Technology
clock | August 2, 2009SciBling Walt Crawford indulges himself in some prognosticating about the (non)demise of various physical means of delivering information: music, films, magazine, newspapers and books. He takes a cautious, conservative tack there, for the most part. I am supposed to be the wide-eyed digi-evangelists around here, but I was nodding along and, surprising to me, agreeing with much of what he wrote.
But I'd like to follow-up on this with some additional caveats and thoughts of my own. You may have to read Walt's post first for the context, as this will be a direct riff off of him.
Regarded as some…
clock | August 1, 2009Gaming is first - but imagine the uses for this kind of technology in education or science:
gregladen | July 31, 2009
(The fastest computer is the same thing but running a better operating system.)
Hat tip: Joe, copied from here.
razib | July 29, 2009A quick follow up to the post below, I was curious as to the increased profile of Google in The New York Times (Google trends doesn't seem to be available to the public before 2004) around the turn of the century. In particular, I curious as to Google's prominence in the "Technology" section of the paper. So I looked it up. There were 78 mentions between July 1999 and December 2001. Mentions of Google increase at a rapid clip throughout this whole period. Below is a histogram of this period, illustrating the consistent rise in frequency of mention.
A dotchart view (x-axis = time along a…
razib | July 29, 2009The collaboration between Yahoo! and Microsoft is spawning a lot of articles about the coming duopoly in search (since the Yahoo! Microsoft deal is for 10 years, we're talking 10 year horizon times). But this got me to thinking: when did people realize Google was something big? I realized Google was something big (for me personally since I'm a data junkie) after being pointed to it from this article in Salon in December of 1998. I became a Google evangelist. Initially most people thought my enthusiasm was a bit strange, at that point there were a dozen search engines, and all of them were…
gregladen | July 29, 2009My own personal experience with Yahoo is a tale of woe.
Years ago, I co-moderated what was then the most heavily used Internet discussion forum on Human Evolution and related topics (which has since evolved into PalAnth. That group was on Yahoo. The three or four of us (depending on when) who moderated the group found ourselves, one day, with no superadmin account. The superadmin was a login that allowed important changes to be made, such as adding other moderators or admins, and so on. For some reason or another, the superadmin account had gone away, and we lost the ability to make…
pharyngula | July 27, 2009Imagine a titanic battle. No, not T. rex vs. a killer whale, but something more alarming, like T. rex vs. a massive bacterial infection. Which side do you think will win?
Something similar is going on right now. AT&T, the T. rex of the story, is going after 4chan, the infamous nest of /b/tards and fierce crackers and hackers, an unstoppable plague of corruption. AT&T is doomed if they continue.
AT&T has been sneakily trying to silence 4chan by quietly dropping access requests to the site by users on their network. I am not a great fan of 4chan (actually, I tremble in fear at even…
razib | July 25, 2009For Mozilla and Google, Group Hugs Get Tricky. To some extent it seems that the story is going to be relevant in a few years when Chrome will presumably be more of a full-featured browser. Right now it seems a non-issue since Chrome's penetration is rather low. But this part was pretty weird:
"Mozilla performed a really good service, but you have to wonder what their relevance is going to be going forward," says Matt Rosoff, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft, an independent firm that tracks the company. "They keep Microsoft honest. But if Google is pushing innovation in its own browser,…
neurophilosophy | July 21, 2009
RESEARCHERS at the University of California, Berkeley have developed a microscope attachment which enables a standard mobile phone with a camera to be used for high-resolution clinical microscopy. Daniel Fletcher and his colleagues describe the CellScope in a paper published today in the open access journal PLoS One, and demonstrate that it can be used to capture high quality bright field images of the malaria parasite and sickle blood cells, as well as fluorescence images of cells infected with the bacterium that causes tuberculosis. The device could potentially become an important tool for…
gregladen | July 21, 2009Appropedia, like Wikipedia, lets anyone contribute or edit articles. Its goal is narrowly focused on collaborating to find solutions that can reduce poverty, increase sustainable living, and help people in developing countries. If you have ideas that you can contribute, consider submitting an article. If you are passionate about these topics and are a great editor, consider editing one of the many articles that are sitting in editorial limbo.
Details at Digital Rabbit
edyong | July 20, 2009As you read this, you are glowing - weakly, faintly, but glowing nonetheless. Chemical reactions within your body, besides liberating energy and producing heat, are also emitting small numbers of photons, elementary particles of light. The glow is strongest in the late afternoon, and around the lower part of your face.
