From New Scientist
Imagine a handbag that warns you if you are about to forget your umbrella or wallet, and which you can later turn into a scarf that displays today?s pollution levels. Or how about creating a wall hanging that glows if someone tries to use your home?s wireless internet connection?
I can think of many people, including myself who would find a bag which kept tabs on your keys, wallet and phone veeery useful…
Very well written piece about the history and potential future of Firefox, the open-source browser project which has now claimed ~17% of the IE crowd (source: W3 browser stats) before even being officially released.
The final build of v1.0 is due out in November…
Apparently BT has hit upon the idea of providing a download terminal in their public phoneboxes, allowing users to download mp3s (or whatever else) to their portable players.
Interesting idea, I wonder just how big the impulse mp3 market is, or could be?
Or correctly 'To Go Boldly'…
SpaceShipOne's aftermath is potentially a world changer. Richard Branson has planned and put the capital aside for five Virgin Galactic ships and is taking pre-orders for flights.
One of the persons interested in the maiden flight of the new craft is one William Shatner, coincidentally the first space-ship is to be called the VSS Enterprise.
Passengers will enjoy 6-minutes of weightlessness and be able to look out over the earth from 70-miles above…cool, worth the £115,000 pricetag?…only time will tell…
A disgruntled japanese tattoo artist, sick of seeing his language scrawled on white people who had no knowledge of its meaning has hit back.
Seems he modified what people wanted into something a little more humorous…
Kerri Baker, a Carlow College freshman, paid $50 to have the symbols for ?beautiful goddess? etched above her belly button, but when she went into Szechuan Express Asian Noodle Shop sporting a bare midriff, the giggling employees explained to her that the tattoo really said, ?Insert General Tso?s Chicken Here!?
Time to go shopping for those silver suits and booties, the future is coming pretty soon. IO2Technology is kicking the sci-fi ideas into reality with their HelioDisplay.
The display uses 'modified' air to create a floating picture. It accepts input from pretty much any current format, and doesnt create a smell or use any weird (refill-needing) gasses.
This looks like the sort of thing that tends to arise on or around the first of april…but apparently it is real.
Parliamentarians from Dutch ruling and opposition parties unanimously agreed that (most) images currently owned by Dutch public broadcasters should be released into the public domain and allowed to be distributed online.
Just imagine the amount of information that would be available to everyone if every country did this.
Well, I guess we all thought it would be essential at one time or another to create a robot which begs for money, then spends it on alcohol…which it then consumes.
The Bar Bot is not beneficial for humanity. Rather, it maximises the advantage for itself, like humanity.
Unfortunately, I dare say it will be much loved by many drunken bar goers…and a damn good way for the bar to make a little profit.
It is actually a little cleverer than that…
Harry Shearer (best known as the voice of Ned Flanders and Mr Burns in the Simpsons) has just unveiled a new artistic installation called 'Non-Talking Heads'. It contains a collection of his found objects, in particular raw video swiped from satellites which shows interviewees waiting patiently to go on live TV.
"Henry Kissinger looks bored. Newt Gingrich looks tired and eventually closes his eyes. (Is he asleep?) Ralph Nader endures the application of hair spray; God knows what toxic chemicals are contained therein, but it's a small price to pay to change the world. John McCain looks expectant, light shining in his eyes. I'm going to be on television! Paul Begala scowls."
Went to a public lecture at Reading Uni last night entitled Copyright Vs Creativity. It was very informative and well-put, it outlined the past, present and potential future of copyright law as well as many of the arguments which it faces at the moment.
One of the enduring phrases was talking about the RIAA+BPI's process of 'education' or 'indoctrination' as they called it of children to stop them from downloading music for free. They said, "if you cant explain a law to a 10 year old, it shouldn’t apply to a 10 year old". Just try explaining copyright law to a 10 year old, it is tough enough to explain it to a 50yr old.
They highlighted the fact that under British copyright law, it is actually illegal to make ANY copy of a copyrighted material. So technically it is illegal to use an iPod, even if you have paid for all of the music on it (unless you made the music, it is in the public domain or you own the copyright for it). Also, one of the more entertaining by products of this, is that any caching system employed by a cd player to eliminate skipping, is also technically an abuse of copyright law as it currently stands.
They haven’t released the mp3 stream for the lecture yet, but as soon as they do i will post it. In the mean time I have included a link to another lecture in Edinbrough last week entitled 'Web 2.0 == AOL 1.0' conducted by the same chairman (and popular blogger) Cory Doctrow.
This sounds like a must-have gadget…It is a universal remote with only one button: 'off'. With one click it sends the standby signal to 209 different makes and models of television, meaning wherever there is an annoying TV, it can be nulled…
Imagine the fun you could have during the FA cup final…or just walking past a branch of Dixons 
Article Here
Gadget Here (slashdotted)
This interesting essay details the Hacker Attitude and why it is actually quite an important and misunderstood thing.
"It is sometimes hard to explain to authorities why one would want to do such things. Another friend of mine once got in trouble with the government for breaking into computers. This had only recently been declared a crime, and the FBI found that their usual investigative technique didn't work. Police investigation apparently begins with a motive. The usual motives are few: drugs, money, sex, revenge. Intellectual curiosity was not one of the motives on the FBI's list. Indeed, the whole concept seemed foreign to them."
