You really have to see it to believe it … this is an absoultely stunning 360 degree panoramic view of Paris at night. However, it isn’t just any panoramic shot, this image is an amazing 14,929 x 526 pixels in size.
Visit: Arnaud Frich Photographs
If you’re a Virgin Atlantic frequent flier who has accumulated 2 million miles, you have just earned yourself a trip to space … for free. For the first time frequent flier miles will be good for a trip out of this world.
“A journey into space seems like a distant dream for many but this deal makes it more even more achievable for our frequent travelers to become astronauts,” said Sir Richard Branson, chairman of Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Galactic. “We expect the first Virgin Galactic space flight to take place in 2008 which gives our Flying Club members time to save up all their miles.”
Virgin Galactic commercial flights are expected to cost $200,000 initially but the company expect prices to fall over time.
This is a much better deal than American Express — in a partnership with Space Adventures, they are offering card members the chance to fly into space for 20 million points.
[via Space.com]
Remember when your grandparents sent postcards from strange and exotic places around the world and you would stick a pin on the map to follow their progress? Welcome to the Internet version.
Jumpclaimer! combines the power of Google maps and the convenience of the cell phone to allow you to digitally pin locations where you are currently travelling. You simply send an SMS to the website along with your current location and any message, and then friends and family can login and track your progress. It’s actually a really cool concept. Check out their demo map.
Visit: Jumpclaimer!
[via textually.org]
That’s the recent headline from the Washington Post. Funny, does that mean they weren’t focusing on explosives in the first place? As Bruce Schneier commented,
Since 9/11, our nation has been obsessed with air-travel security. Terrorist attacks from the air have been the threat that looms largest in Americans’ minds. As a result, we’ve wasted millions on misguided programs to separate the regular travelers from the suspected terrorists — money that could have been spent to actually make us safer.
…
Exactly two things have made airline travel safer since 9/11: reinforcement of cockpit doors, and passengers who now know that they may have to fight back. Everything else — Secure Flight and Trusted Traveler included — is security theater. We would all be a lot safer if, instead, we implemented enhanced baggage security — both ensuring that a passenger’s bags don’t fly unless he does, and explosives screening for all baggage — as well as background checks and increased screening for airport employees.
Then we could take all the money we save and apply it to intelligence, investigation and emergency response. These are security measures that pay dividends regardless of what the terrorists are planning next, whether it’s the movie plot threat of the moment, or something entirely different.
When you have to smoke, you have to smoke.
A French woman has admitted attempting to open an aeroplane door mid-flight so that she could smoke a cigarette.
Sandrine Helene Sellies, 34, who has a fear of flying, had drunk alcohol and taken sleeping tablets ahead of the flight from Hong Kong to Brisbane.
She was seen on the Cathay Pacific plane walking towards a door with an unlit cigarette and a lighter.
She then began tampering with the emergency exit until she was stopped by a flight attendant.
[via The BBC]
A Boeing 777-200R passenger plane just set the world record for the longest non-stop flight after flying an astonishing 12,500 miles for nearly 23 hours from Hong Kong to London.
The plane’s journey, which in kilometers was more than 20,000km, took it east across the Pacific, then over the US and onto the Atlantic.
It was crewed by four pilots and was carrying 35 passengers and crew, including Boeing representatives, journalists and airline executives.
Boeing has now beaten its previous world record for the longest non-stop commercial airline flight, which was set in 1989 by a 747-400 jumbo jet flying 10,500 miles from London to Sydney.
The airline hopes its latest record success will encourage airlines to offer non-stop flights across the world, saving fuel and time spent on stopovers.
[via The BBC]
The University of Architecture in Venice and M.I.T.’s SENSEable Cities Lab have created a walking tour of Catello, one of Venice’s more hidden neighborhoods, driven by BlueTooth, GPS, and multimedia phones and PDAs.
Three Bluetooth sensors peppered along the route trigger a virtual tour of a Venetian home and two art installations, one projected on a building, another on hanging laundry. Seven AGPS hot spots (enhanced GPS designed to overcome Venice’s many dead zones) are positioned along the major thoroughfare to launch video presentations of building interiors and samples of local conversation. “Our goal is to make Castello one of the attractions of Venice,” says the project’s creative director, Michael Epstein of MIT, who has a home nearby.
…
Eventually, the plan is to beam the 50-Mbyte program to smartphones, using Europe’s data-intensive UMTS mobile phone network. Motorola, which donated handsets, and 3, a European mobile network, are cosponsors. History Unwired’s developers believe the tour could serve as a model for other destinations - Italian Slow Food villages or even a Harley-Davidson factory - letting travelers tap into the perspectives of insiders.
Visit: History Unwired
[via Wired]
The following flight pattern visualizations are the result of experiments leading to the project Celestial Mechanics by Scott Hessels and Gabriel Dunne. FAA data was parsed and plotted using the Processing programming environment. The frames were composited with Adobe After Effects and/or Maya and the final piece was highlighted at SIGGRAPH 2005 in the NVIDIA Immersive Dome Experience.
Visit: Flight Patterns
[thanks Paul]
While the US State Department is continuing to promote RFID embedded passports as being a good thing for national security and are assuring people they are addressing the many privacy issues, critics are still crying foul.
RFID privacy problems are larger than passports and identity cards. The RFID industry envisions these chips embedded everywhere: in the items we buy, for example. But even a chip that only contains a unique serial number could be used for surveillance. And it’s easy to link the serial number with an identity — when you buy the item using a credit card, for example — and from then on it can identify you. Data brokers like ChoicePoint will certainly maintain databases of RFID numbers and associated people; they’d do a disservice to their stockholders if they didn’t.
The State Department downplayed these risks by insisting that the RFID chips only work at short distances. In fact, last week’s publication claims: “The proximity chip technology utilized in the electronic passport is designed to be read with chip readers at ports of entry only when the document is placed within inches of such readers.” The issue is that they’re confusing three things: the designed range at which the chip is specified to be read, the maximum range at which the chip could be read and the eavesdropping range or the maximum range the chip could be read with specialized equipment. The first is indeed inches, but the second was demonstrated earlier this year to be 69 feet. The third is significantly longer.
And remember, technology always gets better — it never gets worse. It’s simply folly to believe that these ranges won’t get longer over time.
To address this concern, the State Department has announced it will be included a radio shield which will protect the chip from being scanned when the passport is closed. The data contained on the chip will also be encrypted, with the key physically printed on the passport itself.
However, RFID chips can still be uniquely identified by their collision avoidance ID number — a number that is buried deep in the chip. To fix this concern, critics are asking the not only the State Department, but RFID manufacturers on a whole to implement ISO 14443A, the RFID spec that allows collision avoidance based on a random system instead of unique ID.
[via Wired]
Controversial plans to build a €4.5 billion ($5.4 billion) underwater dam to protect Venice from flood waters has been approved by the Italian Prime Minister.
Environmentalists have criticised the project, and the mayor of Venice protested against the decision saying the city council had been bypassed.
The plans envisage building 78 hinged flood barriers on the seabed which would be raised when high tides threaten the city.
But some environmentalists say the 28m (92ft) high, 20m (65ft) wide structures will turn Venice into a pond and will cause more damage than the floods which periodically submerge its streets.
I guess the Prime Minister never received all those informational pamphlets that propoganda which clearly stated “Venice is not sinking.”
[via The BBC]
