OverLinked

Back in March, we heard about a breakthrough from MIT: an “artificial leaf” that produces pure oxygen and hydrogen gas, powered entirely by sunlight. The technology was described in yesterday’s edition of Science, and the team has released a video showing one of the devices in action.

I say device, but it’s really more of a material. There are no moving parts and it has no set shape or size. The leaf is semiconducting silicon, coated on one side with a special cobalt catalyst, discovered by the project’s Daniel Nocera in 2008, and on the other with a nickel-molybdenum-zinc alloy. Sunlight creates a current within the silicon, and the catalyst causes water molecules to split into gaseous H₂ and O₂, which rise off in bubbles from opposite sides of the leaf.

Take a look at the video. It’s not particular exciting, but it gives you an idea of what kind of conversion rate we’re talking about:

The gases could be isolated and stored in a fuel cell, which could provide power later and produce pure water as its exhaust.

Nocera and several other researchers formed a company, Sun Catalytix, to independently research, apply, and market the artificial leaves, and last year raised $9.5 million from Tata and other investors.

The leaf-like form factor is easy to demonstrate on a human scale, but there’s no reason why the “leaves” couldn’t be microscopic or enormous. The different use cases require much research and testing, however, which is likely what Sun Catalytix is working on at present. That and figuring out to do with the extra protons the process generates. They envision banks of these things powering houses and communities and storing the excess in tanks for sale or emergencies.

There’s more information at MIT’s news page, and, if you’re scientifically minded (and subscribe to the journals), the various papers listed on Sun Catalytix’s tech page.

[image credit: Dominick Reuter]

At today’s F8 developer’s conference Facebook announced their newest iteration of the facebook platform.  Called Timeline, it’s a dramatic change from the facebook of current day.  It draws upon their strengths and shows that they are very good at listening to the market.  My thoughts on how it’ll change the social media landscape:

Identity – the newest battleground for social media

When you see timeline, from a consumer perpsective, you immediately notice how the infinite scroll format is much like posterous, or other blog oriented platforms.  The difference is that because all of the assets on  your facebook page are your own, personal assets, this page does indeed resemble who you are.  Online.   So it makes sense as Google takes alot of heat for demanding “real names” from it’s users, and other startups create “about me” plays encouraging users to customize and curate on their pages what their online “face” looks like, that Facebook has leveraged their defacto leading status as the leading U.S. based social network, to make it easier to represent who you are, online.

On other social networks your identity is based primarily on “what you say” or “what you do” – but often not both of these things are very well integrated.  Facebook timeline will be the mega play at representing both actions and thoughts for each individual facebook user out there.

Things are Speeding up in the Social World

It’s interesting to note the rapid pace of improvements that has happened at Facebook in the last 2 months.  Privacy and sharing improvements that users have been wailing for for years have finally been implemented.  Timeline’s magazine style layout introduces a more personal, almost “My Space” customization ability (but not quite so liberal).  Again, this freedom for expression is something that users have asked for and Facebook’s been critiqued for not implementing.  Yet we’re seeing it roll out in just a few short weeks after Google+ hit the net.  Not to mention minor tweaks like Facebook’s increase in the character limit to compete with Google’s.

The great part of all these indications is that now that there are competitors to Facebook that are lean & nimble, it increases the competition in the space and this means a better experience for social media users all over the world.  The options for expressing oneself through social media is increasing at an almost extreme pace, and it means that companies will be watching each other very closely to see where this evolution is heading.  For us as users, this can only be a good thing.

Verbs as Monetization

I have to wonder when Facebook will really sink their teeth into the brand money that’s out there, and I got a glimpse at the next step.  Though I hadn’t thought much about the vocabulary used on Facebook before, they emphasized that they’d only really used nouns before “Luis liked Stevie Wonder” (proper noun).  Forthcoming, Facebook will make verbs accessible on the platform.  So sentences like “Luis hiked at Diamond Back Trail” will start appearing, thus linking action with a thing – which ostensibly could be a brand name.  Right now, the open graph concept allows all developers to use the verb / noun construct however they want – but requires developers to wait while they review and approve submissions.  It follows that this would be a perfect monetization strategy for Facebook, charging a premium for brands to list their app’s activity under certain verbs.  I don’t think they’re doing this currently, but it would make sense as part of a larger monetization strategy around timeline.

I would love to “own” a verb.

So, we already have a street-legal Tron lightcycle, but why stop there? After weeks of work, Bods Mods just completed its 40-inch long lightcycle PC, complete with ATX motherboard, liquid cooling, and plenty of blue light strips. The designer started the from-scratch custom build in SketchUp, Google’s 3D modeling app, followed by loads of foam shaping and Dremel work. Judging by the dozens (if not hundreds) of images posted to the Cooler Master forum, this is one of the most complex case mods we’ve seen, with incredible details down to the translucent Crucial and SSD logos painted on the lightcycle engine. Bods Mods entered its lightcycle case in Cooler Master’s 2011 Case Mod Competition, though the entries themselves are far more exciting than the first place prize: a boring, non-modified case full of components.

Tron lightcycle case mod is totally awesome, 100 percent 3D originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 May 2011 01:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Bods Mods  | Email this | Comments

Some may agree that over the years, augmented reality’s been slowly losing its appeal given its sometimes laggy and unreliable performance — most implementations require a weird marker to be in clear sight, and the graphics rendering speed on your handheld device would rely on your slow and steady hands. As such, we were initially skeptical when Sony’s SmartAR announcement came along; but as you can see in the video above, said technology took us by surprise with its super slick responsiveness, and the markerless object recognition makes a compelling hassle-free selling point. What’s more, the same clip also shows off SmartAR handling large 3D space with ease — notice how the virtual objects continue to animate even when the original anchor object is out of sight. Sony hasn’t given any dates here, but there’s no doubt that once SmartAR is available to game developers and advertisers, it’ll rake in some nice pocket money for the electronics giant.

