World's First Hybrid Tugboat

Thick, squat and powerful, tugboats are the pint-sized strongmen of the maritime industry.

But, despite their stature, they tend to be big polluters, spewing heavy clouds of diesel soot into the sky as they push and pull massive freight ships into position.

Their reputation as grimy workhorses, however, may be changing with the recent development of a diesel-electric hybrid tug - the Carolyn Dorothy - by Foss Maritime Co. The quiet, 78-foot tug carries all the punch of its counterparts without the environmental price tag.

"Tugboats spend most of their time sitting around idling, and while they're idling, they're sending diesel (soot) into the air," said Foss engineer Jerry Allen during a visit to the boat's engine room. "This tug doesn't consume diesel during down time, so you're having no (ecological) impact there. And it's emitting much less during routine operations."

Externally, the $9 million Carolyn Dorothy - named after a Foss executive's wife - looks like any other tug. But unlike its rivals, it emits roughly half the emissions, including significantly less diesel particulates, which can lodge in workers' lungs and cause cancer.

And because it can plug into an electrical outlet while docked, operators are able to recharge the ship's 126 12-volt batteries during down time. Built during the past year at Foss' Rainier, Ore., shipyard, the Carolyn Dorothy is the source of much hope and pride among port authorities in Long Beach and Los Angeles, who together kicked in $1.3 million to fund its development.

"This proves the technology works in this application," said the Port of Long Beach Harbor Commissioner. "We think it serves as a template for future (green) growth."

Foss has agreed to operate the tug exclusively in Long Beach-Los Angeles through 2013.

Cheers...

I'm picking up some serious NetVibes

NetVibes is one of those under-appreciated apps that does one thing amazingly well - namely, sets up a tabbed homepage full of live widgets and streaming feeds. Next to a cup of coffee, it is the best way to start the day.

Put your email, facebook, flickr, weather, news, live tv, podcasts and more in your face.

Rick Broida of LifeHacker, wrote how to trick it out...

Cheers...

Introducing the Personal SuperComputer

Remember the Charlie Chaplin TV spots promoting IBM's first personal computer? You may not be old enough, but I am and I do.



Which is why I can't wait to see how NVIDIA plans to market their new Tesla.

How would I use a PC that is 250 times faster than what I use today? How fast can I really play Mah-Johng?

The entry level Viglen CL2000 PSC-2 Personal Supercomputer puts nearly 2 teraflops of computing muscle at your fingertips for a mere 3,999 pounds (what with the exchange rate that's less than 6,000 bucks)

I guess if they offer it in the same harvest orange color as my electron microscope with matching particle collider, I might be tempted.

Cheers...

Facing the World with a New Face

Details of the first almost-complete face transplant from a dead donor performed in the United States have emerged.

Eight specialists transplanted bone, muscle, blood vessels and nerves in the 22-hour operation in Cleveland, Ohio.

After such transplants, the new face does not look like the donor because its shape is altered by the muscles and bones of the patient's face.

But some experts have warned of possible psychological side-effects which may include remorse, disappointment, or grief and guilt towards the donor.

The hope is that as this procedure becomes more commonplace, people who avoid others due to their appearance may have an option to help them feel better about themselves.

Cheers...

Burn Baby Burn

[ from LifeHacker ]

Free CD and DVD burner ImgBurn emerged victorious in LH's recent Hive Five Best CD and DVD Burning Tools, followed closely in tow by commercial burner Nero 9.

Freeware app CDBurnerXP rounded came in a distant third.

Cheers...

Help me, Obama-Wan Kenobi

Leave it to the best political team on television to bring us the first live remote broadcast of a hologram reporter. Wolf is in New York talking to Jessica in Chicago and I guess it would be more exciting if it were, well - more exciting.



Cheers...

Let's Do The Time Warp...

No, not the dance from The Rocky Horror Show, I mean the new show Time Warp on Discovery.

Jeff and crew use high speed cameras and super slow motion to analyze what really happens during everyday events. Like being in a car accident, blending fruit in a blender or shooting all kinds of stuff and watching it explode.

