NYTimes: When Laptops Go Light

I bought the HP mini last week, and have been very happy with it. It
also rates well on CNET.com. http://reviews.cnet.com/laptops/hp-mini-1000/4505-3121_7-33351192.html

STATE OF THE ART: When Laptops Go Light
By DAVID POGUE

Netbooks have slow processors, tiny screens and are good at handling e-
mail. Why are they so popular?...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/technology/personaltech/26pogue.html

Memory: In One Ear and Out the Other

Our brains are good at remembering the general gist of things, but poor at recalling detail.

“Jokes work because they deal with the unexpected, starting in one direction and then veering off into another,” “What makes a joke successful are the same properties that can make it difficult to remember.”

In One Ear and Out the Other
By NATALIE ANGIER

Why the best jokes are the most difficult to remember....

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/17/science/17angi.html

Repairing undersea cables

[Using the submersible machine to retrieve broken undersea fiberoptic cables...] 'Plucking a cable from the ocean floor is akin to picking up a piece of thread in a blizzard while wearing a catcher's mitt.' Popular Science Apr '09 p49 http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-03/who-protects-intrnet

One internet exchange hub spends $630,000 a month(!) on electricity, mostly for cooling I guess.

This article has a link to a fascinating tool that traces the path of your internet packet across the web:

http://www.popsci.com/content/trace-your-route

Also in PopSci this month, a belt-drive bicycle (no grease, no noise). p20

http://www.popsci.com/node/33469

Mithridatism for peanut allergies

Mithridatism, the ability to gradually build up resistance to a poison, may be a cure for peanut allergies.  This report of successful placebo-controlled trials is encouraging.  

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/16/health/16peanuts.html

Incredible wearable computer

Want to see dialing a phone by touching numbers projected on your hand? See a wearable computer helping you choose products to buy? Here's an incredible bit of technology cobbled together by a research team, they say for $350, that uses the user's cellphone for brains.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZ-VjUKAsao

Hotel security - soon to be more like airport security.

In the wake of the Mumbai hotel attacks, hoteliers are scrutinizing and revising their approach to security. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29434591/Also in this article, tips for traveling safely... wise for any traveler.

Line-uppers vs sidezoomers - frustrated about traffic?

Hate sitting in a traffic line-up and someone zips past and cuts into the line way ahead?  Here's an article that goes into depth and interviews experts who have put a lot of thought into it.

I liked how well-researched this article was. Interesting conclusion that it is best to hang back and make a gap for a sidezoomer to enter. Sound cryptic? Read the amusing article and you'll understand. 

August 03, 2008 The Urge to Merge By CYNTHIA GORNEY What I, as a driver, learned about the war between lineuppers and sidezoomers in the battle for a lane.

NYTimes.com: Supreme Court Enters the YouTube Era

Video is everywhere these days.  The fact that it is entering the court system is a landmark.  This article quotes a law professor who states that in the courtroom, 

'Video introduced in a court of law is a partial, volatile, and dangerously persuasive' piece of evidence. Interesting. 

| March 03, 2009 Sidebar:  Supreme Court Enters the YouTube Era By ADAM LIPTAK The advent of video links as evidence has the potential to unsettle the way judges do their work.

Pondering Ponderousness

This month's Popular Science highlights obesity -causation theories (artificial sweeteners, viruses, otitis, air conditioning) and treatments. They point out that mother nature builds lots of redundancy into physiologic systems that are as important as storing food as a safeguard against famine. So a drug that blocks one, or two, of these hormones simply allows a backup to kick in after a 3% weight loss. And candidate hormone systems tend to be good at signalling to eat more but not to eat less if they're switched off. To further complicate the problem, switching off the brain's desire for food turns off our desire for life, and suicides increase. It's a conundrum.

Low-fee indexed mutual funds are the best in the long run.

Something I learned years ago and have followed - 

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/your-money/stocks-and-bonds/22stra.html?em

They say, based on an experiment that took into account fees, and taxes on gains,

"it turns out that, after fees and taxes, it is the extremely rare actively managed fund or hedge fund that does better than a simple index fund" and "only a minority of funds that beat the market in a given year can outperform it the next year as well"

The outrageous cost of text messaging.

Having been stung with a $27 surcharge for excess text messages recently, the price versus cost of text messaging stings even more.  The amount of data is so small compared to transmitting voice, yet is charged much much higher.  In fact, because text messages are transmitted on the carrier locator signal that confirms where your cell phone is located periodically, it is essentially free (no marginal cost) for the carrier.  

"But text messages are not just tiny; they are also free riders, tucked into what’s called a control channel, space reserved for operation of the wireless network.

"That’s why a message is so limited in length: it must not exceed the length of the message used for internal communication between tower and handset to set up a call." http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/business/28digi.html

According to Consumer Reports (and anyone with an engineering background can back this up), 500 text messages use less bandwidth than a one-minute cell phone conversation. [Jan. 2009 issue, page 5] http://amateureconblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/cretin-or-crook-sen-herb-kohl-of.html

Just as ironic, the cost of a text message is greater than the cost of a message sent from the Hubble telescope...

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/12/costs-of-text-messaging-vs-space-transmissions/?scp=2&sq=cell%20phone%20carrier%20texting%20minutes&st=cse

USAF uses 10% of all aircraft fuel.

