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Paper Memory Mash!

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This is just fantasic and amazing! I think this has to be one of the most profoundly important developments in technology r&d all year (at least).

A student called Sainul Abideen in Bangalore has developed a method of ‘storing’ data using small printed shapes called ‘Rainbow Technology’. An A4 sheet of paper can apparently store a staggering 256GB of data!

In a demo at his college laboratory, this writer could see text typed on 432 pages of foolscap paper being stored in a four square inch paper. The writer was even shown a 45-second video clip of a Malayalam film stored on an ordinary paper. Sainul was guided by Prof. Hyderali, head of the MCA Department at the College in all these projects.

*picks up jaw from the floor.

Now we just need cool little scanners – like the business card ones. You’d easly get a full DVD on a business card! LOL! Oh. My. God.

technology

Podshow redirecting?

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Hmm.. All my web requests to anything dot podshow.com are being redirected to btpodshow.com

I know they have just done a deal with BT. But hiking the stats like that is a bit rum.

Is this just a UK thing BT are forcing them to do with IP address blocks (as the BBC do). If you are outside the UK, what happens when you try?

Also, I wish they’d fix up the OPML over on podcastalley. OPML lists of RSS feeds should have entries which are type=rss and the feed url is set to the xmlURL=  attribute 🙂

Expect to see some new OPML tools to manage lots of folders full of feeds in the very near future at podcast.com ;p

feeds, OPML, podcast, podcast.com, podcasting, podcasts, rss

Second Life : The Book – Out now!

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O’Reilly has finally released its book on Second Life, available for pre-order now via Amazon called ‘Second Life : The Official Guide’.

I had heard about a Second Life Hacks book from O’Reilly in the works a while ago. Someone in world had even gone to the trouble of mocking up a book cover ages ago which I saw in a sandbox area, claiming the authors to be the ‘FIC’ (Feted Inner Core). Since all the hack shenanigans on the grid recently, I can’t imagine a ‘hacking’ book will go down well with those who get scared by that term. ‘Hacking’ is not always bad. In fact without it, innovation would find it very hard indeed.

Second Life Hacks MockupSomeone once called me a hacker about 14 years ago. I was rather proud! 🙂 I think they only called me that because I sat down and worked things out by myself, rather than followed ‘official intructions’

There is no spoon!  🙂

Second Life, secondlife

SL Money Spent Spiked

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SL money spikeThat graph looks pretty impessive huh? It shows the US Dollars spent in Second Life over last 24 hours at $1,726,930 as of 9:00am PST today (10th Nov 2006).

Well, it turns out that something many people has thought is true – the daily dollar amount which Linden Lab tout as spent is actually (simply) total transactions in world.

This ‘spike/cliff’ was caused by an anonymous resident who wrote a script which passed some Linden dollars back and forth between two avatars. After an hour of running it had generated over one million Linden dollars of transactions, but no money was spent. The avatars which this was running on ended up with the same amount they started with. Zero sum.

I’m sure this is bound to come up at the next Town Hall Meeting with Linden CEO Philip Rosedale/Linden on November 16th. Many companies that arrive in SL are doing so due to all this ‘real’ money being ‘spent’ – hmmm. I wander what they will think. People will want better figures – like the ‘over one million residents’ stat. We want to know how many unique and ACTIVE users there are. Linden record the ‘MAC’ address of your network card, so they have the data.

(Graph saved from secondlife.reuters.com )

Second Life, secondlife

Zune WILL have Podcasting.. Eventually

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According this post with a snippet from someone working on the Zune team for Microsoft, they will be adding support for podcasting.

Good idea!! Lets make sure it supports OPML (with inclusion), RSS feeds – and the manual adding of each of these.

As long as Microsoft listen to the community about the issues surrounding podcasting, then they’ll be a LOT further down the road than Apple could ever wish to be. Apple have proven they can make nice devices, but they are clearly not experts in the basic technology AND ‘openness’ around podcasting.