Check out a sample of raw footage here...(I'm fond of the egg and the propeller)

Cheers...

I'll sleep well tonight...

...knowing that the scientist in this clip "doesn't think" there's any risk of the self-assembling robot technology getting out of control and harming us. Right...

Makes me think of Transformers meet Willard.




Cheers...

Psst - wanna buy some Uranium?

Seriously, when was the last time you heard that. Check out United Nuclear, a kind of homegrown Edmund Scientific that offers everything a maker could ever want to purchase for that special project.

Or for when you accidently knock over your trusty radiometer.

Oh and another thing, they're actually one company that's relocating to Michigan.

Cheers...

Do you Hulu?

I've been decreasing my consumption of television viewing over the past dozen or so years to the point of rarely watching anything broadcast - except for the occasional Mythbusters or Dirty Jobs.

I never got into the Tivo DVR thing either but I have spent some time recently checking out free online viewing site Hulu.

Hulu brings together a large selection of videos from more than 100 content providers, including FOX, NBC Universal, MGM, Sony Pictures Television, Warner Bros. and more. Users can choose from more than 900 current primetime TV hits such as The Simpsons, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Office the morning after they air, classics like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The A Team, Airwolf and Married...with Children, movies like Men in Black, Ghostbusters, and The Karate Kid, and clips from Saturday Night Live, Friends and other popular TV shows and movies.

It's also rated as one of the 5 best streaming TV sites according to this Lifehacker readers' poll.

Cheers...

Words as Art

A lot of blogs lately are including "tag clouds" which are used to show prominent tags on postings in the blog. But what if you just want to take an essay that you've written, or a letter to Auntie Grizelda, and create a "word cloud" based on your text.

Well, now you can and you can do it with Wordle. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes.

You can also create a "word cloud" for any url, as shown here with today's homepage from CNN:

Cheers...

It's Gotta Be The Shirt...

Call them t-shirts or tees, there are a lot of cool shirts out there to be had. In my day, we had to flip through pages of the novelty catalog or hang out at the half-clothing half-tobacco pipe shop to get unconventional tees. Or spend two week's minimum wage on a concert tee.

One of the coolest synergy stories I've read in a while was an article in Inc. about a couple guys who started Threadless. Basically, people submit their own custom designs, everyone votes on the most popular, and then that one is sold in limited quantity and then retired. Genius.

Some of the other offerings on the net include Funny T-Shirts from BustedTees and Snorg Tees.

My favorite from Snorg: "My Butt Hurts"

A couple of emerging ideas (which means I can't go there yet) are from these guys. Maybe I tripped on the Swedish avatar dress-up thing. It sounds naughty.

A new partnership between Swedish avatar dress-up site Stardoll and German t-shirt commerce site Spreadshirt allows users to take virtual clothes they create or see online and get them made into the real thing. Users will be able to take logos or graphics from popular labels in the Stardoll world and get them emblazoned on real-life t-shirts, hats and other items.

Cheers...

Hello, I love you, let me pick out your name...

And when I do, I want to know how popular it is now or may have been in the past. In order to aid me in my quest, I shall employ The Baby Name Voyager. This app lets me view letter by letter, how common or unique, fresh or old-school the name I have chosen may be. For example, names beginning with the letter "F" are in steep decline; while those beginning with "I" dropped off from their peak in the 1890's to a low in the 1960's. A quick ramp up in the 1970's and 1980's and then a huge spike in the 1990's. If you want to see a name that should be on the the endangered given names list, checkout Lester.

Something else revealing is if you were born when your name was most popular. Makes you wonder how creative your parents were or if they followed the herd :)

Cheers...

If you could read my mind...

...while I was playing chess, it might look like this:



Actually, this is what it looks like to read the artificial mind of Thinking Machine 4 while it plays chess.

The artwork is an artificial intelligence program, ready to play chess with the viewer. If the viewer confronts the program, the computer's thought process is sketched on screen as it plays. A map is created from the traces of literally thousands of possible futures as the program tries to decide its best move. Those traces become a key to the invisible lines of force in the game as well as a window into the spirit of a thinking machine.

Cheers...

