LOTTO

Magayo Lotto

Finally, here is software that might help you win the lottery -- literally. Magayo Lotto is a free tool that is capable of generating the numbers for four kinds of lottery games: Powerball, Thunderball, Lotto, and Toto. The tool uses the results of previous lotteries to present a pool of winning numbers the user can then choose from.

Magayo Lotto has a very simple and easy-to-use interface. Just pick the country, the lottery game, and then download the previous results. The tool then offers an analysis of which numbers have the best chance of winning in the next draw. The … Read more

Lucky numbers

Some people choose lottery numbers randomly, or they play numbers that are meaningful to them, like loved ones' birthdays. Other people are more methodical and calculating (no pun intended), and for those people, there are programs like PowerLotto5. This software allows users to perform a variety of different analyses on previous winning lottery numbers, ostensibly helping to predict the numbers that are most likely to win in the future.

PowerLotto5 is definitely geared toward people who have at least some familiarity with statistics and who like to geek out on numbers. There is a Help file with a glossary, but … Read more

Lottery number helper

Lotto Buster 2010 provides an incredible range of tools to help you make lotto guesses. The program not only gives predictions, but also provides the statistics to help choose your own numbers.

The program's interface was an instant hit with us, since it laid out all the options clearly and was easily navigated. Some of the charts and graphs required a visit to the Help file's glossary but were intuitive more often than not. The first impressive aspect was its Lotto Buster's wide swath of lottery choices, which range from every American state's drawings to countries … Read more

Lottery helper

Lotto Sorcerer claims to help you make better guesses at the nightly lottery picks. We were impressed with the program's tools and options, but ultimately weren't convinced that it was capable of picking winners.

We were not blown away by the program's interface. Even though it was simple to navigate and came with an instructional Help file, the layout felt a decade old. Regardless, we soon discovered its positives, like automatically pulling lotto results from any state and any specific drawing. We were shown several years of results and then the program provided us a guess about … Read more

Robots baffled by optical illusions

In theory, robots aren't designed to make mistakes. But a University College London (UCL) project team is hoping errors in how software "sees" optical illusions can make robots more like humans--mistakes and all.

Project leaders Dr. R. Beau Lotto and David Corney at the UCL institute of Ophthalmology say the study provides unprecedented insight into how the human eye can be fooled by lighting and shading. Instead of simulating the human brain, the software simulates learning patterns from past visual experiences.

The UCL Institute of Ophthalmology study recreated the vision errors using software that "learns" … Read more