The Good NET Guide

Posts Tagged ‘science’

Bet you weren’t expecting that headline tonight, were you? Well, it’s about as literal as I could get. Some enterprising boffins at the University of Rochester used a high-powered laser to etch microscopic patterns in silicon such that water overcomes its own hydrophilia and goes in whatever direction they please

Originally posted here: 
Water runs uphill in mysterious silicon etching

Major Japanese oil wholesaler Nippon Oil and Hitachi subsidiary Hitachi Plant Technologies are developing a technology that’s supposed to make it possible to mass-produce eco-friendly jet fuel from Euglena , single-celled organisms that live in ponds and lakes. To be more exact, both companies are cooperating with and acquired shares in a Tokyo-based venture called Euglena, Inc.

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Nippon Oil and Hitachi aim at mass-producing microbe-derived biofuel

File this one under “future toys.” We hear about a lot of these super-low-level advances in processing and storage (whenever I see the word “ holographic ,” I reach for the salt), and while they’re usually at best years away from practice and manufacture, they’re good to keep informed on, if nothing else than as cocktail chatter. “Did you hear about those new nanotube speakers

Originally posted here: 
Let there be… nanophotonic avalanche photodetectors!

Back in the old days, when people got their tech news from stacks of paper stapled together called “magazines,” Popular Science was a nerd’s dream. It was full of all sorts of exciting things, had less nudity in it than Omni (Note: This is not a good thing but your parents would buy it for you), and let you dream of jet packs. This is not to say that that old stalwart PopSci isn’t still around, but back in the old days it was our only lifeline to the world of high tech.

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Popular Science archives are now online

From now on, you won’t even hear the black helicopters coming. Just a breath of wind rustling your blinds, and then — bag on the head! At least, that’ll be the case if the NSA gets hold of some of these Blue Edge rotor blades from Eurocopter. They’re not only shaped like a sword you might find in Final Fantasy XIII, but they have little mechanized flaps that are automatically adjusted in order to reduce the wup-wup-wup noise that results from the blade cutting through turbulent air.

The rest is here:
New helicopter blades not only look cool but are way more quiet

All the hella-haters can spin on it. I want “hella” as an SI-recognized prefix along with “mega” and “kilo.” And that’s why I’m about to do something I rarely ever do: join a Facebook group. Point your little browser toward The Official Petition to Establish ‘Hella-’ as the SI Prefix for 10^27 if you want your storage space in 50 years to be measured in hellabytes and the universe’s weight in hellagrams

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Yes we can make “hellabytes” an SI-recognized term

Last December, Saul Hansell left his job as a veteran reporter and blogger at the New York Times to become the programming director for Aol’s Seed, which is the new online assignment desk for Aol’s 80 different Websites. In his first blog post since he took on the new job, Hansell admits that his new career path was met by “a lot of blank stares” from friends and family. Seed is still a bit of a mystery to many, but its essentially a way for Aol to assign articles to anyone on the Web beyond the 3,500 journalists and professional freelancers it employs directly. Why is this important? As Hansell explains:

AOL is a very different company now. It is independent again. And its mission is to redefine journalism for the Internet age.

Seed is supposed to help by assigning the stories that “satisfy the world’s curiosity” (the Seed Creed). Hansell does his best to make writing articles for Aol at $30 to $300 a pop sound enticing:

Seed is different because AOL is different. With such a large staff of professional journalists working with Seed and some very sophisticated news-gathering technology, our sites offer readers a level of quality and breadth that others simply can’t match.

And that means the experience of working for Seed is very different as well. Your work will appear right next to articles written by Pulitzer Prize winners and other journalists at the top of their game on sites seen daily by millions of people. And we’re not just asking you to write from home in your pajamas. We’re inviting you, if you’re interested, to pick up your reporters’ notebook and join us in our front row seats watching the most interesting events in our world.

That may be where Hansell wants to take Seed, which is still in beta and being kluged together on the back-end, but it’s definitely not where it is today. Seed, at least right now, looks more like Aol’s answer to Demand Media or Helium, where the going rate for an SEO-friendly how-to article seems to be in the $25 to $50 range.

What are some of the current assignments on Seed ready to redefine journalism?  I signed up for Seed to take a look around.  The first thing I saw is that Aol seems to want someone to write a lot of gift guides (for weddings, Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day, kids, grandparents, teachers, and groomsmen).  Then I went to the science and tech assignments.  Seed is offering $25 for articles on the “Best Twitter Backgrounds,” “How Humans Will Colonize The Oceans” ($25), “10 Concepts We Think Were Real,” and “How To Make Free Calls.” (See screenshots below).

The closest assignments I could find that might require some actual reporting are “What it’s like working at Target” ($25) and “How to Untangle Matted Hair on a Cat” ($80), which asks for an interview with a pet groomer.

I am going to go out on a limb here and say that none of these are going to win a Pulitzer.  But maybe that’s not what Aol means by redefining journalism.

Hansell admits that what he writes in the post is highly aspirational, but he also cautions against judging Seed too early.  ”If journalism has to evolve at the pace of technology companies, we have to experiment in public,” he tells me.  ”We will do a lot of experiments.  The potential of Seed is to tap into human intelligence at scale.”  It is clear that Aol wants to use Seed to extend its reporting beyond the how-to variety..  Not that there’s anything wrong with teaching people how to untangle cat hair.

It’s your daily space (Space?) update.

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Look, up in the sky. It’s 3 more Iranian satellites.

Looks like we have ourselves yet another DRM-related controversy for your amusement. The star this time is BioShock 2 , the upcoming FPS developed by various 2K studios. The usual suspects abound: SecurROM, limited installations, and Games for Windows Live

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BioShock 2 DRM madness: Once again, publishers make pirating a game more attractive than buying it legitimately

The Star Trek wetsuit finally lets you couple your love for Star Trek with your love for SCUBA. No longer must you be shackled in a plain, boring wetsuit when you make your dives. Now you can wear a stylish suit that demonstrates your geek cred to all your diving buddies

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Star Trek wetsuit lets you boldly go where few have gone before