A new way to offset emissions.
Airports need lots of room for planes to leave and land. And airplanes spew a lot of greenhouse gases. Idea: Grow crops on airport property to power the planes, and maybe help offset carbon emissions. It’s an idea that may be taking off in Michigan. Yep, taking off…
Continue reading… “Some Michigan airports are growing their own fuel”
Memberly will make a substantial impact in online retailing.
Jack Cheng and his two cofounders launched Steepster, a social network for tea drinkers, in 2009. It soon occurred to them that a tea club, in which members receive a shipment of new teas each month, would be a perfect complement to the site. But they were working long hours to get their site off of the ground, and never thought about making the investment of time and money that starting such a program would entail .
Three years later, they decided to revisit the project — and while they were at it, solve the subscription program logistics problem for everyone else, too…
Continue reading… “Make your own subscription service: introducing Memberly”
The power of a lollipop!
The city of Victoria, British Columbia, is taking a new approach to handling drunken, out-of-control revelers causing trouble in public places. The police hand such people lollipops. Councillor Charlayne Thornton-Joe explained why it works:
Ms. Thornton-Joe said after the men popped a lolly in their mouths, their nasty energy all but dissolved. “They got calmer after taking the lollipops,” she said. “It had an immediate effect.” […]
Continue reading… “Police start giving angry drunk people lollipops to calm them down”
It takes that special touch to get what you want
Google and Facebook both spent more money on lobbyists this quarter than they ever have before, according to disclosure documents filed Wednesday…
Continue reading… “Google & Facebook set company records for lobbyist spending”
Cisco has designed an impressive infographic detailing how the ‘Internet Of Things‘ will affect everyday life. Or rather, how it won’t. As of 2008, the number of ’things’ connected to the Internet surpassed the number of people on earth. By 2050, there will be 50 billion things, ranging from your smartphone to believe it or not, cattle. Wireless sensors (transmitting 200 MB of data per cow each year) have been affixed to cows, instantly notifying a farmer when one is sick. (pic)
Continue reading… “The Internet of Things”
Will radiation warnings curb cell phone use?
“Cell phones cause cancer.” “No they don’t!” “Yes they do.” “No they don’t!“
Back and forth it goes, like the world’s slowest game of tennis. One study spends 6 months proving that cell phones turn you into a giant walking tumor, and another pops up showing that cell phones cause nothing but an increased need to tell people what you’re doing…
Continue reading… “San Francisco passes law requiring radiation warnings for cell phones”
Festivals will be so much better with composting toilets.
As festival season rolls on, many party goers will have been putting up with the ordeal of smelly, chemical-laden and often disgustingly soiled portable toilets. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Roskilde’s p-trees have already tackled public urination, and I’ve written before about how the green-minded and ultra-friendly UK Shambala Festival has embraced some delightfully airy and well-maintained composting loos. But it’s worth giving a shout out to the folks behind those loos—and noting that they are available for purchase for private homes, camp sites, and just about anywhere where pooping takes place…
Continue reading… “Portable composting toilets for festivals, homes and more”
Researchers are working on a ‘time cloak.’
Ocean’s Eleven has nothing on this. A robber breaks into a bank safe and returns home, where he activates a device that conceals his earlier burglary, making it look like he never entered the bank in the first place. Such a “time cloak” is still a long way from reality, but researchers have now made an important first step, demonstrating a cloaking device that can hide for a fraction of a second an event that occurs at a specific point in time…
Continue reading… “Punching a hole in time”
A really, really large fork will not allow you to eat at all.
People who use big forks eat less compared with diners who use small forks – but only when eating from a plate loaded with food, according to a new study. Researchers from the University of Utah in Salt Lake City monitored customers at an Italian restaurant during two lunches and two dinners. With one of the study’s authors and two research assistants serving as waiters, the researchers assigned either large forks or small forks to certain tables…
Continue reading… “Large Forks may curb eating”
A new mobility option.
Car-sharing is getting plenty of green-minded folks excited these days. The rise of ZipCar, carpooling apps, and so forth have been heralded as signs that people are beginning to see the merits of spending less time driving solo and more time sharing, cutting costs and pollution in the process. Well, the folks at the “progressive industrial design studio” Brooks & Bone have taken the concept of urban car-sharing to its logical conclusion: Tiny, boxy vehicles built specifically to be shared a la personal rapid transit…
Continue reading… “The ultimate in Car-Sharing: tiny, electric ‘box’ mobiles”
How does a computer recognize a face?
Since 9/11, there’s been a renewed interest in facial recognition algorithm to catch terrorists trying to slip into the country but ten years later, the system ain’t anywhere close to perfect (yes, even including Facebook’s creepy facial recognition system)
Perhaps they’re going about it the wrong way, according to Ben Austen of Wired. Rather than taking biometric measurements of the size of a person’s nose or eyes, computers would do well to learn from caricaturists instead…
Continue reading… “Better facial recognition algorithms through Caricatures”
J. Alex Halderman and his colleagues have unveiled Telex, a “state-level response to state-level censorship.” It’s a network of censorship-busting major ISPs that provide infrastructure-level, hard-to-detect proxying that allows people in repressive regimes to get access to sites blocked by their national firewalls. The descriptive materials on the site are very easy to grasp and very exciting…
Continue reading… “Telex: an infrastructure-level response to state Internet censorship”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.
