Thursday, June 03, 2004
Shower Light
[+] posted by Jeremy Lyon
(0 comments)
The ShowerStar is a shower head and self-powered light bulb all in one. In case you're having a hard time finding the soap, I suppose. [boingboing]
Advice For Monopolists
[+] posted by Jeremy Lyon
(0 comments)
Run out and hire Mako Analysis right now, because they have demonstrated an unassailable grasp of market dynamics. For example, sell your customers crippled products then make them pay to un-cripple them. For Christ's sake people, how difficult is it to understand that the more you please your customers, the more they'll buy your products, and the more money you'll make?
Electricity From Human Waste
[+] posted by Jeremy Lyon
(1 comments)
Perhaps the idea of generating electricity with poop-processing bacteria isn't appealing to most people, but having spent the past eight months elbow deep in dirty diapers makes me particularly keen to see this theory turned into technology. [piquepaille]
Surviving The Meme Machine
[+] posted by Jeremy Lyon
(0 comments)
Alexandra Polier is the woman who Matt Drudge inaccurately claimed had been having an affair with John Kerry. Unlike many of the people caught up and spit out by the international infamy machine, she had a background in journalism and the determination to find out what happened. Her account of her tumultuous experience is fascinating, both because it personalizes an event that had been no more real than a soap opera, and because it illuminates the hair-trigger sensitivity of the modern media and its propensity to turn the slightest intimation into a background logo and a news ticker. [mefi]
Tuesday, June 01, 2004
New Fiction Now Available
[+] posted by Jeremy Lyon
(0 comments)
We're proud and excited to announce that our second short story, "Shibuya no Love" by Hannu Rajaniemi, is available immediately for your reading pleasure. If "Shibuya" is an example of Rajaniemi's abilities, I suspect you'll be seeing that name quite a bit more before long. Next month: "The Tiresias Project" by Ruth Nestvold.
Monday, May 31, 2004
Easy to Swallow
[+] posted by Brian Wanamaker
(0 comments)
Don't enjoy the idea of a camera on a cable being used just to examine the last bit of your digestive tract? Join the club! Soon there could be a capsule-sized camera which could provide more information, wirelessly. (Prediction: Someday there will be Japanese pr0n based on this technology.)
Harry Potter and the Special Ops Usher Brigade
[+] posted by Brian Wanamaker
(0 comments)
Movie theater ushers in the UK are being issued night-vision goggles in an attempt to curb videotaping (and subsequent illicit distribution) of the new Harry Potter movie. [via waxy]
Give Spam a Kick in the ASCII
[+] posted by Brian Wanamaker
(0 comments)
Here is a charming widget to encode text as its ASCII equivalent. Particularly useful for masking one's email address or phone number on a webpage.
Friday, May 28, 2004
Life Fast, Die Old
[+] posted by Jeremy Lyon
(0 comments)
Scientists in Scotland have discovered that, in mice, a speedy metabolism has the totally unexpected effect of extending lifespan. The study may have implications for extending human lives.
Q's Floating Laboratory
[+] posted by Jeremy Lyon
(0 comments)
Wired feeds your technoporn addiction with a story about the technologies on display at the Navy's floating technological laboratory.
Better Batteries Through Nanotech
[+] posted by Jeremy Lyon
(0 comments)
Mix nanotech components with industrial era tech and you can get some amazing results. Of particular interest to this laptop user is extended battery life. [piquepaille]
Innovation in Games
[+] posted by Brian Wanamaker
(0 comments)
Nintendo's Satoru Iwata argues that innovation, not bleeding edge technologymakes a game great. He should add that being able to perfectly hit a niche market is also valuable. Facing the current sales slump in games, perhaps the makers should apply the wisdom of SNL's Rob Schneider to our own craft, "Making a great motion picture is easy. It's getting people to pay $9 to watch a total piece of s*** that is really hard." [MIT TechReview Blog]
Alternative (non)Medicine
[+] posted by Brian Wanamaker
(0 comments)
Well, well. What do you know? Drugging children into submission to fight learning disorders may not be the most natural solution.
A Cure for the Cure
[+] posted by Brian Wanamaker
(0 comments)
Evidence suggests that heightened allergic reactions are linked to the use of antibiotics, as they diminish gut flora. In order to grow fully healthy, one must also recover the gut flora, or potentially suffer greater than normal respiratory problems. [dangerousmeta]
Thursday, May 27, 2004
Cameras In The Desert
[+] posted by Jeremy Lyon
(0 comments)
Iraq in images, collected from just about every source imaginable. [mefi]
The View From Up There
[+] posted by Jeremy Lyon
(0 comments)
What a cool book! Window Seat makes me want to say goodbye to the aisles, legroom be damned. [boingboing]
Figuring Out Hibernation
[+] posted by Jeremy Lyon
(0 comments)
Bears hibernate. Humans want to. Humans study bears.
