Since the unveiling of the new Apple iPad the other day, people have been fearmongering about how it’s going to challenge the Amazon Kindle…as a Kindle owner all I can say is “yeah, right”. For a more balanced view however, trip on over to Frog’s blog for an Apple iPad vs Amazon Kindle showdown.

Have you ever seen The Polar Express? Did it feel kind of creepy? It did for me – I remember the first time I saw it on telly, channel flicking to a scene halfway through where Tom Hanks is handing out tea to the kids on the train. After a few seconds of vague discomfort I said “eurgh! what’s wrong with them?!”

That weird feeling…of something creepy, something pseudo-familiar, something not-quite right, has a Name. It’s called the Uncanny Valley.

The term was coined by Masahiro Mori, a Japanese roboticist who apart from starting a robot-building competition in Japan, studied the relations of religion, psychology and metaphysics to the development of robots.

He was particularly interested in the relationship between humans and robots, and carried out a study into our emotional responses to ‘non-human entities’. His findings are shown in the graph above.

Mori found that humans are increasingly positive towards robots the more lifelike they become…that is, until they become TOO lifelike. Then robots elicit not empathy, but revulsion.

If you think that Tom Hanks in The Polar Express is pretty damn creepy, you’re in the Uncanny Valley.

Several theories have been put forward to explain this reaction, from our cognitive mate-selection ability repulsing us from robots, to our pathogen-avoidance defences kicking in when we see something that looks like it could be diseased. Whatever it is, it seems that thanks to the Uncanny Valley, robots won’t be infiltrating society any time soon.

SFF Meta is a new meta-critic site for sci-fi and fantasy, and it has the potential to be my new favourite time-waster. It’s easy to navigate, covers the kind of books I like, and just a quick browse has given me half a dozen titles to go buy off Amazon.

Downsides? Well, so far each book only has a few reviews and they’re drawn from other sites. SFF Meta lacks user-generated content. I’m really hoping this accounts for such horrors as The Court of the Air being on the 2007 ‘low scoring’ list, and The Gathering Storm scoring 84/100, when tbh I would quite gladly throw The Wheel of Time series onto a bonfire.

Anyway, I’d like to see SFF Meta open up their site to user reviews instead of just drawing them from elsewhere. It’s a neat idea and even I of so little time and so much apathy would contribute. Like any good community it would moderate itself and the seriously good fiction would rise to the top.

First off, many thanks to Dom for organising ThinkVis and giving me a hotel room on Friday night – Drink Visibility was great fun and I got to meet lots of lovely people, including Shaun, Guy, Alastair, Joanna and many others I can’t find on the Interweb.

Nursing a hangover and with a MacMuffin breakfast sitting heavily in my stomach I made it to Think Vis itself – it was great to see everyone from Northern Bloggers again and finally meet Simon and Steven who I’ve known on Twitter for ages!

I’m not going to go into detail – lots of others have done fantastic write-ups, but I think my favourite talk was Peter Cooper who got all motivational and made me want to go out and do stuff!. All in all it was a great day, and I’ve left out loads of names so if I’ve met you there and haven’t mentioned it just drop me a comment with your site/twitter and I’ll add you in!

We don’t all live in London. This may come as a surprise, but it’s true. Sometimes 200 miles is a bit too far to travel for a conference, especially when your boss turns white at the very mention of paying for a hotel and as for the £XXX entry fee itself, well, he’s just run off to the bathroom clutching at his stomach.

Outside the M25 we’re a bit more down to earth. Leeds’ newest and bestest internet conference, Think Visibility, organised by Mr. TheHodge, costs just £30 and speakers include:

Dave Naylor
Al Carlton
Jamie Harrop
Dirk Ginader
Tim Nash
Tom Smith
Katie Lips
Richard Hamer
Dan Lynch
Patrick Altoft
Tom Critchlow
Kieron Donoghue
Guy Redwood
Rob Lee
Peter Cooper

If that’s not enough to have you weeing yourself in excitement, there are nibbles and a party afterwards.

If you don’t know where Old Broadcasting House is, look on a map. See you there!

I found something disturbing in Google’s search suggest feature today:

Is this such a popular phrase that it’s made it into Google’s database? Is Barry Chuckle indeed dead? All I know is, the nation cares.

After emailing Jeff a little while ago, and since those “I’m a PC” adverts are still on tv all the time, I thought I’d email Sean. One again I got a reply quickly, but it wasn’t quite so fun:

Hi. I got your email. Well, not really. A server that receives and stores emails sent to this address got your email. I, however, don’t so much check it anymore. It was fun to get to connect with many people for a while. Thanks.

Sean

In fact, it’s not fun at all. Sean is no longer on my “favourite Windows people” list

Ok, I cracked and emailed jeff@windows.com from that PC advert. Because I’m a massive geek.

I got a reply!

Hi –
Thanks for your email. I apologize if I can’t send you a more personalized response than this auto-reply – I’m super busy these days trying to optimize my code & squeeze out that last drop of performance. Or sleeping off a caffeine crash
In case you were wondering (you did email me, right?), I’m a software engineer working on Windows Networking technologies. (Networking, like, wireless internet and all that}.

OK. I really need to get back to work now, so bye & thanks again for your email.
–Jeff

So is Jeff real? I think so, but I bet after that advert he had to change his email address