Long Hiatus

Sorry for the long Hiatus, I plan on posting again...

Scott_Adams

Why I love Scott Adams

"The Ultimate Search For Bourne on Google"

About two weeks ago I spotted a Google maps logo at the bottom of the Bourne Ultimatum page. I followed up on that post today and noticed that site has been updated with a flash intro. After the intro your back to the old page but with the Google maps logo missing. But wait, there's more. Scrolling down to the bottom of the page you will notice "The Ultimate Search For Bourne on Google Starts This Summer".



This seems to fit in really nicely with what Google has done in the past with "The Davinci Code". Boy I can't wait to see what's in store :D

Link:
thebourneultimatum.com

25% off your next spray on computer?

We've all seen or heard of the spray on tan, but spray on computer? Researchers in Scotland are ready to reveal "speckled computing"

scientists have developed a computer the size of a matchstick head, thousands of which can be sprayed onto patients to give a comprehensive analysis of their condition.

The basic concept is this; take a bunch of these tiny computers, spray them on a subject and they automatically start to create a wireless network, sending back vital information about your heart rate, oxygen levels, etc...

The individual appliances, or 'specks', will form networks that can be programmed like ordinary computers.

Spraying them directly onto a person creates the ability to carry out different tests at the same time, for example muscle movement and pulse rate. This allows a complete picture of the patient's condition to be built up quickly.

Link:
http://news.scotsman.com/scitech.cfm?id=539582007

Google and the Bourne Ultimatum?

Being that I love the Bourne trilogy (and yes, I have the books), I saw the new trailer floating around YouTube (no DMCA take-down notices, weird:) After watching the trailer I buzzed over to Bourne Ultimatum web site and noticed a nice little Google Maps logo at the bottom left hand side. Is this a sign of a Google partnership like what we saw with The Davinci Code? Maybe I'm reading into this too much, but the Google logo just seems to obviously placed to be a coincidence.



Link:
http://thebourneultimatum.com

Never worry about charging your cell phone again.

I found a great article off CNN Money about a company set to revolutionize the small electronics industry. Powercast claims to have developed a technique for transferring radio waves to a DC; the important part, it's cheap. The concept is pretty simple. Plug in a base station and put in a dime size receiver (about $5 the company says) and whenever your mobile device gets within three feet of the base station it starts to charge. No more plugging in clumsy chargers, instead while you sit at your computer reading the post your phone is charging all on it own.

That's where Shearer came in. A former physicist based in Pittsburgh, he and his team spent four years poring over wireless electricity research in a lab hidden behind his family's coffee house. He figured much of the energy bouncing off walls could be captured. All you had to do was build a receiver that could act like a radio tuned to many frequencies at once.

"I realized we wanted to grab that static and harness it," Shearer says. "It's all energy."

So the Powercast team set about creating and patenting that receiver. Its tiny but hyperefficient receiving circuits can adjust to variations in load and field strength while maintaining a constant DC voltage. Thanks to the fact that it transmits only safe low wattages, the Powercast system quickly won FCC approval--and $10 million from private investors.

Where To Place The Ads

I was checking through the source code for Google Docs when I noticed this new Javascript file addition, conversion.js. Digging through the code you'll notice to interesting urls

var url = proto +
"//www.googleadservices.com/pagead/conversion/" +
escape(w.google_conversion_id) + path +
"random=" + (new Date()).getTime();

http://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/conversion/http/extclk?random=213800 serves up a tracking pixel.

url = url + google_language_code();
var link = proto + "//services.google.com/sitestats/" +
google_get_filename() + "?cid=" + escape(w.google_conversion_id);

http://services.google.com/sitestats/en_US.html?cid=http is an example of what will be served up.

The conversion.js file doesn't really seem to convert anything, rather is seems like standard ad tracking/documenting system. With this in mind is seems like Google is trying to add ads to Google Docs. This does seem like a logical step. Perhaps we'll see a similar system to what we find in Gmail.

Improved Google Video Rankings

I noticed this improvement to the Google video ranking system today.
Just click on the >> by the side of rank to expand this view.