Spider-Man Suit Proposed by Scientist

Continuing our strangely comic-book themed posts this week (when’s that Spider-Man 3 movie premiere again?), a scientist has proposed a type of suit using technology based on geckos to allow people to climb walls, ala Peter Parker’s alter-ego.

In an upcoming paper, Nicola Pugno, a professor of structural engineering at the Polytechnic University in Turin, Italy, discusses formulas for fashioning carbon nanotubes into superadhesive gloves and boots that could be used to create a Spider-Man-like suit in the near future. He also outlines a theory for using carbon nanotubes to create large invisible cables that could act as human-strength cobwebs.

The designs for the materials are modeled from the adhesive properties of the gecko, a tropical lizard whose sticky feet can scale trees. Source: News.com

Even if this works, the part I really love, being able to cast webs and swing across a city (and let’s face it, it would only really work in a city like New York anyway … not in the SF Bay Area where I live) doesn’t appear to be in the cards. Heavy sigh.

Is the iPhone Too Slippery?

Reports have been flying around the Internet that the prototypes of th iPhone that people have been seeing are “too slippery.” People whio have used the device have said it’s definitely drop-prone … not good when you look at the price tag.

According to those who’ve had a little more than Apple’s standard 15 minute playtime, the mobile’s design is simply too smooth, meaning it’s prone to slipping from the hand and, potentially, tumbling to the floor. Source: T3

Let’s say this is true. So what? The reason I say this is because I’ve seen plenty of cell phone prototypes, and many of them go through case changes, including not just color but often texture. Even IF this is true, it will most likely be fixed before release. Case texture or color … that’s easy to fix. What Apple’s been discovering is that the ROM and firmware … those are harder to fix than they expected.

‘Kryptonite’ Discovered in Serbian Mine

Yeah, yeah, this is more science than technology … unless we can harness this mineral to power technology … nah. It’s just fun. The mining company Rio Tinto discovered the unusual mineral, couldn’t ID it, and asked Dr. Chris Stanley, a mineralogist at London’s Natural History Museum for help. After determining its chemical make-up, he discovered it had already been named … in the movie Superman Returns.

“Towards the end of my research I searched the web using the mineral’s chemical formula – sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide – and was amazed to discover that same scientific name, written on a case of rock containing kryptonite stolen by Lex Luther from a museum in the film Superman Returns. Source: BBC News

No, it’s not radioactive, meaning we can’t use it to kill Kryptonians, if there were any around. I haven’t seen any Daxamites lately either.

Big Mistake – AT&T to Market iPhone to Enterprise Customers

What? Enterprise customers? AT&T, you’ve got to be kidding. The device only has a virtual keyboard, no removable battery, a closed operating system … why would any corporation want this?

The idea of marketing the iPhone as an enterprise product baffles some analysts.

If AT&T announces that it will be marketing the phone to enterprise customers, “we’d be against it,” said Ken Dulaney, an analyst with Gartner, who said he hasn’t heard of such a plan from the operator. “We’d immediately tell our customers that’d be a very serious mistake.” Source: InfoWorld

The marketspace I work in gives me insight into this … no executive is going to want to keep up with their corporate email on a device without a static keyboard. And heavy users are going to run out of battery power and want to swap out the battery .. not possible with this device. Marketing this to corporations? A big mistake.

Stephen Colbert Drops a (Google) Bomb

If you don’t know what “Google Bombing” is, it’s a way to raise a site’s ranking on Google. From Wikipedia: “Because of the way that Google’s algorithm works, a page will be ranked higher if the sites that link to that page use consistent anchor text. A Google bomb is created if a large number of sites link to the page in this manner.”

Colbert has, in the past, pranked Wikipedia by asking viewers to go to the site and edit their article on elephants. Because of what he called, wikiality, this would result in a rebound in elephant population.

Now, he’s asked his viewers to help him rank first on Google for a … ahem, certain phrase.

Earlier this week, Colbert announced on his late-night show, The Colbert Report, that he wanted to rank first on Google’s search results for the phrase “giant brass balls.” (A tad lewd, yes.) Colbert-idolizing bloggers, however, thought that just wasn’t good enough, and decided to try to put him at the top of Google’s hierarchy for the phrase “Greatest Living American.” Source: News.com

As of this writing, he’s still first for “Greatest Living American”. I’m sure you’re aware of the most famous Google bomb, the one where typing in “miserable failure” would link to George W. Bush’s presidential biography.

