MP3

Sep 5 2008   7:19AM GMT

Rapping about CERN’s Large Hadron Collider? Not the end of the world as we know it.

Posted by: Alexander Howard
Technology, fun, video, YouTube, cool, culture, learning, free, academics, MP3, futurism, music, science, humor, geek

Need a breath of fresh air and humor heading into the weekend? Check out this hilarious video of the Large Hadron Rap on YouTube. Hat tip to Cosmos Magazine for the discovery. This leads up to the highly anticipated moment next Wednesday when CERN turns on the Large Hadron Collider over in Geneva, Switzerland. Combining humor, science and music, this video brings some geeky fun to the exploration of the fundamental particles of matter, including our understanding of antimatter, dark matter and the elusive Higgs Boson.

According to the YouTube shownotes:

• Kate McAlpine, aka DJ AlpineKat, is the rapper. She works as a science writer for CERN.
• Will Barras, a PhD student in the Department of Linguistics and English Language at the University of Edinburgh, is responsible for the thumpin’ beats.
  
• The images used came from particlephysics.ac.uk, space.com, the Institute of Physics, NASA, Symmetry, and Marvel
• The dancers doubled as camera people, with some work by Neil Dixon. Stock footage is CERN’s.
• The original mp3, lyrics, and vocals can be sampled and remixed from McAlpine’s directory on MSU.edu.

Those lyrics are easily several orders of magnitude more complex than the average gangsta rap. Babes, bling and bluster is replaced by the Big Bang, dark matter and bosons. I posted them below for your enjoyment:

The Large Hadron Rap

Twenty-seven kilometers of tunnel under ground
Designed with mind to send protons around
A circle that crosses through Switzerland and France
Sixty nations contribute to scientific advance
Two beams of protons swing round, through the ring they ride
‘Til in the hearts of the detectors, they’re made to collide
And all that energy packed in such a tiny bit of room
Becomes mass, particles created from the vacuum
And then…

LHCb sees where the antimatter’s gone
ALICE looks at collisions of lead ions
CMS and ATLAS are two of a kind
They’re looking for whatever new particles they can find.
The LHC accelerates the protons and the lead
And the things that it discovers will rock you in the head.

We see asteroids and planets, stars galore
We know a black hole resides at each galaxy’s core
But even all that matter cannot explain
What holds all these stars together – something else remains
This dark matter interacts only through gravity
And how do you catch a particle there’s no way to see
Take it back to the conservation of energy
And the particles appear, clear as can be

You see particles flying, in jets they spray
But you notice there ain’t nothin’, goin’ the other way
You say, “My law has just been violated – it don’t make sense!
There’s gotta be another particle to make this balance.”
And it might be dark matter, and for first
Time we catch a glimpse of what must fill most of the known ‘Verse.
Because…

LHCb sees where the antimatter’s gone
ALICE looks at collisions of lead ions
CMS and ATLAS are two of a kind
They’re looking for whatever new particles they can find.

Antimatter is sort of like matter’s evil twin
Because except for charge and handedness of spin
They’re the same for a particle and its anti-self
But you can’t store an antiparticle on any shelf
Cuz when it meets its normal twin, they both annihilate
Matter turns to energy and then it dissipates

When matter is created from energy
Which is exactly what they’ll do in the LHC
You get matter and antimatter in equal parts
And they try to take that back to when the universe starts
The Big Bang – back when the matter all exploded
But the amount of antimatter was somehow eroded
Because when we look around we see that matter abounds
But antimatter’s nowhere to be found.
That’s why…

LHCb sees where the antimatter’s gone
ALICE looks at collisions of lead ions
CMS and ATLAS are two of a kind
They’re looking for whatever new particles they can find.
The LHC accelerates the protons and the lead
And the things that it discovers will rock you in the head.

The Higgs Boson – that’s the one that everybody talks about.
And it’s the one sure thing that this machine will sort out
If the Higgs exists, they ought to see it right away
And if it doesn’t, then the scientists will finally say
“There is no Higgs! We need new physics to account for why
Things have mass. Something in our Standard Model went awry.”

