Just type a function and you’ll get as a result an interactive graph. You can plot several functions separating them with commas. In my tests the variable must be named “l”, “t”, “x”, “y” or “z”.

You can also define the interval to be plotted using the word “from”. As an example: plot x^2 from 1 to 10

Try it.

(Source: Google Now Can Plot Simple Functions.)

If you use a computer, a phone, or a tablet, you have been touched by the work of Steve Jobs. He didn’t only changed a company, he changed the way we interact with technology.

Please take 15 minutes to listen to his 2005 Stanford Commencement Address:

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
(…)
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”

Here’s to Steve Jobs:

Yesterday Apple introduced a new iPhone that is in the right track to materialize their vision of the future. The following video describes the “Concept Navigator”, and it was created in 1987:

If you listen carefully, you can infer that the action takes place in September 16, 2011.

Now let’s see the new feature unveiled yesterday:

And apparently it’s not just a feature that only works under ideal scenarios:

No wonder people fall in love with their iPhones…

You can try it here.

Hope they soon expand the database to flights outside the US.

Source: An early look at our Flight Search feature | Inside Search.

Category Earth and Space:

“Forming a dramatic backdrop to a tropical skyline, the Milky Way galaxy contains hundreds of billions of stars in a disc-like structure. Our Sun lies within the disc, about two-thirds of the way out from the centre, so we see it as a bright band encircling the sky. This southern hemisphere view highlights dark clouds of dust that aboriginal Australian astronomers called the ‘Emu in the sky’.”

Source: Earth & Space : 2011 Winners : Astronomy Photographer of the Year : Exhibitions : Visit : NMM

We actually have one of the largest security practices I know of; it is over 250 people dedicated to security. I don’t know of too many organisations, other than perhaps intelligence agencies, that have that kind of security. I can’t guarantee it, but when you move into the Google Cloud, you are getting 250 people looking over the security for your data. And I’m very lucky to work alongside some of the world’s leading experts in things like drive-by downloads and malware. And that doesn’t count our internal audit and engineering compliance teams, our physical security teams and the security people who actually sit within the product teams.

In Security and Google Apps | CIO: An interview with Google Enterprise director of security, Eran Feigenbaum

(Via Taken Over by Aliens? Google Has It Covered – Slashdot.)

“Mr. Jobs’s say over the minute details of Apple’s products is legendary in Silicon Valley. The patents that carry his name, for these products and others, offer a glimpse into the range of his influence at Apple. And they paint a picture of a roll-up-your-sleeves chief executive whose design choices reached into every corner of the company.
(…)
Mr. Jobs appears as the principal inventor or as one inventor among several on 313 Apple patents. Most are design patents that cover the look and feel of a product, rather than utility patents, which may cover a technical innovation like a software algorithm or computer chip.

Still, the number of patents is far larger than those granted to most other technology company chiefs, including those whose technical breakthroughs and inventions were instrumental to their companies’ success. Only nine Microsoft patents carry the name of Bill Gates, a co-founder of the company who was its chief executive for more than two decades before stepping down in 2000. And little more than a dozen Google patents carry the names of the co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, according to a search of the United States Patent and Trademark Office Web site.

The NY Times has an interactive display of all these patents. There is also an interesting timeline of Steve Jobs’s time at Apple

(Source A Chief Executive’s Attention to Detail, Noted in 313 Patents | NYTimes.com.)

“Ever wonder why a drop of coffee leaves a ring behind when it dries? Physicists did. In 1997, they came up with a theory of how it works. It turned out to be such a universal theory that it shows up in a number of problems related to deposition of material. Since then physicists have been trying to find a way to get around it and stop making rings. Now a group of University of Pennsylvania physicists have done it.
(…)
The coffee-ring effect crops up when dealing with many methods of depositing materials. Having the ability to control the uniformity of deposition will be useful in fields such as coating and printing.”

(Source: Physicists Find Way to Stop Coffee Rings | Wired Science | Wired.com.)

(Via Religion’s edge | Hypertext.net.)

I learned to program in a machine just like this one:

and on August 12, it celebrated its 30th aniversary.

You can read more here and here.