Here is my weekly selection of articles that were not mentioned here — except if I missed them.
RSS, the rapidly proliferating process for syndicating web sites, wins the true mark of popularity: advertising.
Source: Red Herring, November 7, 2005
Spray-On Computers Reach Hard Places
Grain-sized semiconductors could one day be sprayed onto surfaces like paint onto walls to give computers access to places previously out of reach.
The so-called Specknet combines sensing, computer processing and wireless communication to link the physical and digital world in a kind of computational aura.
Source: Tracy Staedter, Discovery News, November 16, 2005
Library tricks: Books for lending, data for taking
At the library at North Carolina State University, students and faculty will soon be able to sign up for an Internet-based service that will alert them when favorite journals are published, with links to the articles. They will also be able to create home pages with links to databases, books, journals, Web sites and other resources.
Source: Alison Leigh Cowan, The New York Times, via CNET News.com, November 20, 2005
UK’s first hydrogen-powered house switched on
A newly built family house, belonging to Berwickshire Housing Association (BHA), has provided an ideal ‚Äòlive’ domestic venue for the installation of a prototype hydrogen-powered fuel cell, which uses a Polymer Electrolyte Membrane and separates out hydrogen from natural gas to make heat and power.
Source: Jon Land, 24dash.com, November 21, 2005
The Geography of Corporate Giving
Where a company is headquartered influences the types of social programs it supports, such as housing assistance, disease research, and the arts, according to new research by professor Christopher Marquis and his coauthors. Is social spending too confined by geography?
Source: Sean Silverthorne, HBS Working Knowledge, November 21, 2005
How Selling Pixels May Yield a Million Bucks
[The 21-year-old Alex Tew of Great Britain] created a home page, The Million Dollar Homepage, where he divided the screen into 10,000 small squares of 100 pixels each. His plan: to sell the pixels for $1 a piece, with a minimum order of 100 pixels. In each space, buyers could put a graphical ad of their choosing that links to their own site when clicked on. The end result is a cluttered collage of ads in various shapes and colors all amassed on a single digital billboard.
[At publication time, Alex Tew has generated $623,800 toward his $1 million goal.]
Source: Gwendolyn Bounds, The Wall Street Journal, November 22, 2005 (Paid registration required)
Search technology comes to the camera phone
A marketing technique called “mobile visual search” encourages camera phone users to snap photos of participating advertising displays and then send the images to a special database. In return, the consumers get a promotional perk or more information related to the item in the ad.
Source: Stefanie Olsen, CNET News.com, November 22, 2005
The Ants Go Marching - on Your Screen
Brian Fisher, curator of entomology at the California Academy of Sciences, has such enthusiasm for ants, he can make you feel guilty over spraying the little devils in your kitchen. His entomological evangelism extends to his leadership of AntWeb, the Academy’s comprehensive Web resource for ant species.
AntWeb’s graphically rich Web site opens its collection - tens of thousands of specimens strong - to both the research community and the general public. That makes AntWeb an interesting visit for anyone with anyone with an entymological bent. But what makes AntWeb unique among life science databases is its integration with Google Earth (GE), a freely available software tool from search goliath Google.
Source: Karen Heyman, The Scientist, Volume 19, Issue 22, Page 24, November 21, 2005
See you next week…
