February 2008
184 posts
Warmer Atlantic Means More Hurricanes →
As the surface of the Atlantic Ocean heats up, hurricanes will become more frequent, say scientists. In a study published yesterday in Nature, University College London climatologists simulated hurricane activity between 1996 and 2005, when Atlantic hurricanes were nearly 40% more common than during the previous five decades. That warmer seas lead to more hurricanes is generally accepted, but...
January 2008
125 posts
Global EARTH HOUR March 29th- Turn off your... →
About a year ago, Sydney started a trend of turning off your lights for one hour in a show of support for protecting our environment. Soon after, London, San Francisco quickly followed suit. One year later, the organizers of Sydney’s Earth Hour feel that one city at a time doesn’t really cut it anymore. Which is why this year’s event is going global, with cities from every continent, including...
700MHz C-block hits reserve price -- open access... →
Filed under: Wireless
There was a brief, tense pause in the bidding this morning, but some anonymous giant telecom company (Google, perhaps?) has just pushed the price of the 700MHz C-block over the FCC’s reserve price of $4.6B — and the rest of us straight into the promised land of open access. Yep, January 31, 2008, Round 17 will be the day to remember — to think it was all...
Showing off my blog
Getting followed by jobsearchdigest.com. This must be a new recruiting technique. Great!
jobsearchdigest.com is following me. And now… so am I!
Seesmic killed the YouTube star? (Darren... →
Seesmic killed the YouTube star? — It’s not often you are presented with a vision of the future of online video in a pub in London. — But that’s exactly what I was shown last night by celebrated French blogger, well-connected entrepreneur and Seesmic founder Loic LeMeur.
Source: BBC NEWS | dot.life
Author: Darren Waters
Link: ...
UltraBattery developed to drive hybrid cars to the... →
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Transportation
Take one part supercapacitor, one part lead acid battery — the old school kind — and you’ve got an energy cell technology development that at least one power research geek is calling “a leap forward for low emission transport and uptake of [hybrid cars].” Speciously dubbed the UltraBattery by its developers at...
UltraBattery developed to drive hybrid cars to the... →
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Transportation
Take one part supercapacitor, one part lead acid battery — the old school kind — and you’ve got an energy cell technology development that at least one power research geek is calling “a leap forward for low emission transport and uptake of [hybrid cars].” Speciously dubbed the UltraBattery by its developers at...
Researchers put circuits on contact lenses, freak... →
Filed under: Wearables
We’ve seen plenty of newfangled contact lenses in the past, but it looks like a team of researchers at the University of Washington may have outdone them all, with their latest creation promising not only heads-up displays, but “superhuman vision.” That’s apparently possible thanks to a combination of lights and circuits, which they’ve managed...
Tom Cruise's Scientology video -- and Gawker's... →
Gawker is hosting a controversial Tom Cruise Scientology video that other sites were forced to remove after legal threats from the Church of Scientology. In the Cruise video, high-energy music plays while Cruise gives forth a stream of claims about the powers and responsibilities of people who’ve been turned into mystical beings by the cult’s teachings.
The Church has sent a legal...
Prosthetic-limbed runner disqualified from... →
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
Oscar Pistorius, a double-amputee sprinter, has been denied a shot at the Olympics… for being too fast. The runner — who uses carbon-fiber, prosthetic feet — was reviewed by the International Association of Athletics Federations (or IAAF), a review which found the combination of man and machine to be too much for its purely human competitors....
Fair use for the 21st century: if it adds value,... →
My pal Tim Wu continues to say incredibly smart and simple things about copyright, this time coming up with a great working definition of fair use for the 21st century.
Tim’s been debating NBC’s chief counsel on a New York Times blog, and they’ve gotten as far as fair use. Tim busts out a great working definition for fair use that simple enough to understand that it can be...
Black Is The New Black →
Scientists announced yesterday the creation of a substance so dark it absorbs 99.9 percent of the light that strikes it. It’s a revolution in curtain technology. Constructed from carbon tubes, the fancy fiber is “almost 30 times darker” than the recognized standard of blackness, according to Reuters. Researcher Rulickel Ajayan of Houston’s Rice University told it that the...