Islands of Consciousness

While doing some light research on Flickr mashups, I came upon an interesting merger of random sights and sounds from two artists. The site is Islands of Consciousness. Truly inexplicable and surreal. Like a train wreck that you can�t stop looking at.

Cheers...

Digital music from the Sun

Roberts has just introduced the world�s first solar-powered digital audio broadcasting (DAB) radio. It�s called the solarDAB and it retails for a mere �79.99. With its integrated top-mounted solar panel, the solarDAB�s battery pack is charged whenever exposed to the sun�s powerful rays. (You can also charge by hardwire if it�s dark out.) Once fully charged, it can play for 27 hours.

Available in white, black, pink, red or green.

Cheers...

Google Health

Google launched an ambitious initiative Monday, May 19th, that aims to give people a central place online to store their health records and then share them with health-care providers.

The public can now go to www.google.com/health and create profiles that include basic medical information such as existing medical conditions, allergies and any medicines being taken, Google officials said.

People who sign up at Google Health may also import medical records from U.S. pharmacies and medical facilities that have signed on as partners, which so far include Longs Drug Stores, Walgreens Pharmacy, the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and several others.

"Google Health is all about pulling together documents from your doctor's office, labs and pharmacies to provide a holistic picture of your health," said Google Vice President Marissa Mayer, who was joined by health industry professionals to launch the project at a press conference at Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California.

So I'm sure it won't be long until we won't have to fill out that basic information form every time we visit the same doctor.

Cheers...

Where's my Starbucks?

If you've ever asked that question when you're scared, tired and cold, grab your mobile phone and text your present zipcode to MYSBUX (697289)*, and they�ll send you three store matches in the neighborhood with links to maps.

*your carrier's text plan applies

Or...if you want to be able to find any business nearby, you have to try 1-800-GOOG411.

Check out the demo.



Cheers...

Spend 18 Minutes with TED

TED, (Technology, Entertainment, Design) began in 1984 as a way to spread new ideas. They are devoted to giving millions of knowledge-seekers around the globe direct access to the world's greatest thinkers and teachers. They now have a time limit of 18 minutes for each of the talks, which are free to distribute under the Creative Commons License and sponsored by BMW.

Here's a recent talk by Neuroscientist Christopher deCharms who is helping to develop a new kind of MRI that allows doctor and patient to look inside the brain in real time -- to see visual representations of brain processes as they happen. With his company Omneuron, deCharms has developed technology they call rtfMRI, for "real-time functional MRI" -- which is exactly what it sounds like. You move your arm, your brain lights up. You feel pain, your brain lights up.

Crazy.

Other past talks:

In the "What Makes Us Happy" theme, Rick Warren: On Purpose

In the "TED Prize Wish" theme, Bono: Join my call to action on Africa

Cheers...

Five for Printing

I read an article today which listed some of the technologies that have passed on and we're glad they did. One of those was the dot-matrix printer. Now that we are able to buy photo-quality inkjet models for the cost of a dot-matrix ribbon, I tend to agree, and they are much quieter than the brrrapp-brrrapp-brrrapp-kachunka-chunka-chunka.

So check out this post from Friedbeef's Tech to take advantage of this now taken for granted technology.

Cheers...

Latest Productivity Black Hole

As one of my colleague's referred to them, Yahoo's new Widgets are "ridiculously cool!" Download the engine and then pick up a few more of the Widgets from the gallery. One of the guys responsible for most of the coolest ones is Arlo Rose. You can check out his blog at mouselabs.

Enjoy!

Musical Selections

Here are a few audio related selections from around the web today:

Pandora is an interesting self-guided streaming radio station builder.

RocketFM is a sleek transmitter for your PC or Laptop via USB connection, which is offered by one of the best iPod accessories dealer, Griffin Technology.

Theo Jansen is a Dutch artist who creates new forms of art and nature with his wind-powered creatures that walk the beach. You can check them out at Strandbeest.

I was at a friend's house last week watching the Peter Gabriel concert DVD "Growing Up Live" and he rolled around the stage in one of these. I always wondered who would ever buy one - and now I know.