Category Archives: Technology

Codifying Public Transit Routes: Colors, Letters, Numbers, Destinations

Posted on March 15, 2012 by Lex

I have a love/hate relationship with public transit. I think of it as a dysfunctional marriage. As a whole, I’m unhappy with most aspects of it, but on a day-to-day basis, the alternative seems considerably less desirable. Plus, in the … Continue reading →

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John McCarthy: Father of Artificial Intelligence

Posted on October 24, 2011 by Lex

John McCarthy died today at the age of 84. He coined the term Artificial Intelligence and invented LISP: the programming language that every computer scientist interested in A.I. considers to be his first love (as far as programming languages go). … Continue reading →

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Living Without a Cell Phone

Posted on June 17, 2011 by Lex

Per month, I send about 20-30 text messages (almost all as a response), and talk for about 30-60 minutes. The bottom line is I just don’t use the cell phone to a degree that many people do. Why? Because I … Continue reading →

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Connecting Public Transit to the Web

Posted on May 10, 2011 by Lex

Google Transit revolutionized (for me) the public transit system… kind of. It appears that most of it still basic artificial intelligence algorithms operating on data provided by individual cities and states (and not user-added data a la Wikipedia). The problem … Continue reading →

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Technology as an Extension of Your Body

Posted on April 9, 2011 by Lex

One of the things Benjamin Franklin (according to his autobiography) and I have in common is that we obsessively keep stats about various aspects of our personal and professional life. So, I find technology like the Zeo alarm clock especially interesting … Continue reading →

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Google Innovates, Microsoft Duplicates

Posted on March 17, 2011 by Lex

I think implied in the title, and the observation that Microsoft seems to copy other company’s innovations, is that copying is a bad thing. As a researcher myself, I obviously respect and admire innovation. That’s why I love Google and … Continue reading →

Posted in Technology | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments