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for
year
December 20 to 31, 2005
Have a very happy New
year
's, everyone. Thus ends the first full
year
of Kev's News...
The "gallery of computation" has gotten both larger and more varied over the last
year
or so. Great stuff...
The New York Times' 2004
year
in pictures...
April 25 to May 1, 2005
Here's a comprehensive technical overview of Tiger, and why its software architecture for recording, composing, and playing images, movies, music and generally any kind of media is light
year
s ahea...
A beautiful woodpecker thought to be extinct for 60
year
s is found...
I recently revisited AutoStitch and tried the Windows demo application that was released last
year
. The results were completely amazing and it's the most easy-to-use, powerful panorama maker I've eve...
April 18 to 24, 2005
The EU last
year
fined Microsoft $700 million for abusing its near-monopoly in the software industry. Meanwhile, an EU Commissioner who could affect the amount of these fines was invited to a lavish...
Partly thanks to its sale of hybrid cars, Toyota expects to see its best first quarter in 48
year
s. GM expects to lose $850 million that same quarter due to short term bets on "cheap" and "plentiful...
April 11 to 17, 2005
It's official - all the greatest new technology will be here in five
year
s...
April 4 to 10, 2005
Low-power FM (LPFM) radio, devised by the FCC to provide an alternative to corporate-centric radio, is now being dominated by Christian radio networks, effectively limiting the diversity of loca...
With 99% confidence, researchers have found that planetary biodiversity comes and goes roughly every 62 million
year
s, and may be due to astrophysical causes. Looking at the graph, I think we're at ...
March 28 to April 3, 2005
1,360 scientists from 95 countries say that two-thirds of the world's resources are "used up" in a four-
year
$24 million U.N.-sponsored survey...
Gory images of this
year
's Canadian seal hunt...
March 21 to 27, 2005
Environment Hawaii, an independent, nonprofit, award-winning publication that has been around for nearly 15
year
s may be going out of business due to lack of financial support. It's the last 100...
March 14 to 20, 2005
Towards tolerance - "Under armed guard, a woman broke with more than a thousand
year
s of Islamic tradition to lead men and women in a prayer service yesterday in Manhattan"...
March 7 to 13, 2005
One of my pet topics - what happens to your data and online personality after you die? This article uses the case of Aaron Huth, who still has an online presence (and bank account) a
year
after hi...
It's likely that Axl Rose's next album, which has been in the works for 10
year
s at a cost of over $13 million, is the most expensive album ever made...
The blogosphere's raving about 27
year
-old Maya Arulpragasam, daughter of a Sri Lankan revolutionary, who's mixing terrorist themes with pop art and music and causing an stir among critics as well a...
February 28 to March 6, 2005
Howard Stringer becomes Sony's first non-Japanese CEO, after five
year
s of stock declines and poor business decisions. The beginning of the end was circa 1998, when the mp3 community (then a loos...
A friend wrote this article about the Kolea, a five ounce bird that has been flying from Alaska to Hawaii annually for the last 120,000
year
s...
February 21 to 27, 2005
In a panel at a Web conference in 1995 I talked about the inevitable rise of instant stardom and its perils, once the Web got popular. Here are some of the latest subjects - a very funny online vide...
Wal-Mart flew in a team of labor experts to counter 21
year
-old employee Joshua Noble and 17 others who tried to form a union. Despite international attention, the effort failed. "It's just a bunch o...
Nature is a lot tougher than you. Scientists revive 32,000
year
-old frozen bacteria...
The cool trailer for the new movie based on the Philip K. Dick novel "A Scanner Darkly". In nine
year
s, everything you do will be recorded...
February 14 to 20, 2005
Hawaii's poetry slam team made quite a splash last
year
at the national poetry slam competition in St. Louis. You can watch their inspiring performances in a new documentary on the subject calle...
GoDaddy is offering free one-
year
SSL certificates to open source projects...
A review of the latest homemade flight simulators from the last few
year
s...
It's true, the International Monetary Fund bankrupts the Third World, as noted by a former banker in this article mentioned last
year
...
New proof of manmade global warming, thanks to a study of ocean temperature over 40
year
s...
This is not new, but I must have forgotten to mention it here last
year
- the elegantly designed Toro(tm) tissue ring...
