New Florence. New Renaissance.

Countdown to 4G

Stacey Higginbothom at GigaOm has a status on various US mobile carrier plans for 4G - and the promise of 100 MBPS on the mobile network

Supertooth 3 Bluetooth Speakerphone

So, I have written about how different technologies being integrated into cars (DVD players, Bluetooth speakers etc) are typically too expensive, too difficult to upgrade and of course, not portable when you travel.

And in line with that philosophy for the last few years I have used two BlueAnt speakerphones - SuperTooth II while driving near home, and Supertooth Light for the road. I am not big on Bluetooth earphones - and use a lot of car time on the phone, so I have been grateful to BlueAnt for its speakerphones.

So when Lauran Driver who does PR for BlueAnt offered a chance to test the next-gen Supertooth 3, I jumped at the offer.

Lots of things to like. It announces (in choice of 6 languages) names of callers (if you let it import your contact list - with my AT&T Tilt I selectively exported a few contacts that frequently call me) or their caller ID. You can accept or reject the call with your voice. It works with my Tilt's voice dialing. It has a vibration sensor which tells it you are back in the car - nice touch to allow it to go into standby when you are not, and deliver an impressive 800 hours of stand by time. Allows for USB charging - one less cable to worry about.

Much better sound quality than its predecessors - with its noise suppression and echo cancellation improvements. No need to retract the microphone - something I was afraid in the Light version would snap off. Allows for pairing with up to 8 devices (I sure hope my family does not ever need 8 - AT&T's charges are expensive enough). Streams MP3 audio from the PDA - albeit in mono so not as good as typical car stereos, but saves me carrying CDs around. Comes with a 2 year warranty - unusually long for electronics.

Is portable through my travels - weighs only 4 oz. And you can easily upgrade every 2 years - my daughter gratefully inherited my Supertooth Light for her new car.

Finally, without any training its text-to-voice technology did not hesitate while pronouncing Mirchandani when my daughter called. And did not mangle the name either as most call center folks do.

All this for under $ 100 - and no installation fees. Products such as Parrot recommend professional installation - but do work through your car's sound system.

Brainiest College Pranks

Popular Science has a gallery of the best from Caltech, MIT and the legend of George Burdell

Tracking Hurricane Fay

Ok, it is still a tropical storm but Florida's Governor has already declared a State of Emergency, and the storm has bumped even Michael Phelps from local TV and by the time it makes landfall again in Florida (after pounding the islands and the Keys) it will most likely be a Category 1 hurricane. And there is a good chance it will target my home town, Tampa.

I wrote about technology - the satellites, the dropsondes, the recon planes - used to track hurricanes. I blogged that post when Katrina was a Category 1 hurricane - it ended up a few days later as a monster category 5 which devastated New Orleans. In the 3 years since technology has improved in the elusive art of predicting a storm's intensity - Category 1 or 3 or 5.

The "humble" spud

"FOR some reason, it's always called the "humble" potato. But the tasty tuber from the Andes is poised to take over the world. As the food crisis bites, the land area planted with potatoes is increasing faster than for any other staple crop. Developing countries now grow and eat more of them than the traditional potato-eaters of the rich countries: today, the world's biggest potato producer is China, and India produces twice as much by weight each year as the US.

Yet behind this success story lies a problem. The blight that wiped out Ireland's potato crop in the 1840s is becoming more virulent and is increasingly resistant to the fungicides used to control it. Without a new weapon against blight, we could be setting ourselves up for a replay of the famine wherever the disease strikes. And this time even more people could suffer."

New Scientist (sub required)

In the meantime the "humble" potato keeps evolving in color, taste, size as this Oregon State U article describes

The next generation of programmers

New Scientist (sub required)

"Anyone who has struggled with the complexities of C++ or Java knows that writing software is not usually child's play. To develop user-friendly Scratch, the researchers watched how children create and learn with Lego building blocks. Users do not have to write complicated code, but instead drag and "snap together" colourful graphical building blocks, each of which represents a simple programming instruction, such as making a character move 10 steps forward, play a sound, or repeat previous actions."

"Last week teachers and researchers from across the world met the software's creators at the Scratch@MIT conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to share ideas and experiences. "Children are creating whole new genres of projects that we had not even imagined," says Resnick."

Another unplanned benefit:

"Kimberley Scott, who runs the Compugirls project (in Arizona), says women often drop out of computer sciences, mainly because they dislike programming. "Scratch is a visually pleasing, easy way to introduce programming to our students," she says. "Research clearly shows girls like to collaborate on projects. I know girls on our programme like the fact there is an online community where they can look at other people's projects and post comments."

Traffic

It has led to several automobile innovations - in safety, navigation, entertainment. It has caused more medical issues - blood pressure, skin cancer.

It is Traffic, and a new book look looks at the phenomenon across the world and through time with lots of counter-intuitive conclusions.

The World of Science Research

"Massive investments in recent decades by the European Union, China, Japan, Russia and India have leveled the international playing field in the sciences, according to the essay published in the July 24 issue of the journal Nature. The trend will likely put an end to the age of the "unrivaled scientific behemoth," a status the U.S. has enjoyed since the end of World War II. "

" ...U.S. researchers still account for more than half of the top 1 percent of most-cited papers in the world. ...almost 50 percent of papers published by U.S. scientists are not cited by other scientists, which raises the question of whether the high volume of publishing "is really enhancing our stock of knowledge."

PhysOrg

Tracking shopping habits

"So Infosys, which counts 12 of the world's 20 largest retailers among its current customers, has developed ShoppingTrip 360, a hosted software application that can track shoppers and inventory, using wireless sensors placed on shelving, promotional displays, and shopping carts. The sensors, which use the 802.15.4 wireless protocol to connect to each other in a mesh network, can send information such as where shoppers stop in a store, what products they pick up, what they put back, what they put in their cart, and whether a product is out of stock. Infosys has also developed an application to let consumers in the store use their cell phones to get information such as store maps, or to access an online shopping list or collection of recipes."

MIT Technology Review

Georgia gets war messages out via blogs

With its own web sites likely under DDS attacks Georgia, at war with Russia, is getting at least some of its communications out via Google's Blogger...read more at Larry Dignan's

That deserves at least a mention on this innovation blog....