hausrath - Slashdot User

MS Clearflow To Help Drivers Avoid Traffic Jams 243

Posted by kdawson on Thursday April 10, 2008 @09:27AM from the get-me-outa-this dept.

Pioneer Woman writes "Microsoft announced plans to introduce a Web-based service for driving directions that incorporates complex software models to help users avoid traffic jams. The system is intended to reflect the complex traffic interactions that occur as traffic backs up on freeways and spills over onto city streets and will be freely available as part of the company's Live.com site for 72 cities in the US. Microsoft researchers designed algorithms that modeled traffic behavior by collecting trip data from Microsoft employees who volunteered to carry GPS units in their cars. In the end they were able to build a model for predicting traffic based on four years of data, effectively creating individual 'personalities' for over 800,000 road segments in the Seattle region. In all the system tracks about 60 million road segments in the US."

Comment Re:I don't want innovative, give me easy, familiar (Score 5, Insightful) 245

by hausrath on Wednesday January 16, 2008 @11:30AM (#22066880) Attached to: UI Designers Hired by Mozilla

But here's the thing... The statement they're making by doing this is that they think the interface they have isn't satisfactory - isn't intuitive enough. Hiring these people says that they recognize that improvements can be made in the UI which will make firefox more intuitive and easy to use. If that comes at the expense of some (quickly forgotten) sense of familiarity, so be it.

Submission + - Secret mailing list rocks Wikipedia (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by

privatemusings

on Monday December 03, 2007 @10:25PM

privatemusings writes: "'Wikipedians' are up in arms at the revelations that respected administrators have been discussing blocking and banning editors on a secret mailing list. The tensions have spilled over all over the 'encyclopedia anyone can edit' and news agencies are sniffing. The Register have this fantastic write up — read it here first."

Ohio Establishing State Wide Broadband Network 105

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday August 01, 2007 @07:01PM from the fast-internet-for-the-people dept.

bohn002 writes "In order to coordinate and expand access to the state's broadband data network, Ohio Governor Ted Strickland has signed an executive order establishing the Ohio Broadband Council and the Broadband Ohio Network. The order directs the Ohio Broadband Council to coordinate efforts to extend access to the Broadband Ohio Network to every county in Ohio. The order allows public and private entities to tap into the Broadband Ohio Network — all with a goal of expanding access to high-speed internet service in parts of the state that presently don't have such service."

Submission + - Transit Method Reveals Many Extrasolar Planets (space.com)

Submitted by

eldavojohn

on Monday June 11, 2007 @12:16PM

eldavojohn writes: "You might recall not too long ago the first photo of an extra solar planet or, more recently, the mapping & speculation on these planets that lie outside our own solar system. Long since those first few spotted in the 90s, we're now starting to find them in droves due to the popularity of a method that relies on the planet passing directly between the viewer on earth and the star that it orbits. Be sure to check out Space.com's list of the most interesting extrasolar planets. Will we ever find Earth 2.0 candidates?"

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