January 31 to February 6, 2005
The music industry sued an 83-
year
-old dead woman for file sharing...
Sales of $1 million-plus homes in San Francisco grew an amazing 73% last
year
...
California's explosion of autism cases worsened last
year
...
January 24 to 30, 2005
Two tourists took the same shot of an obscure bridge from a difficult vantage point, 20
year
s apart...
The 101 dumbest moments in business. Number three: the chairman of gun manufacturer Smith & Wesson was forced to resign after it was discovered that he spent 15
year
s in prison for a string of arme...
The Bush administration OKs drilling for oil in rare grassland in New Mexico, despite objections from the state's governor, who used to be the Secretary of Energy in the Clinton administration. Thi...
The government is accusing DuPont of hiding materials that suggest that a chemical in Teflon leads to cancer and birth defects. Not only that, the chemical's been found in people's bloodstreams. Afte...
Only nine chlorine plants in the U.S. put eight tons of mercury into the environment each
year
, although some say 65 more tons are unaccounted for annually. This is mostly due to the use of obsolet...
Thanks to rampant over-prescription of antibiotics for over half of U.S. patients, antibiotics may be useless in 50
year
s...
Why don't local supermarkets sell reusable shopping bags at time of checkout? Here's how some towns in Australia managed to ban disposable plastic bags at supermarkets, saving 350,000 bags in th...
January 10 to 16, 2005
Remember last
year
when an onboard Windows system crashed, trapping the Finance Minister of Thailand in his BMW...
In the same way that the MPAA is cracking down on movie pirates, Monsanto is cracking down on farmers that save their patented GM seeds from
year
to
year
...
January 1 to 9, 2005
The story of 21
year
-old Matt Leto, possibly the greatest video-game player ever. He likely holds over 800 world records and is set to make six digits in competitions this
year
...
December 13 to 19, 2004
Recording Academy members voting for the GRAMMY awards will now be able to listen to all nominated songs in the "Record of the
year
" category via iTunes...
December 6 to 12, 2004
Handy child psychology tips and world-weary wisdom from a 14-
year
store Santa veteran...
It's still a little early to call, but here are some pictures of the
year
, more worthy for their subjects than aesthetics...
The Eiffel Tower has a skating rink for the first time in 115
year
s...
November 22 to 28, 2004
Today a new blog is created every 5.8 seconds - here's the latest statistics on the state of the blogosphere. Over 90% of bloggers are 13 to 29
year
s old...
A ten-
year
-old toasted cheese sandwich said to bear the image of Virgin Mary sold for $28,000 on eBay...
The worldwide effects of the sinking dollar, now at a nine-
year
low...
A South Korean woman paralyzed for 20
year
s is now walking again, thanks to stem cells derived from umbilical cord blood...
November 15 to 21, 2004
Timekeeping has just become more accurate, and the second is redefined for the first time in 37
year
s...
Young tech workers can't afford to live in Silicon Valley anymore, a concern for
year
s...
An inspirational account of a three-
year
backpacking trip around the world. With lots of photos...
November 8 to 14, 2004
"The Persuaders" - now: This show aired on Frontline this week exploring advertising's latest evolution - it's all about narrowcasting and emotional advertising that speaks to your "inner lizard" an...
The story behind the five-
year
development of Half-Life 2, which could be one of the greatest PC videogames of all time and make over $700 million in revenues worldwide...
Unemployment among IT workers is higher than the overall jobless rate for the first time in over 30
year
s...
A movie about the Veggie Van, a biodiesel van that criss-crossed the U.S. for over two
year
s. Apologies for the kitschy yet catchy pseudo-folk music...
November 1 to 7, 2004
But that's not why this ex-Reserve Kauai resident is making world news by suing over his recall to active duty after 13
year
s of being out of the service...
October 25 to 31, 2004
New gold CD-Rs are said to last 300
year
s...
Yes, the U.S. knows where Osama is. And he's still getting "only" $1 million a
year
from his family...
October 18 to 24, 2004
About Blake Ross, the 19-
year
-old lead architect of Firefox, the browser downloaded by almost 3 million...
Nat'l Geographic survey - less than 15% of U.S. 18-to-24
year
olds can locate Iraq on a map...
