This was too cool not to comment on…. Scientists at MIT have developed a kind of plastic which can attract/repel water (at the same time). Essentially, the article has photos of some of the tests. One where they treated a pattern area and water droplets have accumulated on it. In much of the developing world access to water is a big problem, access to clean, drinkable water is even bigger. It looks as though this plastic could be use to collect water vapor from “thin air”, but could also be used to decontaminate water.
Category: General Web/Tech
-
2,000 year old computer?
The Register had an interesting article on the analysis of what may get classified as the worlds oldest computer (2000 years old – Greek.) Apparently it’s been known for a while (discovered in an old shipwreck around 1900). It’s been called the “Antikythera Mechanism” and has more than 30 dials and wheels. Anyway, it’s currently been undergoing detailed imaging analysis which has uncovered some new clues which may reinforce a theory that it was designed to track/predict planetary locations (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn were known to the ancient Greeks.)
-
Google Spreadsheet…
If you haven’t heard of this yet, I’m not quite sure how you’ve missed it since last night… There have been article, after article telling of Google’s intention to release a limited trial of their new online spreadsheet at a screenshot tour. Also, this will be a limited trial (so they don’t do an analytics type launch I suspect.) So, there is a form to submit your email address to be considered for the limited trial.
-
Realtime weather data integrated with Google Earth
This looks neat…. Noaa has started releasing kml files which are compatible of course, with Google Earth, to mesh the satellite imagery of Google earth with real-time weather information. It’s covered a few places…. The Map Room… and Google Earth Blog… Now you have the graphics necessary to do your own local weather report…
-
Big Go-Daddy hosting attack
In what feels like a continuation of recent bad news related to major hacks and data losses…..George Ou reports on a BIG hack of GoDaddy hosting customers. There was also a big hack-athon by Turkish hackers over the last week that will be recorded as the biggest mass-web-site-defacement on record… There seems to be a lot of GoDaddy customers hacked by the very same method….
-
Circuit City Support forum serving up trojan….
Embarrasing…. and a big pain in the neck for any of their visitors… It seems as though if you’ve visited Circuit City’s Support Forum with an unpatched Internet Explorer, you likely have a trojan/backdoor of some sort on your pc. (Assuming Explorer hasn’t been patched since January. In reality – if you haven’t updated explorer since then, there are likely SEVERAL backdoors. Call someone to work on it….)
-
Google Wins Bidding War for Dell Desktop Placement
Google has apparently won a pricey bidding war in the race to have their software bundled with new Dell PC’s over the next 3 years. Essentially, I suspect this means, Google Desktop (perhaps Google Pack?) will be preinstalled, as well as browser settings adjusted to make a Google-ified search page the default and probably Google as the default search provider for the browser. They apparently dug in their heels and were determined to win the bidding after seeing the built in search box in IE7 which is in Beta….
-
Federal Long Distance tax ends….
I think at one point I’ve said that once taxes are put in place they tend NEVER to go away. Well, I must admit I’m wrong. 108 years ago in an effort to help finance the Spanish American War, long distance telephone taxes went into place. The tax will no longer be in effect as of July 31, 2006. Supposedly, we will be able to file for a refund of our last three years worth of long-distance taxes for land/cell phones in the 2006 tax returns. I stand corrected… once taxes are put in place they ALMOST Never go away (and if it’s for a specific purpose, it may hang around long after that purpose is completed.)
-
Google Site: search issues
This is interesting…. there’s been a lot of frustration among some (myself included) with the current state of Googles site indexing. For a good while I’ve been able to consistently find ANY post on my site using google if I quote a certain amount of text that I know is on the page. Currently, such quoted text searches for pages that show up as “supplemental” in a site:averyjparker.com search… turn up nothing. In theory, the supplemental results SHOULD turn up when there are no others. (If I understand correctly…) I’ve been able to duplicate this with other site’s supplemental results as well, so it doesn’t JUST affect this site. Well, there’s an update at the official sitemaps blog that tells of some interesting issues with the site: search operator. It sounds like there might be a connection….
-
Computer security day….
A few days ago – while musing about the botnet take-down of Blue Security – I said something along the lines of “Make sure your pc’s are clean from “bugs†and help your friends do likewise. Spread the word, we need a “worldwide clean your computer with antivirus and antispyware day†or something like it. (Kind of like the installfests, Linux User groups have only an uninstallfest.)” Anyway, it looks as though Switzerland does something like this… According to incidents.org it’s called Swiss Security day.