Recently in Technology Category

One of the crucial requirements for extending quality life in the future is cheap and reliable availability of replacement corneas. I've always been creeped out by the way they source these currently. So advancements like this are of great interest.

Biomimetic artificial corneas

[...]an interdisciplinary team from Stanford University has developed an artificial cornea made from a hydrogel. As the researchers have filed four patents for ocular applications of this hydrogel, there should be artificial corneas on the market in a near term future.

Is this the turning point where IT finally has it's day? This article tries to look forward and predict where the industry is going.

The Postmodern Manifesto - Editorial - CIO

The Postmodern IT Department will be smaller, more distributed and dependent on a tightly integrated supply chain of vendors. It will be in desperate need of multitalented specialists who have in-depth technology knowledge but who can also create new products and capabilities that businesspeople might never have envisioned.

RLE :: Quantum Nanostructures and Nanofabrication Group
Tracked this site down for this paper: Nanowire single-photon detector with an integrated optical cavity and anti-reflection coating

The next frontier of electronic and photonic devices lies in nanoscience and nanotechnology research. At the nanoscale, quantum effects start to appear.

DoveBid - Stamper Express Auction Details

Is this a sign of the end of physical distribution? Probably not yet, but some might think we're near. Online providers will have to do a better job of providing the information efficiently if we will make discs obsolete. The customer relationship does not end with the financial transaction. It is an evolving conversation. The ability to retrieve something you already purchased will be a key facet of this conversation.

The amount of equipment and machinery to support CD production is amazing. It's a little more complicated than just a press.
Take a look at the photos tours. Here are a few choice pics.

Seikoh Giken CD-DVD Plastic Injection Molds

Die Coater (interior view)

Conttec Diffraction Unit

Digital Matrix SA4m 3 Station Polypropylene Electroformer

Complete World-Class Optical Disc Mastering Facility, Featuring: Direct Hydraulic Rotary Screw Plastic Injection Molding Machine & Molds, Coating, Laser Beam Recording, Developing, Metallizing, Electroforming, Duplicating, Inspection, Test & Measurement, Lab & Toolroom Equipment

43 Folders: Introducing the Hipster PDA
I think I'll try this...

Recently, I got sick of lugging my Palm V around, so I developed a vastly superior, greatly simplified device for capturing and sharing information. I call it The Hipster PDA.

Putting Facets on the Web: An Annotated Bibliography
Indepth and comprehensive treatment of classifying data for web presentation.

This is a classified, annotated bibliography about how to design faceted classification systems and make them usable on the World Wide Web. It is the first of three works I will be doing. The second, based on the material here and elsewhere, will discuss how to actually make the faceted system and put it online. The third will be a report of how I did just that, what worked, what didn't, and what I learned.

In Archimedes
Expensive media ensured the survival of this work? Or does cheap storage guarantee future works are safe? I think right now that storage is neither cheap enough nor durable enough.

In the 13th century, Dr. Netz explained, Christian monks, needing vellum for a prayer book, ripped the manuscript apart, washed it, folded its pages in half and covered it with religious text. After centuries of use, the prayer book — known as a palimpsest, because it contains text that is written over — ended up in a monastery in Constantinople.

There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom An Invitation to enter a New Field of Physics
by Richard P. Feynman

Why cannot we write the entire 24 volumes of the Encyclopedia Brittanica on the head of a pin?

Let's see what would be involved. The head of a pin is a sixteenth of an inch across. If you magnify it by 25,000 diameters, the area of the head of the pin is then equal to the area of all the pages of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica. Therefore, all it is necessary to do is to reduce in size all the writing in the Encyclopaedia by 25,000 times. Is that possible? The resolving power of the eye is about 1/120 of an inch---that is roughly the diameter of one of the little dots on the fine half-tone reproductions in the Encyclopaedia. This, when you demagnify it by 25,000 times, is still 80 angstroms in diameter---32 atoms across, in an ordinary metal. In other words, one of those dots still would contain in its area 1,000 atoms. So, each dot can easily be adjusted in size as required by the photoengraving, and there is no question that there is enough room on the head of a pin to put all of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica.

Too Cool!

Philips is currently testing more advanced versions of its MirrorTV that could connect the user wirelessly to the mirror and provide everything from news to traffic reports. The company estimates that home version may be available before 2005.

Reading assignment for the weekend.