French scientists demonstrated that seaweed, when burned to a crisp, is a great material for making supercapacitors that could provide more power than traditional batteries — via Boing Boing
A shape-shifting lens has been developed that alters its focal length when squeezed by an artificial muscle, rather like the lens in a human eye. The muscle, a ring of polymer gel, expands and contracts in response to environmental changes, eliminating the need for electronics to power or control the devices
om3ga has performed an experiment as to the best method to fix scratched CDs. He set himself the criteria that it can’t take longer that 5 minutes and it has to be something in his house. The result isn’t what you’d think… Hair Gel — via Slashdot
Green Wi-Fi is a non-profit that seeks to provide last mile internet access with nothing more than a single broadband internet connection, rooftops and the sun. Their wi-fi access nodes, which consist of a small solar panel, a heavy-duty battery, and a router, can be linked together to extend one internet connection into a larger network
Last week the BBC demanded video host YouTube remove many copies of its Top Gear
TV service from its web site. That was because, this week, the BBC made Top Gear
available in its entirety on-line at BBC2 — via digg
YouTube removed all parody/fanfilm/spoof Star Wars content two days ago due to copyright violation. This morning, in an incredibly awesome PR move, Lucasfilm contacted YouTube, and told them to put it all back online — every last one — via digg
Telstra’s hopes of building a $3.4 billion fibre broadband network are near collapse, with negotiations between telco and competition regulator set to be abandoned as early as today
Time Warner says its plan for AOL to offer free email and web services will generate higher profits starting next year, rejecting Wall Street concerns that the move could destroy the internet division’s main source of revenue
Computer researchers are developing a prototype architecture for halting distributed denial-of-service attacks, where a barrage of traffic is directed at a server to shut it down
Looks like a theoretical physicist at St Andrews University in Scotland believes that invisibility may be possible. And its not going to be a potion or a cloak, but will come in the form of a device
German scientists may have found a way to significantly reduce the radioactive decay time of nuclear waste. This could render the waste harmless in just tens of years and make disposal much less difficult as opposed to current standards — via Slashdot
Armor Holdings plans to start selling their liquid armour next year. The new armour, originally envisioned to be spread on like peanut butter, is instead sprayed onto Kevlar in ultrathin coats. It’s a mix of polyethylene glycol, a polymer found in laxatives and other consumer products, and nanobits of silica, or purified sand. Together they produce a sheer-thickening liquid
that stiffens instantly into a shield when hit hard by an object. It reverts to its liquid state just as fast when the energy from the projectile dissipates — via Slashdot
Boston is toying with a somewhat unique approach to their version of the city-wide low-cost wireless network. Rather than put the network in the hands of a private organisation under contract the city may allow a non-profit group to run the show — via Slashdot
The federal government may tap the vast pool of social resources behind blogs and websites such as Flickr and Wikipedia to boost its online information services
Call centre and technology jobs have been the main target of offshoring to low-cost operations in places such as India and the Philippines, but journalism is in the sights of one of India’s largest offshorers
Wal-Mart, the world’s biggest retailer, which last week gave up on Germany, is reportedly looking at trying its luck in Australia and is sizing up our two biggest supermarket operators, Coles Myer and Woolworths
A substance found in crab shells called chitosan has very useful properties. For example, it has been used in bandages to stop bleeding. But now, researchers at the University of Maryland have used the chitosan from blue crabs living in Chesapeake Bay as a component of a nanoscale sensor system which could save many lives in the future. These blue crab nanosensors will be used to improve security in airports, hospitals and other public locations by detecting tiny amounts of explosives or chemicals in air and water — via Slashdot
AOL will test launch a new internet video service in an attempt to demonstrate how much it has learned from its mistakes. The new service, AOL Video, aims to be the one-stop shop for online videos and will let users search for videos across the web, upload their own, or buy or watch for free thousands of TV shows from any one of 45 video-on-demand channels on nearly any device
A Melbourne shopping centre and tourist attraction have banned photographs, in order to prevent terrorism. Because all terrorism begins with the devilish capture of precious photons. Once these photons have been taken away to the terrorists’ spider caves, they are converted into terrorist photons and re-released at the speed of light to attack their targets with relatavistic savageness — via Boing Boing
The House of Representatives voted on restricting access to social sites on public terminals. The bill, which passed the House in a 410-15 vote, would bar users from accessing sites like Amazon, MySpace, or Slashdot from terminals in libraries and schools. Adults would be able to ask permission
to access such sites — via Slashdot
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