Stormy Thursday

Storm damage Wellington 21/06/2013

It's been a wild, stormy night here in Wellington, cutting power to homes, ripping ferries from their moorings, closing down the airport, tearing roofs from buildings.

I know all of this, primarily because Wellington's storm dominated the news hour on Radio NZ National this morning.  Just about all of the useful information I got about road closures, transport cancellations came from the radio rather than the internet.  I trawled the websites of the schools to try to work out if the kids were staying home (they are) but no information there.  I got a piecemeal report of closures from the newstalkzb.co.nz site but not all closures were posted there either.

In this day and age I would expect that every town, city, country should have a single central information hub that aggregates updates from all over the region and presents them in a coherent form.  I haven't yet found such a resource in New Zealand.

It's the same with road traffic problems.  How can I easily find out that SH1 is blocked due to an accident on the Kapiti coast or roadworks on Centennial Highway are causing long tailbacks?  It should be easy enough, shouldn't it.  I'm not suggesting the piecemeal approach of say of visiting the AA or Transit NZ because I'm enquiring about roads.  I want a central hub with roads as one of the many options.

Such a resource would be great as a focus for people to visit but it needs to be up-to-date and reliable.  It needs to have feeds from emergency services, from local councils, from government departments, from schools and colleges, from anyone who has a message of interest to share.

I see no reason why something like this couldn't be made viable through the support of commercial sponsors - if it's as effective as I think it could be the sponsors would be queuing up to be associated with such a project.

Is this the real life

Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen

I remember when our family got our first colour TV.  It was 1975 and Bohemian Rhapsody was number 1.  The set was hired from Radio Rentals in Salisbury and delivered to our home just 2 miles from Stonehenge.

It was pre-tuned to pick up all the available broadcast channels. That was a grand total of three - BBC1, BBC2 and ITV (a second ITV channel, Channel 4, was still 7 years away).  The TV stations all closed down every evening with a stirring rendition of "God Save The Queen", to be followed by white noise and an incessant whine.  Next day when the TV started up again we sometimes had many hours of the 'test card', used by TV engineers to tune the set in when there was no actual programme broadcasting on the frequency.  On BBC2, that may well have been after lunch.

 A 22 inch TV circa 1975, complete with test card transmission  

How things have changed.  My kids are now much the same age as I was then but their multimedia experience is from a different time and space.  They see the 1975 TV scene as pretty lame.  Jump forward to 2013 and their family TV is a full high definition LCD, connected directly to the internet via a computer router, replete with digital video recorder, surround sound, Blu-ray and various games consoles.  It has quite a few more channels, many beamed in from distant parts of the world.  There are more remote controls on the coffee table than my wife can cope with (although funnily enough the kids never seem to have any trouble working out what each one does).

I don't know what the standard size TV is that people buy now but I guess a 39 -42 inch would probably be de rigueur. I could have splashed out on a 55" model but I thought I might have been pushing my luck to smuggle that one into the lounge so I got a middle of the range 42". So, I've ended up with a TV twice as big as the one I grew up watching.  I'd have thought that was reward enough.  Not so.

Sharp has recently released an LED television aimed at the consumer market that has a 90 inch display.  It's certainly not the biggest TV out there but as a consumer device for you to put in your front room that is a serious amount of display real estate.  I'll be checking it out in store next time I'm out and about.  This is something I just have to see.

What can I say?

Sharp unveils 90" Aquos LED TV (Engadget)

When a girl and a clown ruled the airwaves (Guardian UK)

South West England Vintage Television Museum

Recycling nightmares

A lack of consultation with recyclers
makes this new bottle an
environmental problem

There's been a lot of media hype generated by Fonterra for their new milk bottle packaging.  From their advertising it seems that all milk other than the Anchor brand is now spoiled because it's been exposed to light.

A cartel like Fonterra clearly has a lot of clout and they've executed a convincing media blitz to make sure that we know how green they are.  Trouble is this new packaging is turning out to be an environmental disaster.

Just like Novapay they've gone live without bothering to do the user acceptance testing.  Unlike the poor teachers who ended up with no money in the bank, the Anchor debacle isn't bankrupting individuals but it is causing some real headaches for recyclers and it's resulting in some lost revenue.