Continue reading Sony SmartAR delivers high-speed markerless augmented reality, blows minds (video)

Sony SmartAR delivers high-speed markerless augmented reality, blows minds (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 May 2011 01:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Sony (YouTube)  | Email this | Comments

An anonymous reader writes “There’s a popular discussion happening at the Bitcoin forums about a new browser-based bitcoin miner released today. This lets people mine for bitcoin straight from the browser. There’s talk of making an embeddable version. How long until websites start using CPU power from their users to create Bitcoin for their owners?” As Bitcoin gets more attention, I foresee malware with payloads promising to do the same thing.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Have you recently considered a Withings WiFi Body Scale only to be dismayed by its inability to display your weight on your living room TV? Well, today’s your lucky day (for some of you, at least), as the company has just announced that a Withings app is now available for Panasonic VIERA Connect-enabled TVs, which will let you access your complete Health Dashboard from the comfort of your couch, or recliner as the case may be. Full press release is after the break.

Continue reading Withings WiFi Body Scale enters the living room on Panasonic VIERA Connect TVs

Withings WiFi Body Scale enters the living room on Panasonic VIERA Connect TVs originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 May 2011 00:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

The photo-sharing space continues to heat up, and continues to leave dominant player Flickr in the dust innovation-wise. If one thing’s becoming clear, it’s that it must be really painful to work at Yahoo and have any sort of passion for good product design.

The latest example of this pain point comes from Flickr designer Timoni West, who has publicly criticized the service on her personal blog, in a post called “The Most Important Page On Flickr.” In the post Timoni links to the Flickr Contacts > Recent Uploads page and breaks down what’s wrong with it, namely that on a micro-level that there is no chronological way to sort photos, the thumbnail size is too small and there’s no way to see all of a user’s recent photos without visiting their profile.

But what West finds most problematic is that …

“The page fails on a fundamental level—it’s supposed to be where you find out what’s happened on Flickr while you were away. The current design, unfortunately, encourages random clicking, not informed exploration.

The page isn’t just outdated, it’s actively hurting Flickr, as members’ social graphs on the site become increasingly out of sync with real life. Old users forget to visit the site, new sign ups are never roped in, and Flickr, who increased member sign-ups substantially in 2010, will forego months of solid work when new members don’t come back.”

Power Flickr users, desperate for a platform that provides the sense of community early Flickr did, are moving on to Instagram, 500px and the recently launched Mlkshk. As Flickr user and developer Buzz Andersen put it, “This highly perceptive post by @Timoni almost completely covers the reasons my use of Flickr has declined over time.”

Many feel like Flickr has swerved from its original course of being a community of photographers and photosharers to being a storage center. Jason Kottke (Kottke!) referred to the problem as such, “Flickr has become a shoebox under the bed instead of the door of the refrigerator or workplace bulletin board. “

Thomas Hawk is one of the early Flickr evangelists who moved on because of lack of community, leaving the service for 500px, “500px is like Flickr was in the early day. They care about the users. Flickr doesn’t anymore … [500px CEO] Ian Sobolev is interacting with users like Stewart/Caterina did. Flickr censors, bans, deletes and talks down to their users.”

But West thinks (or rather, writes) that there’s still a glimmer of hope, that Flickr still has the ability to “kick ass in this arena.” But she modifies her assertion with “They just have to build it” and her statement is decidedly less powerful when taken in the context of the “This post is largely taken from a proposed redesign I sent out last year” sentence in the introduction.

Last year!!!

With no such redesign in sight one can’t help but feel that West’s insightfulness is lost on Yahoo. And that Instagram should probably hire her to build its web platform.

Samsung just unveiled an amazing new solar-powered LCD television that can operate completely free from the power grid!

This is what technology is for – to improve our lives while also using energy more efficiently. My next TV is going to be “another” samsung.

via Samsung Unveils Solar-Powered Zero Energy Transparent TV | Inhabitat – Green Design Will Save the World.

Take a look at the new Google UI:

See anything familiar?  Inspired by this Inc. Post on Google’s similarity to Yahoo, I compared both search engines’ search results page on one image above, and the results are quite surprising.

Similarities:

• the “Show All” functionality in the upper left corner
• the Related Searches feature (called “something different” on google, ironically)
• Similar number of sponsored links above organic search results – Why the same shade of color? Who copied who first?
• Sponsored links in  right hand area
• Link +text color. I understand that Blue links on white background can be more Accessible.  But I don’t understand why both chose to use the same green to color the end URL

Differences:

• Interestingly, Yahoo chooses to use bold in different ways, they bold both the exact search terms and the domain name URLs, whereas Google bolds the original search terms and closely associated search terms.
• Yahoo places a version of their suggested searches “Also try:…”  above the sponsored results box. I think this is very beneficial for most users, whereas Google has probably more sophisticated search tools, they are somewhat hidden on the left hand side.  Need to click on “more search tools” to access them all.
• Others?

These are just a quick comparison, at surface level of these two tools. The overall value that I see from Yahoo’s search is aimed toward the mass market searcher.  When my non-technical mother asks what search engine to use, I tell her Yahoo.  However, I use google on a daily basis because they gave me powerful search techniques in the late 90′s and I’ve been stuck on them ever since.