Algae As An Alternative Fuel Source
[+] posted by Jeremy Lyon
(0 comments)
Biodiesel works just fine in existing diesel engines, and is refined from renewable sources instead of petroleum. At the University of New Hampshire, they've figured out how to get all the country's biodiesel stock in desert-grown algae farms. [slashdot]
Mr. Roboto, Your Pilot
[+] posted by Jeremy Lyon
(0 comments)
NASA is working on an initiative that could put unmanned vehicles in the same airspace as passenger airliners within four years.
Wednesday, May 26, 2004
Adverse Texting Conditions
[+] posted by Brian Wanamaker
(1 comments)
This can't be a good idea: TextJ@m allows SMS-using drivers to messages to other drivers, using their license plates as identification. Is there really any need to encourage text-input while driving? [mobilewhack]
Exercise And The Brain
[+] posted by Jeremy Lyon
(0 comments)
The damning evidence just keeps piling up. Sitting on your butt not only makes you fat, out-of-breath and cranky, it also makes you stupider than you might otherwise be. [dangerousmeta]
Fame Versus Influence
[+] posted by Jeremy Lyon
(0 comments)
Cameron Marlow has penned an interesting paper comparing the fame of a blog (determined by the number of blogrolls it appears in) to its influence (measured by the number of blogs pointing to its permalinks). They don't necessarily go hand-in-hand, especially as you move away from the most famous and most influential. [joi ito]
Documenting Linux
[+] posted by Jeremy Lyon
(0 comments)
Linus Torvalds and crew have announced a new process whereby contributors to Linux will sign their code, asserting that they have the right to contribute it.
MP3 2 Phone
[+] posted by Jeremy Lyon
(3 comments)
I tossed out a link to Xingtone in this space a long time ago. I'm all over using .mp3's as ring tones (my current favorite is the opening trumpet blast in Oingo Boingo's "Dead Man's Party"), but I'm not sure I understand why as a Treo 600 user I'd want to pay Xingtone for their service, when LightWav lets me use .mp3's to replace any system sound. [boingboing]
Yak Butter Tea And NetMeetings
[+] posted by Jeremy Lyon
(0 comments)
A project to connect villages in mountainous Nepal with WiFi has apparently proven a great success. Look for them in #yakfarmers.
How Toyota's Imagination Works
[+] posted by Jeremy Lyon
(0 comments)
Toyota's PM (personal mobility) vehicle is pure concept. That doesn't stop HowStuffWorks from dissecting the vapor, which makes for fascinating speculation on the future of driving. [slashdot]
Tuesday, May 25, 2004
Grunts Won't By 2010
[+] posted by Jeremy Lyon
(1 comments)
The Army's Future Force Warrior project intends to redesign the infantryman's load, "from the skin out." They're talking clothing with embedded wires, open source operating systems and night vision monacles. If it weren't for the whole getting yourself killed in Iraq thing, I'd almost be willing to sign up so I can play with the new tools.
Blog Software Compared
[+] posted by Jeremy Lyon
(0 comments)
If I ever decide to run my own blog server software, I'll definitely consult this definitive list of current packages. [slashdot]
Rusting The Future
[+] posted by Jeremy Lyon
(0 comments)
The used future became the used present for the guy who built this carefully rusted Halflife 2 case mod. [gizmodo]
Grocery Lists By Cameraphone
[+] posted by Jeremy Lyon
(0 comments)
My grandmother used to tell me stories of living in New York City in the 1950s. There was a grocer on the ground floor of her apartment building who would bring her a daily delivery of fresh groceries, carefully chosen for quality. I'm not a big fan of online grocery shopping because the people who pick your vegetables are in the business for volume, not quality. All of which is a total tangent to the main point of this entry, which is to point out PeaPod's new list creation tool: a Bluetooth-enabled cameraphone. [engadget]
Design Redesign
[+] posted by Jeremy Lyon
(0 comments)
Design Eye For The Usability Guy is a delightfully snarky makeover of Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox website. [boingboing]
Celebrating Smart Mobs
[+] posted by Jeremy Lyon
(0 comments)
James Surowiecki's new book "The Wisdom of Crowds: How the Many Are Smarter Than the Few" posits that collective wisdom really is. Ask enough people a question and the people who get it wrong at the extremes will cancel each other out. "Subtract the error, and you're left with the information." [mefi]
Rah Rah For Free Culture
[+] posted by Jeremy Lyon
(0 comments)
Suw Charman has posted a well-reasoned and cogently expressed argument in favor of Creative Commons-style licenses. There's nothing particularly new here, but I always appreciate those who can make the pragmatic case for free culture. [boingboing]
Spherical Airships
[+] posted by Jeremy Lyon
(0 comments)
Imagine a puffer fish, all puffed up, without the spines. Now imagine riding inside one. That's what Hokan Colting envisions for the future of airships. [piquepaille]
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