Archive for the ‘Current Events’ Category
Thursday, February 14th, 2008
Who Will Control Advertising on the Web?
Exactly how are companies going to make money on the social web? The path to the next generation of online advertising does indeed remain murky, but two new deals may provide a little light.
Google Experimental Search with Digg Style voting
Straight from google experimental labs, they’re experimenting on search engine ranking which can be influenced by users via a “vote†(sort of like digg).
Overhaul of net addresses begins
The first big steps on the road to overhauling the net’s core addressing system have been taken. On Monday the master address books for the net are being updated to include records prepared in a new format known as IP version 6. Widespread use of this format will end the shortage of addresses that sites can be given.
How Big Is the Web? 155,583,825 Sites – Report
A January Netcraft survey estimates that there were last month 155,583,825 WEB SITES ON THE INTERNET.
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Friday, February 8th, 2008
Why Can’t America Vote Right?
Democracy in America is in trouble. For some reason we can’t figure out how to cast votes and count them without blunders, inaccuracy and stupidity. Worst of all, a consensus seems to be forming that computers or electronic ballots are to blame, and that the solution is paper-based voting. Here’s my proposal.
Democrats’ Nightmare: Elite Superdelegates may pick nominee
If neither Illinois Sen. Barack Obama nor New York Sen. Hillary Clinton manages to pull decisively ahead in the next few weeks, the nomination could depend on the convention votes of 796 party leaders, or superdelegates, who are free to ignore the preferences of Democratic voters.
Analyzing the Internet Collapse
When the Internet suddenly collapsed early last Wednesday across the Middle East and into India, it provided a stark reminder of how the Net’s virtual spaces can still be held hostage to real-world events.” And showed “the fragility of the Internet at its choke points.
What This Recession Nonsense Really Means for Us
Recession, shmecession. Everyone keeps blathering on about the dwindling dollar, the deflating markets, and an economy that is sure to dissolve into something obscenely dire any day now. But what does that all really mean and what exactly are we supposed to be doing about it?
10 Mistakes People Make When Starting a Business
What are the common mistakes that new entrepreneurs make and how can you avoid making them yourself? Here is our top 10 list of mistakes people make when starting a business:
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Saturday, February 2nd, 2008
33 Cent Plastic Bag Tax Causes 94% Drop in Use
Reusable cloth shopping bags, like this one at a Superquinn grocery checkout in Dublin, have replaced those stretchy, crinkly plastic shopping bags, which are subject to a 33-cent tax per bag. Ireland introduces 33 cent plastic bag tax. 94% drop within weeks.
Yahoo needs Microsoft’s help
Now we know it wasn’t just a rumor all these months. Microsoft (MSFT) has been seriously thinking about swallowing up Yahoo (YHOO) since way back in 2006. In what would be by far its largest acquisition ever.
Microsoft and Yahoo: Perfect partners?
Certainly, a Microsoft and Yahoo joint search engine would in theory give Google some competition in the search and online ad business. But even a combined Yahoo and Microsoft search proposition would still be a long way behind Google.
The Nation: MoveOn Endorses Obama
The Nation is reporting that MoveOn will endorse Barack Obama, who got 70% of the votes in their online balloting.
80% Efficient Solar Panel?! Works at Night?!
The most expensive, carefully designed, and complicated solar panels in the world operate at about 40% efficiency. That means that, for every bit of sunlight that hits the panel, only 40% of it is turned into electricity.
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Saturday, January 19th, 2008
75 Tips to Keep Your Car in Top-Notch Condition
‘Don’t fill up if you see the tanker’ – If you happen to see a gasoline tanker filling the tanks at your local gas station, come back another day or go to a different station. As the station’s underground tanks are being filled, the turbulence can stir up sediment. Sediment in your gas can clog fuel filters and fuel injectors…
Google to Host Terabytes of Open-Source Science Data
(Google people) are providing a 3TB drive array (Linux RAID5). The array is provided in “suitcase†and shipped to anyone who wants to send they data to Google. Anyone interested gives Google the file tree, and they SLURP the data off the drive. I believe they can extend this to a larger array (my memory says 20TB).
