Monthly Archive for June, 2002

the game of chess has joined the effort to utilise your idle cpu power. chessbrain project plans to form a network of distributed computers to create the largest “brain” of global computers, creating a powerful chess player. ibm’s deep blue computer alone has defeated world chess champion garry kasparov. i wonder how “powerful” chessbrain will be.

you can now encourage kids (and adults) to create music by fusing teddy and gameboy into techno teddy. frankly, it looks like android teddy.

another computer might help you on some winnings if you bet on world cup 2002 games. gari, the glover automated results indicator can make some predictions based on statistics and numbers. the likely world cup winner so far are england, argentina and brazil.

wired ran a story about uc berkeley’s journalism school offering weblogs (aka blogging) as a subject. the story stirred up criticisms from other bloggers about the invasion of old media into the free publishing world of weblogs. nevertheless, weblogs are also being explored as classroom tools by teachers such as will richardson.

credit card charges on you next holiday might help fund terrorist military operations. warren richey discovered that his breakfast waffles came with night-vision scope for rifles on his trip to amman. even more disturbing was that these merchants destroy transaction records.

jakob nielsen, a famous critic of macromedia flash, has formed an alliance with macromedia to educate users in designing better web sites and navigational aid with flash. he once wrote a controversial article criticising flash, that has been updated with a more positive footnote. i’ll be looking forward to read the usability guidelines as well to avoid “design abuse”.