3D printing brings the stars to the blind

Discussions of big data often touch on the challenge of visualization. An even greater challenge, though, is rendering the data into something that is comprehensible to people who have to use senses other than sight.

3D printing brings the stars to the visually impaired by rendering Hubble's images into tactile form.
Read more in 

Reaching for the Stars With 3D Printing

Keeping your identity

Clones, robots, alien shapeshifters, or disembodied consciousness take over people's identities in shows such as Star Trek and Doctor Who. They can then take over the lives of the people they've duplicated, particularly when they have access to their memories. How can anyone defend himself when he can't tell friend from foe?

In real life, most of us don't fear having someone else show up in person claiming to be us. But we are concerned about identity theft. Our digital world makes it all too easy for the bad guys to hack into personal information posted online, as well as financial information that we can think is secure. The cost of identity theft can be huge when hackers get access to our credit cards, debit cards, and bank accounts.

Read more in Your Personal Online Guardian

Cellphone tracking: a matter of protection or loss of privacy?

With the right equipment, anyone can trace where we are through our phones. Whether and how this technology is used has been a source of controversy for years.

One of the latest flare-ups is police use of Stingrays. In this context, it's not a type of fish but the brand name of an International Mobile Subscriber Identity tracking device.

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Cellphone Tracking: Protection vs. Privacy

Glassdoor

Glassdoor, once known primarily as a site for salary information and an insider's peek into corporate culture, has grown by building up its job search features, putting it squarely in competition with the better-known LinkedIn. That could be good news for job seekers and employees who want salary bumps or better benefits. Read more here:IIn Glassdoor vs. LinkedIn, Employees Win

Written in the meta-data

Is it possible to identify an individual’s romantic partner on the basis of his/her social networks alone? That’s the question Jon Kleinberg, a computer scientist at Cornell University and Eric Bakstrom, a senior engineer from Facebook, teamed up to answer. After analyzing millions of Facebook data points, they came up with an affirmative response in Romantic Partnerships and the Dispersion of Social Ties: A Network Analysis of Relationship Status on Facebook -- they assert the answer is yes with a 60% probability. 

Read more in Your Romantic Attachments as Predicted by Metadata

Students on camera -- not for security

We have technology that can use cCameras in Class: Insight vs. Privacy

ameras in the classroom for analysis of lessons. What do you think? Learn more about the concept of  EngageSense in

the use of @ and # before Twitter

Grawlixes, AKA obscenicons are the short strings of symbols that take the place of profanity. It seems positively quaint in today's world when just about everything is considered fit for print, though you may still see it on rare occasion. I was reminded of the device recently when I read The Pigman. (I checked it out of the library after seeing it among the books on display at the New York Public Library's The ABC of It: Why Children's Books Matter). 
The 1968 novel has two narrators, and the teen boy says that to abstain from using curse words, he will type  “@#$%” or“3@#$%.”  I'm not certain I've ever seen the use of grawlixes in books before, though I have seen the oblique reference, something along the lines of "He called her something I cannot repeat," that you can find in a book lie The Forsyte Sage  or the dashes following a letter like "d___ " that you can find in books by the Brontes.

I have the impression that language in print really loosened up in the 1990s, and this fits with what I found in a 2000 article about the shifting standard for newspapers: "He spent 10 years at the San Antonio Express-News, where he watched 'damn' go from being bleeped out to containing dashes to being fully spelled out. "
BTW If you want to hear grawlixes in a song, there is one here:

Related post http://writewaypro.blogspot.com/2013/08/blame-ship-logs-for-this-word.html

Hashtags and Haute Couture: Effective Branding on Instagram

Businesses have a long tradition of serving as patron of the arts. Often they are only acknowledged discreetly with logos on the sign for the exhibit they support. Some get more credit with the free admission times named for them like the “Target Free” days at many museums. For even brand greater exposure, though, it’s necessary to tap into internet sharing, and that is something that  Instagram makes possible

Read about Lexus' getting the most out of sponsoring The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk, with Instagram in 

Lexus Steers Branding Program via Instagram