Why We Flirt
And before you claim, whether single or married, that you never flirt, bear in mind that it’s not just talk we’re dealing with here. It’s gestures, stance, eye movement. We’re biologically and culturally programmed to flirt.
The Science of Sleep (why scientists are still in the dark)
We spend a third of our lives asleep, yet no one really knows why. We do know that people simply don’t perform as well when they don’t sleep enough…
Wikipedia goes video
Wikimedia is partnering with the collaborative video service Kaltura to start rolling out video to Wikimedia sites. Right now, the feature is available on the WikiEducator demo site, which is not affiliated with Wikimedia. But eventually we’ll start to see collaborative video hitting Wikipedia as well.
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Friday, January 18th, 2008
I have been hearing a LOT of news lately about a recession. I think they (the media) have been talking about this for some time, but yesterday, they really hit hard.
If you didn’t hear about it, the Dow dropped around 300 points yesterday. Actually, the market has been sucking all week. Since yesterday, this is all the news in the news. It is beginning to make me wonder if it is actually the media that is making things worse.
I kind of know the way things work over at Wall Street. After all, I did answer one out of the six questions on my finance final in grad school and managed to pull off a B- in the class. I am not saying I even answered it correctly. That’s not bad. Anyway, the way things are supposed to work is by using plenty of data to make buying and selling decisions. I am sure this actually is the way things work most of the time, but day to day trading is heavily influenced by the media. I mean, perhaps if they didn’t talk about the flames at the bottom of the endless pit of doom so much, there wouldn’t be so many drops in the market. It’s almost like the trading floor is blasting CNN over some loudspeakers. The reason I am saying this is because I happen to listen to CNN all day as I work. I must’ve heard the same story about the impending mess of the economy about fifteen times today. Then of course, our President, George W. Bush, had to come on the gool ol’ television to promote a economic stimulation plan. I ain’t sure what another whoppingly huge $300 rebate check is going to do.
I must confess, when I was listing to our President, George W. Bush, I did agree whole-heartedly that we should cut taxes. I would like a flat tax, just like Mike Huckabee is proposing. I don’t care if these brilliant politicians can’t figure out how it is going to work…they are the ones who got us in the tax mess in the first place. I believe that if we weren’t shelling out 33% of our earnings to pay for wars and $4000 toilet seats, perhaps there would be some sort of restraint. I apologize, I got off track there.
All I am trying to say is that I think television, radio, the internet and everything else out there gets everyone so damn paranoid that they hide like a pearl in a clam’s mouth. Well, that’s not good.
Ok, bye.
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Friday, January 18th, 2008
The “Google generation” not so hot at Googling, after all
A new UK report on the habits of the “Google Generation” finds that kids born since 1993 aren’t quite the Internet super-sleuths they’re sometimes made out to be. For instance, are teens better with technology than older adults? Perhaps, but they also “tend to use much simpler applications and fewer facilities than many imagine.”
Nobel Winner Speech Canceled Over Global Warming Controversy
A climate scientist’s speech to high school students was canceled because members of the rural community were concerned the Nobel Peace Prize laureate’s message on climate change would be “anti-agriculture,” the superintendent said Thursday.
Adobe Flash Tutorials – Best of
This article provides hand-picked professional Flash tutorials which can enrich your design skills and improve the quality of your works. Most sources can serve as the entry point for further tutorials.
Colbert Portrait Hanging in the National Portrait Gallery
Video and still photo of Stephen Colbert’s portrait hanging above the 2nd floor bathroom in the National Portrait Galley in Washington, D.C.
