The British government is going ahead with testing of an RFID enabled license plate. Not only is it enable, but it is using active RFID tags, which means that the information is transmitted up to 300 feet away. How long before a cop can say:

well the RFID signal from this car was received at mile marker 100 35 minutes ago, meaning that your average speed was 70 mph, so here is your ticket for speeding. (or some other scenario like that)

I am all in favor of trying to make the country a safer place, but this just seems like there are too many bad uses for technology than good uses. There is talk about how the US government has already begun using this in limited places to help track foreign cargo shipments.

So if you want to read more, you can read this blog here, or read the Wired News article here.

-Matt

I just do not know what I would do without google, I would not have anything to do at work. To commemorate the anniversary the landing of man on the moon, they have a new site, moon.google.com. This site allows you to see a maps.google.com type map of the moon marking the various landing sites on the moon. They just need to integrate this with their 3d earth viewing software.

Cindy also found a link to a site that talks about creating your own movie of the google earth software. The instructions can be found here.

I can not wait to find more google fun stuff. I even have my own custom map for the wedding details, found here

-Matt

This is a Animatronic squirrel that works with your cell phone to let you know that you have a phone call.

Current mobile communication devices do not grab our attention in a socially appropriate way. They could be disrespectful of ongoing social activity such as an important meeting or private dinner. To improve on this, I have built the Cellular Squirrel, a system where the agent that controls my cellphone is embodied in a small portable animatronic device, as a personal ‘companion’ for the user. This embodiment is able to use the same subtle but still public non-verbal cues to get our attention and interrupt us like humans would do (like eye gaze and small gestures), instead of ringing or vibration. The user can whisper and listen to her squirrel, receiving and replying to voice instant messages.

This is just another one of those silly devices, but it is an interesting concept…

Link to the site here.

-Matt

Over at engadget, they have an article about someone that built a case for their Nintendo system out of lego’s. This is a good idea, I wonder what else we can build out of lego’s…

-Matt

Engadget has a clip about a USB hub that is made of a ‘Hello Kitty‘ figure that draws power from USB to move the arms and such. This is just too silly. Read the article here

It makes me want to start asking, when is it too much? How much stuff do you want to add to your computer to make it “cool”. I guess that you will never find one of these on my computer, but you also will not find any ‘Hello Kitty‘ stuff anywhere near me, I guess I am just crazy like that…

-Matt

Update 6/20/2005: I just could not resist adding this one to the post. A Hello Kitty memory card, a must with the USB Hub.