But the Higgs – I still haven’t said just what it does
They suppose that particles have mass because
There is this Higgs field that extends through all space
And some particles slow down while other particles race
Straight through like the photon – it has no mass
But something heavy like the top quark, it’s draggin’ its ***
And the Higgs is a boson that carries a force
And makes particles take orders from the field that is its source.
They’ll detect it….

LHCb sees where the antimatter’s gone
ALICE looks at collisions of lead ions
CMS and ATLAS are two of a kind
They’re looking for whatever new particles they can find.

Now some of you may think that gravity is strong
Cuz when you fall off your bicycle it don’t take long
Until you hit the earth, and you say, “Dang, that hurt!”
But if you think that force is powerful, you’re wrong.
You see, gravity – it’s weaker than Weak
And the reason why is something many scientists seek
They think about dimensions – we just live in three
But maybe there are some others that are too small to see
It’s into these dimensions that gravity extends
Which makes it seem weaker, here on our end.
And these dimensions are “rolled up” – curled so tight
That they don’t affect you in your day to day life
But if you were as tiny as a graviton
You could enter these dimensions and go wandering on
And they’d find you…

When LHCb sees where the antimatter’s gone
ALICE looks at collisions of lead ions
CMS and ATLAS are two of a kind
They’re looking for whatever new particles they can find.
The LHC accelerates the protons and the lead
And the things that it discovers will rock you in the head.

Jun 17 2008   11:08PM GMT

Podcast: Live from Enterprise 2.0, discussing how to use social media

Posted by: Alexander Howard
Web 2.0, podcast, enterprise, Technology, new media, MP3, social publishing, event, WhatIs.com, forum, feedback, community, interactive media, social networking, communications, Web applications, cloud computing, the cloud, government, conference, enterprise 2.0

Last week at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston, I was pulled into a podcast with Chris Brogan, Aaron Strout and Sam Lawrence. We talked about what was going on at the conference, what we’d learned so far and what strategies individuals, businesses and enterprise might find useful in using social media.

Download the MP3

These guys are deeply immersed in the enterprise social software world, aka enterprise 2.0. Aaron is a VP at Mzinga, Sam is the CMO for Jive Software and Chris Brogan, is, well, everywhere in the social media world, along with being a VP at CrossTechMedia.

P.S. Feel free to call me “Andy” from here on out.

May 28 2008   2:10PM GMT

Drop.io: Free, online file sharing made simple, easy and anonymous

Posted by: Alexander Howard
Storage, Mobile, applications, data, Web services, Internet, innovation, cool, free, MP3, feeds, reviews, resource, collaboration, widgets, tool, service, backup, privacy, Web applications

Do you need a simple way to post and share large files on the Web temporarily?

Is sending an attachment over email a bad option, for whatever reason?

You could try Amazon S3 or FileURLs, both of which offer the ability to transfer files around. You could use the tried and true method of posting to a server and FTP client. You could even set up a BitTorrent tranfer between machines.

Or you could check out Drop.io. Launched in November of 2007, this New York City-based storage-as-a-service provider makes storing and sharing files anonymously a breeze. Allen Stern covered the launch of the Drop.io alpha for Center Networks.

You don’t need to register or sign up for an account. Drop.io allows a user to create a “drop” — a dedicated storage space, with all of two clicks. Basic drops are free and include 100MB of storage space.

Here’s how it works:

You creates a drop URL with a unique name more than seven characters long.

You upload a file to it and sets an expiration time (1 day to 1 year) for when it will be deleted, along with passwords for access and administration.

You then can choose what level of access (read, read/write, read/write/delete) any non-admin users will have.

Once you’ve created a drop folder, you can continue to add files and notes to it over the Web, cellphone, email, SMS or even fax.

Each drop also has a dedicated phone extension that allow you to call in and record voice messages that are then added to the drop.

Drop.io isn’t indexed by Google or other search engines, so your data will remain as private as your friends and clients are with the access information.

