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Monday, January 22, 2007 |
MIT-Led Study Says Geothermal Energy Is Viable. amigoro writes to tell us about a study for the US Department of Energy, led by MIT, indicating that geothermal energy could account for 10% of energy production in the US by 2050. The study concludes that geothermal is proven, could impose markedly lower environmental impacts than fossil-fuel and nuclear power plants, and is likely to be cost-competitive with the alternatives. This coverage in LiveScience points out how big a player geothermal already is in the US: "The United States is the world's biggest producer of geothermal energy. Nafi Toksöz, a geophysicist at MIT, noted that the electricity produced annually by geothermal plants now in use in California, Hawaii, Utah, and Nevada is comparable to that produced by solar and wind power combined."[Slashdot]
10:15:23 PM  Google It!.
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Wikipedia Adds No Follow to Links. netbuzz writes "In an attempt to thwart spammers and search-engine optimization mischief, Wikipedia has begun tagging all external links on its site "nofollow", which renders those links invisible to search engines. Whether this is a good thing, a bad thing, or simply unavoidable has become a matter of much debate." This topic has come up before and the community voted to remove nofollow back in 2005. This new round of nofollow comes as a directive from Wikia President, Jimbo Wales.[Slashdot]
4:12:28 PM Google It!.
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Matthew Levine[base ']s holy grail.
Yesterday I noticed that my new home page was a disaster in IE7. I[base ']d cribbed a CSS-based three-column layout from Google[base ']s Page Creator. Then, as is my custom, I[base ']d pruned away as much of the complexity as I could. But evidently I pruned too much of, or the wrong parts of, the the CSS gymnastics encoded in that example. So I wrecked the layout for Internet Explorer.
As per comments here, standards support in IE7 is a thorny issue and discussions of it are heavily polarized. But I aim to be (cue Jon Stewart) a uniter not a divider. So here I simply want to give props to this article by Matthew Levine, from A List Apart. From it, I cribbed the wrapper-free Holy Grail. It[base ']s a minimalistic CSS-based three-column layout that seems to work well in every browser I[base ']ve tried: IE6, IE7, Firefox, Safari.
To be honest, although I[base ']m hugely fond of CSS styling, I[base ']ve always struggled with CSS layouts, and I know I[base ']m not the only one in that boat. When you read the explanation in Matthew[base ']s article, you can see why. CSS layout is like one of those games where you slide 15 tiles around in a 16-square matrix. In principle it is a declarative language, but in practice the techniques are highly procedural: Step 1, Step 2, etc.
Whether that[base ']s good or bad, and to what extent CSS layout really does trump table-based layout [~] these are interesting questions but separate discussions. The bottom line here is that I wanted to do a CSS-based layout, I wanted it to be as minimal as possible so I[base ']d have the best shot at understanding and maintaining it, and I wanted it to behave reasonably in a variety of browsers. For that I needed the pattern, or recipe, which Matthew[base ']s article helpfully provided.
It[base ']s appropriate that he calls the technique the Holy Grail because the three-column layout applies very broadly. Yet, though there are tips and tricks all around the web, I[base ']m not aware of a well-known cookbook, or pattern library, that:
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Identifies the handful of most popular layouts.
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Illustrates minimal, bare-bones CSS treatments.
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Certifies those treatments for cross-browser use.
For extra credit, this cookbook could filter the recipes according to whether support in each of the major browsers is must have or nice to have or optional.
Cross-browser issues have always been a headache, they still are, and the reality is that dealing with them requires hacks. The more we consolidate and simplify the hacks, a la Matthew Levine[base ']s holy grail, the better.
11:22:37 AM Google It!.
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Horizon Report from New Media Consortium and EDUCAUSE Identifies Six Learning Technologies to Watch. The 2007 Horizon Report spotlights six emerging technologies that are likely to have a significant impact on higher education in the next one to five years, presenting an overview accompanied by examples and suggested readings for each technology. The report is based on research by the New Media Consortium (NMC) and is a collaborative effort of the NMC and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative. Read the press release for more information. [EDUCAUSE CONNECT blogs] n defining the six selected areas[~]for 2007, User-Created Content, Social Networking, Mobile Phones, Virtual Worlds, New Scholarship and Emerging Forms of Publication, and Massively Multiplayer Educational Gaming[~]the
project draws on an ongoing discussion among knowledgeable individuals
in business, industry, and education, as well as published resources,
current research and practice, and the expertise of the NMC community
itself. The Horizon Project's Advisory Board probes current trends and
challenges in higher education, explores possible topics for the Report, and ultimately directs the selection of the final technologies.
To create the 2007 Horizon Report
11:20:44 AM Google It!.
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Google, Microsoft Escalate Data Center Battle. miller60 writes "The race by Microsoft and Google to build next-generation data centers is intensifying. On Thursday Microsoft announced a $550 million San Antonio project, only to have Google confirm plans for a $600 million site in North Carolina. It appears Google may just be getting started, as it is apparently planning two more enormous data centers in South Carolina, which may cost another $950 million. These 'Death Star' data centers are emerging as a key assets in the competitive struggle between Microsoft and Google, which have both scaled up their spending (as previously discussed on Slashdot). Some pundits, like PBS' Robert X. Cringley, say the scope and cost of these projects reflect the immense scale of Google's ambitions."[Slashdot]
9:01:43 AM Google It!.
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Something in Your Food is Moving. [Probiotics] Dekortage writes "The New York Times has a report on probiotic food: food that has live bacteria in it. From the article: "[for Dannon's] Activia, a line of yogurt with special live bacteria that are marketed as aiding regularity, sales in United States stores have soared well past the $100 million mark.... Probiotics in food are part of a larger trend toward 'functional foods,' which stress their ability to deliver benefits that have traditionally been the realm of medicine or dietary supplements.""[Slashdot] --Medications or health supplements can be delivered from scientifically engineered bacteria their added to products like yogurt. The primary advantage is that would these bacteria would continue producing health benefits for a considerable period of time. Any event that a mistake is made the process could be reset by taking a suitable antibotics that kill off the flora at in the intestine. Given the advances in biology with gene splicing and DNA sequencing this probiotic technology has to potential to be entirely disruptive to the pharmaceutical industry. --BL
8:30:34 AM Google It!.
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© Copyright 2007 Bruce Landon.
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