Recycling equipment grades plastic by shining a light on the incoming waste.  Apparently it's very accurate at identifying all the different sorts of plastic but the new Anchor milk bottles are being mistaken for low grade plastics and are being mis-sorted into the mixed grade pile.  The machines simply aren't callibrated to recognise this new material because no-one told them that this was coming. There's no real demand for mixed plastics and they command a very low resale price.  Some recyclers aren't even bothering to try on-selling this mixed grade stuff and are sending it straight to the landfill.

So for all of Fonterra's claims that the packaging is environmentally friendly it's proving to be anything but.  Fair's fair, Fonterra aren't the only manufacturer that has launched high-tech but poorly tested packaging into the marketplace but they are the most high profile.

It's not a criticism of the packaging itself - no-one disputes that it is high grade plastic that should be recyclable.

However, when you skip the crucial acceptance testing that ensures all parts of the supply chain are engaged and ready for your product, this is the mess that happens.

When the culprit is one of the biggest milk brands in the country that adds up to a very big pile of rubbish heading unnecessarily to the landfill.

Recyclers see red over 'green' bottles (Stuff)

Stratospheric internet

The assembled balloon in Christchurch, New Zealand

Google has balloon crazy.

Hot on the heels of the blimp trials in sub-Saharan Africa, Google has this weekend arrived at New Zealand's Lake Tekapo to launch a helium filled balloon that has climbed 20 km up into the stratosphere.

Project Loon is all pretty hush-hush but Google has released some details of the mission. The Tekapo trial is the first of the proof of concept field tests - within minutes of launching the balloon it was in position and beaming internet to the ground crew, quaintly closeted in the living room of local resident.

Local resident helps with the test

The balloons are cheap to manufacture and potentially could stay airborne for hundreds of days at a time. They're solar powered so they don't need refuelling.  With a big enough swarm of these things they could provide internet from the skies to whole countries, continents or even the entire globe.

Beaming internet from the heavens removes a huge pile of the normal logistical obstacles - no topology to get in the way, no resource consents or infrastructure headaches. In times of disasters, like earthquakes and floods, a balloon service could quickly be deployed to fill the void left by terrestrial services knocked out by the catastrophe.

It's early days but this first trial is already being hailed as a success. It's been the talk of the weekend here in New Zealand with provincial residents, disgruntled at their lousy internet connectivity, getting very excited at the Loon tests.

Up, up and away for sky high wi-fi (Stuff)

Loon project brings the web to billions (NZ Herald)

Balloon powered internet (TechRadar)

Project Loon launches from the Canterbury Plains

Focus on the road

Killer in waiting - the menace of distracted drivers

The American Automobile Association (AAA) is raising concerns about the spread of more sophisticated technology in cars that provides voice driven control of infotainment systems.

I think they have a point.  More vehicles are being equipped with this gear and in the US that volume is likely to jump from the current 9 million units to 62 million within 5 years.

Normally I'm all for technology and I love the idea of intuitive interfaces that mean the operator doesn't need to use keypads or other cryptic input methods.

However, when it comes to driving I'm of the firm belief that the car's pilot should be doing one thing only and that is focusing on driving.

If they are changing CDs, adjusting climate control, talking on a (hopefullly hands-free) phone or any other distracting activity, they are endangering the lives of themselves, their passengers and all other road users in their vicinity.

A simple suggestion - take someone with you as a passenger to make all these terribly important adjustments whilst on the move.   If you can't do that, then get everything arranged before you take the handbrake off, keep your eyes on the road ahead and on your mirrors and nothing else.  End of story.

Risky voice operated gadgets in vehicles (Stuff)

Angry Scrabblers

Scrabble players take their pursuit very seriously.  After all, it's a game played by people who pride
themselves on their vocabulary and command of language.

Scrabble players are upset about changes to the app

Mess around with the game at your peril.

Unfortunately that's exactly what has happened with the hugely popular Scrabble app.   It appears that control of the app recently moved from the Scrabble license holder, Mattel, to games specialist, Electronic Arts (EA).

However, the transition has produced a very poor customer experience and Scrabblers around the globe are up in arms.

The single biggest gripe is the loss of game history.  Serious players have notched up thousands of games and  commanded high positions on global leagues.  But that history was wiped when the transition occurred and red-faced Mattel have fessed up to admit they can't get it back.

They've also changed the game play so that it doesn't automatically refresh the board after each move, meaning the player must manually execute the refresh - very annoying.