Once the Yucca Mountain 40,000-
year
nuclear waste repository opens in 2010, it will be 1/3 smaller than needed to store all the accumulated waste by then...
October 11 to 17, 2004
19-
year
-old Derek's "King George" sticker on his Grand Am got him a date with the Secret Service...
October 4 to 10, 2004
A rapid body temperature cooling device may help improve athletic performance. My friend at IDEO helped design this a few
year
s ago...
September 27 to October 3, 2004
The "Hello Kitty" debit card, targeted to 10 to 14
year
-olds...
September 13 to 19, 2004
Does anyone know of space for a gymnastics program that "put 11 kids on the national team last
year
"...
September 5 to 12, 2004
U.S. broadband triples in three
year
s. 75% use cable, only 15% use DSL...
Lee Bontecou is one of my favorite artists - she pioneered works that addressed the connections between technology and nature, before H.R. Giger's time. Once the talk of the art world, she dropped ou...
August 30 to September 5, 2004
Last
year
's Labor Day vigil at the sacred hill Pu'u Ohau, at the edge of the unfinished elite Hokulia estate and golf course development on top of ancient Hawaiian burial grounds. Kupunas calle...
"Despite a strong state economy, the homeless rate in Hawaii has nearly doubled over the past four
year
s, and the majority of the new homeless are native Hawaiians and those with some Hawaiia...
The world's smallest atomic clock will lead to devices with super-accurate time everywhere (1 second is lost every 300
year
s), affecting cryptography, global communications, etc....
Over the last 20
year
s 4,000 corrupt Chinese officials have fled with over $600 million...
This week's 12 and 16-
year
-olds marked as terrorists and apprehended by the Secret Service...
Watch the fascinating evolution of 100
year
s of Olympic poster design...
"BMI posts record
year
, despite music industry doom and gloom"...
August 22 to 29, 2004
Thanks to automatic bill-paying, a man lay dead in his bed for two
year
s before being discovered...
It costs the U.S. Government $6.5 billion a
year
just to keep things secret. 90% of those things shouldn't be...
August 8 to 14, 2004
What to do about the War Memorial/Natatorium on Kaimana Beach, an unlabeled hazardous collapsing eyesore that's confused tourists and annoyed locals for 25
year
s? The one that will cost untol...
Over the last few
year
s developer Kenneth Hughes has proposed an ambitious redevelopment plan, which would replace the nearby HECO power plant with a real parking garage and build apartments...
August 2 to 8, 2004
About 22
year
-old Ryan Pitlak, a marketing student who may have made hundreds of thousands from spam, coming from hundreds of shell companies he set up...
Last
year
's "Most Discussed" award winner...
See how a family changes, via similar photos taken every
year
for 28
year
s...
July 26 to August 1, 2004
After a
year
in operation, Kev's News goes online! Since everyone seems to have a blog these days, I decided to go ahead and just do it. I see the rise of blogs as a symptom of people learning how t...
An in-demand violin maker in Berkeley creates quality violins with 200-
year
old wood from Lake Superior. Also an acupuncturist, he sees the vibrational connections between his vocations...
July 19 to 25, 2004
An LED research breakthrough may lead to LEDs replacing lightbulbs in five
year
s...
About Dubai's crown price, the man behind the $3 billion Palm, the "eighth wonder of the world". He makes $2 billion a
year
without even trying...
The fascinating story of East Germany's most embarrassing defection - an intelligence officer, a 16
year
-old, and his mother. Here's a taste of what it's like to grow up in an atmosphere of povert...
UH is building a plant waste processing facility that will net $100k a
year
by tunrning plant waste into charcoal...
July 12 to 18, 2004
Cool Concept of the Week: Seed Balls Take 100 to 200 properly chosen seeds of plants, trees, fruits, and vegetables, and pack them in a hardened sphere of mineral-rich red clay. Scatter one abou...
Tired of Hotmail and other free mail services that bombard you with junk mail and don't let you send large attachments? Try Spymac's new "Spymac mail", with a 3GB inbox, a 20MB attachment limit, jun...
Recent progress in 3D visualization technology allows "virtual excavation", in this case, the ability to completely examine the contents of a 3,000
year
-old mummy without touching it...
