Technology Review takes a look at Charlestown-based Cogito Health, who has developed software to determine whether people are depressed or not based on an analysis of their voices.
The MIT Media Lab spinout is based on the research of Sandy Pentland.
Harvard/Duke/UC Berkeley researcher Vivek Wadhwa — he’s dangerously close to surrounding the entire country with his teaching posts — has told the Boston/Route 128 community what he thinks of its old, cranky behind.
Wadhwa, who caused a stink awhile back when he dared to look askance at some NVCA numbers, says Silicon Valley took a commanding lead in the ’90s with its job-hopping, information sharing, networking, etc.
Which brings me to Boston. Ever heard of Route 128? To my surprise, neither have any of my students at Duke or the entrepreneurs I’ve met in Silicon Valley.
…
This organizational mechanism was in sharp contrast to that of Route 128. Dominated by large, vertically integrated, and secretive minicomputer producers such as DEC, Wang, Prime, and Data General. Technology, skill, and know-how were trapped within the boundaries of the large corporations.
Oh … snap. I like the idea of the Boston area tech executive as a collection of C. Montgomery Burnses, and look forward to their withering retorts via telegraph.
To mark the Internet’s 40th birthday yesterday, the Guardian traces the history of the Internet with a dense interactive timeline. Popular Science covers the same ground via text and photos.
Last week, Mass High Tech asked Leo Beranek, “the second B in BBN,” to sit down with MassTLC chair Steve O’Leary, in an exclusive dialogue about Beranek’s career in technology and entrepreneurship. The interview took place at the Harvard Club in Back Bay in anticipation of MassTLC giving Beranek its Commonwealth Award. In the clip above, Beranek talks about BBN’s role in developing the ARPANet, the forerunner of the Internet.
Keep an eye out for the more video of the interview and a complete transcript running on MHT soon.
Update 10/30/2009, 9:34 a.m.: Video added
Researchers at the MIT Media Lab have developed a robot — the Affective Intelligent Driving Agent (AIDA) — to offer “the same kind of guidance as an informed and friendly companion.”
The system features an expressive robotic head, pictured above, that would protrude from the dashboard. Nothing creepy there. Media Lab researcher Cynthia Breazeal, Carlo Ratti, and Assaf Biderman are working with the Media Lab’s SENSEable City Lab and automaker Audi on the product.
The robot would analyze your driving patterns, your route, traffic, the weather and other information to guide you. It would also interact with you via expressions, like a smile or the Jesus-Mary-and-Joseph-we’re-going-to-die exclamation point.
happiness hat from Lauren McCarthy on Vimeo.
Local designer Lauren McCarthy, ex- of MIT’s Media Lab, CSAIL, and Visual Arts Program, developed a hat that detects whether or not you are smiling, and if not, it stabs you in the back of the head: The Happiness Hat.
McCarthy’s web site says the hat is the first in a series of “tools for improved social interacting.” She further explains:
An enclosed bend sensor attaches to the cheek and measures smile size, a servo motor moves a metal spike into the head inversely proportional to the degree of smile. Through repeated use of this conditioning device you can train your brain to smile all the time. The device runs on Arduino.
For my dollar, when I see someone walking down the street with a constant smile on their face, I think “deranged,” not “happy.” But then again, that might be exactly why I need a Happiness Hat.
Jeffry Picower, the philanthropist behind the foundation that fundedPicower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT, has died of a heart attack.
Picower’s name came up as an investor with Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff, but he may have made more money than Madoff himself from the scheme. He’d been sued by the lawyer who is liquidating Madoff’s assets, who says Picower himself may have made more than $5 billion in fake profits.
In 2002, the Picower Foundation gave MIT $50 million to establish the Picower Center, which focuses on brain and cognitive research. After Madoff’s arrest in December 2009, the foundation shut down, saying it had run out of money.
Harvard Medical School has developed a H1N1-tracking iPhone app. The app is a project of HMS Mobile, which sounds like a British Navy ship, but says it’s a Harvard Medical group dedicated to helping people deal with day-to-day health emergencies.
Also — that’ll be two bucks. Just around the corner, those anti-capitalist hippies at Children’s Hospital, working with the MIT Media Lab, released their own, free H1N1 tracking app last month.
That’s two H1N1 apps sprouting from about one city block — If things keep up like this, pretty soon you should be able to use your mobile phone to track H1N1 germs chasing you down the street in real-time, or see the normally invisible H1N1 crawling over people’s faces in an augmented reality app, exposing them as the feverish, congested zombies they are.
Today’s news of open-source statistics software maker REvolution Computing’s $9 million round of venture funding comes a week before a unique demonstration of its software: The 2009/2010 Houston Rockets season opener.
NBA front offices are a burgeoning, if limited to exactly 30, group of users of REvolution’s R statistical analysis software. Houston Rockets GM, MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference organizer and former Celtics statistics analyst Daryl Morey, who recently got a 2-year contract extension, is the Michael Lewis-annointed Billy Bean of basketball.
Morey has used analytics to find players either underrated or cast off by other teams, like Aaron Brooks, Carl Landry and most notably Shane Battier, the Kevin Youkilis of basketball stat-nerdery. According to our sister publication, the Sporting News, Morey’s style is very Kendall Square:
Imagine that the Rockets are stockpiling — nay, engineering — long, athletic players with high IQ who know how to shoot and enjoy pinpoint defense. If this assembly line gets going, we should all be awed and frightened.
Rockets stars Yao Ming is out for the year with a broken foot and Tracy McGrady is also out indefinitely; both were pre-Morey acquisitions. This year will be the first time every player on the floor is a guy drafted, signed or traded for by Morey, based on whatever crazy numbers he and his team are running through R.
Popular Science has chosen “10 Young Geniuses Shaking Up Science Today,” and not surprisingly, four of them come from New England. Take that, Rest of the Country.
Among the 10:
PopSci also helpfully notes that, John Cusack notwithstanding, the planet Nibiru will not collide with Earth, wiping out all life, in two years.
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