Computer Program Could Translate Dog Barks Into... →
Hungarian researchers have written a program that explains the meaning of dogs’ barks. The software is still a bit buggy, but it’s promising enough to suggest that computers could one day translate not only between humans, but between species. For a study scheduled to be published this week in Animal Cognition, researchers from Eötvös Loránd University developed algorithms to...
Video: Land Rover LRX's iPhone personalizes your... →
Filed under: Cellphones, Portable Audio, Portable Video, Transportation
At the nexus of MacWorld and the Detoit Auto Show is this, the iPhone dock for the Land Rover LRX concept car. Our brethren at Autoblog had a chance to sit down with Mr. Sandy Boyes, the LRX’s interior designer, to get a better understanding of the iPhone’s role in the vehicle. When docked, the iPhone would...
Workaholics →
A workaholic lives on fear. It’s fear that drives him to show up all the time. The best defense, apparently, is a good attendance record. A new class of jobs (and workers) is creating a different sort of worker, though. This is the person who works out of passion and curiosity, not fear. The passionate worker doesn’t show up because she’s afraid of getting in trouble, she shows...
Executives vs Leaders →
This was the recurring theme in my day yesterday. It hit me as we were in bed last night watching the democrats debate in Nevada. The question was about strengths and weaknesses. Barack Obama volunterred that he wasn’t much of an operator and that his staff knew to give him the piece of paper at the last possible moment so he didn’t lose it. Apparently his desk looks like mine....
Executives vs Leaders →
This was the recurring theme in my day yesterday. It hit me as we were in bed last night watching the democrats debate in Nevada. The question was about strengths and weaknesses. Barack Obama volunterred that he wasn’t much of an operator and that his staff knew to give him the piece of paper at the last possible moment so he didn’t lose it. Apparently his desk looks like mine....
Lessig's Future of Ideas goes Creative Commons →
Larry Lessig’s magnificent book The Future of Ideas is now available as a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial licensed download. Future of Ideas is a grim and prescient look at the way that corporate interests have rigged the system so that they can own more and more of our thoughts, ideas and conversations — from banning you from taking pictures of your car and distributing it...
Exoskeleton for farmers →
Megan says: “Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology researchers developed an exoskeleton to help aging farmers perform manual tasks.” Link
City of Lyon being cloned in Dubai →
Dubai is cloning the city of Lyon, France on a 700-acre plot, replicating its cultural institutions in a grand and surreal gesture of I’m-not-sure-what. Alas, the newtown is called “Lyons-Dubai City” and not “Baudrillardville.”
Lyons and Dubai had already signed a “pact of cooperation and friendship” but al-Gandhi’s idea adds a new twist to...
Betting Against Google’s Answer to Wikipedia →
As many now know, Google announced Friday that it’s testing a new content initiative — dubbed “knol” — that it hopes will rival Wikipedia. Realizing that Wikipedia entries rank first on 27% of all Google search result pages, the folks at Googleplex couldn’t resist launching a competitive product. In announcing …
How the Oceans Once Ended Global Warming →
Last time Earth suffered a carbon-induced fever, algae saved the day.
Google Apps coming to Clearwire customers via new... →
Filed under: Wireless
Don’t look now, but it seems Google is teaming up with wireless broadband provider Clearwire in order to bless its customers with the Google Apps communication suite. Though no definitive date was provided, Clearwire will “soon” begin migrating its users to Gmail / Google Calendar sometime during the first half of this year, and furthermore, these same...
A tenfold improvement in battery life? →
Stanford researchers say silicon nanowires could help extend the life of a lithium ion battery for laptops from 4 hours to 40 hours.
Eco Fashion Could Boost U.S. Farmers →
A growing desire for clothing with minimal carbon footprints could help U.S. farmers.
The future of solar is nanotech: Nanogram,... →
With a new $32 million funding going to nanotech firm NanoGram, mainly for development of next-generation solar cells, it seems like a good time to point out some up-and-coming technologies that work on very small scales to make photovoltaic cells more efficient.
