Transform iPhone Into a Universal Remote

OK, so we know a thing or two about the "convenience" of using your iPhone as a remote control. For instance, using it to control Boxee was alright -- until we needed to make a call. Or we received a call. Not to rain on anyone's parade, but the idea of re-purposing your phone to act as a universal remote seems a little silly. But what do we know? Maybe you hold all calls while Jersey Shore is on anyways. In that case, Re could be your next favorite gadget. This bad boy lets your handset communicate with all your AV equipment via infrared, contains an extensive database of devices, and can learn from any IR remote. If that weren't enough, New Kinetix promises regular updates to the app -- and your typical remote can't do that! Compatible with the iPod Touch as well, there's no word yet on a price or release date, but we're expecting that we'll be getting plenty more details come CES time...more

Cooky Robots

Cooking robots aren't exactly anything new (even if they haven't yet been perfected), but they generally come in the form of humanoid robots or, at the very least, robotic arms in order to be more adept in the kitchen. JST's ERATO research division has taken a decidedly different approach with these so-called Cooky robots, however, which are tiny, wheeled bots that scurry about your countertop and work as a team to make miso soup for you. As you might have guessed from the image above though, they aren't quite entirely autonomous, and require that you both label all the necessary ingredients with special cards, and pre-program things like cooking time and temperature. They'll take things over from there on out though and, as you can see in the video after the break, the results do at least appear to be edible.

This Is Your Data on Silverlight

Here's an interesting video that gives you an idea of what working with data on the web can be like using Silverlight. The company is Data Applied, and if you can take the robotic narration you'll see some interesting data visualization examples. There's a link to sign up and try crunching your own data for free. I tried it out with and it's definitely worth a look. One nit I have is the mouse wheel deepzooms the data rather than scrolls the list. But there are interesting analysis you can run, like pivots, tree maps, forecasts and correlations. If you're a data viz junkie, you'll find a lot to keep you busy. (http://www.on10.net/)

Quantum Algorithm Promising Superfast Search

Quantum computing has long dangled the possibility of superfast, super-efficient processing, and now search giant Google has jumped on board that future. New Scientist reports that Google has spent the past three years developing a quantum algorithm that can automatically recognize and sort objects from still images or video.

The promise of quantum computing rests with the bizarre physics that occurs at the subatomic level. Different research teams have worked on creating quantum processors that store information as qubits (quantum bits), which can represent both the 1 and 0 of binary computer language at the same time. That dual possibility state allows for much more efficient processing and information storage.

To take an example cited by Google, a classical computer might need 500,000 peeks on average to find a ball hidden somewhere within a million drawers. But a quantum computer could find the ball by just looking into 1,000 drawers -- a nice little stunt known as Grover's algorithm.

Google has been using a quantum computing device created by D-Wave, a Canadian firm. But a lack of information about how D-Wave's chip works has led to outside skepticism regarding whether it does indeed count as a quantum computer... read more

MIT Gestural Computing

MIT Media Lab, home to Big Bird's illegitimate progeny, augmented reality projects aplenty, and now three-dimensional gestural computing. The new bi-directional display being demoed by the Cambridge-based boffins performs both multitouch functions that we're familiar with and hand movement recognition in the space in front of the screen -- which we're also familiar with, but mostly from the movies. The gestural motion tracking is done via embedded optical sensors behind the display, which are allowed to see what you're doing by the LCD alternating rapidly (invisible to the human eye, but probably not to human pedantry) between what it's displaying to the viewer and a pattern for the camera array. This differs from projects like Natal, which have the camera offset from the display and therefore cannot work at short distances, but if you want even more detail, you'll find it in the informative video after the break. (http://www.engadget.com/)