Some of you may already be familiar with the concept of Eink, a new way to make digital readers for all kinds of publications, and a way to make all of the publications more cost effective endeavor for the consumers.
You may have already seen Eink and not even known it. In September of this year in celebration of its 75th Anniversary, Esquire Magazine and the new Ford Flex made the first-ever digital magazine cover released to the public.

New prototypes have been released that will show how the Eink technology can be brought to the markteplace at a reasonable cost thanks to the ability for effective advertising on the site. The prototypes shows a video of an interactive ad on the front page of the New York Times, similar to what you may see on many websites currently.

These new generation of readers can help to reduce the costs of readers and of subscriptions to Eink publications by adding these ads to the page. Which means that Einks may not just show up on the front pages of magazines, with plenty of glossy space inside to pay for the technology but in a wider range of applications as the cost model shifts.

This change of costs will, over the long run, make the devices more cost friendly for the general public.

Scientists from one hundred and thirty countries want to redo existing world data centres and services in order to create a World Data System. The group of scientists is know as the General Assembly of the International Council for Science (ICSU).

The reasons cited for this change include:

• More scientific data and information is now available than at any other time in history and the volume
  is increasing daily.
• long-term stewardship availability of this data is largely uncertain and a large amount of valuable scientific data remains in-accessible to many members of the scientific  community.
• To provide  full and open access to scientific data and products for the global community.

What do people in the position to make decisions about the sharing of scientific data have to say about this?

Ray Harris, chair of the expert Committee that produced the report said, ‘Data is the lifeblood of
science and there are many exciting developments, which mean that access to scientific data both for
science and for policy making should be much easier.  However, in many areas there is little order and
the origin and reliability of what one finds on the web can be almost impossible to determine’.
‘A more strategic and systematic international approach, together with significant financial investment
at the national level, is urgently required if we are to realise the full benefit of science for society,’
Harris continued.

Dave Carlson, the Director of the programme office for the International Polar Year (IPY)—a major,
ICSU-sponsored, interdisciplinary research programme that is using and generating enormous
amounts of data—added: ‘There are more than 200 IPY research projects, funded to the tune of 1.5
billion Euros, and its major legacy should be the data that will inform polar research for years to come.
But we still don’t know how most of this data will be handled’.

ICSU will be implementing the recommendations for a World Data System over the next three years. The report cand more information on the General Assembly are available at: www.icsu.org/3_mediacentre/GA_29.html

Who knows what kind of advances this sharing of research might yield.

The head of the Design Team and former world record holder Richard Noble (Project Director of The BLOODHOUND Project) are working to develop the first land speed vehicle that breaks the 1,000 mph barrier and will have its design underpinned through world-class research from some of the UK’s top laboratories.

The team worked with the scientists at the UK’s National Physical Laboratory (NPL), the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) and Fluid Gravity Engineering (FGE) to advise the world-record bid team on two of the most high-risk aspects of the world record attempt.

Many materials were considered for the wheels including a choice of metals and composites that could be used in the design, providing reports on titanium and aluminium alloys, and metal composites.

Those two aspects are the wheel and rocket designs. To reach 1,000 mph they need to be able to rotate at 10,500 rpm without being damaged by the road surface or any stones that may be in the road. In addition they need to be able to need to be as light as possible to minimise steering and suspension forces, absorb all of the weight, down force loads and stresses and distribute this pressure without causing damage to the vehicle or the surface.

The vehicle will have the first ever mixed powerplant of a hybrid rocket motor and a jet engine that is currently used on the Eurofighter Typhoon. It uses cutting edge jet technology to provide the initial thrust and the novel rocket impulse to achieve the 1,000 mph target. The hybrid engine is being tested by a scale model that is only 6 inches long.

What do they think of the progress so far?

Well Brian Chapman, who is the Project Leader for NPL, said:

“When you’re travelling at 1,000 mph you don’t want to be worrying about your motor holding out or whether your tyres are up to it. That’s why NPL – with FGE and AWE – have spent the last year looking at every eventuality for both the wheel and the rocket motor designs. We have been closely examining the effect that materials properties will have on the rocket performance, the size and weight the wheels need to be to sustain the speed, and environmental effects such as a high speed impact with a small piece of debris could have. We’re confident that our work will help to ensure that Richard and Andy are able to safely oversee another successful world record attempt for the UK, and go faster than ever before.”

Dozens of cars in the Boston area are testing the latest generation of an MIT mobile-sensor network for traffic analysis that could help drivers cut their commuting time and alert them to potential engine problems.  In addition the project, named the CarTel project, will allow automobiles to monitor their environment by sending data from an onboard computer — which is about the size of a cell phone — to a web server where the data can be visualized and browsed. They will do so via pre-existing WiFi networks which the car passes during a trip.