NanoGram has already had several commercial successes, including inventions in both electronics and medicine. However, the company has...
Trader Made Billions on Subprime →
John Paulson made a spectacularly successful bet against the housing market at the right time. The little-known hedge fund manager reaped what’s believed to be the largest one-year payday in Wall Street history. Here’s how he did it.
SOLAR ARK: World’s Most Stunning Solar Building →
Sanyo has built an ark for the solar century – an impressive 630 kW solar-collecting building that boasts over 5,000 solar panels and kicks off over 500,000 kWh of energy per year. Even more outstanding is the fact that most of the monocrystalline modules used on the Solar Ark were factory rejects headed to the scrap pile. Located next to Sanyo’s semiconductor factory in Gifu, Japan, the...
Designers Reenvision Blimps →
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow’s Hindenberg III may be docking soon at a skyscraper near you. Manned Cloud is a hotel blimp concept dreamed up by French designer Jean-Marie Massaud. The world’s first flying luxury hotel would be able to accommodate 40 guests and 15 staff members in its 3,600 square foot double decker space, which would include restaurant and bar, library,...
Company Claims to Photograph Future, Revealing... →
A new YouTube video and blog point at the latest venture in immersive marketing/gaming — a possible alternate reality game, or ARG for the new Fox show Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. EniTech Research Labs is claiming to have a camera capable of capturing images 1193 days, or roughly three years, into the future. Employees are documenting their findings and asking for feedback...
The last Sky Commuter concept craft hits eBay →
Filed under: Transportation
Oh, what a tease! This here Sky Commuter prototype is the last remaining example of what could have been: after the company failed in the late 80’s and the plant was shut down, all other prototypes of this personal commuter craft were destroyed. The vehicle is registered with the FAA as a “VTOL” (Vertical Take-Off and Landing) aircraft, but the...
Microsoft and MediaCart prepping self-checkout... →
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
We’ve heard plenty of these initiatives before, but with the likes of Microsoft pushing the tech, it might not be too long before we’re all pushing a super-connected shopping cart down the aisle. Microsoft’s aQuantive acquisition last year has the company looking to new ad venues, and apparently shopping carts are one of those. Microsoft has been...
Amputee Sprinter Denied Olympic Entry →
The Olympic bid of double-amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius has been denied. In November, the International Association of Athletics Federations tested the carbon-fiber feet that carried Pistorius to top of South African sprinting and earned him the nickname “Blade Runner.” Had the IAAF allowed Pistorius to compete, he would have been the first disabled athlete to participate in the...
The Pipe Is Only Dumb If You Make It That Way →
Over on GigaOM, Chetan Sharma has a guest column called The Operators vs. the Media Brands that’s well worth a read. He talks about how the two industries are converging, but how difficult it is for operators to become media companies, despite their comments to the contrary. The biggest point I took away from it came from this passage:
To be successful over the long term, operators need to focus...
Britain's new fastest supercomputer makes its... →
Filed under: Desktops
It’s always tough to keep track of the fastest supercomputers around at any given moment, but according to Reuters, the rather imposing block of machines pictured above is now at the top of the heap in Britain, and at least near the top in all of Europe. Dubbed HECToR (for High-End Computing Terascale Resource), the Cray-built rig packs the equivalent power of 12,000...
Amazing Video of World's Toughest Animal →
You’d never guess from looking at these clips that the millimeter-long tardigrade is the world’s toughest animal, found from deep ocean to Himalayan mountaintops, able to survive at a single degree above absolute zero. How tough are tardigrades? They require water to live, but in a pinch can drop their metabolism to a hundredth of normal and wait — up to a decade if necessary...
Commercializing Solar Power with Molten Salt →
Solar power might be the most up-and-coming renewable energy source, but one of the biggest drawbacks to solar power plants is their inability to generate electricity at night or during cloudy days. But now, a new venture called SolarReserve hopes to change all that using salt! Their program would save and store captured solar energy in molten salt, the new solar plant will produce up to 500...