Drop.io is, in fact, completely anonymous, other than the fact that it tracks your IP address to address legal requirements or tersm of service violations

The service doesn’t require you to give your email address or create a permanent account or profile. Once the drop expires, so does everything related to it.

Just any time you’re uploading large files, there can be freezes or time outs if your upstream connection isn’t all it could be, as David Weinberger noted when he tried it out. I didn’t have any issues when I dropped a screencast for a colleague onto the service.

Drop.io has another cool feature: an RSS feed created for the drop. As a fan of RSS, this is a snazzy feature that instantly opens up new means of collaboration and distribution.

If you post an audio or video file into a drop, bingo: instant podcast, complete with a player. Remember: You can also leave voice messages on a given drop, so this is about as easy a podcasting method as you’ll find.

As Lifehacker pointed out, Drop.io features free, simple faxing. Other folks can send faxes to your dedicated number, where the document are converted into a PDF and syndicated to any portable device that can handle that format. You’ll need to send an automatically generated cover sheet to the sender to ensure proper conversion. Conversely, you can upload a document to Drop.io, enter a destination fax number and click “Fax” to send.

There’s even a way to embed the Drop.io widget in a Web page or wiki, which allows visitors to *send* you files. Password protection is included if you’re leery of malware (an excellent idea, in this writer’s opinion).

Your friends, colleagues and clients can also post to the drop simply by emailing a file to it, though given that the service specifically works *around* sending large files through email servers, this is probably best kept to smaller bits and bytes of content. Just address the message to  yourdropname at drop.io.

Read the Drop.io FAQ for more information or check out the brief tutorial.

Watch a video interview with the founders of Drop.io, Sam Lessin and Darshan Somashekar, from CenterNetworks.
Leo Laporte and Amber MacArthur also had Sam and Darshan on the 46th episode of the Net@Night netcast.
[Listen to the MP3]

The service isn’t perfect: As Dave Winer and Michael Arrington both noted, files posted to Drop.io are not added as an enclosure to the RSS feed, which means you’ll have to go back to the service to retrieve the media.

That being said, I’m an instant fan — and I’m far from alone. The following is just a sample of the positive reviews for drop.io out there:

Download Squad: Share files with Drop.io

AppScout: Drop.io simplifies file sharing and uploading

HackZine: Drop.io is simple, anonymous file sharing

Drape Stakes: Drop.io’s file sharing with RSS = endless possibilities

Andy Piper: Sharing large files with Drop.io

One Minute Tips: Drop.io is the Swiss Army knife of transfer

Mar 31 2008   9:53AM GMT

Win an iPod with a hyperlink

Posted by: Alexander Howard
fun, blog, free, MP3, music, songs, gadgets, blogging

Linking to ITKnowledgeExchange.com could be music to your ears.

Over the course of April, our sister site will be running a promotion whereby anyone that links to them or adds them to a blogroll will be eligible to win an iPod Shuffle.

All you have to do is add ITKE and then send Brent Sheets an email to let him know about it.

Good luck!

Jan 4 2008   11:40AM GMT

The future is now. And the silicon cockroach has evolved and flourished

Posted by: Ivy Wigmore
Security, hardware, messaging, Mobile, Apple, Technology, Audio, multimedia, MP3, futurism, traffic, Bluetooth, gadgets, trend, telephony, science, texting, geek, grayware

It’s sometimes said that the only constant that you can count on is change. Change is necessary, after all — “Adapt or die” being an imperative of the natural world. And perhaps even more so in the world of technology…

These are the sorts of thoughts that occur as I poke around in the definition database, reviewing likely suspects for Words of the Day.  WhatIs has been around since 1996, when founder Lowell Thing started his little “dining room table experiment in hypertext.” Eleven calendar years ago. I’m not sure how long ago that is in Web years, for which the calibration must always be ramping up. However long the years since, though, what it means for us editors is a whole lot of updating.

We try, with varying success, to make definitions as future shock proof as we can without compromising the value of current information. Today’s Word of the Day, Antikythera mechanism, lends itself to that approach pretty well. You don’t expect a lot to change on a 2000-year-old computer. But for breaking news and link rot, we’re pretty much set with that one.

