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Filmmaker Replaces His Eye With a Camera

What would you do if you lost one of your eyes? Filmmaker and self-proclaimed cyborg Rob Spence, who lost his eye in a childhood shooting accident, worked with a team of engineers to turn his prosthetic eye into a camera.

“It wasn’t easy but because it’s so like (science) fiction, engineers had a lot of fun making it,” the Toronoto man told Britain’s Sky News. “I was able to do it without a budget – it was a fun project for these guys.”

Spence’s prosthetic makes him resemble the Terminator. But the camera isn’t connected to his brain, so he doesn’t actually see what is being filmed. Built using an endoscope, the device is a transmitter that sends footage from the prosthetic eye to an external camera. Sky News says the technology that makes this possible is the same as a wireless lapel mic, except instead of transmitting sound, it transmits video.

Spence was commissioned by the makers of Deus Ex: Human Revolution to make a documentary about the future of human prosthetics. The video game, which is set in the year 2027, envisions a world in which cyborgs are the status quo. Spence traveled around the world and filmed what he called bionic people using his own bionic eye. He said he found that the fictional technology portrayed in Deus Ex is not that far away.

“People are going to have the option of having superior arms, superior eyes, at some point,” he said. “People say no one would ever cut off their own arm and replace it, but if the technology gets there – and it looks like it will – people will think about it. They might be early adopters.”

Last year, an NYU professor also had a camera installed in his head, but it wasn’t a prosthetic. A camera implanted in the back of Wafaa Bilal’s skull shot an image every 60 seconds, sent them to a Web site, and projected the pictures on a screen at a museum in Doha, Qatar. However due to headaches and discomfort, Bilal was forced to have surgery to remove the camera, but continued to wear it tied to the back of his neck.

Spence’s camera isn’t as invasive; he can pop the prosthetic in and out as he pleases.

You can watch his full, 12-minute documentary below.

Source: pcmag

The Desperate Yahoo Have Fired Its CEO!

Few years ago, Carol Bartz was know as one of the most successful CEOs in the planet. Before she came to Yahoo, she was the CEO of Autodesk. Autodesk is one of the leading companies which produce world’s best design and architecture software. They owns the top architecture tool Autocad. They owns the two best animation tools Maya and 3D Max! So, on 2009, Yahoo thought that this woman who changed Autodesk can also change their company… But, unfortunately, they were wrong!

In the past few years, we heard about Yahoo’s failures rather than victories. First, big companies like Microsoft and Google tried to buy the company. Next, they started to close down or sell some of their biggest services like Delicious…

Actually, we wrote several articles in the past regarding Yahoo and I can remember writing about an info-graphic which clearly shows their failures. According to that, its clear that Yahoo have made a lot of acquisitions without proper targets. Then, they fails! They gave Carol an already failing company. She tried to take it back up by cutting down the staff and selling off their services. But, Yahoo is heavily wounded… you’ll need a miracle to heal it now!

According to Mashable, she have just sent her last message to her employees stating that she was fired from the company :

To all,

I am very sad to tell you that I’ve just been fired over the phone by Yahoo’s Chairman of the Board. It has been my pleasure to work with all of you and I wish you only the best going forward.

Carol

What do you think? Can Yahoo rise again? Who will be the next CEO? Will that person do a miracle to this company? Actually, I think now its time to hand over the whole company to Microsoft or Google. But, will they accept it?

Facebook Revenue Was $1.6B In First Half Of 2011, Net Income $500M

It’s your mid-year Facebook revenue update; When we last spoke DST and Goldman Sachs’ investment in Facebook has brought to light some interesting revenue numbers, namely that Facebook had a net income of $200 million in 2009, on a revenue of $777 million. While the Goldman documents did not give numbers for all of 2010, analysts and reports held that Facebook’s income for the year could have been as high as $2 billion, with a net income of $600 million.

While many had pegged Facebook as on track to make $4 billion (with $1 billion in net income) in 2011, Reuters has revealed a Facebook mid year revenue number that when extrapolated falls below that mark. According to one Reuters source, Facebook made $1.6 billion in the first two quarters of this year, with net income at $500 million, a 2011 run rate of about $3.2 billion in revenue and $1 billion in net income.

While below estimates, the number is more than double what Facebook reportedly earned during the same period in 2010, and shows optimistic revenue growth resulting from the amping up of products like Facebook Ads and Facebook Credits coupled with appeal of 750 million users to brands — And lends credence to the company’s $80 billion private market valuation.

According to those people ever familiar with the matter, Facebook plans on IPOing in 2012. Google, which currently has a market cap of $172.43 billion, reported $1.5 billion in revenue and $106 million in net income 2003, the year before its IPO. Just sayin’.

Source : TechCrunch