UK jails considering RFID implants for prisoners →
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
Ah — dead, eerily-prescient, 20th century authors… they just can’t stop proving you right, can they? In a decidedly Orwellian turn, British authorities are considering a proposal to implant “machine-readable” RFID tags under the skin of some prison inmates as part of a plan to free up space in the country’s overcrowded prisons....
Netflix to loosen restrictions on internet viewing... →
Filed under: Home Entertainment
Granted, there are some out there who’ve been dodging the whole “limitation” aspect of Netflix’s Watch Instantly feature for a good while, but for the honest, upstanding citizens abiding by the rules, things are (seemingly) about to change for the better. According to a recent report from the AP, Netflix is gearing up to banish the time...
Phiaton brings the visual delight to audio gear →
Filed under: Home Entertainment, Portable Audio, Portable Video
Phiaton — not to be confused with Volkswagen’s futile attempt to break into the luxury sedan market — is setting out to grab dollars from audio geeks that have a thing for style. The firm is actually part of Cresyn, and is attempting to put its name on the map by introducing four new exotic looking headphones, a...
Striking Writers to Launch Online Video Co.,... →
Striking Writers to Launch Online Video Co., Seeking $30M+ — Out of work and newly wise to the state of content being distributed online, a group of professional writers is looking to start their own production and distribution company. Aaron Mendelsohn, writer of the Disney film Air Bud …
Source: NewTeeVee
Author: Liz Gannes
Link: ...
Can Apple save WiMax? (Jordan Golson/Valleywag) →
Can Apple save WiMax? — Our sources tell us that Apple may include WiMax, the high-speed, long-range wireless broadband technology, in an ultraportable 13” notebook computer, and possibly across the entire MacBook Pro line. Just part of the rumor mill flying in preparation …
Source: Valleywag
Author: Jordan Golson
Link: http://valleywag.com/344015/can-apple-save-wimax
...
Chinese Blogger Beaten To Death By Government... →
A Chinese blogger has been beaten to death by Government authorities for the crime of attempting to record a protest on his mobile phone.
When Wei was present at some sort of confrontation or protest by local villages against municipal authorities when more than 50 municipal inspectors turned on him, attacking him for five minutes.
According to CNN, the killing has sparked outrage in China,...
Google Now Offering iPhone Version Of iGoogle →
Spotted by Google Operating System is a new iPhone specific interface for Google’s personalized webpage product iGoogle. The page can accessed directly from http://google.com/ig/i, although iPhone users should be immediately redirected to this page when trying to access iGoogle.
The new iPhone interface is a step up from Google’s previous offering of a mobile specific page at google.com/m (our...
New Data Confirms Growing Influence of Internet on... →
Some new data from the Pew Research Center puts some numbers around the growing influence of the Internet on political campaigns. None of this is too surprising, but it quantifies what we already know: that the Internet is becoming more important in political campaigns, especially among younger people. Each election, teh Internet grows stronger and stronger. This data suggests that in 2008 the...
Benchmark Bets on Ruby on Rails With $3.5 Million... →
Is Ruby on Rails the next Java? Benchmark Capital thinks so. It just invested $3.5 million in Engine Yard, taking its entire series A round. Ruby on Rails is an increasingly popular Web application programming environment because it is dead-simple, open-source and very fast to develop on. The downside is that it is not always as robust as more mature frameworks such as Java.
In fact, Ruby on...
McDonald's: Burgers Don't Make You Fat, Video... →
In an interview with the Times, UK McDonald’s Chief Steve Easterbrook lays the blame for child obesity on video games, not fast food:
[T]here’s fewer green spaces and kids are sat home playing computer games on the TV when in the past they’d have been burning off energy outside.
Video games get blamed for everything. Chris Kohler at our sister blog Game|Life pointed this out after the...
Crowdsourcing Cover Competition Picks Up Steam →
Wired editor Jeff Howe coined the term “crowdsourcing” in 2006, which he described as “the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent
(usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally
large group of people in the form of an open call.” Now he’s writing a book about it, and asking the general public to design a cover for the UK edition....