REDMOND, Wash. — Most of us carry our phones everywhere we go. Yet we spend only a small percent of time actually using all the computing, communication and sensing abilities being crammed into them these days. Ramachandran Ramjee and his…

REDMOND, Wash. — Most of us carry our phones everywhere we go. Yet we spend only a small percent of time actually using all the computing, communication and sensing abilities being crammed into them these days. Ramachandran Ramjee and his team of Microsoft researchers wanted to change this so they devised a new distributed software platform that uses things like GPS, the accelerometer, Bluetooth and microphone sensors on your phone to create a rich collection of road data for personalized trips.

After downloading an app to your phone, you can access a specialized map that aggregates information about potholes, speed bumps, honking vehicles, etc. “Say you want to travel somewhere and you notice there’s a lot of beeping and honking going on in one particular part of town. You may decide you want to avoid that area,” Ramjee states.

Using a remote controlled Audi R8 and two smartphones, Ramjee placed a cardboard “speed bump” in the path of the car to show how his phone automatically registered the bump and sent information about its position back to a mobile node for aggregation. In theory, by using the data generated from thousand of smartphones, you could get an hyper accurate picture road conditions in your town or city.

“There might be times when you don’t necessarily want the shortest route to a given destination,” Ramjee says. Sometimes, you’ll want the safest.”

Via [wired.com]

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Google Cleans Up With Gmail Soap
This is Gmail Soap, and we have no idea why or what it is. The image appears on a Russian site (some nudity, NSFW) amongst many Photoshopped images, but there is an accompanying video on YouTube, showing bars of Google…

This is Gmail Soap, and we’ve no idea why or what it is. The image appears on a Russian site (some nudity, NSFW) amongst many Photoshopped images, but there is an accompanying video on YouTube, showing bars of Google Soap being used to mop the floors of metro cars.

We assume it’s some kind of satirical art project to do with Gmail cleaning up spam, but the only solid fact to be gleaned is that it’s still possible to smoke on the Russian subway, as you can see 40 seconds into the clip. Russian readers, please help.

Re: Сделаем мир чище! [YouTube via Oh Gizmo!]

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No Health Insurance? Get Your Terminal Illness Diagnosed By Bees [Medicine]

If you were concerned that you had cancer, would you go to see a physician or would you consult some bees? I bet you said doctor, didn’t you? No fun! If you used one of Susana Soares “alternative diagnosis tools” you’d be relying on bees instead for some goddamned insane reason.

She’s making artsy glass orbs that have specially sized compartments inside. The bees buzz around inside, and when you blow into them they either fly around like the stupid bees that they’re or they fly into the compartments depending on what the diagnosis is. It works because bees have very sensitive senses of smell and can be trained to target specific odors that appear in your breath when you’re sick.

Would this be cheaper than seeing a physician? Yes, yes it would, but I think I would want a second view from a non-insect if a bee told me I had a terminal illness. But hey, if you don’t have health insurance I guess there are worse animals you could go to for medical consultations. [MOMA via Dvice]

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(Photo by Jon Snyder, Wired) Lenovo ThinkPad X300 No one will contest the MacBook Air’s sexy little chassis, stupendously slim profile, or impossibly light weight, but its dearth of ports and lack of an optical drive have had many scratching…

(Photo by Jon Snyder, Wired)

Lenovo ThinkPad X300

No one will contest the MacBook Air’s sexy little chassis, stupendously trim profile, or impossibly light weight, but its dearth of ports and lack of an optical drive have had many scratching their heads over whether it’s something they could really use on a daily basis. In contrast, the X300 is a full-featured laptop, just shrunken down to (just about) the Air’s diminutive size and a tad heavier at 3.4 pounds. The screen is the same 13.3 inches wide, though less bright than we’d like. Under the hood, a 1.2GHz Core 2 Duo, 2 gigs of RAM, and a 64GB solid-state hard drive power it to respectable benchmarks (faster than a standard MacBook but slower than Dell’s XPS M1330). But the X300 really shines in its offering of every connectivity option you could need, including three USB ports, VGA output, Ethernet, and a DVD burner. The only things missing vs. bigger laptops are FireWire, S-video out, and ExpressCard connections — though few users take advantage of any of those options. And if that doesn’t cut it, every conceivable wireless radio is also inside the box, from Bluetooth and 802.11n to Verizon 3G WWAN (plus GPS) and even WiMax (should WiMax each actually come to pass). If you can’t get connected with the X300, you can’t get connected, period. —Christopher Null

WIRED Virtually weightless at just 3.4 pounds. Runs Windows XP as an option instead of Vista. System is swift and responsive; feels like a standard notebook, not a stripped-down ultralight. Loud speakers. Handy keyboard-illuminating light embedded in LCD panel.