The producers have tried to claim that they've improved the game by adding the ability to play the game in six different languages - the gamer response to that seems to be, why would I want to do that?

Another cardinal sin has been committed.  Scrabble has always used the Chambers dictionary, a reference book that players are intimately acquainted with.  The game now uses the Collins dictionary, another excellent work but still different to what has always been associated with the game.

This appears to be customer relations disaster for Mattel.  They have clearly taken their eye off the ball and have upset a loyal and passionate customer base.  In the age of technology and social media a faux pas like this spreads around the world in the time that it takes to refresh an app.   Some better user involvement before the transition could have averted this mess.

Disgruntled Scrabble players vent their frustration (BBC)

Email spring clean

Yahoo plans to reallocate inactive email addresses

It's good to see that Yahoo are going to re-release a whole bunch of inactive email addresses very soon.


This has long been a bone of contention.  It's so hard to get the email handle you want because all of the good ones were snapped up long ago.

The trouble is that even when they fall into disuse they are never released to be re-registered.  Some of the best ones have been out of circulation for over a decade.

I hope that other leading providers will follow Yahoo's lead and clean up their email bases so that we can all have a shot at picking up a flash address.

Yahoo inactive email addresses (Stuff)

Spritely does it

If you heard that private individuals were about to put a satellite into space you'd probably think they would be the likes of Richard Branson, Alan Sugar, Clive Sinclair or any other entrepreneurial type with a big wad of dosh in their back pocket.

How about instead a Cornell University graduate engaged in a research project and a bunch of people he's found through a crowd-funding drive?

Zac Manchester with his sprite 'nanosatellite'

That's the background to KickSat - a triumph of our age.  Such a project simply wouldn't have been possible before now.  It's a shining example of technology, community and ambition to try something new.

First of all there's the funding.  Satellites are expensive things to develop and even more to deploy.  So we have the determination and talents and graduate, Zac Manchester, to thank for finding a way to reduce this to  next to nothing.  The KickSat project is non-commercial and has gained NASA sponsorship under it's Educational Launch of Nanosatellites programme.   That basically means that NASA is footing the bill.

Even though the launch cost is being picked up by Uncle Sam, the units themselves don't come for free.  Zac has raised the necessary cash through Kickstarter.  He needed $30,000 and he got $74,586 with each punter paying around $300.

No bigger than two postage stamps - the Sprite spacecraft 

This is satellite on a minature scale.  The main unit is only 30cm and packed within it are 200 tiny satellites (or sprites).  They're not exactly much to look at.  Although they comprise just $25 of electronics they are packed with all the goodies that a satellite needs to function and to stay in orbit - a micro-controller (the computer brain), a magnetometer, a gyroscope, a radio transceiver and a solar array to provide the power.

There any number of technical and logistical issues to overcome - packing the sprites so that they spring out as expected and are orientated to point at the sun to allow the solar cells to generate power.  They've practiced it many times and they reckon they've got it down pat but the real test will be when they deploy for real.

The sprites are being launched in a low-orbit so they'll only last a few months before the fall out and burn up in the earth's atmosphere.  Still, that's not the point.  This is an ambitious project to demonstrate that real satellites can be built and deployed not with the vast resources of governments but by community efforts (plus a little help from the state).  No doubt they will learn heaps and this will hopefully lead to a pile of ever more ambitious projects.

The very best of luck to the KickSat project and all of those follow-ups that it may spawn.  

Kicksat.org

Check out the video on Kickstarter

Shopping Chronicles

In this age of digital everything, a coffee table picture book is still a talking point.  Every year beautiful glossy hardback books are produced in their millions and they are snapped up by shoppers who love to dream.

Weta Digital coffee table book, the Hobbit Chronicles

I had my twinkling eyes set on such a prize when I went looking for Weta Digital's The Hobbit Chronicles, a gorgeous high-quality record of the sets and design for the motion picture.  I'd already checked out the Whitcoulls web site and found that they had it for sale for $45.95 with free delivery.  Rather than order it online there and then, I made a note to call in to the retail store in town to buy one.

However, on arrival I found the sole copy of the book they had on the shelf was marked with the full recommended retail price of $59.99.  I took it to the counter and the ever so helpful assistant confirmed it would cost me $60 to buy the book.  But on your web site it's $45, not $60 - how does that work?  Oh well, Sir, we often sell cheaper through the web site.


