Category Archives: Space, Science & Tech

Google announces GoogleTV

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On the second day of Google’s I/O conference today, the search giant announced a new product, GoogleTV. The platform, which will be available built in to at least some Sony TVs, as well as available in stand-alone boxes (think TiVO or your cable DVR box), combines your DVR functionality (including program guide), web-based video sites like Hulu, and Netflix streaming…. Read more »

Lake Tennessee

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I’ve been mostly neglecting the big weather news in Becky’s and my last pre-Colorado home state, and Loyette’s state of birth, Tennessee. But it’s bad, with just awful flooding (albeit mostly in Middle Tennessee, not East Tennessee where we lived). Here’s the front page of today’s Nashville Tennesseean: More photos here.

A scary thought: Hurricane Oil?

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There’s a lot of talk about the allegedly slow reaction to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill being “Obama’s Katrina.” I haven’t followed it closely enough to have an opinion on that. But could the moniker prove more literal than anyone now imagines? Blogger Alan Sullivan, who predicted “significant harm to the Gulf” from the BP explosion at a time… Read more »

Earth, (solar) wind, and fire

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Of all the volcano-related photos I’ve seen recently — including the beautiful gallery of Eyjafjallajökull pics on the Boston Globe‘s always-awesome photoblog, The Big Picture — this one is my favorite. It was taken by Arnþór Ævarsson of Hveragerði, Iceland, on April 5, and it shows the volcano in the foreground… and the aurora borealis in the background. The volcano… Read more »

Eyjafjallajökull’s ash cloud

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From the Norwegian Meteorological Office, via The Map Room, here’s an animation of the ash cloud from the Icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajökull, that’s disrupting air travel and sowing PANIC!!!!! all across Europe. “Yellow indicates ash that has fallen by itself, red ash that has fallen as a result of precipitation, and black where the ash cloud is at that moment in… Read more »

All Your Gene Are Belong To Us

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You may die because of a gene patent that should never have been granted. The owner of that patent owns the gene that exists in your body. It’s private property. Well, according to the late Michael Crichton anyway. Good golly, that sounds frightening. What should and should not be patentable has been the subject of debate – and legal disputes… Read more »

Twitter iApp pet peeve: Where are the newfangled retweets?

In search of the best tweeting and tweet-reading experience on my new iPod touch, I’ve downloaded a whole bunch of Twitter apps, some free, some merely cheap. Specifically, I’ve tried Twitterrific (free), Echofon (free), Twit Pro ($0.99), Tweetie ($2.99) and TweetDeck (free). Aside from Twit Pro, whose UI is just awful, the other four are all good apps, each with… Read more »

Winter Spring Wonderland

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Two of the biggest, if not the two biggest, snowstorms we’ve gotten this winter in Denver, didn’t happen during the winter at all. The first was just before Halloween. The second was last night and this morning, during many local schools’ spring break, several days after the vernal equinox. Go figure. Anyway, here are a couple of photos from this… Read more »