TIRED Expensive; a standard (and bigger capacity) hard drive would be just fine. Disappointing battery life (2 hours, 13 minutes). Power cord is too short. Black brick design really feeling its age. Graphics performance is middling at ideal.

$2935 (as tested), thinkpad.com

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A One-Way, One-Person Mission to Mars: Who Wants In? [Space]

Would you go on a mission to mars? What about if it was a one-way mission? And you were by yourself? Yeah, that changes things a bit. Well, that’s exactly what former NASA engineer Jim McClane advocates, saying that it’s worth considering and removes many of the hurdles keeping us from the red planet now.

Dubbed “Spirit of the Lone Eagle,” his plan would eliminate the hardest aspect of any potential Mars mission: the need to launch off of Mars to return to Earth.

“When we eliminate the need to launch off Mars, we remove the mission’s most daunting obstacle,” said McLane. And because of a small crew size, the spacecraft could be smaller and the need for consumables and supplies would be decreased, making the mission cheaper and less complicated.

While some might classify this as a suicide mission, McLane feels the concept is absolutely logical.

“There would be tremendous risk, yes,” said McLane, “but I don’t think that’s guaranteed any more than you would state climbing a mountain alone is a suicide mission. People do dangerous things all the time, and this would be something really very special, to go to Mars. I don’t think there would be any shortage of people willing to volunteer for the mission. Lindbergh was someone who was willing to risk everything because it was worth it. I don’t think it will be hard to find another Lindbergh to go to Mars. That’ll be the easiest part of this whole program.”

So, what do you say, wanna be space travelers? Would you ride in a little spaceship to Mars by yourself to be known as the first human ever to travel to, and then die on, Mars? [Universe This day via Danger Room]

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Microsoft Reportedly Working on Sphere Shaped Version of Surface [Microsoft]

By now you’ve probably heard quite a bit about Microsoft’s “Surface” multi-touch table, and now ZDNet is claiming that the company has been showing off a sphere-shaped version of the technology around their campus. We know that Microsoft is pushing to get this technology into homes sooner rather than later, but a spherical device doesn’t seem to be all that practical (unless you are a fortune teller or something). However, when it comes to the future of this device, we will just have to wait and see. [ZDNet via Electronista]

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Sony CEO: $200 Blu-ray Players Coming [Sony]

Everybody clamoring for a cheap Blu-ray player now that the format war is over might wanna bide their time with a sweet DVD upconverter—the $200-player Blu-ray cavalry is at least a year away, according to Sony Electronics CEO Stan Glasgow, who we talked to this day in New York. “I don’t think $200 is going to happen this year. Next year $200 could happen. We’ll be at a $300 rate this year. $299 will happen this year.”

No cheap Chinese-made players will be flooding the market to push it down either, not until the BDA decides to license the tech to them, and Glasgow implied it’s gonna be a while before that happens. Anyone else wants a license? Sure. But not them, in part it was indicated, because of piracy concerns. Not that the price matters too much right now, since Sony is “struggling to keep up with the demand.”

The mighty morphin’ PS3 SKU—from 60GB to 40GB, backward-compatible or not—isn’t going to halt shape-shifting. When asked “Will there also be another PlayStation with Blu-ray built-in? Glasgow answered that “there’s going to be continual evolvement in the PlayStation line” before speaking about feature upgrades with software.

Other points that came up at the roundtable:

• Sony dropped Memory Stick slots from its Televisions, even ones that do pics and music playback. Not sure what that means for the underdog format.

• When people are asked what brand they think of when it comes to HD, Sony “is far and away the leader”—close to 36 percent, compared with 10 percent for the runner up.

• Around 50 percent of their LCD HDTVs sold last year were 1080p—the shift to 1080p is happening now and Blu-ray will help that.

• Sony is not sweating the recession.

• The company is “working very hard” on an answer to Apple TV, though it all seems to center around a Blu-ray player one way or another, and doesn’t necessarily rely on the ill-fated Bravia Internet Video Link. Sony is “working on many other avenues to deliver downloaded content,” like the PlayStation Network which will be “spread that over the next year or so to many other products of Sony.”

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