After telling the assistant that there would be no sale after all, I headed down to Paper Plus to find that they also wanted the full RRP.  That concluded my options in the mall.  Not a happy shopper.  Not happy at all.

Amazon owned book specialist

So when I got home I checked out the web for comparison.  It wasn't hard - it's not like we have a great deal of local options here in Godzone.  Whitcoulls online was $45.95 as noted earlier, Mighty Ape  higher at $52.99 (+ $3.90 P&P so getting up towards the retail price) and Fishpond was just $41.95 with free delivery.  The Fishpond item proclaimed it was in stock with the NZ supplier (I wonder who they use).  For comparison sake I also checked out my favourite overseas site, Amazon-owned Book Depository, which just squeezed in with the lowest price of $41.61 with free delivery from the UK to New Zealand.

I find this kind of nonsense all the time and I'm getting tired of it.  New Zealand retailers moan about the web, particularly the competition from overseas yet they price themselves out of the market.  Whitcoulls' crazy philosophy of driving their customers online can only hurt their retail stores.  And here's the thing - if I end up buying online I have no loyalty at all.  I will often buy the cheapest option (as long as it looks like the seller is legit and that I will get my order).

So what did I do?  Well, I opted for the Fishpond offer.  I could have gone with Book Depository but why

A smart local web merchant, Fishpond

add to the carbon miles by having it shipped from the UK when it's available here for much the same price? I've been impressed with this local web merchant and they seem very focused on competing with the overseas big boys.  In fact, judging by the number of products they advertise as in stock with their UK and US suppliers, I suspect that they have agreements with the likes of Amazon and/or Book Depository to ship direct to NZ customers.   The best of luck to them.

As for our high street retailers, I recommend you wake up and apply some common sense to your pricing while you still have some customers.

More online shoppers favouring overseas sites (Stuff)

Enduring relics

Some technology just refuses to die.  It may have been shipped off to the nursing home but it still manages to sneak out on the town once in a while.

Why is that?  What is it about certain gadgets that lets them live on well past their sell by date?  Technologies that we depended on last century should be well and truly buried by now but some of them just won't lie down.

I loved my Palm IIIxe

Take the Personal Digital Assistant (PDA).  The Palm Pilot and its ilk were highly desirable once upon a time.  However, with the advent of the smartphone, which is a PDA and a zillion other things besides, you would think that there was no market for the humble Palm.  Not so.

According to the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), 350,000 PDAs were sold in the United States last year.  I doubt that you personally helped the figure along but if you work for a company that sells product lines they may well have been a contributor.  PDAs have long been used for stock control in warehouses and shops and that need is still there.  Just because new technology is available it doesn't mean that companies have thrown out the systems they've used for years.  So, yes, the PDA may be dead as a consumer gadget but it still has a niche in industry, and for good reason.

My first SLR: Canon AE1 Program

Maybe there's also a niche for photo film cameras too.  Although the digital camera has very publicly killed the likes of the once mighty Kodak, film stock refuses to die.  You can still buy single use, disposable film cameras and camera buffs need film for those quirky cameras they still play around with.  You also have to appreciate that just because something is old doesn't mean that everyone will stop using it.  People who have grown up with film and have a camera that they know and love will still support the technology, even if becomes increasingly difficult to source the film stock and the processing services.

Simplicity personified: the Rega Planar 3 turntable

A similar situation exists with vinyl records. Compact discs should have killed vinyl off years ago and digital
music services over the net should have mopped up any stragglers but no, vinyl is more popular now than it has been since its heyday.  Why?  Because people like the sound they get from vinyl.  They like the big footprint of the 33 and the wonderful equipment that plays these plastic discs.  Even price seems no barrier to sales, with vinyl releases costing considerably more than digital downloads or CDs.

People have long sounded the death knell for these technologies but when the user base for that obsolete gadget still supports it, you cannot truly kill it off.

12 obsolete technologies that refuse to die (Yahoo)

Voyeur's delight

Microsoft is off to a poor start on privacy matters with their Xbox One console.  I was surprised to hear that you must maintain a constant connection to the internet whilst playing games.  You must also be connected to Kinect - the 3D camera and microphone with the console.

Potentially you could be spied on and listened to then pay for the privilege since it's your connection that is being used to send any information back up the line.

Just putting aside whether Microsoft may want to spy on you, what about anyone else that gains access to your connection or hacks into the Xbox servers?

