Aerogel is the world’s lightest solid — and also the most porous. I’ve got a story on Wired News this morning that explains all about this really cool material, how it was used in NASA/JPL’s recent Stardust mission, and how some companies are commercializing the stuff. This story was really fun to write, not least because of the nifty aerogel samples I got to handle.
Wired News: A Solid That’s Light as Air
[image courtesy NASA/JPL]
Tom Lantos is my congressman, and it’s principles like this that keep me voting for him every single time he comes up for re-election: Congressman quizzes Net companies on shame | CNET News.com
Anyone else have problems with T-Mobile Hotspots in Starbucks bumping them off the network and reconnecting every 15-20 minutes? It’s really annoying.
Locke blogged my story. I blogged his blog of my story. Then he blogged my blog of his blog of my story. Now, I’m blogging his blog of my blog of his blog of my story. Ain’t trackback fun? Krugle Blog » instant replay or infinite recursion?
I’ve got not one, but two stories about search engines appearing today.
Here Comes a Google for Coders, on Wired News, talks about a startup search engine called Krugle, which will let programmers find source code and documentation online. Krugle debuted last week at Demo. My story adds some details about how Krugle works and its business model that haven’t been covered in the press yet, as far as I can tell. (Krugle’s chief blogger Chris Locke blogged the story with some nice comments here. Chris’s comment: “And he actually interviewed people! (Wow, a wrinkle like that could really catch on.)”)
And over on Technology Review, my story Google’s Private Lives investigates the “Share Across Computers” feature of the new Google Desktop 3. This feature lets you search for files on more than one computer–but in the process, it stores files on Google’s servers, rendering them vulnerable to secrete government subpoenas.
Update 2/17/06: My Krugle story got Slashdotted. The Krugle folks say it boosted their site to the #1 search on Technorati today. Amazing. Now let’s see what they do with their newfound fame: They’ve promised a lot, and what they have to do next is deliver.
Elmore Leonard’s rules of writing. (Sadly not included: Don’t center your copy, since it makes it fucking hard to read.) Category | Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points and Especially Hooptedoodle (via 43 Folders)
Winner, best business writing, February 2006: Annalee Newitz: “investors have turned their burning, collective gaze from the wastes of Mordor to the human world of Silicon Valley again” AlterNet: Son of Dot-Com
Maybe all these folks are leaving technorati because the site sucks, and they couldn’t fix it. Valleywag: Jason DeFillippo walks out Technorati’s door with Niall Kennedy
Dear Steve Jobs:
Next time you update the iPod and iTunes, can you please make the music styles listed in the equalization settings the same as the default music styles listed in the “Genre” field for each song? That way my iPod could automatically adjust the EQ based on the genre of each song. It would be a lot easier than going all the way up through the menus, then back down into the EQ section, then finding the appropriate setting and selecting it. By the time I finish doing all that the song is half over already. Honestly, Steve, the whole process reflects badly on your legendary obsession with good user experience. It’s as if two completely separate teams were designing those two parts of the iPod. What, your engineers don’t talk to each other? Anyway, you know how terrible AC/DC sounds on the “Jazz” EQ setting. Thanks.
Sincerely,
Dylan Tweney
Recycling … and screaming bikini girls. Girls Crushing Cars (via Grist)
