January 2009
37 posts
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Search Photos By Color
This is a cool web tool for searching Flickr photos by color. (via AskMeFi)
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Manipulating Surface Tension
A lab has posted a video of a mini-boat that manipulates the surface tension of water to move without moving parts. I’m wondering if the same principle could be used on windshield wipers or “2D” water pumps for miniature chemical lab chips.
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TwitterVenn Is Cool
I like this tool: TwitterVenn — it graphically shows you twitter search results in a Venn diagram.
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Google As A Predictor Of _____
Google Flu was an interesting study for how Google’s PageRank could be used to predict the flu season. So what else can Google predict? How about Nobel Prize Winners? (via Slashdot) I’m thinking Google probably has a leg up on VCs who want to invest in web startups, too.
Obama is The President
There are still great challenges ahead. But let’s hope… (and I gotta double check if it’s true that Condoleeza Rice was actually the President for a few minutes before Obama was sworn in.)
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Forecast Scorecards
There are plenty of consulting companies that publish forecasts, but not so many of them report on how well their predictions matched reality. I suspect that compiling the data would simply reveal that no one can predict the future accurately.
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Balloon Power
Instead of wind farms that rely on rotating blades, there might be a way to harness solar energy using hot air balloons. As the sun heats up the air in a balloon, it rises and pulls on a (3 km!) tether connected to a generator. I think this could be combined with a kite system to generate even more energy using the wind gusts…
Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation
I’m always interested in stories about how people try to motivate others, so this story written by a software business owner debating how to reward one of his temporary employees struck a chord with me. Basically, an intern came up with a profitable side business — and ended up getting some conditional stock shares (in a private company)… I don’t quite see how...
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Twitter Me This
A bunch of folks have been guessing at what Twitter’s business model can/will be. I’m thinking they have the same plan as Wordpress — ie. start charging for premium features. Other opportunities would likely require a bit more engineering “magic” — such as “tweet indexing” to target ads and marketing campaigns. That would require some semantic...
Songs That Sound The Same
This is why guitar players can sound good only knowing 4 chords…
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Yahoo Opened Its Search Platform.. Neat, But Who...
Yahoo released its BOSS API to let developers build their own search engine services. That’s really neat — just like Yahoo Pipes. These are awesome tools, but who really pays for it all? I suppose it’s a drop in the bucket since Yahoo’s resources are already being funded (somehow…), and if anything gets really big — it’s a boon to Yahoo.
Google Shuts Down More Products
Google is shutting down some of its lesser-known services like Jaiku, Dodgeball, Mashup Editor, Google Video Upload, Google Notebook, Catalog Search — after shutting down Lively. It’s interesting to me that Google doesn’t release some of these as open-source projects and put them on minimal life-support. Some of these service, tho, are understandably just duplicate services...
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Star Wars Plot Summary -- From A Non-Fan
I thought this was pretty funny:
Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn’t seen it) from Joe Nicolosi on Vimeo.
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Cheap Fuel Cells For Everyone
Not sure why cheap, ubiquitous fuel cell technology would be restricted to the third world, but there’s a startup aiming to develop fuel cells for low-power DC devices in Africa using “dirt bags” that can be set up easily. Apparently, these fuel cells can be created for under a few bucks (one example cost $3, and cheaper ones seem to be the aim). Microbial Fuel Cells (MFCs)...
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Silkworms In Space -- YUM
Slashdot points to an article predicting silkworms as a source of food for future astronauts. Kinda neat, but I wonder that’s just one example of a sustainable man-made biosphere. Insects seems like a good basis for a sustainable artificial biosphere since bugs seem to occupy a pretty large portion of the Earth’s biomass.
Palm Is Starting To 'Get It' -- Maybe.
A bunch of folks noticed that Palm has a chance to one-up Apple’s iPhone platflorm with more open development terms (and potentially some better developer tools, too). A Palm employee asked for advice on his blog and received some (too much?) attention — so he had to move the post to an ‘official’ Palm.com site (after a bit of internal discussion). I am a Mac fan, but I...
Chrome for Mac Users
Google says it has a deadline for releasing Chrome for Mac and Linux users. Sometime before the 2nd half of 2009… is when Mac users will get to play with a stable and usable verson of Google’s web browser.