On the other hand, there are those definitions that seem to have been written in a simpler time, probably in the last century. Occasionally, I review a definition that predicts future developments that have either not panned out or have proven so prescient that all we have to do is change the tenses and phrases like “might become” to “is.”

Take silicon cockroach for example. I came across that one yesterday, looking for WODs for the weekend. John Sidgmore coined the term back in ‘98 to refer to the multiplicity of small electronic devices that he predicted would prevail in the future. We added the definition in ‘01. Now, as we flip lightly over into ‘08, I see that not only do the tenses need to be changed from future to present but a host of new life forms added to the species. No mention of MP3 players, GPS , USB drives…

What does our definition say now? Well … that depends. How far into the future are you reading it?
~ Ivy Wigmore

Aug 13 2007   5:54AM GMT

Could your heatbeat power your iPod?

Posted by: Ivy Wigmore
energy efficiency, Technology, Audio, MP3, interesting, futurism, invention, green, music, gadgets, buzz, science, medicine

It’s not quite perpetual motion — but it might be the next best thing. Dr. Steve Beeby and a team of researchers at the School of Electronics & Computer Science (ECS) at Southampton University in the UK have developed a kinetic energy generator that harnesses the energy of environmental vibrations and movement. When you think about it, Elvis was right: There’s a whole lotta shakin’ going on. And the scientists working on the VIBES (Vibration Energy Scavenging) project want to put all that energy generated to good use.

Actual size: less than 1 cubic centimeter

Although the generator is not the first of its kind, it’s said to be 10 times more powerful than any previous implementation. The technology, which has an industrial background, is being adapted for use with pacemakers. In this application, the beat of a person’s heart could power their pacemaker, which would mean that they would no longer require surgery to replace the batteries.

Here’s Beeby’s explanation (quoted in IndiaTimes Infotech):
“There is a big drive towards using wireless devices, but one of the challenges in supplying power to these devices is that batteries have a finite supply that needs to be replaced. We have a spin-out company that is now looking at powering pacemakers from the movement of the heart.

“As the power consumption of electronic devices continues to fall, the opportunity to use these devices to power them becomes more apparent. The potential is there for devices like mobile phones and MP3 players being at least augmented by vibration generators. There is quite a lot of energy available on a human such as the impact of a heel on the floor which could also be used.”

When you think about it, there’s no end of vibrational energy being generated all day every day. The VIBES team and other researchers are also exploring the potential of vibrations from roads and bridges. ~ Ivy Wigmore

Jun 26 2007   11:14AM GMT

Sneakernets, removable storage and hassle-free file transfer methods

Posted by: Alexander Howard
Storage, open source, wireless, Mobile, applications, command line, software, media, data, Internet, useful, cool, MP3, lifehack, downloads, collaboration, freeware, network, Bluetooth, music, howto, backup, fundamentals

One of WhatIs.com’s faithful readers wrote in recently with a suggestion for a much-beloved IT sniglets page (go take a look if you think words like CrackBerry, AlzIMers, IMglish or prairiedogged are a hoot): sneakernet. We love that sort of thing, of course (write to us!) but in this case we already had a definition for sneakernet: a method of transmitting electronic information by personally carrying it
from one place to another on floppy disk or other removable medium. The concepts certainly doesn’t seem many years removed from the days of copying working files onto a 3.5″ floppy disc at the end of the day in the computer room — or even of writing simple algorithms to the cassette tapes attached to the ancient PET computers next to my classroom in the late 80s.

As is so often the case, technology and life comes in cycles. In recent years, the explosion of cheap, removable flash drives (or jump drives, so some folks call them) has allowed mind-bogglingly large sneaker-borne file transfers copied over speedy USB 2.0 ports. iPod owners have long since discovered that those giganormous 80-gigabyte hard drives also make fantastic data warehouses for easy travel and transfer (as long as you don’t forget the cord!) and of course, it’s a cinch for most PC owners to burn a copy of a file to a CD and walk it over to another desk or office. That sort of thing can result in podslurping, of course, as network admins know. Entire operating systems can be carted around as LiveDistros, along with whatever portable applications a user might desire. I won’t even touch, of course, the multitude of flash memory formats that inhabit cameras, smartphones, GPS devices and other electronica, each a potential method of data transfer in “the sneakernet.”

