Another Reason Libraries Should Become WiFi Hotspots.

Ben Hammersley on Setting Up a Open Wireless Node

"Ben Hammersley writes about setting up his public WiFi node in his Guardian column. Ben's experience is a little unusual -- within a day of setting up his access point, Doc Searls (who was 9000 miles from home), stumbled upon it (and Ben). Later, at a group dinner with a bunch of British geeks, Matt Jones suggested chalking 'WiFi hobo-runes' on the sidewalk marking discovered wireless service, so that other netstumblers and war-walkers may connect to it." [Boing Boing]

From the article itself:

"...As a writer, with no need to be anywhere but at the end of an internet connection, an email address and a mobile phone number, it's a revolutionary step.

But the wondrous convenience of writing in a place designed to bring me regular blasts of caffeine is really nothing compared to the serendipitous meetings it has created: for as the network I set up is free for all to use, and somewhat advertised on the web, this cafe has seen a steady stream of like-minded technology enthusiasts, bloggers, and geared-up layabouts united in the joyous realisation that they never need go to the office again. A correctly enabled laptop, and a coffee addiction later, your first delivery of email over a community wireless network seems to come with angelic music and a parting of the clouds....

Since then, he and many others have used the spare bandwidth on my internet connection, and I've drunk plenty of coffee. In fact, with the caffeine, the only thing wired around here is me."

[Jenny Levine: Tech Goddess]

Tie this in with Autodesk's location suite (original report) and you can be alterted every time that you are in a location that you can get wireless access, which gives you the hobo runes mentioned above in a universal (and geeky) format.

8:48:24 AM    

Nanotech Tubes Could Form Basis of New Drug Purification Techniques [Scientific American]

Dope the inside walls of a nanotube with antibodies that will attach themselves to the chiral molecules that you are looking for in the solution. Next, the tubes extract the chiral molecules that you are looking for, at a rate that is much faster than the molecules that you don't want.

While this is currently being researched for use in making medicines, I imagine that this would have a variety of uses in other fields. Any kind of filtering (now THAT is good coffee!) or waste management would benefit from a selctive filter of this nature. Home greywater treatment could get the water back to pure rather quickly, or use it to filter the water that is coming into your home, knocking out lime etc. The trick would be to get it to work fast enough to be viable for high volume use.

8:43:09 AM