Thursday, May 12, 2005

Britain Backs Penalties if Iran Restarts Nuclear Program. Prime Minister Tony Blair said Britain would support U.S. moves to invoke the U.N. Security Council "if Iran breaches its obligations and undertakings." By ALAN COWELL. [NYT > International] 8:43:16 PM    comment []

Splice It Yourself. Who needs a geneticist? These days you can build your own DNA lab in the garage. By Rob Carlson from Wired magazine. [Wired News] 7:28:49 AM    comment []

Fantastic list of MP3 blogs Tofu Hut has published a huge list of blogs that have MP3s, arranged by genre. I need a bigger hard drive. BLUES/FOLK/OLDTIMEY music and sounds: American Memory Audio, American Music, Cantaria, Honey Where You Been?, Honking Duck, The Ragtime Ephemeralist, Tinfoil and Uncommon Folk. Link (Thanks, Sebastian!) [bOing bOing] 7:28:47 AM    comment []

Moovl. Moovl is a digital online drawing tool with lifelike dynamic properties. It allows children to create drawings that move according to simple rules of science. When children draw pictures on a Tablet PC or an interactive whiteboard, the animating environment simulates gravity, collision, and tension so that the pictures move as if they were in the real world. The software is intended to allow children to make predictions and hypotheses about how things in the world work, to visualise their ideas, and to test them out in a trial-and-error approach. An online "scrapbook" function allows kids to save their simulations and access resources created by other children over the web. This feature aims to help children to think together about science, and to share and solve problems together. Authors: SODA (the guys of the amazing soda constructor, a version for mobile phones is announced). Moovl will be shown at the OFFF festival in Barcelona, from 12th to 14th May. Via we make money not art [unmediated] 7:28:11 AM    comment []

Later this morning I'm giving a talk to a conference of 400 academics about "User communities and their tools." [Scripting News] 7:28:10 AM    comment []

A Reporting Tour de Force. Drunkenbatman's opus on his investigation into a software project is extraordinary. He's done apparently prodigious research, and does something more journalists should do: He tells us what he doesn't know, not just what he does. [Dan Gillmor on Grassroots Journalism, Etc.] 7:28:04 AM    comment []

Cisco Pushes a New Twist on Options. Cisco Systems is seeking approval for a financial instrument that could allow the company to assign a lower value to stock options than under current valuation models. By GARY RIVLIN and FLOYD NORRIS. [NYT > Technology] You are there . . . at the beginning of the next great transformation of capital markets, akin to the creation of the mortgage-backed securities that fueled takeover games two decades back. 7:17:23 AM    comment []

Google aquires(?) Dodgeball.com. But really...When a public company with a market cap of $64.1 billion "acquires" a two-person company, isn't that more like a "hire" with a signing bonus? (via PaidContent) [rexblog: Rex Hammock's Weblog] 7:16:00 AM    comment []

Students make their own MOMA audio-guides [bOing bOing] 7:08:18 AM    comment []

Great piece on the estate tax: how it works, why it makes sense (it's efficient, e.g., provides worthwhile incentives, and so on), and what the consequences of repeal would be like. Also contains many witty, pithy lines (such as that the estate tax permits having lower taxes during one's lifetime, and we all understand that taxes are generally less painful to the dead). The Estate Tax: Efficient, Fair and Misunderstood. Is support for repeal of the estate tax as broad as it appears? By ROBERT H. FRANK. [NYT > Business] 7:08:11 AM    comment []

New Edition of the CIA World Factbook. The CIA announced last month (press release here) that the 2005 CIA World Factbook is now available. The Factbook can be reached at http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html . In addition to the usual updates to the actual information, the Factbook has added features. As you know if you've used the Factbook before, it has a variety of information about each entity listed, broken up under several subheads. Under the People subhead, a "major infectious diseases" field has been added for countries which are considered to have a higher degree of risk for travelers. The entry for Benin, for example, lists waterborne and vectorborne diseases of which travelers should be aware as well as respiratory disease. There are other new entries as well. The Economy subhead has fields for Current Account Balance, Investment, Public Debt, and Reserves of Foreign Exchange and Gold. I did not see all these fields in Benin's entry. Finally the Transnational Subhead has a Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons field if appropriate. [ResearchBuzz] 7:05:46 AM    comment []

Go Forth and Multiply, Little Bot. Cornell researchers create a robot that can build copies of itself. They hope the modular machine is a step toward self-sustaining, adaptive contraptions. By Stephen Leahy. [Wired News] 7:05:06 AM    comment []