Fun Fact: Happiness Can Be Tracked

While reading through the Oracle Blogs, I came across this link to statistics on happiness on Facebook.  My takeaway is that your attitude shows everywhere.  I think your Christian testimony can shine or fade on Facebook.  This ability to measure happiness from your comments is just one proof.

Another thing I notice is the strong tie between happiness and events.  You can chart the holidays by the happiness levels.  When we have true Joy that exists regardless of the events around us, we truly standout and our light shines.

I had seen the Google Flu Trends before, which charts the Flu outbreaks from Google Searches.  The information age is just starting.  The amazing part is not necessarily the new information that we will see but the availability of the information and the way in which it can be analyzed and brought together.

Receipts

After just taking a business trip myself, this idea of digital receipts sounds appealing.  Having to keep up with a million paper receipts and try to turn them in is never fun!

I ran across this link about Digital Receipts that caught my attention.  This sounds great to me, but I am not convinced that it is feasible.  First of all, the digital receipts will have to be transferred to the consumer in an open format that various applications can use.  Otherwise, I will be left out because proprietary solutions and Linux don’t usually mix well.  Secondly, many places that I go seem to do good getting a credit card machine to work much less a point-of-sale system that delivers digital receipts!

I think the more realistic solution is a phone application like “Expense Manager” that digitizes the receipt on site.  This way the receipt is tracked digitally but it doesn’t require anything of the vendor.  I am still working to get it perfected.  I didn’t use it this past trip for some reason.  I am not sure exactly why.

Electric Vehicles

Today, I saw a couple of articles on electric vehicles.  These have always fascinated me; maybe one day, it will make sense for me to own one!

Engadget: Mavizen’s electric bike hits 130 MPH, ships with Linux and WiFi

The idea of any vehicle with Linux sound cool to me!  I wonder if it starts automatically as I saw on this other car?  The $41,000 price tag kind of limits my interest too much.  I don’t see that in my driveway any time soon.

Engadget: Tesla pulls in $465 million government loan to build Model S electric sedan

The Tesla vehicles have been interesting for a long time.  This Model S looks like it is closer to reality.  Even if I can’t afford it, I wonder if it will shake up the market and bring new innovative features to other vehicles trying to compete.

Oh well.  Maybe one day, but now, it is time to hop in my environment unfriendly vehicle and head home!

Fun New Gadgets

Here are a couple of links that caught my eye:

Cell phone car starter

I would love to me able to start my car from inside the house or from a distance, but living in Florida, it’s not worth paying for.  Why can’t all the cars just run Linux, and I could code a little hack to let an App on my phone start the car?  This cell phone idea is a little over the top for me though — the telemarketer thing is a little too realistic!

It pays to play video games!

I bet that if they studied programmers, they would find programming does twice what video games do.  You can never have too many studies that say to spend more time with electronics.  Just kidding.

Food printer???

I have always been interested in robotics in the Restaurant business, but this is above what I would have imagined.  It should would be convenient to not need to cook.  Then, can we get wireless support and email the food to work for lunch?

Wireless Charging

Cordless is great, but you still need power some how.  Sometimes keeping batteries charged is more annoying than having the tool wireless.  If wireless power works, that would revolutionize the wireless world!

Fun Fact: Open Source Cars

Having an Open Source car sounds great!  Where can I get one?

EDAG’s Light Car EV is open source, doused in OLEDs

Gadget Wishlist

I came across this on this gadget on Engadget, and it caught my interest.  We have an old camcorder that has a battery problem.  It works great if you keep it plugged into the wall, but you can’t capture the moments well like that.  This might make a good replacement!

The price didn’t look too bad: $150 (from here).  It says that it takes up to a 32G card.  If it records at 20min per 1GB, the card would hold over 10 hours of video.  That would be plenty of time  for the things we would do: recording Christmas morning fun, kids programs/plays, ballgames, etc.

This comes out in April.  So, it’s not like we could go out and get it now.

If anyone has any thoughts or knows of other camcorders like this, please let us know.

Fun Fact: Facial Image Search

According to this article, you can use Google Search to search for just pictures with faces in them.

Here is another article along the same lines.

According to the second article, the option is in the advanced search options now.

Fun Fact — Wireless Electricity

It might just be possible!

I first read about it in this article:
‘Wireless power’ could save the day

Company web site:
eCoupled website

Is it possible that we won’t need batteries for our electric cars in the future? The cars will just have an antenna, and instead of stopping at the gas station, we’ll just pay the transportation electric bill.

This would be great for the laptop. I can access the Internet without a cord, but I still have to be close to a power outlet if I am going to be there for more than a few hours. With wireless power, the laptop would truly have no strings attached.