Coming in the same week that we hear that the NSA's Prism programme has direct access to trawl through our private data held at some of the world's biggest providers, anyone with anything to hide probably shouldn't be hooking one of these consoles up. 

There's probably going to be a lot of discussion on this one so watch the web for stories.  In the meantime when you get your shiny new console, probably best not to play games in your underpants or worse and only say nice things about Redmond. You never know who's looking in.

Xbox One has spying eye (Stuff)

Wearable tech is a step nearer

News this week of a space age fabric that conducts and stores electricity.

University of Wollongong scientist and inventor, Gordon Wallace, with the space age fabric

By combining strands of carbon nanotubes with strands of plastic polymer, Australian scientists have created a yarn that is both incredibly stronger and conducts electricity.

Imagine sportwear made of this stuff that actively monitors all of your vital functions.  What about sewing in any amount of wearable technology - a music player, a GPS, a phone, whatever you need to be connected.

I think somebody is going to get very rich on the back of this one.

Only the lonely

Generation Net the loneliest of all (Stuff)

Interesting article on Stuff talking about the problems of loneliness faced by I assume the younger generation in the internet age or as they call them, Generation Net.

Not sure that this is anything new - people have always experienced isolation and loneliness - but this article tries to put things into a context around what's happening in the modern age.

A young person is still learning how to manage relationships and inevitably it takes time to take all this in.  Some will succeed whereas many will stumble through their whole lives like a train wreck.

What I think the article is trying to articulate is that young people may be failing sometimes to cultivate meaningful relationships in person.   Retreating to the web for support is not the same as talking things through one to one.

I'd argue that for people looking for help on loneliness the internet has the potential to provide more information than has been available to any generation before.  After all, before the web, if you failed to connect with someone to talk through your issues, you really had nowhere else to look.  Now you have a wealth of opinion at the click of mouse but whether you can actually decrypt any of this detail is another matter.

What we must not allow to happen is that people lose sight of the fact that real human, in person relationships are what life is all about.   The vacuous concept of 1000 Facebook friends is totally meaningless against a single real friend who is there to listen and support you.  The thought that people would actually prefer to hold a text exchange rather than have a meaningful dialogue with real words spoken, facial expressions observed, emotions felt and understanding reached - that would be a tragedy.

Still, people will always experience loneliness.  How they are supported through that time has little to do with technology and much more to do with real human warmth.

Mighty Samsung

Ssmsung logo

When did I first hear the name Samsung?  I'm not really sure but I guess it would have been in the late 80s / early 90s.  In New Zealand's limited choice market they were a TV brand you bought if you couldn't afford a Japanese one.  What would you rather have - a Panasonic, a Sony or a Samsung?  At the time that was an easy call - a Sony first, then a Panasonic.  A Samsung if I couldn't get either of the other two.

How things have changed.  Some people will still try to tell you that the Japanese brands are better but I'm still waiting to see any evidence of that.   Without doing any kind of in-depth study on such things I'd say that generally the Korean brands (Samsung and LG) have the very latest technology first.   And they seem to throw in more bells and whistles at lower price points than the Japanese.  Does that hold up to scrutiny?  I have no idea but that's my perception anyway.

Curves are in

The thing is Samsung is as good as anything else in the TV market.  They are also about volume, about choice, about constantly moving the technology onwards and upwards.  They are also about innovation.  Consider the gesture control, the curved OLED display - cutting edge stuff.

Of course Samsung is so much more than TVs.  They are far and away the largest manufacturer of Android based smartphones.  No-one else even comes close.   How did they crush the opposition to grab that number one spot?  Was it good luck, good management, dirty tricks?  Well, I'd venture to say a mix of all of the above.

The rise of Samsung is a story of human aspiration to be bigger and better than everyone else.  To learn from failure and build on success.  Appreciate that absolute power of a chaebol sits with the chairman, not with a committee.  When he is dissatisfied with quality and wants to make a multi-million dollar bonfire, who's to stop him?

Have a read of this fascinating potted history of Samsung's rise to glory from a small local trading company to one of the world's industrial power houses. Well worth a read.

Samsung stories

How Samsung got big (Techcrunch)

About Samsung Electronics (Wikipedia)

All about Samsung tablets and smartphones (Digital Trends)

Avoiding the mistakes of Android in Chrome

I've long been a fan of open-source technology.  I am often deeply frustrated by the proprietary approach taken by some manufacturers and I quickly become annoyed when confronted with situations where my freedom of choice is constrained.

