Scientists from around the world launched a project on thursday to genetically identify species using bar codes. By taking a snippet of DNA from all the known species on Earth and linking them to photographs, descriptions and scientific information, the researchers plan to build the largest database of its kind
A cordon-bleu chef has modified an ink-jet printer and loaded printer’s cartridges with coloured fruit and vegetable concoctions instead of ink, and the paper tray contains edible sheets of soybean and potato starch. Flavours range from birthday cake to sushi
Newcastle-based telecoms and media player SP Telemedia has announced plans for a DSL broadband network focused on regional areas in the eastern states
Mark Jen, a blogger whose candid comments about life on the job at Google sparked controversy last month, has left the company. It is not clear if he resigned or was fired but references a post at Google Blogoscoped where it was suggested that he may have been fired over his blog Ninetyninezeros. Given Google’s push into the blogging space with their recent acquisition of Blogger it might be interesting to see how this shakes out
A rare oarfish washed up on a beach in Perth, Australia on Monday. It’s oddly the sixth oarfish to be found on a Western Australia beach in recent months
Ophthalmologists have implanted Artificial Silicon Retina microchips in the eyes of five patients to treat vision loss caused by retinitis pigmentosa. The implant is a 2mm chip that contains about 5,000 microscopic solar cells that convert light into electrical impulses. Already some patients have experienced improvements such as not bumping into objects around the house, and being able to read the time on a clock
A Perth couple has attempted to sell the naming, advertising and promotional
rights to their unborn daughter for at least $1 million via an internet auction site. eBay pulled the auction
Why is this not a surprise? The cleaning done, now About.com is for sale, according to NYT. The asking price is $350 million to $500 million. Five companies are bidding for it and the bids close today: bidders are Google, Yahoo, The New York Times Company, AOL and AskJeeves — via paidContent.org
A Welsh rugby fan cut off his own testicles to celebrate Wales beating England at rugby. Geoff Huish, 26, was so convinced England would win Saturday’s match he told fellow drinkers at a social club, If Wales win I’ll cut my balls off
. Friends at the club in Caerphilly, south Wales, thought he was joking. But after the game Huish went home, severed his testicles with a knife, and walked 200 yards back to the bar with the testicles to show the shocked drinkers what he had done — via Warren Ellis
What kind of cake do you make for a rat-obsessed friend?
One that looks like the little beasties have been at it, of course. The rats are made of brownies and so are their turds — via BoingBoing
A microchip so powerful that it could turn mobile phones into pocket-sized desktop computers has been unveiled by Sony, Toshiba and IBM. Ten times faster than its rivals, the new Cell microprocessor is being billed as the world’s first super computer on a chip
, it will be used in the new Sony Playstation 3 due out next year
Gmail, the Web mail service operated by search engine Google, could be gearing up for its official launch after users of the service found that the number of invitations they could send out increased from four to fifty
Using design as a medium for exploring everyday rituals from drinking tea to watching television, the British designer Onkar Singh Kular has developed a series of conceptual products since graduating from the Royal College of Art in 2002.
He created a set of mugs in each of 128 Pantone shades of brown so that each family member or co-worker can choose the mug corresponding to their favourite colour of tea. Whenever a relative or colleague makes tea for them, they will be able to tell from the colour of the mug exactly how strong it should be and how much milk to add — via BoingBoing
A recent independent
report did a hatchet job on municipal wireless networks, damning them as an expensive failure. Glenn Fleishman took the report to pieces in a series of long blog-posts, exposing its shoddy methodology and dubious provenance. Now he reports that the organisation that produced it, the New Millennium Research Council, is a front for the telecoms lobby — via BoingBoing
Eureka Aerospace in Pasadena is developing a High Power Electromagnetic System that can fry a vehicle’s microchips and slow cars to a halt — it leaves the suspect in control of the car; he can steer, he can brake, he just can’t accelerate. The antenna array could be mounted on police pursuit vehicles or helicopters. It’s slated to be ready for testing by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department by late summer — via BoingBoing
Toronto police have found a new application for computerized photo editing. The police released edited photos on 3 February from a series of child pornography pics in an attempt to locate where the photos may have been taken. Two days later, they have identified the Port Orleans hotel in Disney World as being the location. This seems to be the first time photo editing has been used in law enforcement this way and strikes an interesting line between protecting the victims and being able to get public tips. It looks like it may be used quite heavily in the future given this success. The girl from the photographs has been found and is safe. Her abusive adoptive father is already in jail for other child porn charges, and may face more time for the Disney World photos
Fuji Photo and CMC Magnentics are two of six companies, who have formed a consortium to promote HVD technology, which they say can be used to put 1TB of data onto just one disc. The consortium say that a HVD disc could hold about 200 standard DVD’s, and transfer data at speeds 40 times that of DVD, about 1GB per second. HVD is being seen as a possible successor to Blu-ray and HD-DVD technologies
Sunbird, Mozilla’s standalone cross-platform calendar project, has reached its first official relase: version 0.2, for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. This is good news for all of us waiting for decent free calendaring software
A federal judge has struck down a Bush administration rule that lowered Endangered Species Act protection for wolves that are migrating out of strongholds in the Northern Rockies and Great Lakes into neighbouring states. In a ruling released yesterday, US District Judge Robert Jones in Portland rescinded the April 2003 decision by the US Fish and Wildlife Service which had divided wolf range into three areas and had reclassified the Eastern and Western populations as threatened instead of endangered. The agency had left wolves in the Southwest in the endangered category
South Australian Premier Mike Rann wants an immediate investigation into why an Australian woman was held in the Baxter detention centre for four months. Cornelia Rau, 39, who went missing from the Manly psychiatric hospital in Sydney in March 2004, spent four of 10 months’ detention in Baxter after being found in far north Queensland without identification. She spent the other six months in the Women’s Correctional Centre in Brisbane, after Queensland police believed she was an illegal immigrant. She was turned over by police to immigration officials, who could not confirm her identity
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