[WEB2] Ah, there's the makers
[WEB2] Destroying things wantonly can be great
AUSTIN, Texas--OK, that was a lot of fun. I'm here for Maker Faire, and one of the things I'd been most looking forward to after spending two days watching people set up things was seeing the folks from the blog Toolmonger.com rip down the shack they'd built just for that purpose. At Toolmonger.com's Maker Faire exhibit in Austin, they built a small shack only for the purpose of tearing it down. It's part of the blog's 'breaking s#!$ week.'(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com) Accordi...
[WEB2] Eepy Birds rock Maker Faire, fire ants attack
AUSTIN, TEXAS--Who doesn't like watching the chemical reaction that happens when Mentos come in contact with Diet Coke? Stephen Voltz, one-half of the team known as Eepy Bird, loads up the tandem's custom Mentos delivery system in preparation for their show at Maker Faire in Austin Saturday. Eepy Bird is known for its synchronized fountains from mixing Coke with Mentos.(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com) Well, I can't prove that everyone in attendance at Maker Faire here Saturday loves...
[WEB2] 'Dirty Art Car' is beautiful art
AUSTIN, Texas--With all the high-tech in evidence at Maker Faire here, it's hard to believe that one of the most amazing things I've seen was purely analog: drawings in dirt on the side of a car's window. This is Scott Wade's Dirty Art Car. Scott Wade makes beautiful art by drawing in dirt on the windows of his car, the 'Dirty Art Car.'(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com) Most people, when they see cars with dirty windows, just use their finger to write "wash me" on the glass. Bu...
[WEB2] Microsoft Virtual Earth offers 3D building capability
Microsoft and Dassault Systemes have released a 3D building application for the Virtual Earth mapping program, the companies said Friday. (Credit: Microsoft/Dassault Systemes) Virtual Earth-3DVIA will let people create 3D structures with textures and colors and share them with one other online. The models can also be tagged with real-life addresses or town information so that they can be viewed in Virtual Earth as they would be on a map. The application is being released as a "technolog...
[WEB2] More states join call for extra Microsoft policing
Updated at 4:00 p.m. PDT: In something of a surprise move, four state attorneys general who previously praised the effectiveness of Microsoft's antitrust settlement with the feds said they're not ready to see five years of oversight wind down just yet. In a nine-page court filing with U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly on Thursday, officials in New York, Maryland, Louisiana and Florida said they were joining a group of six states, led by California and the District of Columbia, in...
[WEB2] Defying death on the Star Wheel
AUSTIN, Texas--I'm high in the air, aboard a carnival ride cum Burning Man art piece cum bicycle-tech-powered people mover known as the Star Wheel. It's hard to describe this: It's a giant wheel, maybe 20 feet high that has three seats built into the middle of it--independent of the outer frame--that are geared to spin around when their occupants pedal like crazy. As they pedal, the wheel moves slowly forward while those inside whoop and scream their way through rapid 360 degree rotations. ...
[WEB2] Craig Venter: Google your date's DNA
Genetics pioneer Craig Venter took the stage at the Web 2.0 Summit with organizer Tim O'Reilly. What's a biologist doing at a Web 2.0 conference? Talking about how information and biology are converging (and have been for a while). (Credit: J. Craig Venter Institute) Interesting tidbits: Venter's own DNA was sequenced as part of his research. It cost, he estimates, about $70 million. Today it costs only $300,000 to sequence a person's DNA, and the $100,000 benchmark is in sight. It's...
[WEB2] Geotagging to Flickr
Stephen Shankland of CNET.com has been writing a number of stories about "geotagging"--that is, organizing photos by location. This can be done manually on a site like Flickr; you drag your photos onto a map and thereafter they stay associated with that location. This can be handy if you're looking for pictures of, say, the U.S.S. Constitution, it makes as much sense to look for photos by location as by keyword. And, if the keywords aren't obvious or unique, it may make a lot more sense. That s...
[WEB2] Gates wants to make his presence felt
Anyone who has ever used an instant-messaging program has seen the basic idea of presence. That little status bar that says "available," "away," "out to lunch" or "cursing the Mets" is your presence--the computer's understanding of how and under what means you are available. Today, that information is stored on the computer, but is mostly acted on by other people. Perhaps you see that someone's status is busy, so you send them an e-mail asking them to call rather than pestering them with an...