Sure, I'm a Windows user but that doesn't mean that I'm happy about it.

I loathe the digital rights management (DRM) systems that prevent me

G-RRR-RRRR

from playing my music on any device of my choosing.  I detest the region locking that prevents me from playing optical media from other countries.  I avoid music distribution services that require me to install their database for storing digital copies of those tracks.  I simply refuse to patronise services or product ranges that impose these draconian constraints on my right to choose.  

"I am not a number, I am a free man" . . .

Now that I've got that out of the way, let me add that although I celebrate the free spirit of open source, I also appreciate that it is not without its own problems.

Android is bloated and slowing down

Take Android for instance.  Manfacturers, phone service providers can and do customise the hell out of this operating system.  The end result is a complete mess.  New releases of Android from Google are vanilla offerings but because the phone manufacturer or the service provider insists on adding a pile of custom fixes, it can take months before it's rolled out to the customer base.  When it does appear it's weighed down with bloat and in dire need of a diet.  For older devices where the providers are no longer interested in support, that next release may never become available.  

Chromium versus Chrome

Google seems keen to avoid this quagmire with their other faster, slicker, all-round more promising offering, the Chrome operating system.   With Chrome, Google will have control over source code and any changes made to it.  That all sounds rather proprietary, don't you think?  Well, yes it is but here's the difference.  Google will maintain control over the Chrome offering but they will provide an open-source version as Chromium.   Positive changes made by the community to Chromium may well be adopted officially into Chrome but some of the more hare-brained customisations will not be allowed to pollute the pure version.

That to me sounds like a great way to go.   So what will catch on, Chrome or Chromium?  Clearly Google will throw plenty of money at Chrome whereas some equally cash-rich manufacturers and providers may favour the flexibility that the Chromium alternative offers.

It will be very interesting to watch how the two stables co-exist in this fascinating technology space.

Chrome versus Chromium - what's the difference

Google Chrome likely to replace Android

Covert contact

Here's a shining example of multiple cutting edge technologies converging to create what could be the next
generation of high tech eye wear.

Forget Google Glass - how about all seeing contact lenses?

We all know that an inherent weakness of the current generation screens on our smartphones and tablets is that they are fragile, inflexible and prone to damage.

The fragility comes primarily from needing to use inflexible glass and plastic to protect the conductive indium tin oxide layer.

South Korean scientists have substituted a flexible, transparent layer of atom-thick graphene to replace the indium and have embedded nanowires to carry the electric pulses within a soft contact lens.

An LED screen within a contact lens

This design provides the potential to take photographs, video and to receive interactive feeds onto an inorganic LED screen embedded within the lens.

If people are worried about the privacy invasion possible from the much more obvious Google Glass then they should be positively terrified of the opportunities for covert surveillance and privacy abuse if this technology is introduced.

The tracking aspects of this technology work both ways.  The software constantly tracks the wearer - this sounds a lot like that wonderful but ominous show, Person of Interest.  You are being watched !

You are being watched

On the positive side, such a device could be incredibly useful, replacing the need for a user to carry a separate screen in their hand.

Such advances would not be possible if it wasn't for the highly innovative approach that scientists and manufacturers are taking to marrying up the advantages of so many cutting edge technologies.

Reflection 

Although just a few years ago this device would have been confined to the realm of  science fiction, it's now a reality.  This is a shining example of how fast development is moving in different but connected fields.  We are seeing so many strands converging to make possible a whole new technology.  Consider what has gone into this device:

• Nanotechnology has given us the abillity to create electronic circuits so tiny they can easily fit into a small part of contact lens
• Radical new materials such as graphene are being harnessed to provide amazing capabilities - graphene is the strongest material we have on our planet, it's incredibly flexible, it's totally transparent, it weighs next to nothing yet it can be equipped with an intricate network of electrodes to provide the conductive layer of this device
• Advances in screen displays have given us a tiny inorganic LED screen that fits within the lens
• Wireless communications and the availability of a world wide internet infrastructure means that such technology can be deployed across the globe
• The power of this technology is that we can connect this tiny camera/transmitter/receiver to computers and enormous power - there really is no limit to what we could do with the technology.

Most of all though, beyond the technological abilities demonstrated here, there is the human desire to innovate, to create such capability and to use it.  That is truly inspiring.

