Techonaut's log...

... A giant leap for electricity

2007-06-11T07:48:00.000-07:00

The most interesting tech news I've come across this week is about an experiment that was successfully done at MIT recently. They managed to light a 60-watt light bulb from a power source seven feet away with no wires connecting the power source and the bulb! The researchers employed two magnetic coils, 20 inches in diameter, designed to resonate together. The team labeled the concept WiTricity, for wireless electricity.

The applications of such technology is endless. Just imagine, wirelessly working on your laptop without the battery running out of power, wirelessly charging your mobile phones . . .

Online Book of Life

2007-05-10T09:02:00.000-07:00

A massive effort has been started to create the world's largest encyclopedia of life with information on every one of the 1.8 million species known to man. The projects will be extremely useful not just to scientists but also to people like you and me, students, anyone who needs to know about anything on life.

The Encyclopedia of Life

Its getting hot in here!

2007-05-07T10:49:00.000-07:00

Its interesting to see so many people talking about Global Warming and Saving the Environment these days. Finally, everyone's waking up. Yey to that. I really do believe that we have done a lot of damage to our planet and I also believe that Global Warming is caused by green house gas emissions. I don't care if someone else believes that or not because it really does not matter. Either way, they'll still have to agree that emissions are polluting the air we breathe, its not helping the environment for sure. They have to agree to that. You can see it, literally. Reducing emissions is the way forward. There's nothing wrong with being nice to our planet for a change and actively moving towards greener technology. All we have to do is look at it like a long-term investment or like life insurance, something we do for the benefit of our future generations. Lets give for a change!

Yahoo! Photos to Flickr and fade away

2007-05-06T02:04:00.000-07:00

Yahoo has decided that it will continue to support only one photo sharing service from now. They have chosen Flickr over Yahoo Photos. Being a Photos user, I was initially annoyed on hearing the news. However, I checked out Flickr, and guess what, its amazing! I wouldn't mind moving to Flickr at all, and I think this shouldn't impact me as much as I though it would since Yahoo will be offering easy methods to move all my current photos to Flickr and other photo sharing services. If you're a Yahoo photos user, then go to the Yahoo Help Pages for more information.

MSN Yahoo or Yahoo Live?

2007-05-05T00:23:00.000-07:00

It seems that M$ considering a merger with Y! to take on the big G. Thats right folks, Microsoft could be bidding for Yahoo as much as 50 billion dollars. Both Microsoft's MSN/Live and Yahoo! have a huge number of registered users all over the world. If this deal does happen, it would surely have a big impact on the Internet landscape. I wonder if it would lead a new portal with a fusion of both the Yahoo and MSN flavours, or these portals will remain separate (in which case theres probably a minimal impact to you or me, save the logo change). But the fact is that even a combined MSN-Yahoo would still be weaker than Google is currently.