Alternate use for the technology behind electronic paper:

1. Contact lens that serves as a "gel" between your eye and the world, tinting according to your needs. Polarizing?
2. Image enhancement/zoom.
3. Serving as a very personal data display.

Issues:

1. Power Source
2. Keeping everything oriented correctly
3. How thin can the lens be and still function without damaging the user?
4. Data I/O?

10:17:44 PM    

Combine this with a good HUD (Heads up Display) for the following possible uses:

1. Crime scenes - Police go in and record everything they can on the first pass through the location, then, later on, others can tour the area without disturbing the site, seeing it was it was at the time of discovery.
2. Tourism - Instead of having a taped tour (Like they do in Alcatraz) you could have a "live" tour, with the guide going along at your own pace.
3. Fitness trails and gyms could have instructors to show you how to use the equipment.
4. AI assistants for more personalized reminders.

9:58:52 PM    

Grid researcher says component software will simplify Web services [IDG InfoWorld]

I see paralells between the use of grid computing and insuring that content creators are paid every time their work is accessed. The web services layer using SOAP could serve as the means to allow users to access data and pay the creators at the same time.

Example: I want to create a mix cd. I go to download the music that I don't have from an online file sharing service. the music that I grab is tagged in such a way that for each song I download, I get charged a fee based on the quality of the track I grab. the person who I am grabbing the file from gets a credit for serving the file for the artist, again, based on the quality of the track. 

I'd be happy to pay $1.00 for each track I snag in this manner. The artist gets $.50, the person serving the file gets up to $.25, and the remainder goes to the distributor. My account with the service gets billed for my downloads, I get credit for what I serve, so at the end of the month I have either a bill from the service, or I need to start uploading more music in order to get back in the green. This prevents leeching, and insures that artists get paid for their works.

9:14:40 PM    

Replacement for DVD unveiled. The world's Big Nine electronics companies have agreed on a single standard and name - Blu-Ray [New Scientist]

27 gigs, or all of my games, on one disc. Sweet. Dual sided to come, for a total of 50 gigs.  Very sweet. Not compatable with my current DVD players. Sour.

6:54:44 PM    

Some Thoughts on the Economics of Terrorism. For anyone who's interested about the economics of terrorism the following short piece might be of interest. Being something of a nascent political scientist, my field has been swamped with a lot of issues relating to terrorism since 9.11. Economics is only one of them. I worked on this a few months back as a reasearch item, and thought I'd take the intro bits and post them to see what you all thought, if anything at all, about the topic. [kuro5hin.org]

Kuro5hin continues to provide gems of knowledge, and the explanation of Hawala is particulary interesting.

8:53:50 AM    

Mac Fiends Who Live for Updates. VersionTracker is a Macintosh downloads site that can be addictive; some people visit the site every 20 minutes. Why is it so compelling? By Leander Kahney. [Wired News]

It would appear that this site would benefit from having a subscription feed that tracked which tools you had downloaded, and when there was a new version available. By having a rating for each tool that you had downloaded, it could then also know if it should notify you for every time a tool was updated (something you had given a 5 star rating to) or if it should wait for a scheduled time (2x daily) or wait until there are a certain number of updates that you are interested in (a set of 2 star programs.)

8:47:42 AM