More on tracking technology

Blink of an eye (NZ Herald)

Transparent flexible electrodes demonstrated by Korean researchers (Asia Research News)

More bans for Google Glass functionality (Guardian UK) 

Flipboard

My favourite news aggregator - Flipboard

I love my smartphone or should I say I love the apps that run on it.  I'm not one for actually using the thing as a phone unless I really need to but I do love to catch up on the news on the way to work or lying on the couch.

There are lots of great news and social media applications out there but one of the easiest and fun ways to get your fix must be through Flipboard.

It works like a high tech notepad where you use your finger to flip through the pages.  What's so great about it? Well, I think it's the satisfaction of flipping at high speed through any number of teaser headlines and gorgeous photos until you find something you want to read.  A single tap and the story opens up.

Flipboard aggregates news and social media feeds depending on what you have told it is of interest to you.  Take it to a whole new level by logging in through Facebook and get a whole pile of highly personalised feeds based on your FB profile and what your friends are posting.

News aggregators serve an essential function in today's glut of websites.  Rather than you having to visit each and every one of your favourites one after the other, an aggregator pulls all of the good stuff from a multitude of sources and serves then up to you organised in bite size chunks.  The best aggregators have cracked the problem of presenting that stuff in a format that is appealing.  For me, Flipboard is at the top of that pile of successful providers.

I love the way this app has been put together.  It's intuitive, it's interactive and best of all, it's free.

Try it out.  It looks great on a smartphone but even better on a larger tablet screen.

Thermonuclear experiments

Masthead from the International Thermonuclear Energy Reactor (ITER) project website

In an experimental plant in southern France scientists are researching the ultimate energy source.  They are trying to prove the nuclear fusion can be harnessed to provide an infinite amount of power for the world.

This is ITER - the International Thermonuclear Energy Reactor project.  Their goal is to produce a nuclear reactor that produces at least 10 times more power than it consumes to prove that this type of energy production is a viable commercial proposition.  Ideally they want to push this differential out to 50 times.   Can you imagine that?  I can't.  The idea that you get more energy back than you put in is hard to grasp.

People don't like nuclear reactions.  They immediately start thinking Chernobyl or Fukushima or . . . .  or what? What other nuclear accidents can you think of?  These two stand out because they were firstly very rare blots on the industry's safety record but also so truly awful and let's face, with better oversight, completely avoidable.  The nuclear industry is its own worst enemy when it fails to police itself properly.

So, in an atmosphere of great mistrust and moves against nuclear power, why is ITER pushing ahead?

Well, ITER is not interested in creating new fission reactors that burn radioactive uranium and all the problems that that brings.  They are looking to produce nuclear fusion where two hydrogen atoms fuse together to create a single helium atom.  They are looking to copy what our greatest star has been doing continually for millions of years at temperatures of 15 millions degrees Celsius.

H-bomb testing in the 1950s

It's not like we don't know how to bring about nuclear fusion.  In the 1950s our testing of hydrogen bombs did that but as we know the output of the energy from a bomb is not the kind of controllable release we want for power generation.

There have been fusion experiments before.  One of the biggest scientific hoaxes of modern times came in 1989 when  two american scientists, Pons and Fleischmann, claimed that they had achieved cold fusion in a test tube but were never able to demonstrate it to the assembled scientific community.

The ITER project  is no backroom science experiment.  This is a truly international project that  will consume billions of dollars of investment.

The reactor is housed in a tokamak - a giant container that uses magnetic fields to hold a plasma (a cloud of ionised gas) at 150 million degrees Celsius (yes, 10 times the temperature of the sun's fusion).  ITER's process uses deuterium, a naturally occurring form of hydrogen with one neutron in the nucleus, together with tritium (which has 2 neutrons).  The deuterium and tritium atoms fuse to form a helium atom.  This apparently is the most efficient known fusion reaction we can achieve.

Nuclear fusion using deuterium and tritium fusing to form helium

The energy from the fusion reaction is absorbed by the walls of the tokamak then used to heat water to create steam that turns a turbine to generate electricity.

These guys are serious about their mission.  Their website says it all -  "In our opinion, the use of fusion energy is a "must" if we want to be serious about embarking on a sustainable development for future generations".

The very best of luck to them.

