In 2022 World Cup Bid, Japan Offers to Broadcast Live, Full-Scale 3-D Holographic Games on Fields Worldwide – “When Germany hosted the 2006 World Cup, people flocked to public parks, arenas, and sporting stadiums worldwide to watch the games on massive screens at public viewing events. If Japan lands its bid for the 2022 Cup, you may be able to go to your local soccer stadium and view real-time 3-D hologram displays of tournament games projected full-size on the pitch…”

10 Ways You’re Getting Ripped Off – “To be sure, in some cases we know we’re being taken but we put up with it anyway. What you may not know is just how egregious the gouging is. We started unearthing rip-offs in 2009, and our hunt continues. Here are some of the latest lowlights…”

16 Items They Only Sell At Chinese Walmarts – Crocodiles? Frogs?

Wal-Mart: “It’s Time For Chip-And-PIN In The U.S.” – “With major card brands and the banks strongly opposed to Chip-and-PIN efforts in the United States, there’s only one way it’s going to happen–and that happened Wednesday (May 19): Wal-Mart publicly forced the issue. When the world’s largest retailer insists on a path, even Visa has to listen. And Wal-Mart is now insisting on a domestic Chip-and-PIN (EMV) program…”

World’s first battery fuelled by air – “By replacing the traditional chemical constituent, lithium cobalt oxide, with porous carbon and oxygen drawn from the air, the cell is much lighter than current batteries. And as the cycle of air helps re-charge the battery as it is used, it has a greater storage capacity than other similar-sized cells and can emit power up to 10 times longer…”

Um, Did Google Just Quietly Launch A Web-Based iTunes Competitor? Yep. – “Today at Google I/O, Vic Gundotra introduced Froyo, aka Android 2.2. But he also went a bit beyond Froyo. Coming soon, is a way to download an app through the Android Market over the web — and have it automatically download on your Android devices too. But that’s not all. Gundotra also showed off a new section of the Market — Music. Yes, an iTunes competitor on the web from Google…”

Sayonara, iPhone: Why I’m Switching to Android – “I was already fed up with my lousy AT&T service, and was seriously considering switching to the HTC Incredible, an Android-powered phone that runs on the Verizon network. But then, after seeing Google’s new mobile-phone software today, I’ve made up my mind. Goodbye, Apple. I’m ditching my iPhone. Seriously, I’m gone…”

Steve Jobs says no to Google’s VP8 WebM codec – “In reply to a email asking his thoughts on Google’s announcement of the royalty-free WebM video codec, Steve Jobs reportedly simply forwarded back the critical expose profiled yesterday by AppleInsider…”

Scientists Create First Self-Replicating Synthetic Life – “In a feat that is the culmination of two and a half years of tests and adjustments, researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute inserted artificial genetic material — chemically printed, synthesized and assembled — into cells that were then able to grow naturally…” See also: Artificial life, the stuff of dreams and nightmares, has arrived

Lets get some terms straight

‘World’s largest’ airship inflated in colossal Alabama cowshed

Thin-Film Trick Makes Gallium Arsenide Devices Cheap – “Researchers led by John Rogers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have invented a cheaper way to build devices—including solar cells and infrared cameras—using highly efficient but notoriously pricey compound semiconductors. Their method, reported in the journal Nature, involves growing stacks of thin films of semiconductor, peeling off the films one by one, and printing them onto cheaper substrates, such as silicon or glass…”

Saying information wants to be free does more harm than good – “”Information wants to be free” (IWTBF hereafter) is half of Stewart Brand’s famous aphorism, first uttered at the Hackers Conference in Marin County, California (where else?), in 1984: “On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.”"

Water Motions Revealed (w/ Video) – “Gaze into a glass of water, and you’re unlikely to see much more than your own reflection. But gaze a little deeper using a microscope — or, better yet, a series of laser pulses and detectors — and you’ll see an intricate molecular dance. As water sits, seemingly calm, the hydrogen bonds between water molecules are continually breaking and forming, with each molecule switching dance partners a hundred billion times a second…” See also: Instantaneous Velocity in Brownian Particles Observed, a Century After Einstein Said It Would Be Impossible

Paper supercapacitor could power future paper electronics – “All those paper transistors and paper displays that scientists have been designing can now be powered by an onboard power source, thanks to the development of a new paper supercapacitor. Designed by researchers at Stanford University, the paper supercapacitor is made by simply printing carbon nanotubes onto a treated piece of paper. The researchers hope that the integrated design could lead to the development of low-cost, disposable paper electronics…”