New surfboards with shark-repelling devices will hit the market this
year
...
July 5 to 11, 2004
Have you ditched Internet Explorer yet? It's lost 1% in popularity so far, its first recorded decline in five
year
s. That's about 300,000 people...
After two
year
s of noodling, Ford announces the first hybrid SUV...
June 28 to July 4, 2004
"Facetop", a method of videoconferencing that's actually about 35
year
s old but may one day be popular...
May 31 to June 6, 2004
"For the second straight
year
, an Internet unknown won the famed World Series of Poker on Friday, ravaging a field of professional players on his way to glory and riches....
Never mind the news you've read last week about the lack of sex in Japan. I'm curious about "hikikomori", a contributing condition affecting one million teen boys - they never leave their rooms...
"Bad Hair
year
...
May 24 to 30, 2004
Beautiful photos from the Harbin Snow and Ice Festival, where it's below freezing over half the
year
...
Some of the hippest mp3 blogs out there. Mash-ups are really popular these days. The mp3 format actually got popular because of blogs like "Blex's Page of Good Mp3", seven
year
s ago. I used to visi...
May 17 to 23, 2004
The beautiful story of the last pure Hawaiian land, and William Kaihe'ekai Mai'oho, whose family has guarded King Kamehameha's bones for 185
year
s...
Eight
year
s ago my old startup bought from Peapod every week. Now online groceries are coming back...
May 10 to 16, 2004
How about trying environmentally friendly anti-foul compounds used on ships? The six-
year
test is impressive...
More groovy green efforts from San Francisco: an ink jet cartridge recycler and an industrial composting company. This is a great model for cities to follow to get small businesses recycling compos...
The UK is trying "chewing gum posters" to help alleviate gum on the street, and there have been "tangible results". Gum is a $225M/
year
problem...
One of the coolest painting programs I've seen in
year
s: Cosmic Painter! It's free and better than a Spirograph. (Sorry, for Mac OSX only)...
May 3 to 9, 2004
The Sasser worm, developed by an 18
year
-old in Germany who also made the ubiquitous "Netsky" email virus, infected an estimated million computers last week, 80% of which belonged to home users an...
Over ten
year
s since the first Web survey mentioned women, marketers still have misconceptions about what women want online...
April 26 to May 2, 2004
In class a 15-
year
old art student draws Bush's head on a stick. The Secret Service visits the school...
April 19 to 25, 2004
Due to a budget crisis in California, the U.C. college system is turning away eligible students for the first time in over 40
year
s...
April 12 to 18, 2004
An extensive 20-
year
study of a baboon troop found a permanent, unprecedented cultural shift occurred when the most violent, dominant males died out from a tuberculosis outbreak...
The Pixies played together in public for the first time in about 12
year
s...
This is the logical progression of hampsterdance.com, which took the net by storm five
year
s ago, gathering over 60 million visitors worldwide...
Ben & Jerry's is installing new freezers in their stores that use sound waves instead of chemicals refrigerants for cooling. Commercial (domestic) use of such technology is still 5 to 10
year
s away...
April 5 to 11, 2004
Bad singing - it's in fashion again! William Hung is a plucky 21-
year
-old U.C. Berkeley engineering student who tried out for American Idol and was kicked off halfway through his audition. His firs...
Wooden-cone speakers will be hitting the market - they have a wider and smoother frequency response than conventional speaker technology. Here's the story of how this breakthrough was achieved afte...
"The share of the economic pie going to wages and salaries has plummeted to just over 50%, its lowest level in at least the past 50
year
s, and perhaps longer....
The story behind the IRS' $8 billion modernization project, which has chewed up three CIOs in seven
year
s...
March 31, 2004
While the islands have seen a few distinctive architects that were compelled, nurtured, and influenced by Hawaii's natural environment - Dickey, Ossipoff, Morgan - the last 40
year
s has been witnes...
The last two
year
s have seen a rise in co-housing and prefabricated architecture projects in Europe and the U.S.. Thanks to the support of cutting-edge shelter magazines such as Dwel...
March 29 to April 5, 2004
"Nude women have been on the menu at The Sutler for
year
s, but the Nashville pub covered up the 19th-century Victorian photos after being warned they might be too racy for state law....
