Olympic Tech

The Beijing Olympics are cool and the swimming is even better. However, just as the hype and intensity of the Olympics increases every four years, so does the technology used in it. More and more technology is being used by the officials, organizers, and the athletes to have more precise measurements, and faster lap times.

Being able to predict the weather is something we have tried to do for centuries. For the most part, unsuccessfully. For the 2008 Olympics, its no different, as the Beijing Meteorological Bureau teamed up with IBM and acquired a new supercomputer called the P575.

This is not it but it looks very very similar.

The P575 is supposed to have ten times the computational power of the current Beijing Meteorological Bureau and be able to provide up to the hour forecasts. In addition to that, it will be able to measure the air quality in and around Beijing and help improve the overall accuracy of weather forecasts.

Predicting the weather is great, but that does not really help athletes. What improvements have been made that help athletes? The US Swim team have been using an experimental flow measurement techniques developed by a fluids mechanics professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to figure out how each and every stroke can be improved. By taking complex flow
measurements of actual swimmers in the water and combining that with force measurements exerted per stroke, the research team is able to measure a swimmer in real time.

Measuring how the swimmer can go with the flow of water and how much he displaces in his strokes is vital to knowing how to gain that advantage, where in professional competition, it could be as little as a hundredth of a second.

In addition, there have been strides in China's cell phone industry with the advent of the Olympic games, as they launched 3G services of their own and also began offering up media dedicated for mobile devices. This shows a gradual push towards incorporating more technology within the games. Who knows what will be employed in the next your years. For more information about the Olympics, visit Experience' Sports blog.

Headphones

One of the most integral aspects of a college student's life is music. Specifically, ones own individual music and the ability to listen to it without interruption from everyone else around. If it means blasting your music at full volume, then so be it.

With that in mind, I wanted to check out what it would take for people to truly enjoy their music in peace, without any interference from the outside world. Believe it or not, there is a lot of technology associated with it, most of which is hard to understand unless you're in engineering.

Who would have ever thought Dolby Surround Sound Technology would be available in headphones, but they do exist. Somewhat pricey, however, Dolby Headphones create the effect of 5.1 surround sound with advanced signal processing. The headphones accomplish this by creating a virtual room with virtual sound that is extremely fine tuned to simulate the feeling of surround sound.

By using a special decoder (that you can see in the picture to the right) the signal coming in can be processed into Dolby Surround Sound Technology and then sent to the headphones. Nowadays, more units are becoming available with this technology built in so that any good pair of headphones can produce this rich surround sound experience.

So now you have some great sounding music or whatever you listen to...but the cord is in the way. Whether you go to the gym or you want to be discrete about your listening habits in class, for some reason or the other, you hate the cord. Then get rid of it! Okay, don't cut it off, get yourself a pair of discrete wireless headphones that you thought only existed in the movies. Introducing the Sennheiser MXW1 (who comes up with those model names?) wireless headphones. You simply pop these bad boys into your ears and you're set to listen to hours of music discretely, while you're in a boring class or listening to a lecture from your significant other....they will never know.

Best of all, they come with a rechargeable carry case and also an ipod shuffle-sized wireless transmitter that transmits audio signals at hi-fi stereo sound quality a.k.a its pretty damn good! So go on your way you champion of the lectures, with these, you can sit through almost anything and still enjoy your music.

The bad man notice: I do not work for or endorse any of the products or technologies shown in this post and all brand names are respective of their owners.

Wallet Woes

As the new fall semester approaches, those of us who will have to go back to school either dread it or welcome it. I have mixed feelings about entering my senior year, some good feelings about finally being a senior and all the buzz related to that. And (yes I started a sentence with "and") some not so great things like graduation and my life afterwards.

These are all very important things to consider as one is about to begin the race for the final stretch, the home plate, the end zone, the big kahuna...or lebowski. Either way, technology will be there to try and save you from .... yourself. I'm talking about loosing your wallet...or not loosing it....or not worrying about it once it is lost, if it does get lost....what?

