Rupert Murdoch has made another foray into e-commerce, with an investment in the world’s largest job search engine. Simply Hired received a total AU$18.11 million from New Corp’s Fox Interactive Media and venture capital firm Foundation Capital
A rat nerve cell attached to a semiconductor chip has exchanged a signal with the chip, an achievement that could lead to organic computers that process information like a brain — via Discovery
America’s estimated 30,000 Elvis impressionists fear that they are about to be put out of business. Robert Sillerman, a New York businessman, has bought the rights to Elvis’ name and likeness and has threatened to ban unauthorised
Elvis clones — via The Times
Five girls decorated their Ohio hometown with life-size Super Mario Brothers power-up bricks. The Man responded with full-on terrornoia, dispatching video-game illiterate bomb-squads to defuse
the bricks, and now the girls face potential criminal charges
— via Boing Boing
In 1993, Jack Rogers grudgingly agreed to serve on a task force studying whether his local Presbyterian church in Southern California should ordain gays. Quite frankly, he wasn’t interested in giving the topic serious thought. I opposed homosexuality reflexively — that was just what I thought Christians were supposed to do,
he recalls. But once he did embark on a scholarly journey, the Presbyterian minister found that his views changed 180 degrees: He’s become a vocal advocate of ordaining gays and marrying gay couples in the church — via The Detroit News
A legal spat over a Web site criticising Jerry Falwell for his antigay views won’t ascend to the US Supreme Court. The justices on Monday declined without comment to take up the evangelical preacher’s appeal, which challenged the operator of Fallwell.com, a site that aims to explain why Rev. Falwell is completely wrong about people who are gay or lesbian
. The televangelist had claimed the domain name’s spelling was too close to that of his official Web presence and asked the courts to shut it down
Shoppers in the British city of Nottingham are being kept in line by a team of former Ghurkas hired to patrol Ikea. Since the team took over three weeks ago, not a single crime has been reported — via SBS News
The world’s strongest glue is made by bacteria. The adhesive can withstand an enormous amount of stress, equal to the force felt by a quarter with more than three cars piled on top of it
Vespa has unveiled two prototype hybrid scooters that deliver 25% more power and use 20% less petrol. You plug them into a standard European 220V socket for three hours to charge them or run them on normal gas-engine mode. They can run battery-only at low speeds, which is useful in indoor/zero-emissions environments. The helmet-space under the seat has been replaced with a stack of 12V/26Ah batteries — via Boing Boing
Agents from the US bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearm agents detained a suspicious individual
on a Georgia college campus — a guy dressed up in a ninja costume, on his way to a party on campus — via Boing Boing
Scientists studying organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs) have made a critical leap from single-colour displays to a highly efficient and long-lived natural light source. If the device can be mass-manufactured cheaply interior lighting could look vastly different in the future. Almost any surface in a home, whether flat or curved, could become a light source: walls, curtains, ceilings, cabinets or tables — via Warren Ellis
Users thinking of pirating the next version of Windows may have a surprise in store: no Aero for you. The upcoming Microsoft OS will run a check to ensure the copy was legally purchased. If it comes up short, the shiniest part of the OS will not be available. The Aero display also won’t be available to those who buy Windows Vista Basic, the low-end consumer version of the operating system. Let’s see how long that security feature
takes to crack
US forces in Afghanistan are checking reports that stolen computer hardware containing military secrets is being sold at a market beside a big US base. Shopkeepers at a market next to Bagram base, outside Kabul, have been selling memory drives stolen from the facility
Google has launched a Web-based calendar service that allows users not only to input and track events, but also to coordinate schedules with others and create automatic event alerts
Internet shoppers accustomed to tax-free purchases from Apple Computer’s iTunes Music Store soon may be in for an unpleasant surprise. State legislatures and tax officials, eager to find new ways to boost government spending and curb budget shortfalls, are eyeing the burgeoning market for digital downloads as a potentially lucrative source of revenue
Ministers may now hesitate before using anti-terrorist powers against suspected extremists after a court ruling against control orders. Lord Carlile, the government’s independent assessor of terrorism laws, gave his view after a High Court judge in London ruled that ministers’ powers to put accused terrorists under house arrest contravene human rights laws
70 year old Yasumasa Matsuzaki was evicted from a convenience store because of his habit of reading magazines without ever buying anything. He returned five minutes later with a chainsaw and threatened the staff before returning to the magazine rack. The incident last week is part of a wave of so-called grey crime in Japan. The percentage of over-65s in prison has trebled in the past decade and exceeds 10 per cent of the total prison population – four times the UK figure. Japan has the highest rate of incarceration for pensioners in the industrialised world
Sitting in a culture dish, a layer of chicken heart cells beats in synchrony. But this muscle layer was not sliced from an intact heart, nor even grown laboriously in the lab. Instead, it was printed
, using a technology that could be the future of tissue engineering. Droplets of bio-ink
— clumps of living cells a few hundred micrometres in diameter — flow together and fuse when squirted close to each other. They can be made to form layers, rings and tubes — which could serve as blood vessels — depending on how they are deposited. Bioprinting could develop into a fast and cheap way to engineer a variety of tissue types
MIT scientists have harnessed the construction talents of tiny viruses to build ultra-small nanowire
structures for use in very thin lithium-ion batteries
A Tasmanian company has obtained the first state or territory licence to use hemp in a pet food product. Hemp is banned in food for human consumption in Australia, unlike most other western countries. Industrial hemp contains very low levels of psychotropic chemicals and is used in products like paper and clothing. Business owner Ian Rochfort says he has been fighting bureaucracy for years for the right to harvest hemp, which will be used in the company’s dog biscuits — Hemp Hound Hors d’oeuvres
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