More on the International Thermonuclear Energy Reactor project

The International Thermonuclear Energy Reactor project

How does a fusion reactor work? (HowStuffWorks)

ITER project (The Independent UK)

Russian firm Rosatom is building ITER plant (Telegraph UK)

Precision additives

It's great to occasionally read about real-life applications for 3D printing rather than the media frenzy around making guns and drugs.

General Electric Aviation, in conjunction with Sigma Labs, are on the verge of producing fuel nozzles for jet aircraft using additive manufacturing techniques.

GE are on going to '3D print' fuel nozzles for jet aircraft 

This all makes a lot of sense.  High precision components where tolerance needs to be measured at a micro
level seem to lend themselves to this form of fabrication.

I guess that speed of manufacture is not the main concern when you are producing a component that must not be allowed to fail (although they are looking for printing speed gains too).

With a 3D printing process that uses lasers to gradually build up a part that is an exact representation of the computer blueprint, this component should be as near to perfect as we can hope to make it.

Good news indeed for aviation safety.

In what other industries are we likely to see this kind of precision fabrication, I wonder?  Will we perhaps see these machines used to clone parts for their own kind, a sort of self-perpetuating production line of next generation 3D printers?

GE Aviation and Sigma project (3D Printer World)

Caution battery technology

There's some very exciting new battery technology coming to a device near you soon.  Check out some of my battery posts for details of these replacements for the current generation lithium ion batteries we use in our smartphones and laptops.

Surely, this is just a win-win situation, isn't it?  What could be the downside of improved batteries?

Toxic dumping

If this new technology is as sensationally good as it's touted to be, surely everyone is going to be dumping their existing batteries as quickly as they can.  Regardless of whether this rejection of the old technology happens rapidly, there is going to be a big increase in the number of old batteries that need to be recycled.  Recycling of batteries is, at best, a hit-and-miss affair.  Will the recyclers be able to cope with the volume?  Will people continue be as lax as they are now and simply toss these toxic timebombs into the landfill?

Accelerated obsolescence

These new batteries will most likely work on similar voltages as existing rechargeables but will they be directly compatible with the devices we have today?  Batteries come in all shapes and sizes and it seems that every phone or laptop has a different replacement model of battery to the next.

Will it quickly become impossible to get a replacement old-tech battery to keep your otherwise perfectly serviceable laptop running for another year?  Is a lack of spare parts going to make consumer devices obsolete before their time?

Protected designs

Much of this new technology is already protected by patents and trademarks.  The processes used to manufacture the electrodes is also protected so only licensed parties will be able to make this stuff.  What happens to all the traditional battery manufacturers around the world who are not part of this exclusive club?  Battery manufacturers are often located in the developing world.  If the plants are no longer able to make the products that the western nations want, what happens to the factories and the communities that depend on them?

Reduced replacement needs

Consumer devices have a limited lifespan, we all know that.  Generally people start looking to replace their gadgets as they become unreliable.  Currently one of the biggest causes of reduced reliability is when the battery fails to hold enough charge and the owner is forever having to plug it in.  This is often the point at which they make the decision to chuck it out and buy something new.

Manufacturers rely on short replacement cycles for their sales.  Sure, they want new customers but they need  returning customers, too.

This next generation of battery has around 10 times the lifespan of your current rechargeable so guess what, the battery is not going to be the first thing to fail on your consumer device.  So given that the weakest part of your portable device has been the battery up until now, how long can you expect that device to last?  Longer than the 18 months you might get out of it at the moment, that's for sure.  Will you necessarily be looking to replace it quite so often or will you make it last another 6 - 12 months?

If the world market starts adding that kind of additional time between product replacement cycles, then the manufacturers are going to be selling a lot less product.

African cell

Non-rigid airships (Blimps) to carry wireless signals in Africa 

Google is reported to be setting up a very exciting project in sub-Saharan Africa.  Rather than wear the huge cost of building cellular networks across vast (sometimes war-torn) land masses Google is using Blimps (non-rigid airships) to carry the wireless signals needed for a mobile network.

The devices will of course be Android, primarily low spec phones rather than the latest and greatest.  The radio frequencies will be harvested from so-called white space TV channels - frequencies normally reserved for TV but not actually in use in these countries.

Does Google want to compete with the likes of Vodafone in these emerging markets?  Hard to say but there are millions of potential new customers out there and it looks like their first encounter with mobile technology is going to be Android.

Blimps to carry wireless signals in Africa (Wired)

Google's Blimp network (theRegister)