A company called Splashpower has developed a 'wireless power' system to recharge your portable devices without cradles and multiplying plugs.
goodexperience.com currently has an interview with Google product manager, Marissa Mayer
I think Google should be like a Swiss Army knife: clean, simple, the tool you want to take everywhere. When you need a certain tool, you can pull these lovely doodads out of it and get what you want. So on Google, rather than showing you upfront that we can do all these things, we give you tips to encourage you to do things these ways. We get you to put your query in the search field, rather than have all these links up front. That's worked well for us. Like when you see a knife with all 681 functions opened up, you're terrified. That's how other sites are - you're scared to use them. Google has that same level of complexity, but we have a simple and functional interface on it, like the Swiss Army knife closed.
Also, comments on maintaining Google's simple interface, text ads vs banner ads, user testing.
At UCLA, they're using fractals (a matchematical way to model coastlines, mountains and other natural landscapes) to design wireless antennas.
Fractals, short for "fractional dimension," are mathematical models originally used to measure jagged contours such as coastlines. Like a mountain range whose profile appears equally craggy when observed from both far and near, fractals are used to define curves and surfaces, independent of their scale. Any portion of the curve, when enlarged, appears identical to the whole curve — a property known as "self-symmetry."
Using fractals may allow 'more' antenna length to be packed into spaces.
Derrick Story at O'Reilly.net writes about his Top Ten Digital Photography Tips.
Among the items discussed:
Doonesbury turns its comic wit to blogging.
Movable Type has released Movable Type 2.5
The new version integrates search capability, adds a new default template, and also enhances accesibility.
The City of North Vancouver has an online Graveyard locator.
You can type in a last name, a birthplace and/or a type of burial and the system will list possible matches and locate the burial site on a map.
Check out this new weblog on creativity and innovation....
The Supreme Court heard arguments last week on the copyright extension case, Eldred v Ashcroft. Lawerence Lessig has a post mortem on the actual court appearance on his web log.
Kevin Kelly has an opinion piece, Making My Own Music, in the New York Times (note: you have to register to access NY Times articles, but registration is free). Kelly discusses the hearing by the Supreme Court of Ashcroft v. Eldred, a case protesting the most recent extension of copyright protection.
Under the current copyright regime, short-term profit outweighs long-term value. As copyright protection lurches toward perpetuity, America's cultural heritage %u2014 in whatever media %u2014 is increasingly becoming the property of corporate copyright holders. But it belongs to all of us. Technology has given fans the means to enhance and protect this common heritage. The law should give them the right.
Copyright is important. It gives creators the right to control the use of the their creations for a limited amount of time. But the public domain is important to. It affects how we learn and grow and build from the past and create new discoveries for the future.
Exchange emails with a handshake.
Two Japanese companies have developed a technology that turns the human body into a broadband-paced link so that information, like e-mail addresses, can be exchanged through a simple handshake.
My question--how would you turn it off?
According to New Scientist, a team of government funded US scientists are working on a new peer to peer network. The network, dubbed the Infrastructure for Resilient Internet Systems (IRIS), will speed up searches and information transfer over the internet, and aims to foil "Denial of Service" attacks by hackers.
This is particularly interesting in light of efforts by members of the information industry to regulate and, in some cases, shut down peer to peer file sharing.
Movable Type has set up TrackBack at Mac OS X Conference
to aggregate weblog posts from all over that are talking about the Mac OS X conference going on from Monday through Thursday this week.