New UK govt to curb CCTV, scrap ID cards, help open source – “The Britain of today is watched constantly by CCTV cameras, is preparing for a national ID card, slaps a “crown copyright” on most government data, and can now censor websites and eventually boot people off the Internet. According to the new Liberal Democrat/Tory coalition government, that’s all about to change…”

Report: Facebook caught sharing secret data with advertisers – “The privacy issues that have been hounding Facebook may be coming to a head. A report in the Wall Street Journal indicates that the Facebook, along with MySpace, Digg, and a handful of other social-networking sites, have been sharing users’ personal data with advertisers without users’ knowledge or consent…”

Google Is Leapfrogging Apple – “Google is done playing catch-up. Today they’re setting the agenda: With Android Froyo, Google TV, mobile ads and streaming media, Google isn’t just matching Apple—they’re taking the lead…”

Probing the Dark Side of the Universe: In Search of Primordial Gravitational Waves – “Advancing into the next frontier in astrophysics and cosmology depends on our ability to detect the presence of a particular type of wave in space, a primordial gravitational wave. Much like ripples moving across a pond, these waves stretch the fabric of space itself as they pass by. If detected, these weak and elusive waves could provide an unprecedented view of the earliest moments of our universe.”

Evolution of PC audio:

How To Build An Atomtronic Computer – “The idea is to manipulate neutral atoms using lasers in a way that mimics the behaviour of electrons in wires, transistors and logic gates. Over the last decade or two, physicists at NIST and elsewhere have become masters at creating optical lattices in which atoms can be pushed pulled and prodded at will…”

Living in denial: How corporations manufacture doubt – “Where tobacco led the way, coal and chemicals followed. And, of course, the fossil fuel industry has been working overtime – and with shocking success – creating doubt about climate change…”

Polluted by profit: Johann Hari on the real Climategate – “Why did America’s leading environmental groups jet to Copenhagen to lobby for policies that will lead to the faster death of the rainforests – and runaway global warming? Why are their staff dismissing the only real solutions to climate change as “unworkable” and “unrealistic”? Why are they clambering into corporate “partnerships” with BP, which is responsible for the worst oil spill in living memory?”

ReclaimPrivacy.org: Facebook Privacy 101 – “If you’ve been watching the slow motion train wreck that is Facebook.com’s recent effort to revamp its privacy promises, you may be wondering where to start making sense of the dizzying array of privacy options offered by the world’s largest online social network. Fortunately, developers are starting to release free new tools so that you don’t need to read a statement longer than the U.S. Constitution or earn a masters degree in Facebook privacy in order to get started…” See also: MySpace, Facebook and a half dozen other companies just screwed up. Big time.

The first in-depth technical analysis of VP8 – “Back in my original post about Internet video, I made some initial comments on the hope that VP8 would solve the problems of web video by providing a supposed patent-free video format with significantly better compression than the current options of Theora and Dirac. Fortunately, it seems I was able to acquire access to the VP8 spec, software, and source a good few days before the official release and so was able to perform a detailed technical analysis in time for the official release…”

Facebook is a major influence on girls, says survey – “Facebook has become one of the biggest influences on the lives of girls, according to a survey. A study of eight to 15-year-olds for National Family Week found 40% of girls identified Facebook as one of the most important things in their lives – compared with 6% of boys…”

Sugar Within Human Bodies Could Power Future Artificial Organs – “The advent of the artificial heart has spurred scientists to pursue synthetic kidneys and pancreases as well. Still, one key obstacle to realizing such devices is powering them after they have been implanted. Instead of having to constantly recharge them by hooking them up to some external system—or, worse, periodically removing them and replacing their batteries—researchers would prefer that these machines somehow harvest energy from their hosts…”

Japan Launches New Venus Probe and Solar Sail – “A powerful new Japanese spacecraft and experimental solar sail blasted off together on Thursday (Eastern Time) to start a six-month trek to explore Venus and cosmic parts beyond…”

Facebook challenged by ambitious upstarts – “The controversy over Facebook’s privacy policy is helping those developing alternatives to the social network. Funding and users are flowing to services that claim to put members in charge of their personal data…”

[[[Jump to - Interesting Reading #493 – Let there be Synthetic life, Bigger netbooks, Apple suicides, Big bang problems, Artificial butterflies and much more…]]]