The Danish company Foss, which is producing measurement apparatus for industry and production processes, is turning 50 this year. To celebrate that aniversary a number of events has been set on the menu. Latest, Foss set up a competition together with Associate professor Jan Larsen at Technical University of Denmark. The competitors were students from the different universities doing machine learning on a data from wine production.

After a qualifying round, the finalist participated last week in hour long contest at the Technical University of Denmark, estimating several paramters of the wine by machine learning and signal processing methods. In one of the tasks, for example, the students had to estimate the price of the wine, given certain data of the wines quality. Since price is highly influenced by factors not directly measurable, this task was rather hard, but the youngsters gave it a good shot.

On a holiday last summer, Machine Culture author Janus Sandsgaard bought an old Apple Classic from a messy store. Proud and delighted we later discovered that the computer could boot and function with no problem at all ... now thats cool first class machine culture!

But the interest for old computers that actually works, is something we share with a lot of people. In fact, there are events for especially that kind of fetish: The Vintage Computer Festival (VCF). The VCF is taking place today, May 13 2006, in New Jersey so if you are in the neighbourhood, get your ass down there and see some real, old, impressive stuff.

If you like the different topic covered here at Machine Culture you’ll probably find this master program interesting: The “European Studies on Society, Science and Technology” (ESST) is an international master programme in Science, Technology Society studies (STS) with 14 partner universities in several European countries.

Deadline for applying for next semester is approaching, and the ESST website at Maastricht University has been updated, which among other things contains this description for next semester:

“The emergence of new technologies – such as internet, genetic engineering, nanotechnology and sustainable energy production – open up both opportunities and threats to modern societies and economies. Citizens, governments, universities and businesses face great challenges when trying to take advantage of the seemingly infinite opportunities of scientific and technological innovations, not least because of the unintended consequences that may accompany them. Since 1992 ESST provides the knowledge and skills necessary for understanding and managing the complex issues of modern innovation. The programme approaches these problems from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, political, cultural, ethical and economical. Convinced that a purely technical approach is not enough in understanding today’s knowledge society, ESST focuses on governance and cultures of innovation”.

When I was studying at the ESST program I choose the specialization “Technological Culture” at Maastricht University – and I had one of the most interesting and best-organized semester ever.

Read more about the program at esst.unimaas.nl. Deadline for applying is 1 June 2006.

Apple and Nike just announced a new collaboration and a new finess gadget for running: A “Nike + iPod Sports Kit”. The kit seems to contain:

- A special pair of Nike shoes with builds in food pod.
- An iPod Nano with a special receiver, which will make the iPod serve as a running computer with voice feedback.
- Some kind of web application, which can keep track of your progress.

Unlike project Fusion from Polar and Adidas the Apple/Nike-kid does not include a heart rate monitor. But both Nike and Apple are strong brands and the product will probably appeal to the casual runner and Mac users (as Polar and Suunto does not offer their software for Mac).

(to be updated)