If you haven’t seen or read the news lately, then you probably don’t know that NASA is set to intentionally crash a probe into the moon as an experiment to test for the presence of water in the lunar soil among other things.
If you’re in the right spot on Earth, you can will be able to see the action in a few hours using your telescopes. And if not, there’s always NASA TV. More viewing info can be found at the NASA LCROSS project page.
I finally got a chance to test out Virgin America’s in-flight WiFi service for myself on a Boston to Los Angeles flight and found that it performed quite well. Download speed (which is what most folks care about) was well over 1Mbps in all of my various speed tests; in some cases, I got as much as 2.5Mbps. However, those folks looking to do some more serious work that involved uploads should be cautioned – I barely got 300kbps and those uploads tests stuttered in more than a few cases.
Virgin America uses Aircell’s GoGo service and while I find that $12.95 for a cross-country flight is a bit pricey (especially on top of the $20 they charged me for my 1 piece of luggage), business users shouldn’t blink for this chance to be more productive. I was also pleased that the staff announced prior to take-off that WiFi coverage could be spotty as we crossed Canada briefly, so we were duly warned.
If you’re on a VA flight, and you need to get on those addictive Interwebs, then you should be pleased with this service.
H+ Magazine recently interviewed AI researcher, Bruce Katz, who believes that we as a species will ultimately want to be free of the limitations of the human brain, which by extension means uploading our memory and consciousness to a different device, a computer of some sort.
Katz describes the brain as having a kludgy design and lays out those ‘kludges’ in his book, Neuroengineering the Future. They include:
It will still be a while before we’re able to do this. Let’s face it, imperfect or not, the human skull does a pretty good job of protecting that delicate piece of meat we call a brain, and we hardly think about it.
Ever wanted a microscope, but didn’t really care to squint through a small eyepiece? Then the Jakks EyeClops Bionic Eye is for you. Long name, but it magnifies practically anything up to 200 times its regular size and displays it on your TV screen. It plugs directly into your TV without any software.
Think of it as part of a home science kit; it even comes with an observation dish to better help you position your objects of inquiry.
Sure, it’s geared to kids, but the EyeClops is sure to have adults clamoring to use it.
Buy now!
Price: $29.95
(Please note prices are subject to change and the listed price is correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of posting)
I recently tried out a staple-less stapler which works without traditional metal staples. The staple-less stapler (which I’m going to shorten to ‘sls’) works by cutting out a tab of the paper, wrapping it around and tucking it back into a small slot (take a look at the picture for a better idea).
The sls doesn’t work that well beyond a few sheets of paper, as its cutters aren’t that powerful, not to mention that it’s completely hand-powered. I also don’t care for the size of the hole that is made in the paper. Let’s say you wanted to add/remove some pages and re-staple, then you’ll end up with a quite a few large holes in your stapled pages. Last thing is that the ‘staple’ itself isn’t that strong so after you’ve folder the paper over a few times, it will lose its integrity.
Overall, I think I’ll stick with my traditional staplers. Office Space kit, anyone? This is a cool concept item but not too practical in my opinion. It’s pretty surprising how many places actually sell these though.
Price: approx $6
(Please note prices are subject to change and the listed price is correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of posting)
Remember the movie, the Terminal with Tom Hanks? Well, what if you took that idea and extended it one step where the person still couldn’t leave airport terminals, but could jet from one to another? Wired.com took up Brendan Ross’ Craigslist ad to fly around on JetBlue’s all you can fly pass for a month.
Crazy, but for a month, he’s not going to leave the airport/airplane world. The other side of this is that the science ‘experts’ say that there is a huge chance he’s going to snap at some point.
You can follow Brendan on Twitter and the Wired blog.
For all of you Tolkien fans out there, some good news: JRR Tolkien’s estate has settled some contentious contract disputes with New Line Cinema, and have allowed for the production to go ahead.
The Hobbit will be directed by Guillermo del Toro and released in 2011. Another Tolkien-inspired movie will follow after that.
We’re heading to a future where there is more customization for and by the individual, and fontcapture is one such company that is doing their part. They’ve developed a very cool, free web-based service that allows you to create a font that is based on your very own handwriting.
All you need to do is fill out a template, scan it and upload it to their site where it analyzes and then creates the new font which you can then install on your computer.
Unfortunately for me, I’ve been writing less and less as time goes on (and typing more), that my once decent handwriting has deteriorated noticeably. Maybe I should capture it now before it devolves into a doctor’s chicken-scratch…!
Now we’re moving along. Google is doing their part to get the industry on board with EPUB, an electronic format for books. That means that all of those public domain books hosted on Google Books are now downloadable in that format on any device that supports it. That includes Sony’s line of eReaders.
C’mon Amazon – get your Kindle up to speed already.
