‘Advertising is the cave art of the 20th century’, Marshall McLuhan said. Advertisings are mythical depictions of hunting and gathering rituals, that don’t take place on some stretched savanna, but in supermarkets and shopping malls. Through advanced profiles and content management systems ads can nowadays be targeted to select audiences.
Although it exists for less than 20 years, online search has become such a commonplace activity it is hard to imagine life without it. For your grandparents it didn’t exist. For you it is a second nature. For your grandchildren it will be a first nature.
Via Boomerang. Related: Your grand-grand-grand parents new media, Google everything, Google 2084, Google DNA, Google tracks flue via sick searchers, Google manhole, Googling in physical space.
Are bacteria faster than a computer? According a group of biological engineers they are. The scientists have done a research in which they have used the well-known bacteria Escherichia coli to solve a mathematical problem.
The Hamiltonian path is the shortest route between city A to city B along several other cities and at which every city is visited only once. This sounds easy, however this has caused a lot of problems to the navigation systems. If you want to go from Amsterdam to Rome and visit some other European cities, there are millions of possible routes and the system will have to calculate all the separate routes to come to the final solution of the Hamiltonian path. Now the researchers have used bacteria to get a direct overview, in which the bacteria consider all the routes simultaneously.
In the research, they have modified the DNA of the bacteria and let them find the shortest route between three cities. Each city has its own combination of genes, which causes the bacteria to glow red of green. The possible routes between the cities were explored by the random shuffling of DNA. The bacteria that had found the best route fluoresced green and red, resulting in yellow colonies.
Problem solved! Althought this is just a small test and it will be difficult to program a complex computer this way, the researchers are convinced this a proof that demonstrates the possibilities of using bacteria to solve these kind of mathematical problems. According to the researchers their results validate synthetic biology as a valuable approach to biological engineering. Having a computer infected with a virus will not quite be the same anymore.
The study was published in the Journal of Biological Engineering. Related: Crash course on synthetic genomics, Bacteria that eat waste & shit petrol, Bacteria that turn CO2 into energy, Google tracks flue spread via sick searchers, Conversations at the doctor.
No, this is not some solar system far, far away. Closer than you think, this is is a visualization of a botnet storm. For all you know this malicious virus, or one of its siblings, is controlling your computer – spamming thousands of innocent internet users on your behalf – at this moment. Feeling paranoid already? Yes, next nature can be harsh sometimes.
As technology evolves, people are more and more depending on it to function properly. But the nature of technology is that it needs networks, sources, software, batteries and signal. Once these conditions fail, horror scenarios unfold for those who depend…
Supercut video by fourfour.typepad.com | Related: Cellphone Minutes, the Next Currency, Crackberry Addicts, Handset gets taken to the grave.
Boomeranged metaphor in the news: Google’s algorithm for ranking web pages can be adapted to determine which species are critical for sustaining ecosystems, the BBC reports.
Related: Google tracks flue spread via sick searchers, Google everything, Boomeranged metaphors. Thanks Renhui Zhao.
This picture was taken in Zambia by Sarah Los (NL) while on wildlife safari. Every fairly trained “NextNature spotter” should be able to distinguish the cellphone-tree masts from old-nature trees. But that’s odd; there are three of them in a row and all different species!? Does every cellular network provider plant its own tree family? It surely looks like a competition. Future designs are expected to look better, taller and greener.
Let us do a quick jungle safari ourselves. Read the rest of this entry »
Data-hungry companies like Google, Microsoft and Amazon could reduce their energy consumption with 40% by rerouting data to locations where electricity prices are lowest on a particular day. A smart routing algorithm could take advantage of daily and hourly fluctuations in electricity costs across the country (US) perhaps even the world. Further it could weigh up the physical distance needed to route information (it is more expensive to move data over greater distances) against the likely cost savings from reduced energy use. Energy prices fluctuate daily (changes in supply, consumer demand, fuel price hikes), even among geographically close locations. It is the outcome of research done by PhD student Asfandyar Qureshi and colleagues at MIT.
Google recently built a datacenter in Belgium that relies entirely on ambient cooling — on days when the weather gets too warm, the center’s servers are simply shut down. The energy-aware Internet-routing scheme is an extension of this idea says Bruce Maggs, vice president of research at Akamai. Data distribution alone will not be able to do the trick; servers need to use substantially less power when idle than when fully running. Further he remarks: “The paper is not about saving energy but about saving cost, although there are some ways to do both. You have to hope that those are aligned.”
Via: technologyreview.com | Related: Search Engine | Energy Consumption shown on Power Plant | Datafountain | Power Aware Cord
This video shows the first beta version of TwittARound – an augmented reality Twitter viewer on the iPhone 3Gs. It shows live tweets around your location on the horizon. Because of the video see-through effect you see where the tweet comes from and how far away it is.
The app does something similar as layar(.com) — launched in Amsterdam (NL) June 17th –, a phone interface that puts a content layer over the phone camera’s videoscreen to locate the nearest toilet, bar, supermarket, bank and other search categories.
Though we still trust our natural eyes and ears; with tools like these, we have but to reach in our pockets to look ahead and see what is coming. The apps are not predicting the future yet, but I am pretty sure we will have to get back on that soon.
via: i.document.m05.de (thanks @droombos) | Related: On the Road | Avatar Machine
In the depths of northeastern India, one of the wettest places on earth, bridges aren’t built – they’re grown. What could 21th century architects learn from these dynamic construction principles? I would like to see this applied on highways.
Read the rest of this entry »
Recycling robot takes the streets of Italy
Games become jobs: Gold farming in China
Google Everything
Join the Next Nature tribe on Facebook 
