Mar 13 2010
NASA has discovered 1.3 trillion pounds of ice across more than forty craters near the moon’s north pole. That sounds great! But what does it mean? The long-awaited discovery actually holds some rather interesting implications for the near future of space exploration and possible colonization. The first, most sensational, and most obvious conclusion to be …
Mar 12 2010
It’s already annoying enough dealing with the Bluetooth People. You know the ones – talking to thin air, sometimes even right at you (ugh), while they’re on the phone. But that’s nothing compared to what’s coming: people having a full phone conversation by silently moving their mouths. Yes, it’s being developed, and here are the …
Mar 11 2010
During World War II, some of the best and brightest minds of the British Royal Navy were hard at work figuring out how to make ice. Well, not just any ice. An ice stronger than ice – in fact, almost as strong as concrete! The material was called pykrete, and although it was successfully invented …
Mar 09 2010
Who, a decade ago, would have charged fifty cents to a credit card for a newspaper? Or conceived of using said credit to pay a buddy back for a soda? Credit cards and electronic fund transfers, like writing checks, used to be a thing reserved for large payments. No more – enter: the micropayment. Every …
Mar 02 2010
AA, AAA, C, and D! No, batteries…not bras. Have you ever wondered why there are so many sizes of standard batteries? Have you ever looked closely, seen that they all produce 1.5 volts, and wondered why there are so many sizes of standard batteries that do the same thing?? Here’s why. It begins with the …
Feb 28 2010
B-Floppy became A-Floppy, which gave way to CDs, then DVDs, and now Blu-ray. The future of digital media seems to be in online video streaming, but could there be a market for hard-copy transfer? What format would it take? The answer is both surprising and entertaining (pun intended). To begin, let’s take a look at …
Feb 26 2010
A recent survey conducted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) found that a whopping nearly one-third of the U.S. population (93 million people) do not subscribe to broadband at home. The main causes have been identified, and the government plans to address them at the national level. Le musée de la Communication de Berlin, courtesy …
Feb 24 2010
The internets are abuzz lately with the news that Google has obtained for its subsidiary, Google Energy, the rights to buy and sell wholesale energy. The common reasons for this investment are known and accepted, but Google has a knack for taking the common and producing quite uncommon results. An exploration of Google’s past and …
Feb 21 2010
The Blockbuster closest to my house recently sold, shuttered, and gutted, grimly foreshadowing the end of the video-rental store era. Like Sony Walkman cassette players (do my younger readers even know what these are?), VHS has all but vanished. DVD and Blu-ray, too, are trembling before the inevitable growth of online video streaming. Like a …
Feb 18 2010
In an earlier blog post, I espoused that Apple’s preference of HTML5 over Adobe Flash would likely change how video is streamed online. While this may still be true, a deeper look into Adobe’s AIR programming foundation reveals that the answer is not so simple. In readdressing this issue, the first thing I wanted to …
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