(BTW, hat tip for the cool sneaker image goes to ProZak on Flickr)

So sneakernet is definitely not dead (as noted in this tip from SearchNetworking from 2005). The prompt provided by the reader email did, however, recall to my biological RAM an e-column I read just last week from David Pogue, the witty and frequently funny technology reviewer over at the New York Times. David recently wrote about a trip to California where he managed to forget a folder of 2 GB of digital photos he’d taken of digital SLRs he was reviewing in that week’s paper. With the help of a marvelously patient wife, he managed to get the files transferred over to his laptop from home using a nifty little shareware application called Pando. Pando provides, as David says, “a free, cross-platform, super-simple program designed expressly for idiotproof file transfers, even big ones.”

You can learn more at (you guessed it) Pando.com.

The only snag is that for the service to work, both users have to download and install the client, a step and hitch that David rightly suggests is a potential hindrance, or even impossible for some end users without admin privileges. That being said, Pando worked well for David and is allowing thousands of users to easily backup, transfer, recover and (yes) trade quite large media files. Color me a fan.

Aside from discovering Pando (thanks, David!), the process Pogue worked through is remarkably similar to one that plays out in classrooms and cubicles daily. How to do it? Sneakernet and removable storage is certainly one way, though I hear that the “Interwebs” is an attractive method these days as well. Here’s a crack at a list of ways to make a hypothetical transfer happen. If you have more ideas, please add them in the comments.

For instance, gmail has changed the way that most people think about using email to send attachments, with its remarkably large capacity (convertible to online storage, as I’ve blogged about before, with Gdisk), though I agree with David that 2 gigs is a tag weighty to send this way.

Also like David, I’ve been using FTP for a long time to download and upload files online, though I’ve endured timeouts, unexpected logouts and all manner of file corruptions over the years. I still have fond memories of the early versions of Fetch, including the happy dog icon that accompanied the app. David’s second idea, using an IM-client to transfer files, wasn’t a bad idea at all, though that kind of P2P file sharing isn’t likely to fly on many corporate networks.

As David discovered, however, IM and large files size don’t mix well for file transfer.

Command line geeks know about how to use Secure Shell (referred to as SSH or secsh) to securely access a computer remotely, a method that isn’t exactly for the technically faint of heart but allows direct access to the other computer’s directories. Rajpaul Bagga offers a Secure Shell (SSH) howto if you’re interested.

How else can you transfer large files? The list isn’t short, to be sure, even after touching on CDs, iPods, flash drives, P2P file sharing apps, FTP clients, iPods and IM.

.Mac users can also set up a public folder on their iDisks, which allows them to post large files for others to download, securing them behind password-protection as necessary.

Networking geeks can directly connect one PC to another with a crossover cable. And, as many will point out, a server or shared hard drive can be set up for file sharing as well.

You can use the IrDa port on your PDA and laptop (if they both have one!) to swap files using infrared.

And (of course) Bluetooth can be enabled to allow easy transfer between PCs, PDAs and printers, though bluesnarfing should worry users with proprietary or sensitive data.

Some smartphone users can use MMS to send files as well, most often pictures or (very short) videos taken with digital cameras. Unless you’re on an EV-DO, HSDPA or some other 3G wireless network, however, this won’t work particularly well with larger files.

Did I miss anything? Let me know in the comments!

Jun 25 2007   1:47PM GMT

I aced my SATs (and how you can, too)

Posted by: Dennis Shiao
podcast, college, MP3, downloads, gadgets, tutorial

OK, so I lied - I didn’t ace my SAT exam.  However, if I grew up as part of the iPod Generation, it may have turned out differently.  The New York Times has an interesting article today about Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions’ release of three interactive programs for the video iPod (and available at iTunes).