How many times have we forgotten our social security, insurance, student ID, credit card and bank numbers? Well all that can be a thing of the past. Introducing the new Biouno....not the card game. The Biouno is a revolutionary new wallet that can store the typical cards and cash but can also store more than 100 account numbers, pins, and other highly sensitive information in its 8mb flash card that is only accessible through a biometric finger swipe security system.
For pictures and more information, check out their website:
http://www.biouno.com/

The wallet opens up to reveal a small screen that displays your chosen personal information. If you loose said wallet, dont worry about it. The data is stored behind a 200 billion to one anti fraud biometric algorithm that is unique to each Biouno unit.

Granted, there are programs that are becoming available for cellphones which will be able to store sensitive information behind a good algorithm system but nothing beats the simplicity of having your financial information handy with you where your money is and only accessible through your unique fingerprint.

Disclaimer: I do not endorse this product but merely share my thoughts about something interesting.

Green Tech Part 2

This is part 2 of the Green Technology series; the idea is to discuss how technology is paving the future of environmentally friendly ideas and concepts into production with real world usage.

Last week, I discussed GE's new GEnx jet propulsion engine that is going to be incorporated into the new fleet of Boeing's 787 Dreamliner. This week, I found the Chevy Volt. Chevy? Yes. Chevrolet? Yes. As in, GM? Yes, GM.

Probably the first good thing GM has done in a long time is revamp its electric car...after the company killed it in 2003 with the required return of all leased EV1 cars. Regardless of the past, the Chevy Volt is certainly a "jolt" to an industry that is currently dominated by Asian automakers. But before you judge the behemoth of a failure that GM has been, take a look at the Chevy Volt.

Is that really a Chevy?? Yeah, it surprised me too, yes it is real in all its glory; something that cannot be said about a GM vehicle, period. So what makes this car green?

The underlying concept, even though it is just a hybrid, is that it is an electric powered, gasoline assisted vehicle. Generally, its been the other way around, gasoline powered, electric assisted. However, the concept behind the Volt is that most Americans drive under 40 miles a day. So, if you make a vehicle that has an electric range of 40 miles, then you will be satisfying the need of most Americans without using a drop of gas. Of course, that range increases a bit with regenerative braking and constant recharging, etc.

Powering the Volt is also pretty straight forward; simply plug the car into a standard wall outlet and voila! By the time you wake up, the car will be fully juiced and ready to take you wherever
you need to go. Since it runs on an electric motor, there are no emissions of any kind, and its completely clean. In addition, an added benefit is that the motor does not have to shift into higher gears to reach optimal performance. You have 100% of the torque as soon as you touch the gas pedal, and that relates to some really fast 0 - 60mph timings. I won't delve into all those details but I will say that you will have no problem reaching highway speeds from take off.

Lithium-ion batteries, like the ones in a laptop, have made this technology possible. By coupling a bunch of lithium-ion batteries and adding a really sophisticated processor to the entire mix, you have a very useful system that is relatively cheap and also very environmentally friendly. After all, being environmentally friendly is what the green age is all about.

Green Tech Part 1

With all the talk about going green (make sure you check out the Experience Green blogs), I decided to take a look at how technology can help us achieve that goal. Obviously, technology is what got us into this rut in the first place; we might as well have technology clean it up. This is the first of a three part post which explores technology that is trying to make the world a better place.

Lets get a roundup of exactly what companies are producing to enter this new green age.

General Electric (or simply GE) has designed an aircraft engine, the GEnx, that has 15% better fuel economy, 60% less noise, and the ability to meet stringent NOx (emissions) regulations.

The blades and the external housing of the GEnx are made with composite materials that are lighter, stronger, and able to last much longer than aluminum, or steel. Such materials can reduce the weight of the entire engine by up to 350 lbs which translates into more fuel efficiency as the engine can burn less fuel with the same energy output.

However, since Boeing began production of the Dreamliner, they needed an engine that can produce more power and with all the cost saving features included. To achieve this, the GEnx engine, a standard on all of Boeing's new Dreamliners, will have a 23:1 compression ratio. This will effectively
allow the engine to generate up to 85,000 lbs of thrust for the massive aircraft.

Now, you would think that making bigger things is not necessarily in the best interest of the green age; it isn't size we should be concerned about (for the most part...) but rather, how we are able to energize and utilize whatever we make. If a bigger airplane has better fuel economy and more power than a regular airplane, then why not go bigger?

The question is not why, but rather, how can we make things that are efficient and provide the same or better utility while still being good for the environment.

Read more of this series.