interesting stuff

build it yourself eyetracking unit

http://tinyurl.com/cu4m7

The AeroPress Coffee Machine: a new concept in an ancient art

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January 16, 2006 There’s always a better way – ALWAYS! Humans have been consuming coffee for 1200 years, the first coffee shops opened 500 years ago and coffee is the world’s second largest traded commodity, behind only oil. More than 1.5 billion cups of coffee are consumed every day with the US market for coffee machines at 20 million a year and growing. You’d think we would have already perfected the best way to produce a cup of coffee from coffee beans, but several years of research by Stanford University mechanical engineering lecturer Alan Adler (the inventor of the Aerobie flying disk which holds the world throwing record of more than a quarter mile) appear to have found a better coffee machine. Independent reviews suggest the new Aerobie AeroPress delivers the smoothest, richest, purest and fastest cup of coffee (under 30 seconds) you’re likely to find and the bonus is that the AeroPress costs just US$30. And while it might look like a French Press because both use immersion and pressure, it works quite differently.

http://tinyurl.com/exk9x

Competition yields several new viable computer concepts

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January 16, 2006 In years to come, people will no doubt scoff at the primitive early form factors of the computer. As the miniaturisation of computers continues, there is no imperative for there to be any particular visible form for any part of the computer other than input and display facilities, and both of those aspects are clearly in the early stages of their evolution too. Accordingly, if you’d like to stretch the brain cells about what the future of the PC might look like, the recent Microsoft/IDSA-sponsored competition to rethink the Windows-based PC experience threw up a number of interesting ideas and the site is well worth a look. The Judges' Award went to a doozie of a design named Bookshelf that was developed by two Purdue University industrial designers

http://tinyurl.com/7nnou

JUST TO HIGHLIGHT THAT ARTICLE JACK SENT AROUND:

Greater Tel Aviv replaces NY as world's largest Jewish city

By Amiram Barkat

This year will mark the first time in history that there will be as many Jews living in Israel as in the United States, according to statistics presented at a Jewish Policy Planning Institute conference this week. The greater Tel Aviv area has already replaced New York as the city with the most Jews.
The change is part of a larger trend showing that while the number of Jews living in Israel between 1970 and 2005 increased, the number of Jews in the Diaspora shrunk by about a quarter in that time. Overall, the world Jewish population has increased slightly in the last 35 years - but its percentage of the overall world population has decreased by about a third since 1970, Hebrew University Prof. Sergio Della Pergola said Sunday at the conference in Jerusalem. The Jewish population increased from 12.65 million in 1970 to nearly 13 million in 2005, but in the same period, the world population grew by more than 70 percent. As a result, the Jewish people now comprises 0.21 percent of the world population, down from 0.35 percent 35 years ago.

http://tinyurl.com/8ou49

Camera dealers feel the Web's wrath The last best address leads to a metallic gray warehouse by the waterfront in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Trash haulers go about and there is a dull buzzing sound in the hallway. Graffiti gives information that white people are devils. Envelopes marked Price Rite Photo are stacked by a door. No one has picked up the mail since the business quit the premises two months ago, said Robert Colon, the handyman. Telephone calls to the company go unreturned. The proprietors of Price Rite are a subject of complaints to the state attorney general, the city Department of Consumer Affairs, the county district attorney and the Better Business Bureau. The company is only one of several online camera dealers in Brooklyn that have gained nationwide notoriety for hard-sales tactics and bait-and-switch advertising, but when customers suddenly began rallying against the dealers, Price Rite was the center of attention.

http://tinyurl.com/d3wbg

Are virtual assets taxable?

http://tinyurl.com/7d8vg

Small Company Aims to Soar Above Lockheed to Win Blimp Contract

The firm is confident the Pentagon will pick its design for a craft to move troops and cargo.

By Peter Pae, Times Staff Writer

It's the blimp industry's version of David and Goliath.

An obscure Tarzana firm run by Russian emigres is locked in competition with Lockheed Martin Corp., the world's largest defense contractor, to win a Pentagon contract to build 900-foot- long, blimp-like aircraft to move cargo and troops into combat zones.

Worldwide Aeros, which makes blimps used for flying billboards, generated plenty of buzz in aerospace circles last summer when it and Lockheed each landed $3-million contracts from the Pentagon to do preliminary design work.

The Pentagon's advanced research arm expects to pick the winning design in September and award a $100-million contract for a prototype airship. The winner then has a chance to bid on a blimp production contract potentially worth $11 billion over 30 years.

"In reality we don't feel Lockheed is our technical competitor," said Igor Pasternak, 41, Worldwide Aeros' founder. "There is only one solution, and we have that one solution," the Russian-trained scientist insisted.

Pasternak's company "wrote a proposal that seemed outstanding," said Norman J. Mayer, a veteran airship designer for Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. and the Navy, who helped the Pentagon evaluate the blimp proposals. "They were very serious about what they were trying to do. Time will tell how well they do it."

Winning will not be easy.

http://tinyurl.com/aft3z

Parrot squawks on woman's affair A parrot owner was alerted to his girlfriend's infidelity when his talkative pet let the cat out of the bag by squawking "I love you Gary". Suzy Collins had been meeting ex-work colleague "Gary" for four months in the Leeds flat she shared with her partner Chris Taylor, according to reports. Mr Taylor apparently became suspicious after Ziggy croaked "Hiya Gary" when Ms Collins answered her mobile phone. The parrot also made smooching sounds whenever the name Gary was said on TV. New home Mr Taylor, 30, a computer programmer, confronted the woman he had lived with for a year who admitted the affair and moved out, several newspapers reported. He also gave up his eight-year-old African Grey parrot after the bird continued to call out Gary's name and refused to stop squawking the phrases in his ex-girlfriend's voice.

"I wasn't sorry to see the back of Suzy after what she did, but it really broke my heart to let Ziggy go," he said. "I love him to bits and I really miss having him around, but it was torture hearing him repeat that name over and over again." Ms Collins, 25, said: "I'm not proud of what I did but I'm sure Chris would be the first to admit we were having problems." Ziggy - named after David Bowie's former alter ego Ziggy Stardust - has now found a new home through the offices of a local parrot dealer.

http://tinyurl.com/bsv9s