show your support. As well, please spread the word of this charity event to your friends. All proceeds from this charity goes toward the Hurricane Katrina victims. Oh, and do not forget to go to the Bomber afterwards! And remember, I am playing a live set from 2:30PM to 4:00PM! Come dance!

via TechCrunch, Om Malik’s Broadband Blog, SiliconBeat, IFTF’s Future Now

Why I blog this? This is Web2.0 all the way. Small team, innovative idea, excellent execution so far. Stay tuned to their blog for more details.

The DepthCube z1024 3D Display is a rear-projection volumetric display in which a high-speed DLP(TM)
video projector sends a series of 3D image slices into a 3D projection volume. The projection volume is
composed of a physically deep stack of 20 electrically-switchable liquid crystal scattering shutters. At any
instant in time 19 of scattering shutters are transparent and only one is in a white scattering state. We
switch a single shutter into the scattering state and project onto it the appropriate image slice
corresponding to its physical depth. Since each image slice is stopped in the projection volume at the
correct depth, the DepthCube produces a 3D image that is truly deep.

A patented 3D anti-aliasing hardware algorithm virtually eliminates the visual discontinuities between
layers so that the 3D image appears to be completely smooth and continuous.

Why I blog this? It would be damn fun to play with for the graphics course I am currently taking.

via Video Thing via Future Feeder

Need to wake somebody up? Want to have some fun while doing it? Pull the pin, toss the gernade, and get ready for a “very annoying and piercingly loud noise”.

via Boing Boing via RedFerret

An example game is Peekaboom, which is used online by teams of two players. The first one, designated as “Peek,” sees on his screen an image — initially empty — and a word that describes the image or one element of the image. The second one, named “Boom,” gradually reveals the image or gives hints to “Peek” until he correctly guesses the word associated to the image. A computer program can use this information to learn how to better categorize and identify objects visually. Essentially, humans are helping to train computer vision systems.

This reminds me of the method people use to break CAPTCHAs. A Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart is often used to protect web forms from automated use. To break a CAPTCHA, one simply needs to redirect the CAPTCHA image that the script comes across - to a human of course. The most common way to do this, is to ask a human to evaluate a CAPTCHA image before giving them access to free pornography. Clever, but extremely simply, and I would guess it is quite effective.

Why I blog this? I believe we will see many more ‘teaching systems’ where computer software ‘learns’ by working with humans. Why? Because humans already know how to learn. We can categorize incoming sensory information and manipulate it abstractly with symbols. And, we know instinctively how to teach learning when we raise children. I quite expect to one day raise a personal A.I. using human training and attention.

via FutureWire via Unmediated via SmartMobs