Tag: Switzerland

Google asks, ‘Shall we play a game?’ with hidden Chrome adventure

intro_text adventure.gif

Wanna sleuth your way around a tech giant’s Mountainview campus? Google has embedded this retro text adventure game and all you need is a web browser (and infinite patience) to play.

To launch Google’s text adventure game

  1. Launch your Chrome, Firefox or Edge browser.
  2. Search for ‘text adventure’.
  3. RIGHT+CLICK on the results page and select Inspect
  4. CLICK the Console tab.  The text “Would you like to play a game?” appears.
  5. Enter ‘yes’ at the > prompt

Cheers (with special thanks, to Di, for passing this along)!

quincy
Related Posts:

Google Maps Goes Round (‘n round, n round..)

Take that, Kyrie Irving!…

MapsGlobe.gif

Perhaps in a bid to win over Flat-Earthers, when zoomed out in Google Maps, you’ll see a round Earth instead of a flat map.

Cheers!
quincy
Related Posts:

An Interactive Newspaper

The future of printed press?

While vacationing in Zürich, I had the privilege to visit its Landesmuseum, the Swiss National Museum).

20180715_112918

Of the great many exhibits here, one that most impressed me was this interactive journal; a digital journal, projected onto plain paper, that changes and reacts as you scroll through it.

 

landesmuseumbuch2

Reading can be a tactile and even olfactory pleasure. For any one who’s sat curled up in an armchair, or tucked away between the aisles of bookstore,  book in lap..scent of aged paper wafting in their nostrils… fingers gliding across a page, their anticipation builds as one nears the bottom of the page, readying for that page turn.

The format of book appeals to us bibliophiles who appreciate the weight of a printed page. It equally appeals to we tech-savvy research moles, who prefer to navigate across the web, in order to pull together a larger narrative.

Cheers,

quincy

Related posts:

Drone Delivery via Mercedes Benz

MatterNetBenz.gif

Matternet, Mercedes-Benz, and Swiss online-shop, siroop, have teamed up to deliver coffee and other products to your front door.

Earlier this week the city of Zurich hosted a test. For this demonstration, the drone successfully flew and landed on it destination, the roof of a Mercedes-Benz van.

How will it work in practice?

The drone reads the destination information using a QR code on the package, then flies the goods to the receiver directly using onboard GPS. Moving at speeds of 43 mph(70 km) and with a range of 12 miles (20 km) it will delivery it’s goods (up to 4.5 lbs) directly to the consumer.

Cheers!

ʎɔuınb

For related stories, read:

Matternet’s Drones will fly and refuel themselves

Earlier I reported on startup, Matternet, and their drone-based pharmaceutical delivery service.

Now these drones will not only deliver autonomously, they will refuel themselves, thus shaving what can be life-saving minutes off the drug drop off process, and freeing up the care-giver to focus on their primary charge.

For more read: Matternet’s autonomous delivery drones can now refuel and reload by themselves — TechCrunch

Also checkout:

Cheers!

Q

Midyear Roundup: My Best Dates

Some of my fave Excel Date Functions. Some old, some new; all designed to help track the passage of time.

Date Functions:

EOMONTH
returns the last day of the month		 EOMONTH ( start_date , month )
EDATE
returns the date x number of months before/after a given date		  EDATE ( start_date , months )
NETWORKDAYS
calculates the number of working days
(see also NETWORKDAYS.INTL)		  NETWORKDAYS ( start_date , end_date , [holidays] )
TODAY
returns the current date		  TODAY( )
WEEKNUM
returns serial number for a given week		  WEEKNUM ( date , [week_start] )
WORKDAY
calculates the next valid work day
(see also WORKDAY.INTL)		 WORKDAY( start_date, days, [holidays] )

 
YEARFRAC
returns the date as a fraction of the year		  YEARFRAC ( start_date , end_date , [basis])

Cheers!

hɔuᴉnb

Additional reading:

Comments and questions are always welcome!

SOS: Save Our Swiss Alps (with Snowblowers?)

Starting this summer, Johannes Oerlemans of Utrecht University and his colleagues will blow artificial snow onto a small glacier at the foot of Diavolezzafirn, in the south-eastern part of Switzerland. The hope is that a thin white sheet of snow will increase the sunlight reflected, and thus protect the ice underneath from melting, Oerlemans explained at the European Geosciences Union on Thursday (Apr. 27). If this $100,000 pilot project is successful, researchers hope they can raise funding to use the technique to protect the Morteratsch glacier, a huge tourist attraction that’s considered a national treasure—but is shrinking.

via Switzerland will blow artificial snow onto its prized glaciers in an attempt to save them — Quartz

%d bloggers like this: