Let's learn judo with Vladamir Putin!



Russia's Prime Minister also just got a tiger cub for his 56th birthday yesterday.




The dude's a badass.

He tried to find a job in science but failed. So he went to work at the car dealership.

"I got a hard luck story," says Doug Prasher.

He gave away the gene for the protein that, that he discoverd, and later led to the Nobel Prize in Chemistry this year by a group of there scientists that didn't include him.

Prasher doesn't have any regrets about giving away the gene. Tsien and Chalfie did great work, he says, which he probably couldn't have done because the National Institutes of Health had rejected his funding proposals.

"At that time, I knew I was going to get out of it; my funding had already run out," Prasher says.

more to the story at NPR

The Funometer -- A real vending machine in the East Village of NYC that sells Ideas for $.50

source: Boing Boing

Morph Monkey Spreads Chlamydia On Facebook

"A new app from the American Social Health Association aims to spread Chlamydia on Facebook to raise awareness of the disease."




I always thought spyware was the first unofficial internet STD - It's the "Browser Clap" picked up from shady domains.

read more at Techcrunch (source) | digg it here

Thoroughbred Germs Make Gas From Garbage

Imagine converting virtually any waste--grass, municipal waste, old tires, wood chips--into fuel for your car. A company called Coskata claims it can do this using a patented bioreactor and anaerobic microbes found in nature.

Unlike corn ethanol refining, Coskata's process essentially vaporizes, or gasifies the feed stock, and their patented colonies of bacteria are fed the gas created, and then emit ethanol as a byproduct. The science behind the process comes from Oklahoma State and the University of Oklahoma, and was developed and perfected at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois.


Yesterday, the company announced a 40,000 gallon per year "demonstration plant" ethanol facility. It is estimated that they will be able to produce automobile fuel at wholesale sale cost for $1.00 per gallon. (Retail cost would likely be closer to $2.00 per gallon, but that's still an enormous savings from current prices of approx $3.75 per gallon/US.)


By 2011, they plan on having a 50-100 million gallon per year facility.



The smart money is behind them too, including General Motors and Koshla Ventures (Sun Co-founder's VC firm) The long term business plans of Coskata is to license their technology and colonies of "thoroughbred germs" to other companies who can build refineries and produce large amounts of low-cost biofuel.

read more | digg story

Deer Blogging Their location using GPS, cellphones, and free Google Products

A buck named Thor is the latest member of the animal kingdom to take up blogging. He and two other Bambi-bloggers named Laura and Kelsy are part of a deer research project at Bryn Athyn College in Pennsylvania that is tracking and automatically mapping their location in blogger, Google Maps, and Google Earth.

What's really cool about this project is the researchers ingenious use of email/sms & entirely free Google products-working in concert with one another- to accomplish this.



Every 5 minutes, Thor's GPS location is sent from the cellphone on his collar via SMS to a gmail account. The gmail account auto-forwards these messages as blog posts here. This Blogger account is tied into this Google Spreadsheet, that through some google-hackery and error-checking, automatically feeds Thor's location data to a Google Map (below) AND to a this Google Earth KML file that auto-updates. Detailed and Step-by-step instructions of this new "Mail-to-Map" hack can be found here.



View Larger Map


It's not entirely clear from the College's website what the purpose of the research is, or for how long they will be tracking the deer. As pointed out elsewhere, one wonders for how long the GPS/Cellphone units will hold power, or if the deer will meet their demise from a local hunter.

In any case, there appear to be at least 2 "firsts" here: Non-human members of the animal kingdom blogging and the invention of a free "mail-to-map" hack/application using all Google services. Well Done, "Siberian!"

Digg this Story Here.

Data Art: The Sheep Market

"Artist Aaron Koblin's phalanx of 10,000 sheep, all drawn by random strangers through Amazon's labor distribution mechanism, The Mechanical Turk. Koblin's goal was to raise questions about the emergence of new labor systems in the information age"

Techmeme over Time lapse

Digitial Inspiration has a great video up here of Techmeme screen shots animated over 50 hours in 50 seconds. It shows how blog posts move up through the homepage of this memetracker over time.

Jimmy Wales early Christmas present: A "Search Wikia" Alpha Launch?

Search Wikia, The open-source, community search engine effort backed by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales could go live as an early test version as soon as next week. according to New Scientist.

Jeremie Miller, the project's technology chief, hopes an "alpha" version of the engine will be running by Christmas. As well as search, it will offer "wiki-style tools to improve search and basic social networking"

"Unlike Google, Search Wikia will not share search data with advertisers, nor invade privacy by storing users' search terms...The effort's architecture is similar in fashion to the SETI@Home project...500 volunteers are running web-crawlers to compile Search Wikia's web index, which so far totals 100 million pages"

Wikia's Search is smartly boot-strapping off of the established open source distributed web crawler software/project that it purchased in July, Grub. An introduction from Grub's site:

Search is part of the fundamental infrastructure of the Internet. And, it is currently broken.

Why is it broken? It is broken for the same reason that proprietary software is always broken: lack of freedom, lack of community, lack of accountability, lack of transparency. Here, we will start to change all that.

Grub started back in 2000 with a simple concept of distributing part of the search process pipeline: crawling. In a way, we were a bit ahead of our time, but our intention then was what it is now. We want to help fix search.

Now, with the help of Wikia, community members, contibuters, and Open Source developers our time has come again. Come be part of something greater. Come help us change the World.

This is a very interesting project with altruistic motives. Google and Yahoo do good job at search, but as pointed out here previously, having an open source, and non-commercial democratic search index/application would be a welcome addition to the proprietary ones offered by the web giants. Time will tell if the Search Wikia can deliver the same kind of quality, relevant results.

digg the New Scientist story here

Google's "My Location" Makes your Phone a Real Beacon...GPS Not Required

Google's "Maps for Mobile" makes it so you can automatically send your phone's location to their maps application without GPS!

After this light-weight maps application is downloaded and installed on your phone, you just type the "0" key to activate the new, "My Location" Beta service.

It doesn't work on all phones, but if yours is one that does, It will then get your phones location data from the cell tower serving it, and it will plot your location on the map (within 1000 meters or better). You can then search for a destination, get directions, and more.


The MIT Technology Review has an excellent article about the underlying technology, and other developments in this kind of non-GPS related mobile tracking. Interestingly, Google does use some GPS data on the back-end of this "My Location" application:

"Google also uses data from cell phones in the area that do have GPS to help estimate the locations of the devices without it. In this way, Google adds geographic information to the cell-phone tower's identifiers that the company stores in a database."

So instead of "triangulating" your location by pinpointing you relative to two other towers, Google is just using the single tower that is serving your phone, and then using other people's Maps enabled GPS devices to help fill in the gaps! It sounds like quite an amazing mashup & cross reference of geo-location data. Integrating all of it with the maps application making it work with relative accuracy is a remarkable feat.

Not surprisingly for Google, they expect the service to improve and more "intelligent" with time.

"As the database grows, says Lee, the service will become more accurate. It will never be as accurate as GPS, but he expects that it could eventually find a person within a couple hundred meters"

Here's a wild thought: Since Google is the Authority on "Search" (and privacy issues notwithstanding) wouldn't it be something if you could search for another person by dialing their cell phone number and then find their current location on the map ?!?!

Cellphones as an Airline Boarding Pass

Continental Airlines & Transportation Security Administration are doing a 3 month test in Houston that lets passengers board the plane with their cell phones or PDAs!

The way it works is that a bar code image is sent to the device (presumably from the airlines website or from a check-in kiosk at the airport) The image that's displayed on the device gets scanned at the baording gate just as the bar code on a paper pass does.

While the test doesn't allow for multiple passengers to board from one bar code, Continental is working on upgrading their system to allow for that.

While this is the first use of this kind of technology in the US, it's not the first ever implementation. Air Canada has been offering it since September of this year. USA Today reports that other US Airlines such as Delta and US Airways hope to offer this kind of paperless technology in the future too.

read more | digg story

How can I use spreadsheets to answer some of my many questions about the world?

The following was produced by Google and the original can be found here. For some reason, the URL is unacceptable to several social bookmarking sites. I've reposting it here so it could be shared, which I'm assuming Google is OK with ;-D. The video demo below is also an offical Google one, but I found it from the Googlesystem Blog.

This is some pretty powerful stuff You can basically create dynamic spreadsheets with data snarfed from all over the web!!






You can get answers to many common questions by using the GoogleLookup function. Please note that this function is only available in English at this time.

The GoogleLookup function attempts to answer your question using the web, with information about people, places and things, like the population of Japan, the mass of Jupiter, or the place of birth of Abraham Lincoln.

Keep in mind that, while the GoogleLookup function knows quite a bit, it doesn't know everything. Not all of the formulas that you might try will work, but we encourage you to experiment with the function and see what does work.

Using the GoogleLookup function

To use the GoogleLookup function, enter the following formula in the desired spreadsheet cell:

Syntax: =GoogleLookup("entity"; "attribute")
where "entity" represents the name of the entity that you want to access, like Kuala Lumpur, Audrey Hepburn, or oxygen, and "attribute" is the type of information that you want to retrieve.

Different attributes apply to different objects. For example:

• Boston has a population.
• Kofi Annan has a place of birth.
• The Mississippi River has an origin.

Here are a couple examples using the formula:

• To insert the number of Internet users in Paraguay:
  =GoogleLookup("Paraguay"; "internet users")
• To insert the Earned Run Average of Roger Clemens:
  =GoogleLookup("Roger Clemens";"earned run average")


Note: In order for the formula to compute properly, quotation marks must be used around both the "entity" and the "attribute."