Nokia have a competent first stab at a podcasting app on their N91 and you can bet that other mobile manafacturers will be hot on their heels with their own applications.

podcasting, podcasts

MultiVerse Open Beta launched

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Yet another virtual world to add to the smorgasbord: MultiVerse is a system of 3D virtual world clients and servers which you can build and support yourself – eventually. They have just opened up the beta for all to test.

They say:

  • Participate in the game industry’s most exciting frontier.
  • Make a complete MMOG or virtual world for less money and in less time than you ever dreamed possible.
  • Deliver your vision on-line to a large market of players.
  • Make money however you decide: subscription, item sales, and/or advertising.

http://www.multiverse.net/developer/login.jsp

Looks pretty interesting – but beyond me I think (for now). People like James Cameron, John Landau and Max Sims (of Maya fame)  are behind it too.

I wonder how many more virtual worlds we’ll have to tinker with this time next year? And will we be able to teleport from one to the other? Hmmmmm… iiiinteresting.

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An A-Z of Podcasts

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If you head on over to index.podcast.com , you will find a browsable A to Z index of all the podcasts in the podcast.com system.

Soon, you’ll be able to easily add feeds from this or the search (or anywhere!) to your own podcast directory and share the shows you like to listen to and organise them into feed folders, all with lovely OPML for you to build nice widgets out of 😉 – and we will to!

feeds, OPML, podcast, podcast.com, podcasting, podcasts

Saddam to die by hanging

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UPDATE : December 30th 2006 : He’s dead. He was hanged at 6am local time.
He certainly did bad things and was responsible for many atrocities against mankind. But I feel slightly uncomfortable with the FACT that the equipment to create nuclear weapons was apparently sold to Iraq by the USA and the chemicals for nerve agents was apparently sold to Iraq by the UK. I think those responsible for those transations should also face questioning. IMHO.

I am not the most religious person. These ‘books’ seem to cause more harm than good. Especially when people ‘take sides’. I understand that all the religious ‘stories/fables’ appear to carry a similar message, and are indeed branches of the same tree. None of them condone killing another. That power is supposedly left up to ‘God’ – whoever or whatever he or she may be, to you.

————————————-

Wow. So they have sentenced Saddam to death.

I live in a country where we don’t legally kill people any more (UK). It’s an odd feeling thinking about someone’s death by the hand of the law. He certainly deserves to be punished for his crimes. In his country, they kill people for crimes such as his. They do in America too. I don’t know if I agree with it. If there is a God, then I doubt he or she would either.

Gandhi said “An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind” – I tend to agree. Jesus told people to turn the other cheek.

Would it be enough to let him rot in jail? I don’t think so. But hanging? It’s so barbaric. Why not poison gas or injection? I don’t know. He made so many people suffer that he surely deserves what he gets. But suddenly it doesn’t feel like 2006 any more.

Disturbed and confused. But strangely pleased this farcical trial is now over.

Now let’s see what happens. I’m sure it won’t all be good.

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MacBook Grind

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Oh no!!!! My four month old MacBook Pro has started to make an awful grinding, whirring sound as illustrated here, here and here.

Oh crap! I was very happy with it. I have never had a Windows laptop make this noise. It gets SO HOT too! I think this is why. Heat expands things dontchaknow. It sounds like the space for the fan to move has gotten smaller. Like the spindle it spins on has warped.

Now, as I bought it in the USA, does this mean I have to take it back there? Or can I take it to Apple in the UK? Y’know. Are they like – global? ;p I did buy AppleCare with it. But surely they should fix this anyway right?
The worst thing is, is that this means I will no doubt have to go without it for over a week!! I CANNOT AFFORD TO DO THAT! But I suppose now, I cannot afford not to. Hey Steve, could you please warm your hands first? They’re delicate.

So, if anyone out there has had the same problem and had to take theirs back, could you tell me – did you get a whole new one? Did you have to lock up all your files or reinstall anything at all on its return? Do they prod around your files? (Let’s not forget I’m CTO of podcast.com folks) Should I trash the Windows installation on here?

Oh no. I really don’t need this now 🙁

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