Filed under Technology

Never imagined Facebook would be used for this!

After Facebook being used in a variety of scenarios like match-making, dumping your wife, election campaigningrecruitment, novel writing, SOS, even writing a suicide message, here is the latest stuff - Facebook is being used to connect women, whose babies need supplemental milk, to lactating women who have extra milk (see full story here). A search cannot be more focussed (its a unique combination of needs and availability) and localized (both the recipient and the donor needs to be in the same locality). Forget you and me, even Zuckerberg could not have imagined this!!

PS – Just came across this piece, Israeli Military is using face book to catch hold of females avoiding serving the army by giving false information about their religious background. This is interesting!

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Waterless Washing

A company Xeros have developed a system to wash laundary using less than 10% of the amount of water as compared to currently available methods. This is done by the use of small polymer beads. These beads pull off stains from clothes and lock them into its molecular structure. Moreover, these beads can be used again and again … upto hundreds of washes. This process was invented by University of Leeds scientist Stephen Burkinshaw. The technology on which the process is based is explained in this published patent application.

Not only clothes, there are now products in market which allow “waterless shampooing of hair”. Details can be found here.

 

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From DNA to Design (and loads of Money!!)

Winning ideas are amazingly simple.

They are always there; just that no one noticed it. Until a maverick comes and finds it out, nurtures it, builds it into a winning business enterprise – and leaves you wondering – Oh man, why didn’t I think about it.

Have you ever seen a DNA gel electrophoresis. It is basically a dull black and white Keep reading…

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Google vs. Microsoft: You Bing me, I Chrome You

The inevitable has happened. Google has announced its intent to launch an operating system. Named as the Google Chrome OS, the operating system would be an open source system, initially targeted at netbooks. Speed, simplicity and security (all three features which lack in windows) will be the USPs of the new operating system. According to the announcement, the OS will have a minimalist interface (something which is very typical of Google). To start with the OS will be targeted towards users who spend a lot of time on the internet. Considering that their business is mostly limited to the internet, it is difficult to say whether a full fledged version of the OS is being planned of or not. Keep Reading…

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Scientific Research – Seriously?

I always had a great respect for scientific research. Basic research builds the platform for technological innovations and development, which in turn improves the standard of living. The quality of life today is much better than 50 years ago, the credit for which goes entirely to scientific research.

However, these days I find so many news articles/reports about research projects which seem useless at the best, and more often are ridiculous and purely stupid. Sample this: This research studied the response of a cockatoo towards more than 1000 videos and inferred that animals can indeed dance!! Another one proved that fleas living on dogs Keep Reading…

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Lets Tweet & Discover the Power of Micro-Blogging

A lot has been said, written and discussed about the use of Twitter as a tool for marketing (for the uninitiated Twitter is a micro-blogging service where you can send/receive 140 character long posts, called as tweets. You can tweet using cell phones also, and people can follow your tweets). After blogs and social networking, it is considered as the next big thing for viral/buzz marketing. Sony’s viral game for movie Terminator Salvation (where users use twitter for resistance squadrons in order to fight the machines) is one example of a successful viral marketing campaigns using Twitter. You will find a “Follow us on Twitter” link on a significant number of commercial websites these days. Keep Reading…

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Search 2.0 – What’s next in Internet Search?

If you want any information/data, you put a query (one or more words describing what you want) in an internet search engine, and it helps you in finding relevant websites having the desired information. In short, a search engine helps you find the source of the information and not the information itself. Currently, this is more or less how almost all search engines work.

However, search engines are evolving. Taking clues from current research, beta versions of newly launched search engines and limited search features provided by some of the existing search engines, we will soon have search engines which will provide answer to our questions, the data/information we want, rather than directing is to a list of potential sources. Keep Reading…

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Do You Google, Will You Bing?

No company has ever dominated one industry at the global level as Google has dominated Internet Search. It is not wrong to say that there are two types of people on this earth – those who use Google and those who do not use the internet.

Recently, Microsoft has unveiled a new search engine Bing, which will eventually replace the MSN live search. Bing, Microsoft’s attempt to break Google monopoly in internet search, has a refreshingly cool and colourful webpage. Publicized as a “Decision Engine” rather than a “Search Engine”, Bing helps people make better decisions regarding shopping, travel, restaurant, health, etc. Not surprising, this is from where most of the advertising money comes from. Keep Reading…

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