Some of the entities and attributes you can use

Here are some of the types of entities you can access using GoogleLookup, and a few popular attribute names (some entities won't have all these attributes, and some will have more, so feel free to experiment):

• Countries and Territories (like "Burkina Faso"): population, capital, largest city, gdp
• U.S. States (like "Tennessee"): area, governor, nickname, flower
• Rivers (like "Amazon River"): origin, length
• Cities and Towns (like "Chicago"): state, mayor, elevation
• Musicians (like "John Lennon"): date of birth, place of birth, nationality
• Actors (like "Audrey Hepburn"): date of birth, place of birth, nationality
• Politicians (like "Anwar Al-Sadat"): date of birth, place of birth, nationality
• U.S. Presidents (like "Zachary Taylor"): date of birth, place of birth, political party
• Baseball Players (like "Wade Boggs"): games, at bats, earned run average, position
• Chemical Elements (like "Helium"): atomic number, discovered by, atomic weight
• Chemical Compounds (like "Isopropyl Alcohol"): chemical formula, melting point, boiling point, density
• Stars (like "Betelgeuse"): constellation, distance, mass, temperature
• Planets (like "Saturn"): number of moons, length of day, distance from sun, atmosphere
• Dinosaurs (like "Velociraptor"): height, weight, when it lived
• Ships (like "USS Chesapeake"): length, displacement, complement, commissioned
• Companies (like "Hewlett-Packard"): employees, ceo, ticker



Note: You're allowed 250 GoogleLookup calls in a single spreadsheet.

Twitter, Social Web 2.0 Apps Breaking California Fire News

"Parislemon" MG Siegler has a excellent post on how Twitters power lies in breaking events in times of big news or crisis. MG is out in the San Diego area and he points out how the NPR radio station out there, KBPS, had thier web site go down go down temporarily, but advised listeners to check the station's twitter page for news updates in the interim. At the time of this writing, I see from it that evacuation orders have been issued for areas of Del Mar & Solana Beach, Califronia. My thoughts and prayers go out to everyone in SoCal affected by this. I hope you remain safe.

More broadly across the web is more firsthand coverage and information on the fires. Center Networks has a good roundup of all the fire coverage on social media sites.

The LA Times has created a google maps mash-up of where the fires are:

View Larger Map

Free Point-to-Point Mobile Phone Service !?!

Imagine a mobile phone system where any two phones form their own "network" as soon as they are switched-on and within range of one another. Such a system would eliminate the need for a carrier and large mobile network; Replacing it with a shared grass-roots public network that allowed for private phone calls.

As reported on the BBC News, such a system has already been developed out of Sweden by a company called TerraNet AB!

The technology is designed for remote areas where wireless base stations are not practical. It is being used in Lund, Sweden where it was developed and projects are underway in Ecuador and Tanzania.


How it works

Each wireless unit instantly communicates with other units within a range of up to 2000 metres - without the need for a base station. Calling and texting are free between the units, with all units acting as nodes and carrying traffic between other units in the cluster. A call hops from one unit to the next until it reaches the destination, up to seven units away. The cluster of TerraNet wireless units creates an organic communication mesh that spans a large area, be it a university campus, a rural village, a company site or a disaster zone.

A TerraNet access point can be established wherever a computer with Internet access is available. Simply insert a TerraNet USB dongle. At least one TerraNet unit must be within a range of up to 2000 metres. The unit communicates with the access point and with other TerraNet units in the cluster. This way, any user in the cluster can set up free VoIP calls via the Internet to users in other TerraNet clusters, and via low cost VoIP dial-out services to fixed line phones and mobile phones anywhere in the world.

CEO Anders Carlius seems to enjoy the implications of disrupting the mobile telephony business model. From the company's site is the following:

Traditional operators are charging for landline and mobile phone calls like a taxicab - by the minute and by distance. With the arrival of flat rate or zero-rate communication solutions, including VoIP initiatives like Skype, the taxicab business model is no more. To eliminate the cost between the endpoints, you need to minimise the network infrastructure, the base stations, the antenna installations and the telephony servers. With the TerraNet Wireless Technology, the users deploy their own network.

If the calls sound good, it Sounds real good to me!

Wikipedia, 2 Million English User Generated Articles and Counting.

Wikipedia passed 2 million English language articles today. This free, user-generated encyclopedia has been around since 2001.

I've got to hand it to Wikipedia, despite it's politics and the hole Jimbo Wales thing...it's a cool site and often helpful. Sometimes, it's surprisingly thorough and I like how it lets you know when it's not. (e.g. "this article is a stub", when it lacks references, citations, etc)

All in all, Wikipedia is a solid representation of what Web 2.0 is about. Good and Bad. High Five's Wikipedia!

A Social Bookmarker's Convention?

DigiDave Cohn is proposing a Social Bookmaker's Convention. I say "Hell Yeah!" Stumble on out and Digg some Vines. They're delicious. We'll upload it, post it & host it (u reddit) - The nation's biggest LAN party -- watch out!

We'll see how "wise" this crowd gets ;-)

What are your thoughts?

The UNIX Wizard

The classic UNIX magic poster by Overacre was distributed at past USENIX conferences and featured a white bearded wizard with UNIX related things around him:


Apologies, Coding Horror. I had to digg it.

there’s a 20 percent chance we’re living in a computer simulation

click image for NY Times Piece

Definition of Irony: Justine Ezarik's iPhone Bill

Sexy Mobos

The Back of the Motherboard of the new iMac (see the ports):