CarTel is also linked to a vehicle’s onboard diagnostics system (available in all cars sold since 1996), so a driver can check various parameters key to maintenance and be alerted to potential problems.

The CarTel project, is being run by Professor Hari Balakrishnan and Associate Professor Samuel Madden of MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science as well as Jacob Eriksson from the University of Illinois, Chicago.

“Our goal,” Balakrishnan said, “is to make the data behind CarTel available to help you plan and organize your commute and drives. We want to minimize the amount of time spent in your car.”

The system has already been in small scale testing for a while.  The current system, deployed since January on 50 Boston-area cars – including 40 taxis — tracks traffic by monitoring each vehicle’s speed at different points during a trip. Unlike other route-planning systems, “CarTel understands where traffic delays are and recommends routes to avoid them,” Madden said.

From the f***ing awesome department comes word of a new patent by Microsoft that could have a profoundly positive impact on its Xbox Live service.

The eagle-eyes at Ars Technica report that the United States Patent and Trademark Office has approved Microsoft’s application for a way to censor profane or inappropriate language.

This is great news for anyone who has put up with one too many f-bombs, or any racial/ethnic/sexual slurs at all for that matter, while trying to enjoy a game of Halo or Gears of War.

According to the patent, the invention would process incoming audio, compare the words in the audio to an index of “undesired speech” and, based on the probability of a match, censor the audio to a point where it’s “substantially no longer perceivable by a listening audience.” Better still, the probability threshold improves dynamically to improve performance down the line.

Ars Technica also points out that this technology could be used for live television applications, possibly eliminating the need for a tape delay, or at least saving producers the stress of hovering over a “bleep” button.

Let’s hope something gets developed for the Xbox 360 soon, and for the sake of our Playstation 3 owners, gets offered or developed for Sony’s console as well. Better yet would be a technology to record incidents of foul language so that bigots could be wiped from online gaming outright.

[Via Joystiq]

Come November 19th, Xbox Live is going to get a major facelift. While the changes deal with mostly cosmetic and organizational issues, one feature of “The New Xbox Live Experience” will allow anyone to download user-created games.

Previously, this option was only available in beta to premium members of the XNA Creators Club, an exclusive group for the homebrew developers. Microsoft plans to bring the service out of beta along with the new Xbox Live.

This is no free ride for consumers, though. XBL Director of Programming Larry “Major Nelson” Hyrb inteviewed XNA Community Manager Kathleen Sanders on the topic, and they were sort of quiet on the factoid that you’ll have to pay for these games, so we’ll post Sanders’ quote right here:

“They have an idea, they have the energy and the willpower to do it, they can go and create it, put it through peer review, and then it’s up on Community Games for you to buy,” Sanders said.

To be fair, developers are going to make some money off of this, or at least recoup some of the $99 they spent on the development software. More specifically, they get 70 percent of the revenues, or 40 percent to 60 percent while the game is being promoted as a feature title. Games will cost between 200 and 800 Microsoft Points to download, according to Joystiq.

Hyrb has previously detailed some of the new organizational features of “The New Xbox Live Experience,” so hopefully we’ll also get some robust measures to sift through the inevitable amount of crap that will be available.

Currently out, as a free public download is the java development environment for Blackberry phones.  The download, currently in its public BETA, will enable any developer to make new programs for Blackberry Storm, Blackberry Bold and Blackberry Pearl Flip smartphones, as well as desktop simulators for the Blackberry Storm, Blackberry Bold and Blackberry Pearl Flip smartphones that accelerate mobile application testing.

These tools are known as the Blackberry JDE v.4.7 for short.  New API’s available with Blackberry JDE v4.7 that enables developers to take advantage of the new features of the Blackberry Storm smartphone.

Some of the features that you may see based on these tools include:

• Touch-screen support-receive input from taps, slides and other gestures.
• Orientation and rotation support-support portrait and landscape orientations and re-draw the screen when rotated.
• Camera and Media Integration- Build camera and video recording capabilities into a custom application.
• Set Homescreen Background Image- set the background image on a smartphone’s home screen

What does Blackberry think about that?  “The latest versions of the Blackberry Java Development Environment present developers with opportunities to create innovative, mobile-savvy applications that take advantage of the robust feature sets of the Blackberry Storm, Blackberry Bold and Blackberry Pearl Flip smartphones,”

said Alan Brenner, Senior Vice President, Blackberry platforms at Research in Motion.  “Each new Blackberry smartphone presents an opportunity for mobile developers to create new applications or extend their innovations with the latest advances in mobile technology and application development.”