Could you fly a fighter jet with your mind?

Jan Sheuermann can and she is quadriplegic, owing to a neurodegenerative disease. As part of Darpa’s Revolutionizing Prosthetics research track Jan was first trained to control a robotic arm with her mind alone and has recently been flying a F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (the US military’s next-generation attack jet) using a flight simulator. You can read more about this in a Wired article there's also a video.

How the internet of things is changing sport

We've heard a lot about the internet of things in the last few years, smart fridges and home thermostats for example, but it's having an effect in places you might not expect, for example sport. An article by Stephen Pritchard in The Guardian titled The internet of things is revolutionising the world of sport describes the fascinating new ways it's being applied, from golf clubs that monitor your swing to the Connected Athlete project. Fascinating stuff.

Artificial Intelligence Goes to the Arcade

My colleague, Mark Wilson, brought this article titled Artificial Intelligence Goes to the Arcade in the New Yorker about an AI that can learn to play computer arcade games better than people. Combining neural networks with reinforcement learning the company, DeepMind, was bought by Google for over $600 million last year. This is an interesting article which you can follow up in more detail with a paper recently published in the journal Nature.

Alan #Turing wins an Oscar

Well... the movie The Imitation Game won an Oscar yesterday for best adapted screen play by Graham Moore. If you haven't seen the movie I strongly recommend it to you, it's excellent Graham Moore gave a moving acceptance speech that I think Alan Turing would have appreciated.

Do you want to live in a Smart City?

Stephen Poole in the The Guardian has written a very interesting and thought provoking long article The truth about smart cities: ‘In the end, they will destroy democracy' that presents both sides of the vision of the future smart city; the benefits of a highly connected society and infrastructure and the potential pitfalls. With online privacy and data security such hot topics at the moment it's certainly easy to see how the smart city of the future could be fraught with dangers. I recommend you read it.

A year (and a bit) with Inbox Zero

In January 2014 I blogged about Inbox Zero and I have now been following that practice for a little over a year; so it's time to give my appraisal. After following the techniques outlined in the various web posts on Inbox Zero and spending a little time on the remaining stubborn emails that really had to be actioned I achieved the nirvana of an empty Gmail inbox (perviously it held approx. 20,000 mails of which approx. 2,000 were unread).
    I now check my email at set times of the day: first thing in the morning, before lunch, mid afternoon and early evening. I apply the delete, delegate, respond, defer, and do mantra to each email and have maintained inbox zero successfully for just over a year now. I'm never going back, I feel so much more relaxed and in command of my email. I use email not the other way round. For example if I receive an email from a work colleague on a Saturday I defer it until the following Monday (unless of course it really is urgent) - I'm not at work so I shouldn't be dealing with work email at the weekend. I've turned off the email notification and app badges on my iPhone and iPad. I use Unroll Me to manage email subscriptions and mailing lists, Mailbox (an excellent app) on my iOS devices, and a snooze script within Gmail. I strongly recommend you take the plunge and try Inbox Zero, you wont regret it.

The Bionic Bird

The Bionic Bird is ready to take flight. Drones have been in the world a lot recently, but this is something different; inspired by nature it really looks and flies much like a small bird, moreover you can control it's flight from your smartphone just by moving your hand. You can pre-order your Bionic Bird now (costs 99 Euros). It's my birthday soon...