Semantic Search versus 20 Questions
Ask.com has been working on “semantic search” for quite some time, I believe. And depending on how you define the feature/technology, it works pretty well. But if it’s supposed to be a “magic” mind-reading search technology that basically understands all queries, then it’s pretty much doomed to fail. I’ve always wondered if search engines would be...
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Focus On Robots For Space Exploration!
Apparently, NASA is explaining to the Obama administration why they’re working on a new rocket design for upcoming astronaut missions. NASA says the plans for the Ares rocket system are based on newer space shuttle technology (using solid rocket boosters) which is safer for humans because it’s been extensively studied after the Challenger disaster. However, I think NASA should be...
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Synthetic Biology
I just like the idea of synthetic life forms, so I’m making a note of this blog post on Craig Venter’s efforts to create human-synthesized genomes and bacteria. Reminds me of the work of Rebek on self-assembling molecules… Really cool stuff, and closer to the study of nanotechnology than most other projects claiming to be doing nanotech.
Other researchers are working with RNA...
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Living Longer... Using Isotopes -- and iFood!?!
There are a bunch of folks working on how to extend human life spans via various methods. As an undergrad, I’d heard of using isotopes to alter metabolism chemistries, but now there’s actually a company called Retrotrope that’s proposing to create isotopically-enriched food (iFood?). That name sounds like a joke Apple product — and maybe iFood is the reason why Steve Jobs...
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PR Monitoring Services
I wonder if there’s a list of all the PR monitoring services out there…. I guess I could start one. BurrellesLuce, Meltwater, Biz360, etc..
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WalMart Growth Map
A neat animated map for how WalMart spread across the US with time…
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Do Ads and Wikipedia Mix?
It’s interesting to see how people react to the idea of putting ads on Wikipedia. Do corporate sponsorships really tarnish the quality of the content? I wouldn’t think it would necessarily. But the reputation and brand of Wikipedia might be harmed by ads — though I thought Wikipedia already took some corporate funding from Google and some hardware manufacturers. Hmm. I guess...
Space Elevator Simulations
What happens when a space elevator snaps? Apparently, the top piece gets flung into space….
Open Source For An Entire Country
How many countries can dictate the use of open source software for all government agencies? I guess Vietnam can. I wonder what this will mean for software development. Will documentation need to be translated from Vietnamese? Or will Vietnamese people need to learn more English?
Do We Really Need To Worry About Contaminating...
Space.com seems a bit concerned about a Russian mission that wants to test the hardiness of Earth life by sending some microbes to a Martian moon. Reminds me that I should look up what happened to that Martian fossil that was found on Earth…. If there is a possibility for “natural” cross-contamination between planets, then we can be as careful as we want — but we’re...
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Gotta check out the R thing... Someday
Looks like there’s a stats language package called R that’s getting some notable usage. (via /.)
Twitter Graphs!
Here’s some neat graphs in a paper that discusses Twitter and various plots of ‘updates vs followers/friends’ — showing that after about 800 updates, many active Twitter users seem to stop gaining followers. So I guess I have about 700 updates before I max out my Twitter follower numbers… :P
Just Add Digg
Google seems to be asking for product feature suggestions for its mobile platform, and it’ll collect all the suggestions using a Digg-like mechanism. Seems like a good idea to get Google to be more attentive to its users… and Google even says:
“While we’re kicking off this initiative with Google Mobile, we hope to extend Product Ideas to more Google products in the...
Interesting How That Brain Works...
This NYT story about a blind patient who can still navigate obstacles makes it seem like the brain is a bit more pliable to damage than one might think. The blind patient’s brain allows him to “subconciously” see things. Pretty neat.
Stem Cells From Wisdom Teeth.. How Wise!
Glad I still have mine. Good ol’ wisdom teeth… in case I need to re-grow some teeth, they might come in handy. But what’s so special about wisdom teeth? hmm….
Mac Wheel
This could be my next laptop… according to The Onion.
Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard
Picasa For Mac .. but not for me. :(
They’re writing songs of love — but not for me. Google has finally released a version of Picasa for the Mac, but it only works for 10.4 with Intel Macs. Someday, I’ll have to upgrade to a new MacBookPro… maybe when Google releases a Mac version of Chrome.