The next time you’re riding the train and see impressionable teens bobbing their heads, it may not be the beat of Jessica Simpson, but rather a mathematical stumper that they’ve just solved.  As the article notes, the exam is still a “pencil and paper” format; however, I wouldn’t be surprised to see this exam move to a digital format in the near future.

I’ll be interested to see the popularity of these Kaplan downloads, especially compared to all of the entertainment options that teens have these days.  As for me, I hereby return to my own iPod, where I’ve got podcasts loaded up from some technology sites, along with my current favorite - numerous podcasts from ESPN Radio.

May 14 2007   2:14PM GMT

Codemonkey: The new media model for creative, Web-savvy musicians?

Posted by: Alexander Howard
fun, video, new media, Internet, commentary, cool, culture, public domain, MP3, social publishing, interesting, creativity, entrepeneurship, interactive media, music, songs, mashup, buzz

Last week, as I caught up on my backlog of podcasts, I heard a song on net@nite that Amber and Leo were laughing — hard — over. The tune was “Codemonkey” and a fan had posted a video to go along with it on YouTube. [Watch that version here.]

In fact, it turns out that there were a lot of user-created videos built around the song.

I watched several, thoroughly enjoying the catchy tune with a techie humor twist. Here are my favorites, in no particular order:

• The Codemonkey Dance
• Jocopro’s early homage
• A mashup of Codemonkey and Traders, a Canadian TV show
• Another mashup, this time of Codemonkey and the animated virtual reality of the Sims.
• There was even a WoW version of Codemonkey, perfect for MMPORG geeks like me.

Little did I know that yesterday’s Sunday New York Times Magazine would feature an article, Sex, Drugs and Updating Your Blog, by Clive Thompson, that would provide both a backstory for Codemonkey! The piece delves into the daily life of the musician (Jonathan Coulton) that wrote the song and explores at length the changing face of music, artistic expression and artists’ control over their work.

There’s a great video exploring how Codemonkey became a viral hit at nytimes.com as well.

Jonathan quit his job as a computer programmer 21 months ago to become a full-time singer and songwriter. Ten years ago, that might seem, on the face of it, either very ambitious, wildly inadvised (as the .com boom ramped up) and touchingly naive. Maybe all of those things. Whatever concerns he (or his wife) may have had, his discipline and passion, along with considerable talent and energy, have turned him into one of new media’s successes. Every week, he writes a new song, which he then publishes and markets online. In the process, he’s built a widespread fanbase and a reasonable income as an independent artist.

Not everyone can pull this off, of course. Just read the Wall Street Journal’s Tech section’s cover story today,”How to be a Star in a YouTube World.” It’s a great piece that drives home both the shift in the media landscape and the challenge in getting your voice heard in the increasingly-frenetic mix of artists on MySpace on YouTube. Thousands vloggers, podcasters and aspiring artists like Jonathan are all using a combination of these platforms to create, syndicate and, increasingly, monetize content. It’s not easy, but for those who have the time and talent, like Ask A Ninja, LonelyGirl15 or Rocketboom, it can work. It’s important to note the amount of writing, production, editing and marketing that is necessary for that success: the Ninjas, for instance, can take up to 18 hours for each 3-minute short.

Can the Web can allow more funny, creative artists like Jonathan to make a living? What do you think? Do you buy the premise of the articles?

And which version of the Codemonkey video is your favorite?

Apr 10 2007   3:32PM GMT

LibriVox: Free audiobooks from the public domain

Posted by: Alexander Howard
open source, Audio, free, public domain, MP3, audiobook, crowdsourcing, volunteer, books

LibriVox.org is an open source project that provides free audiobooks from the public domain without any advertising. To pull that off, LibriVox enables volunteers to record chapters of books and then upload the audio files as .MP3 and .OGG files back onto LibriVox, where they are then listed within the online catalog. LibriVox’s stated goal is to make all public domain books available as free, downloadable content. We wish them luck! If you would like to help, it’s easy to volunteer. Don’t worry — quite a bit of Tolstoy’s War and Peace remains to be recorded, along with numerous works of Shakepeare, if you’re feeling your thespian oats.