The new semester is about to begin. Another 4 months of working late, having fun, and buying coffee whenever possible. To get to one's respective college, university, institute of higher learning, one requires directions. Gone are the days of printing out directions and squinting at them while trying to stay in the same lane.
There is no need to waste paper when you have a GPS device. They have gotten less expensive every year and one can purchase a good device for around $100 that will get him or her from one end of the country to the other, if they so wish.
So how do these things work? How does a GPS device know exactly where you are when you turn it on? Is it tracking your every movement with an invisible radar and sending the information to top secret departments of the government to spy on each and every single citizen?...okay, maybe not.
To put it simply, GPS works on math. Lots and lots of mathematical computations are done every second by the GPS device that you or anyone else might have. There are currently 27
GPS satellites in orbit around the earth at an altitude of 12, 600 miles. Each satellite simply sends down a focussed microwave beam with an algorithm. For the system to function, there has to be at least four satellites in view. When your GPS receiver device picks up the signal, it receives the algorithms from a number of satellites and using a set of equations, and a method called trilateration, the receiver draws a virtual sphere between itself and the satellite. With two or more signals, the virtual spheres intersect in two places. Once in space and the other on earth. The intersection point on earth is the location of the receiver, and thus, you. As more spheres are drawn, the accuracy increases.
By adding more satellites to the equation, you add more spheres and you have greater accuracy of your location. The point of having so many satellites in space orbiting the earth twice a day is to ensure that there will always be a minimum of at least four satellites in view.
So with all those satellites circling around up there, won't they ever crash into one another? That is highly unlikely because there is no wind or interference in space that would make them deviate from their trajectory. Each of which has a very specific path hindering the collision of two or more satellites.
After all, if the satellites collided, that would be a very hefty waste of tax payers money. in recent years, more nations are launching their own versions of the GPS system with their own satellites:
China - COMPASS
European Union - Galileo
Russia - GLONASS
India - IRNSS
Japan - QZSS
Global Positioning System
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.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.
