Subzero Blue

Salt Water As Burning Fuel Using Radio Frequencies

A really interesting and promising bit of news…

An Erie cancer researcher has found a way to burn salt water, a novel invention that is being touted by one chemist as the “most remarkable” water science discovery in a century.

John Kanzius happened upon the discovery accidentally when he tried to desalinate seawater with a radio-frequency generator he developed to treat cancer. He discovered that as long as the salt water was exposed to the radio frequencies, it would burn.

The discovery has scientists excited by the prospect of using salt water, the most abundant resource on earth, as a fuel.

[Source: Yahoo News]

Now that would be a great source of energy: sea water.
We have more of it than we need, it’s clean, cheap, and all we’d possibly get as emissions from burning it is more water, now who wouldn’t want that?
Hmmm… well, actually a lot of people, starting with the oil companies and the people backing/profiting/being backed by them; but that’s their problem.

[Thanks for link: Janissary]

Google Earth Looks Towards The Sky

Google has gone ahead and launched Sky in Google Earth, a new functionality that will be adding space imagery to Google Earth’s extensive maps and imagery of planet Earth.

Google’s announcement says that with this functionality “You can now explore the universe from the comfort of your chair. Zoom in to distant galaxies hundreds of millions of light years away, explore the constellations, see the planets in motion, witness a supernova explosion; it’s like having a giant, virtual telescope at your command — your own personal planetarium!”

According to TechCrunch, the space imagery used in this new functionality includes over one million photographs from various sources, including the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the Palomar Observatory at the California Institute of Technology and the Hubble Telescope.

This isn’t actually the first time Google looks to space, it already previously launched Google Moon, including Nasa imagery of the moon, and Google Mars with scientific maps of the red planet.

You have to download the latest version Google Earth to use this new functionality. I’m doing it right now.

Bike Dispenser

Springtime’s Bike Dispenser is a sort of vending machine that allows you to rent an RFID-tracked bike from one stand, ride it to your destination, drop it off at another stand, and then walk away.

The Dutch company won an award at the 2007 Spark Design & Architecture Awards for their idea, which works perfectly for an urban environment.

Very cool and practical idea… I love it…

[Via: Gizmodo, Trendhunter]

The Two Ways Of Software Design

There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult.

— C.A.R. Hoare

Pixels Are The New Pies

I just love this…

A great new way to represent percentage-based statistics instead of the traditional pie chart.

– The chart on the left is from a NY Times story on atheism and the afterlife, and was created by Charles M. Blow.
– On the right, a detail from a Wired story on how much Americans spend on gadgets, and was created by Arno Ghelfi.

Very creative and more representative and accurate I think.

[Via: Anil Dash]

Google’s Top 10 Mistakes

Google In the tech circles, we almost always get carried away by all the greatness of Google and its products, that we forget that Google too is not perfect. Yep, Google too have made a number of big mistakes; and here’s the top 10 list according to me, a loyal fan.

1. Google Web accelerator: The idea behind this product was to speed up page loading for users and all as it name suggests, but the product went down amid privacy concerns, web application problems resulting from the system and Google’s announced inability to handle all the traffic.

2. Picasa Web Albums: Picasa is a really sweet piece of software that was acquired by Google a few years ago. A while later Picasa Web Albums was announced, which a lot of people thought would be a flickr-killer, but instead it turned out to be a crappy badly-presented service that leaves much to the liking.

3. Dodgeball: This was an interesting startup that Google also acquired a while back, they were the first big startup that leveraged mobile phones and text messages for social networking. Google bought them and didn’t do much with the service, leaving the door wide open for twitter to come along and take over the show.

4. Orkut: This is yet another social networking site that was much-hyped and that Google ~~put their hands on~~ launched as an inside project a few years ago, but ever since then they sort of put it on the back seat and forgot about it, while MySpace and Facebook took over the world.

5. Google Video – 1st Version: When Google first launched Google Video, it just didn’t work for the users, it felt half-baked, it didn’t live up to the level the competition had already set and people couldn’t find their favourite shows easily. Google fixed this pretty quickly, but still the first version is worthy of noting.

Continue reading Google’s Top 10 Mistakes

My Top 5 Firefox Extensions

Ever since I converted to Firefox, I haven’t really looked back; I have tested other browsers for the sake of it, but never really considered moving to another one.

What makes Firefox even more interesting and exciting for me as a user is the various extensions I can plug into to it to extend its functionalities.

The following is the list of my top 5 Firefox extensions:

1. Web Developer: This is an essential extension for anyone who is involved with web development or design in any way.

2. Firebug: Another great plugin for web developers and designers; enabling you to edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page

3. Fireftp: Everything you need in an ftp client right from the comfort of your Firefox browser.

4. SearchStatus: A handy little plugin that gives you an idea about how each site you visit is performing search- and rank-wise.

5. Google Notebook: I’ve been using this extension more and more lately to jot down notes and thoughts or save info on the fly.

I could go on forever listing extension after extension, but I thought I’d limit it to five only here.
What about you: what are your favourite Firefox extensions?

Web Trend Map 2007

Information Architects have released their Web Trend Map for 2007, a subway map of the 200 most successful websites on the web, ordered by category, proximity, success, popularity and perspective.

Here’s the larger version.

Another interesting way of presenting all these online services that have come into our lives.

[Via: TechCrunch]

Periodic Table Of The Internet

Wellington Grey has created a periodic table representing some of the internet’s most popular sites.

The different web services are grouped into the categories: Search Engines, Internet Tools, Site Ranking, Aggregators, Webcomics, Productivity, Get Stuff, Operating Systems, Miscellaneous, Blogs, Social Networking, Podcasts, Videos and News.

Of course, not everything is on there, but I find it an interesting graphic nonetheless.

[Source: Wellington Grey]
[Via: Download Squad]

10 Tips To Being A Better IT Manager

I just found a great article on ZDNet with ten tips to being a better IT manager. I couldn’t agree more with the points on the list; this article is a must-read for anyone taking on a management position in an IT environment.

The list goes as follows:

1. Spend time (and money) developing your people
2. Get to know what your staff really does
3. Don’t do it for them
4. Know the business and make sure they know you
5. Treat communication as a busy, fast-moving, two-way street
6. Encourage everyone to work as a team
7. Provide feedback regularly and let employees know what you want
8. Hire well
9. Understand best IT practices but don’t just make them buzz words
10. Be a good project manager

Read the full article here: 10 tips to being a better IT manager.