[WEB2] Comcast really does block BitTorrent traffic after all
For a few months Comcast has been the subject of scattered reports that say it throttles BitTorrent traffic. TorrentFreak said in August that Comcast was surreptitiously interfering with file transfers by posing as one party and then, essentially, hanging up the phone. But when we contacted Comcast at the time, it flatly denied doing it. Thanks to tests reported Friday by the Associated Press, however, it's clear that Comcast is actively interfering with peer-to-peer networks...
[WEB2] Sun starts bidding adieu to mobile-specific Java
SAN FRANCISCO--One area where Sun Microsystems' Java caught on was in mobile phones, but a leader of the project is working to eventually replace the mobile-specific version of the software. Sun Vice President James Gosling speaks in May at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco.(Credit: James Martin/CNET News.com) Java Standard Edition (SE), geared for desktop computers, will gradually supplant Java Micro Edition (ME) as technology improvements let more computing power be packed into s...
[WEB2] 'Chore Wars,' where 'World of Warcraft' meets toilet cleaner
SAN FRANCISCO--Housework is a lot more fun with a battle axe and a couple of dwarves. Chore Wars, a game shown off by noted game developer Jane McGonigal at the Web 2.0 Summit recently, gives users "experience" points for various household chores. Collecting those points then lets you advance your profile in the online game. Jane McGonigal speaks at the Game Developers Conference held in San Francisco this past May.(Credit: James Martin, CNET News.com) Swiffer the floor twice a week and ...
[WEB2] Human sewage--the next source of electricity?
SAN FRANCISCO--Synthetic Genomics is certainly teaching microbes some interesting tricks. The company, which specializes in genetically manipulating microorganisms and creating new organisms to accomplish industrial tasks, has devised a fuel cell that can generate water or electricity from the stuff that goes down your drain, said founder J. Craig Venter at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. J. Craig Venter "We have biological fuel cells driven by bacteria that take human wastewater and...
[WEB2] Flickr to upgrade photo printing
SAN FRANCISCO--Flickr was originally designed for sharing photos, but Yahoo is trying to make life easier for those who want to print pictures and not just see them on a screen. The Yahoo site is working on an upgrade to Flickr's Organize interface, which lets people select batches of photos, to make it easier to print multiple photos, said Kakul Srivastava, Flirk's director of product management. Today, each photo must be selected individually off its own Web page, which rapidly gets ti...
[WEB2] Windows gets a 'Mini-Me'
It's rare that anyone at Microsoft talks publicly about Windows 7, the next version of Windows. It's even rarer that anyone provides actual information about what might be inside the operating system, which is still in the planning stages. However, Microsoft has posted a video of a recent university lecture given by Distinguished Engineer Eric Traut in which he talks about, among other things, a new, slimmed down kernel known as MinWin that was created as part of the Windows 7 development p...
[WEB2] Firefox 2.0.0.8 includes Apple Leopard support
Mozilla on Friday released version 2.0.0.8 of its popular Firefox browser. The new release includes support for Apple's upcoming Mac OS X 10.5 operating system, Leopard. The new Firefox release also addresses several security flaws. One of the critical flaws (CVE-2007-5838) allows attacker-supplied javascript to run with the same privileges as the user. Another critical patch addresses two specific vulnerabilities (CVE-2007-5339 and CVE-2007-5340), plus a range of other performance issues t...
[WEB2] Yahoo to expand in Microsoft turf
Yahoo is leasing office space and hiring in the Seattle area, not far from Microsoft actually, as part of a plan to create a technology hub in the area. The company has leased three floors, about 115,000 square feet, in an office building in Bellevue, Wash., and will likely fill it with 450 to 600 workers, David Sobeski, senior vice president of platforms and architecture at Yahoo, said in an interview on Friday. (Credit: Yahoo) In addition to hiring an unknown number of people, Y...
[WEB2] Where are all the makers?
AUSTIN, TEXAS--I'm in the Texas capital for the first Maker Faire to be held here, and the gates will open to the public in 16 hours. Yet, even at this late date, after nearly two full days of setup, less than half of the exhibitors, or "makers," have shown up yet. Less than half the exhibitors at Maker Faire Austin had shown up, with just 16 hours to go before the event opens to the public Saturday morning at 10 a.m.(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET Networks) Which means that as you walk a...
[WEB2] Get your hemp footie bag at Google
Google Hemp Full-Zip Hoodie(Credit: Google) Google is going green with its online store. That means the company is selling organic cotton T-shirts, pencils made of recycled blue jeans, and other recycled and eco-friendly materials. And instead of plastic polybagging, it is using recycled wraps and stickers when shipping items. This is great news because plastic bags are a HUGE ecological problem. (Read about how plastic bags are killing birds and sea animals and have created a toxic floating...