Texas Is Biggest Carbon Polluter in United States
Everything’s bigger in Texas — Big pickup trucks, Big SUVs, Big carbon footprint. Texans’ fondness for large, manly vehicles (plus 19 coal-burning power plants) has helped make the Lone Star State the biggest carbon polluter in the nation.
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Tuesday, January 15th, 2008
Facebook IS Buying Plaxo
I’ve just heard from a source that Facebook is “one hundred percent†buying Plaxo. This follows up on at least one previous rumor saying the same thing. While there are reasons to be skeptical, here’s why it could make sense.
Monkey Controls Robot Using Only its Mind
Recently, neuroscientists at Duke University announced that a monkey in North Carolina had managed to make a robot all the way in Japan walk using only the power of its mind.
Forget oil, the new global crisis is food
A new crisis is emerging, a global food catastrophe that will reach further and be more crippling than anything the world has ever seen.
Mortgage Lenders Do Not Deserve to Be Rescued By Tax-Payers
The U.S. government is working to develop several different programs meant to stave off foreclosures. Although policymakers claim that these programs are for struggling mortgage borrowers, it is obvious that the real goal is to bail out mortgage lenders. The question is: do reckless lenders deserve to be rescued?
Black Holes Spin Near Speed of Light
Super-massive black holes — isn’t that a song by Muse? Anyway, super-massive black holes may spin at speeds approaching that od the speed of light.
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Monday, January 14th, 2008
Everything You Know about Eco-Friendly Cars is Wrong
Setting the Record Straight on Hybrids, Electric Vehicles and the Smart
$1 per Gallon Cellulosic Ethanol from Waste!
General Motors and Vinod Kohsla have invested in a new company promising to produce ethanol from any organic substance (grass, newsaper, tires, agricultural wastes) for as little as one dollar per gallon.
Breaking News: Greenpeace win battle against Japanese fleet
Greenpeace activists are claiming that they have managed to chase the Japanese whaling fleet from its hunting grounds in the Southern Sea (for now)…
Even Republicans Agree Rush Limbaugh Is Obsolete
Particularly when it comes to his head-in-the-sand stance on global warming, Rush Limbaugh is part of an old, tired machine that even conservatives are growing tired of.
Newsflash: Time May Not Exist
Physicists are confounded about how time actually fits into the universe. One theory is that “time may be an approximate concept that emerges at large scales—a bit like the concept of ‘surface of the water,’ which makes sense macroscopically but which loses a precise sense at the level of the atoms.”
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Friday, January 11th, 2008
Network Solutions defends frontrunning-to stop frontrunners
Network Solutions has been heavily criticized for its new policy that automatically registers domains to itself once a user searches for it. The company has now responded, saying that the policy is a “security measure” meant to protect customers from real domain frontrunners.
Adobe Photoshop Tutorials – Best Of
An overview of professional step-by-step tutorials which can enrich your design skills and improve the quality of your works.
Social Blogging Platform Profy Launches in Alpha
Today, we get a new blogging platform from Russian/San Francisco startup Profy.
Google Processing Over 20 Petabytes of Data Per Day
Google currently processes over 20 petabytes of data per day through an average of 100,000 MapReduce jobs spread across its massive computing clusters.
Understanding Search Engine Penalties
Why is your celebrity blog being penalized? Find out here…
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Thursday, January 10th, 2008
5 of the World’s Weirdest (Discredited) Scientific Theories
From subterranean Martians to female hysteria, people have been known to believe some pretty bizarre things. What does it take to make a believable scientific theory? Apparently, not much. Here are five of the strangest examples and who knows what people will find hilariously untrue from our era in 50 years?
Web Hosting Names that Make You Go “Huh?”
There are a lot of web hosting companies out there with unusual, strange, or just plain weird names (and URLs). We have collected some of the strangest ones in this post.
Top 17 Most Bizarre Sights on Google Earth
Satellite imagery used to be the exclusive domain of governments and spy agencies, but ever since Google Maps and Google Earth we can all get to see weird things!
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