Grant Gochnauer - Blog : Technology : Foundation

Hump day. Need I say more?

DorkBot. You know you want to attend!
The gathering was the monthly meeting of “Dorkbot,” a loose forum for the exchange of creative technological ideas that is developing a cult following around the world.

Medical Marijuana’s Catch-22
What is completely wrong about the FDA’s position, however, is that in effect it continues to impede not just the medical use of marijuana but also medical research on marijuana, which could lead to superior therapies that don’t involve smoking or getting high at all.

Finally! Neural interfacing with games! You know what’s next right? I’ll let you guess
At least two start-ups have developed technology that monitors a player’s brain waves and uses the signals to control the action in games. They hope it will enable game creators to immerse players in imaginary worlds that they can control with their thoughts instead of their hands.

Get this — The chip is called “NeuroSky”. That sounds a LOT like Terminator 2’s SkyNet eh? The end is near!! AHHHH

Breakthrough with solar panels: Use holograms
Now Prism Solar Technologies of Stone Ridge, NY, has developed a proof-of-concept solar module that uses holograms to concentrate light, possibly cutting the cost of solar modules by as much as 75 percent, making them competitive with electricity generated from fossil fuels.

Firefox backers: DESTROY IE Campaign
Next up: World Domination

Speaking of IE, another day, another 0-day critical exploit
Microsoft is scrambling to address the public disclosure of a new zero-day vulnerability that could be used in code execution attacks.

When kids teach teachers: Technology in the classroom. Kind of funny actually
“Students are the digital generation, yet schools are not coming to terms with the technology revolution. By including students in the planning and implementation of improvement efforts, their passion and optimism about the future is put to good use,” Harper said in an e-mail.” — I couldn’t agree more!!

Microsoft wants in on MySpace generation with: Wallop (huh?!)
Much of the Wallop approach will center on trying to help people find ways of expressing themselves online that more closely match the way they interact in the real world. Photos, videos and other user-generated content are a part of the company’s approach, Jacob said.

Have you been hit by the new Microsoft Windows XP anti-piracy pop-ups?
Is this when we all switch to Mac OS X or Linux?

AT&T slowly down fiber rollout because it saw Verizon doing it MUCH better with their FIOS Service
In contrast, Verizon’s Fios initiative is a fiber to the premises (FTTP) solution, which means that the beautiful optical stuff goes right to your doorstep. That enables Verizon to offer speeds of up to 30Mbps down/5Mbps up (albeit starting at US$179 per month) to its optical fiber customers. Even with those high speeds, Verizon will be using only about 20 percent of its network capacity for broadband. The rest of the roughly 4.2Gbps will be reserved for TV.

An awesome read on your typical buying experience at computer retail stores (Best Buy, etc)
One thing that I noticed when I went along with Jennifer is that those positions that pays commission, or provides some sort of profit sharing; tend to have representatives that are more professional. Most people would think that these people would be pushy in areas of sticker tags and warranties, but that was not the case in our experience. That does not mean you will not encounter a snake-oil salesperson at one point or another, but it was interesting to see the difference in age and professionalism between these two realms, and it was definitely not what I was expecting.

Massively redesigned iPod Nanos coming soon!
OK, why is it I keep having to buy new iPods. DAMNIT! haha

Interesting concept: Enterprise monitoring with Google Calendar

Menuet — The ultimate Mac addition for music

Great article on switching from Windows XP to Mac OSX. What you need to do it

So typical of Chicago the weather yesterday was sunny and 70 degrees and today it’s 36 degrees and pouring rain. I guess it’s a day inside!

In other news however, if you are like me, and read www.digg.com frequently, you are probably aware of the controversy surrounding how stories are promoted to the homepage and how spamming works. Well, the latest TWiT episode, Kevin Rose explains all what has happened. Very interesting listen if you are a digg fan.

Onto the news!

IE7 Beta 2 released
Flash forward to this week and Microsoft has shipped IE 7.0 Beta 2. This version isn’t hugely different from the previous two pre-release versions, but the product has been fine-tuned quite a bit and is now quite close to the final version we’ll see later. In fact, Microsoft is so sure of IE 7.0 Beta 2 that they’re actually going to provide free phone support for this version

College bans all users from going to myspace.com
An investigation found that heavy traffic at MySpace.com was eating up too much bandwidth, said August Alfonso, the school’s chief of information and technology. Forty percent of daily Internet traffic at the college involved the site, he said.

Complete web-based office system: ThinkFree
I have to say, this looks damn cool! It is based on JAVA and AJAX. They have a Word, Powerpoint clone, as well as this “webtop” that allows you to store all your documents online. Check it out! ThinkFree gives you a lot considering you don’t need to pay anything for it: A gigabyte of storage, Microsoft Office-compatible editors, a way to share documents and to have access to and the ability to edit them from anywhere. It’s not going to put Microsoft Office out of business, but if you don’t need that Office’s advanced features, this free webware can be a godsend.

Black holes are econmically friendly. Haha
Scientists studying the energy output of black holes have discovered to their surprise that “the conversion of energy by matter falling toward a black hole is much more efficient than nuclear or fossil fuels” - so much so that “if a car was as fuel-efficient as these black holes, it could theoretically travel more than a billion miles on a gallon of gas”.

Awesome look at Firefox 2.0 requirements.
Describes what features will definitely make it, probably make it in, and what version you’ll see that feature in (alpha,beta, release, etc)

Windows WGA protection to target pirates with ANNOYING popups

Playstation 3 will NOT be 100% backward compatible

Awesome view into the new Airbus A380 cockpit. Complicated?

Firefox to take over Internet Explorer

A Windows user’s point of view on switching to Mac OS X. Good read