New Florence. New Renaissance.

Word of the Year!

Time can have its Person of the Year, but we now have a new entity to celebrate

"w00t," an expression of joy coined by online gamers and spelled with 2 zeros, was crowned word of the year by Merriam-Webster dictionary. It "reflects a new direction in the American language led by a generation raised on video games and cell phone text-messaging."

Smart Pen

MIT Technology Review

"So long as the user writes on paper printed with a special (microdot) pattern, the smartpen transforms what is written into interactive text. For example, the pen has a recording function, called paper replay, that can record sound and connect it to what the user writes while the sounds are being recorded. Later, the user can tap the pen over what she wrote and replay the associated sounds."

Grid of wind farms

"Wind power is one the world’s fastest growing electric energy source, but as wind is intermittent, a single wind farm cannot deliver a steady amount of energy. This is why scientists at Stanford University want to connect wind farms to develop a cheaper and reliable power source. Interconnecting wind farms with a transmission grid should reduce the power swings caused by wind variability and provide a somewhat constant and reliable electric power (or ‘baseload’ power) provided by other power plants."

Roland Piquepaille

The remarkably productive USB thumb drive

Web Worker Daily identifies 10 cool free applications for your thumb drive to carry around and possibly leave your own laptop at home.

Prices are down nicely fro the holidays...a 4GB (yes, not a typo) for $ 25.

Of course, they are also a significant security risk...so consider getting a pricier, but encrypted one.

"High-Frequency Harmonics"

"A line of headphones from Colorado company Able Planet increases the clarity of high-frequency audio without increasing its volume. The technology is aimed not only at the elderly, but also at younger people who hope to avoid hearing damage and at video gamers who want to hear each other over the din of virtual battlefields."

MIT Technology Review

Scanning for text to voice

"..by combining (HP)scanning technology with Mouscan's ability to optically recognize text, translate it and vocalize it, you have a brand new device about the size of a cell phone with a lot of cool potential. Imagine you're a traveler trying to read a foreign article, document or even a menu. You just wave the Voiscan over the document for a few seconds and it quickly organizes the text and begins reading it aloud. It can also output to another device so you can see the translation.

This is cool for travelers but also students trying to pick up another language. It presents a quick way of understaning a foreign language and seeing how it's used every day. The last scenario is for vision-impaired people, who will be able to gain information about printed documents that are not in braille."

The Tech Chronicles

Innovation in US services firms

When Finland wants to innovate its services economy, who does it turn to? The US. This report is fascinating - it identifies 12 innovative US services firms using the Doblin 10 types of innovation framework.

The innovative firms cataloged include The Hartford (insurance), Crowe Chizek (accounting), Ingram Micro (Distribution) and Total Quality (Logistics).

Nice holiday present, this.

IBM's Smart Surveillance System

"S3 uses analytic tools to index digital video recordings and then issue real-time alerts when certain patterns are detected. It can be used to warn security guards when someone has entered a secure area or keep track of cars coming in and out of a parking lot."

"Beijing's S3 network is already being rolled out and is expected to be operational by the time the Games begin in August 2008..."

New York Times

Crowdsourcing your next project

"When Constellation Energy Group Inc's commodities group needed a new system recently, it considered the usual sources of labor: internal staff, a consultant, a contractor, offshore programmers or a mix of all four. Instead, it turned to a somewhat less traditional technique: Ask programmers from all over the world to compete with each other to write the best code for the system. When all is said and done, hundreds of programmers will labor over a system that, in the end, will represent the work of less than 100 developers, whose code will be hand-selected by Constellation and TopCoder Inc., the company that is managing the competition."

Computerworld

Flexible Fluid-Lubricated Foils, or better known as Magic Carpets

This is what Physics researchers do for fun and fantasy -)

New Scientist  on the physics of flying carpets "a 10cm long carpet 0.1 millimetres thick would have to vibrate with 0.25 millimetre high waves 10 times a second to stay aloft in air and fly horizontally at 0.3 metres per second."