- November 7, 2011 11:07 am
For those of you that thought type that SMS or e-mail on your smartphone was hidden from the masses, you are wrong. Researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have developed screen spy software that can tell what you are typing from up to 200 feet away. Jan-Michael Frahm and Fabian Monrose are the geniuses behind this little gem. They wondered if modern computer vision technologies threatened mobile phone privacy, so they created a program to steal text remotely, using only known techniques.
The way iSpy works is that it takes the common bubble text effect that happens when typing a letter on Android devices as well as in the keyboard on your iPhone. If you recall the last message you typed, if you hold on a letter, it shows up in a bubble so you are aware of what you are typing. The program analyzes the footage of where those bubbles appear on your screen to determine what is being typed. For the letters that overlap, like E and R, the software assigns accuracy probability to each letter. The leet hack worked 90% of the time, so beware of those dirty little late night emails you like sending out!
Drop on in for a video.
- December 17, 2010 7:16 am
We may all drool over the latest and greatest PC hardware as it trickles onto the web, but quite honestly, it’s the same story year after year. More transistors, more cores, more efficiency combined with more processing power. The real excitement however, will come when scientists finally unlock quantum computing for the masses. The potential of such technology has far reaching and incredibly powerful potential. And thanks to the help of several intelligent physicists at the University of Utah, we are now one step closer to such technology…
- November 15, 2010 10:34 am
You could be like every other normal, un-interesting home owner and put some bland plank of wood in your living room, boring your guests and coffee cups alike. Or, you could make use of this awesome Han Solo Coffee Table designed and built by England-based design studio R9…
We’ve all played with a potato gun in one form or another. Yeah, they’re a lot of geeky fun. But they don’t have anything on this — a t-shirt launching gatling gun that can launch 200 shirts over 150 yards @ 3 shirts per second! Those lucky members of Team 254 Robotics…
- October 21, 2010 11:56 am
Have you ever wondered what it would be like if you didn’t exist? Perhaps something a little less deep — what if that hub cap on the car wheel were different? What if the building didn’t have some garish box jutting out of the side? Thanks to some researchers at Germany’s Technische Universität Ilmenau, now we can answer at least two of the three questions above. (Sorry, we can’t help you with questions regrading your existence at this point and time.)
The technology has the nickname “Dimished Reality”, and essentially works much like augmented reality. Except, the only difference (and it’s a big one) is that the process is all live, in real time, using video. The image above gets the point across. The video inside causes your shirt to turn into a drool rag. So get clickin’…
- October 14, 2010 10:23 am
The coolest video of a water drop falling onto a Superhydrophobic Carbon Nanotube Array you’ll see all day…possibly all week. If you’re life is especially boring…all year.
Video after the jump.
- September 24, 2010 7:08 am
I’m a warm weather loving person. And when I say warm, I meant hot. 90+ is my comfort zone. Old people…not so much. But I’m still young and youthful. Yippie for me. With that said, I hate loathe the cold. And yet I love snow. Go figure. I’m somewhat retarded. Anyway, if I lived in a place where it was -45°F…well…ok, I’d never live there. But if I did, I’d totally take some boiling water and chuck it out the window, watching it turn into insta-ice on the way to the ground. Some fun geeky science would keep me occupied for a few minutes anyway. A picture is worth a thousand words, but sometimes a video is just so much more expressive. You know where to go … –>
- September 23, 2010 6:58 am
Yet another prized possession from ThinkGeek — the Star Trek Pizza Cutter. It’s so beautiful wrapped up in it’s little box, shiny and all. It’s almost too beautiful in that I don’t want to tarnish it’s face with garlic laden pizza sauce and chicken grease. But alas, I hate buying things I can’t use. Wear your geeky character loud and proud, right? For the record, if you cut your pizza with the Starship Enterprise, you are a massive geek.
[Product Page]
- September 10, 2010 6:50 am
With the Imperial army in shambles, old, decommissioned AT-AT Walkers need something to keep active.
[Product Page]
Larger pic after the jump…