The US Air Force uses 2.5 billion gallons of fuel annually - a full 10% of the entire fuel supply used by all domestic aircraft. -Popular Science Feb 09 p. 60
http://www.popsci.com/node/31142

Floating garbage the size of Canada. Wow.

Can you believe there's a mass of floating garbage mid-pacific that's the size of Canada? It weighs some 100 million tons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch#Impact_on_wildlife
There's a guy going to sail through it to document and research it and publicize its magnitude.
http://www.popsci.com/node/31395

My favorite iPhone apps as of Feb 2009

Free apps:
Pandora:
Pandora is a music player that takes your favorite songs, and plays songs with similar attributes as streaming audio - like a radio station that only plays your favorite songs. There are some songs that don't seem to match at all, but the more you use it, the better the music selection gets. And it introduces you to new artists you might not otherwise encounter. I think this link should take you to it.
phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=284035177&mt=8

Snaptell:
The idea is this: you're in a store, and you wonder if buying the item you're looking at would be cheaper online. Take a photo of any item (book, CD, game) with the phone, and it searches for prices of that item from online sites like ebay and amazon. What a great use of iphone technology - camera, browser, web. Very cool.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/17/snaptell-one-of-the-coolest-iphone-apps-gets-even-better/
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=291920403&mt=8

WSF schedule:
This one tells you what time the next ferry will arrive at any WSF dock. Very handy if you ever take the ferry. Supported by unobtrusive embedded ads.
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=288902938&mt=8

Midomi:
Hold your iPhone up to a radio, and it will identify the song. Or you can hum a tune into the phone... I tried it in a store playing a nice song over the speakers, and it worked very well.
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=284972998&mt=8

Wikipanion:
Search wikipedia quickly, and have the result already formatted for the iphone screen.
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=288349436&mt=8

Charts and Tides
This 'teaser' app shows nautical charts for the Seattle area and uses your phone's GPS to locate you on the chart. It's to convice you to buy the full $50 version.
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=300499486&mt=8

Units:
convert any imaginable unit into another unit - area, temperature, speed, you-name-it
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=284574017&mt=8

Showtimes:
Uses your current GPS location to tell you what showtimes are available for movies near you.
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=285018181&mt=8

Youversion:
Raed and search the Bible, and add your comments to any verse.
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=282935706&mt=8

Yelp:
Find reviews (usually by techno-savvy trwenty-somethings) of restaurants and services by location. You do have to register with the website (free, no junk mail so far).
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=284910350&mt=8

What's on:
Automatically updating TV listings - set your locations and the provider at that location.
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=289190113&mt=8

Epocrates:
Drug compendium - handy reference. Also can suggest a digest of a couple of noteworthy new articles each week, if you want. Have to register (free, and no junk emails so far).
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=281935788&mt=8

Everytrail
Use your iPhone to record a hike or bike ride, link pictures to a location, and figure our how far you went. Can show a live terrain map of your location, and has a nice minimal-battery-use lockout function so it'll record up to say four hours of hiking.
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=290954446&mt=8

The Weather Channel
Can show a live Doppler map of precipitation.
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=295646461&mt=8

Paid applications:
$10
Seattle Bus Map
My favorite new toy: shows where Seattle buses are in real time, using the GPS transponders signal from every bus. So you don't have to stand there wondering 'When will that bus ever get here?' Not worth the $10 unless you take Seattle buses often. Doesn't work for the Seattle-Tacoma express buses, unfortunately.
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=299293359&mt=8

$10
mboxmail
Finally, finally, I can get hotmail on the iphone. I can't tell you how much time I've wasted trying to sign into hotmail only to get odd redirects and answering 'Is this going to be your primary phone' over and over again. Now I have rapid access to fully functional email with swipe to delete, move to folders, and click contact list features that are so handy on the regular iphone email program. However, since the program can't run in the background unless it' open, there's no change in the screen icon when you get new mail. And it has a maximum attachment size of 1MB which hardly bothers me, but seems to have some reviewers on the Apple app store pretty steamed.

$20
iBird
Love this one. Used to do a lot of birdwatching, and here's more than a field guide now conveniently tucked into your iphone. (Lugging that field guide was always a nuisance, but ya gotta have it.) You can identify an unknown bird by answering a series of questions (size, color, location etc) and then have illustrations, photos, recordings of its song and maps of its range at your fingertips. Layout looks great on the screen, and all info is stored on board the iphone so it works where there's no phone signal.

$3
Easy wifi -
allows you to sign in with one click at a Starbucks or McDonalds. Easier than typing in your phone number each time and then waiting for a text message and so on as they'd normally have you do.
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=296273148&mt=8

$1
Searchquest:
Uses you GPS location to find wikipedia entries that are located close to you. Probably useful when traveling, but only finds a smattering of local entries here in Seattle.
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=283286021&mt=8

$10
Anchor alarm
OK, I don't have this one yet, but next time I go sailing overnight, I'll get it. Last time I was anchored overnight, I kept waking up at night wondering if the anchor was still holding. Peering out in the darkness, it took my sleepy eyes a few minutes to figure out if we had drifted more than a few feet. Here's an app that sounds an alarm if you drift more than a specified distance from your original anchoring point. Granted, you'd need a power source to keep the iphone GPS up and running all night, but peace of mind is worth it.

Performance Art on a Light Rail Train

An innovative classical music group here in Seattle filmed a kind of performance art piece by playing a concert on a light rail train, with random riders getting a surprise free concert. 

You can read all about them at www.simplemeasures.org