Many living creatures, including fireflies, jellyfish, squid, glow-worms and deep-sea fish, are known for producing their own light often through the help of bacterial accomplices. But virtually all living things emit some degree of light, albeit so weakly that it's very hard…
clock | July 19, 2009A few months ago, I posted about a very innovative way of using Twitter in science - monitoring fish catch by commercial fishermen.
The first phase of the study is now complete and the results are published in the journal Marine and Coastal Fisheries: Dynamics, Management, and Ecosystem Science 2009; 1: 143-154: Description and Initial Evaluation of a Text Message Based Reporting Method for Marine Recreational Anglers (PDF) by M. Scott Baker Jr. and Ian Oeschger. It is relatively short and easy to read, so I recommend you take a look.
The next phase will continue with the program, with…
clock | July 16, 2009That is the title of the article in the latest issue of BioScience by Elia Ben-Ari (@smallpkg on Twitter) which just came online today (if you'd rather see the PDF, click here).
It is a nice article about Twitter and the way scientists use it, the difference between 'lifecasting' and 'mindcasting' (with attribution to Jay Rosen for the concept), a brief mention of FriendFeed, and quotes from Jonathan Eisen, David Bradley and myself. It also mentions the National Phenology Network and North Carolina Sea Grant experiments in using Twitter for collection of scientific data.
gregladen | July 15, 2009According to a recent survey, most companies will not deploy Windows 7. They just think it is going to suck and they are not going to have anything to do with it. YouTube will not be supporting IE6 any longer. Once again, an unpatched Microsoft Expected Feature, er, I mean Bug, is causing major problems. And, already, the Post Office is switching 1,300 of its servers to Linux.
It is only a matter of time...
gregladen | July 13, 2009CNN is supposed to be a professional news outlet. But even the editors and writers at CNN's Fortune desk are no match for Microsoft's' Stupid-Ray Gun.
This piece is virtually giddy about the fact that the next version of Microsoft Office will be just like Google Office. Free and on line .
Now, think about that for five seconds and imagine yourself to be a writer for CNN. Do you actually believe that Microsoft Office is going to be available for free? Like, me, Greg Laden, can just decide "Oh, I've had enough of Google Docs ... I'm going to switch to the online version of Microsoft…
grrlscientist | July 11, 2009tags: technology, neurobiology, brain, Three ways the Brain Creates Meaning, Tom Wujec, streaming video
Information designer Tom Wujec talks through three areas of the brain that help us understand words, images, feelings, connections. In this short talk from TEDU, he asks: How can we best engage our brains to help us better understand big ideas? [6:26]
Take Home message: Creating technology that works intuitively with the way our brains function enhances our ability to solve really complex problems more efficiently.
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances…
drorzel | July 10, 2009If you're desperate for something to fill your Friday afternoon, and not the comment-leaving sort, you could do a lot worse than spending an hour and a half (give or take) with Chuck Klosternman and Bill Simmons in their two part ESPN podcast. It's nominally about sports, but they spend a good bit of time talking about Michael Jackson (in a sensible way, not a vapid-entertainment-reporter way), the effects of fame, the effect of writing for an audience, and a bunch of other interesting stuff.
It's about a week old, but I only got around to it yesterday. It's worth a listen, though. It also…
gregladen | July 9, 2009VideoLAN's VLC media player, arguably the world's best media player, hit version 0.9.9 in early April. Three months and more than 78 million downloads later, VideoLAN has announced VLC 1.0.0, or "Goldeneye."
Your media will never be the same.
In fact, with VideoLAN's VLC media player for Windows, Mac, and Linux, it doesn't have to be. One of the amazing things about VLC is that it can play anything that you've ever even thought about playing. That random media format that one site in Ecuador requires--VLC likely plays it, while Windows Media, Apple QuickTime, etc. likely will not.
source
It…
laelaps | July 9, 2009I have tried to avoid too much navel gazing here during the past few months, but a new paper published in the journal Evolution: Education and Outreach by Adam Goldstein has raised the question "Of what use are evolution blogs?"
Before we can answer this question, of course, we have to ask "What is an evolution blog?" There is not a simple answer. Goldstein considers an evolution blog to be a science blog that is intended "to provide information [about evolution], steering away from the controversies over creationism and intelligent design." The extent to which a blog must "steer away" from…
razib | July 9, 2009Two positive assessments of Bing. Google is my main search engine, but I use Bing's image search preferentially now since the UI seems less kludgey.