Froogle Takes the Fun Out of Shopping

OK, OK, not really. In fact, I never found Froogle, Google’s price comparison site, to be all that great to use. I prefer to use sites like Pricegrabber. To be honest, it’s easier for me to see the compared prices, I don’t get eBay sellers (if I want eBay sellers, I’ll go to eBay), and I get less stores that, because I’ve never heard of them, make me place my hand on my wallet.

On the other hand, I did like the name (hence, my comment about fun ). Google has renamed Froogle the more boring Google Product Search.

Google is rebranding “Froogle” as “Google Product Search” and simplifying the interface to match the main search site. Now, Google Product Search will still be a site for searching shopping listings only but the most relevant listings in Product Search will also appear in the main search site in a “one-box” area above the organic results, which are the most relevant unpaid search listings. The one-box area snags results from other specialised Google search sites, such as Google News. Source: Silicon.com

It’s been said that people didn’t understand what Froogle was all about … but I got the pun right away. Also, the only change I can see so far is that the refinement options (for search) that were at the top of the page are now at the bottom. Other than that, it’s not really all that different … and thus, hasn’t moved into my preferred list of price comparison sites. We’ll see if more changes are to come …

Intuit’s Computers ‘Taxed’ by Late Filers

The moral to this story is "Don’t want until the last minute". So many people were e-filiing yesterday, that Intuit’s e-filing system became overloaded … and transactions that normally take minutes were, by Tuesday evening, taking hours.

A record number of returns from both individual taxpayers and accountants started causing delays in Intuit Inc.’s e-filing system early Tuesday, and the problem got worse as the midnight deadline for getting forms to the Internal Revenue Service approached, said Harry Pforzheimer, a company spokesman. Source: MSNBC

I filed weeks ago, and received my refunds late last week from both State and Federal agencies. However, last night I was trying to register my copy of Quicken, and it kept timing out … it didn’t occur to me what day it was. A friend of mine was trying to file at 10PM, and the program told him the submission was “pending”. When he checked back, it said it had failed … and it was already past midnight.

According to the story, Intuit has informed the IRS of the issue and the IRS will have a statement later today regarding this. Cross your fingers, you late filers!

Fixya.com … An Answers Site Centered on Tech Support

I just found out about this site (or rather, they found my blog and contacted me!), and I decided to take a look at it. If you’re familiar with Yahoo! Answers, the concept is a familiar one. However, in this case Fixya centers its attention squarely on tech support. Interestingly, it doesn’t just support computer and software-related issues, but any consumer product. In fact one of the answers on the front page was one about a washing machine, and indeed, it looked like a useful answer.

I took a look at it … what would be interesting to find would be the total number of questions posed so far. I’d like to see how popular the site is both in terms of answers and questions. Why? Obviously if I am going to use a site like this, I’d only use it if the site was popular enough to get a lot of “experts” using it. The highest number of solutions I saw posted was around 300, and it dropped off rapidly from there.

On the other hand, I was impressed enough to sign up as an “expert”. Eventually they plan to allow “live chat” experts to charge for answers, but for now the site is still in beta. Not sure I’m interested in going that far, but I will keep an eye on this site.

Yahoo! Japan Says Sayonara to Millions of Emails

Seriously, it was only 4.5 million emails. It could have been worse since, after all, another 5 million emails were temporarily unavailable.

The Kyodo news agency said the company confirmed Friday that 4,492,200 e-mails sent to nearly 275,000 people were lost and another 5,149,500 were temporarily unavailable to users.

The company said most of the erased online messages were from specific Internet addresses and had been sent in bulk between Dec. 26 and Feb. 26. Source: UPI

So they were bulk emails, but not spam, according to the story. At least they weren’t individual emails. Most likely these were not that important.

On the other hand, maybe this is how they plan to get unlimited email storage to work.

Swap Porn, Leak Defense Secrets …

So, we’ve seen many hospitals, financial institutions, and some defense contractors lose, misplace, or leak data via losing laptops, taking flash drives home, losing CDs, etc. etc. This is a new one. Defense data on the Aegis radar system was not quite leaked but could have been … because of swapping porn between computers in Japan.

The officer told police he accidentally copied the confidential data onto his computer’s hard disk when copying porn from a computer belonging to a crew member from another destroyer, the Yomiuri newspaper reported.

A third officer was also found to have copied data on the Aegis system alongside pornographic images, the Yomiuri said. Source: MSNBC

Note that although the leak was in Japan, the Aegis is our system … so those are our dang secrets being swapped with porn!