Heh heh...heh heh...fire...

I see 4 possible futures for this guy:

1) Future X man (an evil one, 'cause only the evil ones have flame throwers, right?)
2) Engineer for Tony Stark
3) Prison
4) Intensive care in a burn unit

From Wired.

Do we really need a new browser?

As some of you may have heard, Google, in their ongoing campaign for online domination (hey, I have a Gmail account, I use Google Reader, and Blogger, which I use to host my blog, is owned by...guess who?), released their own web browser, called Chrome. Thus, we now have 5 significant players in the desktop web browser space...Microsoft (Internet Explorer), Opera (Opera Browser), Apple (Safari), Mozilla (Firefox), and Google.

Now, I understand that Google looks to Chrome to provide greater flexibility and integration to match the growing richness of the content available on the web. But Google is already a significant supporter of Firefox...why not just work with Mozilla to bring that functionality to Firefox? So is this really innovation for the sake of advancing the evolution of the web, or is it innovation for the sake of innovation?

Or innovation for the sake of control? Seems there's some interesting language in Chrome's license agreement that basically gives Google rights to any content you create using Chrome. So, for instance, if I wrote this blog post using Chrome, they could use it however they wanted. (By the way, here is what the Blogger terms of service say about my intellectual property rights: "Google claims no ownership or control over any Content submitted, posted or displayed by you on or through Google services.")

I think I'll pass for the moment.

(Note: Google has since announced that they'll be removing that language from its license agreement. Why was it there in the first place?)

It's all about the birds and the bees...and the cows?

I've heard of animal magnetism, but this is ridiculous. It's long been known that birds use the Earth's magnetic field to guide their migrations. But apparently cows have some kind of internal compass as well. And how was this discovered? Through the collective knowledge of generations of farmers? By comprehensive study by veterinarians?

No. By using Google Earth.

Knowing that small mammals, like bats, also have a magnetic sense, a group of researchers decided to see if large mammals, particularly domestic cattle. To figure it out, they looked at more than 8,500 Google Earth images, and found that cows tend to face either north or south.

No one knows precisely how this happens, how cattle and other animals "know" north and south from east and west (the researcher ruled out solar position in the sky as an influencing factor), but it may be that this "sixth sense" is widespread in the animal kingdom.

So think about it...you might have your own little GPS in your brain. But that still probably wouldn't keep you from getting lost on the streets of Boston...where Rt. 93 South and Rt. 95 North are the same road.

Candid cow closeup by flickr user wYnand!.

The connected home project - pt. 1

I'm a gadget freak. I love shiny things with buttons that go beep. For some time, I've thought it would be cool to wire (or unwire) up the house so that all of our music - maybe even photos and movies, too - lives on one computer in such a way that I can stream it around the house.

A couple of weeks ago, Lifehacker (one of my favorites geekery blogs) posted instructions on how to use an iPhone or iPod Touch as a multi-room music remote. Great post, but I don't have an iPhone or iPod Touch (but God, I want one!). But what I do have is a Macbook, a WiFi network, and a smartphone funning a program called Salling Clicker, which lets a phone act like - you guessed it - a WiFi remote control. All I was missing was an Airport Express.

Until yesterday, when the one I bought on eBay showed up. I haven't gotten everything hooked up yet, but once I do, I should be able to stream the music from my computer to my stereo, or even better, to the radio in my bedroom. If all works well, I may even get a couple more Airport Express units to hook up a couple of other rooms, and maybe even set up a wireless print server. I'll post an update later....

Anyone still wondering whether I'm a geek?

Update: It works!