Samsung’s new phone is the first to use Barclaycard and Orange’s ‘Quick Tap’ payment technology.
Orange and Samsung have teamed-up with Barclaycard to provide mobile phone payments with the new “Quick Tap” payment technology.
Netflix Accounts for 30% of Internet Traffic Overtaking Web Surfing
Movies and TV shows online takes up a lot of bandwidth compared with Web surfing.
Netflix movies now take up more of the Internet pipes going into North American homes than web surfing.
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British Inventor Plans Spectacles Revolution for Developing Countries
Inventor Joshua Silver modelling his spectacular invention.
A British atomic physicist is liaising with the World Bank on a revolutionary project to distribute spectacles to 200 million children in developing countries. Users will be able to adjust the glasses to their own personal prescription without help from an optician. “All users have to do is look at a reading chart and adjust the glasses until they can see letters clearly,” said Professor Joshua Silver…
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Aggressive Male Mating Behavior Can Endanger Species
Seed beetle. Aggressive male mating behavior might well be a successful reproductive
strategy for the individual but it can drive the species to extinction, researchers say.
Aggressive male mating behavior might well be a successful reproductive strategy for the individual but it can drive the species to extinction, an international research team headed by evolutionary biologist Daniel Rankin from the University of Zurich has demonstrated in a mathematical model…
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QR Code Art
QR Codes can become art if you are inventive like Scott Blake.
In the past, Scott Blake made composite portraits of people using barcodes. Now he’s getting with the times and using QR codes instead. Pictured above is a portrait of radio show host Amy Goodman…
Bathtubs Disappearing From U.S. Hotels
Business travelers don’t have time for a long soak.
Many hotels across the United States are doing away with the bathtub. These hotel chains use the freed-up space to install ever more luxurious showers.
Patients Admitted to the Hospital on the Weekend Are 10% More Likely to Die
20 to 25 thousand people die each year in the United States because of admission on a weekend.
Ten percent of people admitted to the hospital on the weekend are more likely to die than those who checked in during the week, according to a new analysis of nearly 30 million people.
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The Future of Libraries: Interview with Thomas Frey
Libraries in the future will come in many different forms
NOTE: The following is a reprint of an interview that recently appeared in American Libraries Magazine
Without consulting a crystal ball, Thomas Frey, executive director and senior futurist at the DaVinci Institute, writes and speaks about a promising future for those libraries strongly connected to their communities and quickly adaptable to the changing world around them. Tom Sloan, executive director of the DuPage Library System in Geneva, Illinois, asked Frey to discuss the future of libraries.
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Anger Swells Over Lifeguards’ High Pay in California Beach City
Some lifeguards’ salaries, benefits and overtime pay topped $200,000.
When Aurora Toussaint takes her disabled son to the sun-kissed beaches of Newport Beach, California she knows that the lifeguards who watch from their towers will be there in seconds should anything go wrong.
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Record Number of Americans Participated in Recreational Boating in 2010
32.4% of American adults participated in recreational boating in 2010
They didn’t have enough cash for a cruise to the Caribbean. They didn’t have the available credit on their credit card to charge a flight to Disney World.
But 75 millions of Americans during tough economic times the perfect little getaway in 2010: a weekend of boating.
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Routine Periodic Fasting Is Good for Your Health, and Your Heart, Study Suggests
Fasting can be good for your heart.
Fasting has long been associated with religious rituals, diets, and political protests. Now new evidence from cardiac researchers at the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute demonstrates that routine periodic fasting is also good for your health, and your heart.
Research cardiologists at the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute are reporting that fasting not only lowers one’s risk of coronary artery disease and diabetes, but also causes significant changes in a person’s blood cholesterol levels. Both diabetes and elevated cholesterol are known risk factors for coronary heart disease…
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HOWTO make a SNES cartridge urinal
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQlCaroTcIw&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
Here’s a delightful HOWTO for making a urinal out of SNES cartridges (please only use broken ones and crappy sports games, as the authors of this suggest!):