"Spreadsheets: 25
year
s in a Cell...
March 22 to 28, 2004
Musician Kevin Shields created one of the most expensive, influential and highly praised albums of the last two decades - "Loveless". Here's his first interview in 12
year
s...
March 1 to 7, 2004
Lawrence Lessig's article on why he thinks he lost last
year
's Supreme Court battle over copyright terms...
The first music video ever to be entirely shot using a cell phone. Reminds me of the first movies made for the Web ten
year
s ago - in another ten directors may be viewing dailies on their phones...
February 23 to 29, 2004
Modern video games are on the cutting edge of reality simulation: where 20
year
s ago a shoot-'em-up game took one to four people, today's games require teams of 30+ and specialized knowledge o...
10 million Pacific giant crabs are invading Norway's coast and destroying the local ecology. "But Glenn, a 30-
year
-old car mechanic, replied: 'It's true the seabed now looks like the Sahara but the...
February 16 to 22, 2004
Apple had the largest earnings increase of tech companies last
year
, with a 552% jump in annual profits...
Heard the Grammy Award-winning Song of the
year
"Hey Ya", the one with the phrase "shake it like a Polaroid picture?" Thanks to advances in instant photography, doing so can actually damage you...
February 9 to 15, 2004
Pictures and information about Destino, the lost 50
year
-old animated collaboration between Disney and Salvador Dali. It's been nominated for an Oscar...
A Swedish company has developed an environmentally friendly way to dispose of (and recycle) bodies. This is as opposed to the current methods, whose byproducts are polluting incinerators, toxi...
February 2 to 8, 2004
A California bill has been signed to invest $3.7 billion in the next four
year
s in nanotech research...
The IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) has a nice article on this
year
's dream engineering jobs. They interview the guy who made Sony's jumping robots, but the real story i...
A new paint eats smog for five
year
s - it's been shown to reduce pollution up to 60 percent at street level...
January 26 to February 1, 2004
Another groovy 360-degree panaroma, this one of Chinese New
year
's in New York...
January 19 to 25, 2004
"Republican staff members of the US Senate Judiciary Commitee infiltrated opposition computer files for a
year
, monitoring secret strategy memos and periodically passing on copies to the media"...
January 12 to 18, 2004
Finally, Verizon announces that it will convert its entire nationwide telecommunications network to packet switching, "the protocol on which the Internet runs". This, over 40
year
s after AT&...
January 5 to 11, 2004
The New York Times refused to run this article - the journalist posted it himself online instead. Here's a good idea to help offset online "sharing" - a $60 per
year
charge for broadband users...
December 29 to January 4, 2004
Happy New
year
! Slow news week though...
December 22 to 28, 2003
Lots of end-of-
year
lists popped up here and there. Here's a few: The 2003
year
in pictures, from the San Francisco Chronicle...
Power adapters one-fourth of their current size will be mass-produced next
year
, thanks to new piezoelectric technology...
There were 40% more faxes last
year
than in 2001! ?Que pasa...
One company expects 1.2 million subscribers by
year
's end...
December 15 to 21, 2003
Multiple studies have confirmed that there is at least 10% less sunlight striking the Earth than 30
year
s ago. A special session on "global dimming" is being formed for the next joint meeting of th...
A Texas housewife is busted for selling a vibrator... she faces up to a
year
in jail and a $4,000 fine...
The anatomy of a Hawaiian high-tech news item This
year
, a UH-Manoa researcher working with international collaborators discovered a new unknown subatomic particle, called X(3872)...
December 8 to 14, 2003
It's legal (and has been for
year
s) in over half the states to sell your voter registration information - including name, race, email, street address, phone number, birth date, political affiliation...
Alexi has become popular on the strength of his self-made
year
-old 4-song album on cdbaby, two songs off which have already been featured on national TV shows. Many college/independent DJs and majo...
And now, in complete contrast to the above... the Mushroom House, a beautiful handcrafted wooden house in Canada that took 22
year
s to make...
December 1 to 7, 2003
A 7-
year
-old is punished in school for talking about his lesbian moms...
November 17 to 23, 2003
The epidemic is so bad that the U.S. government last week developed a 10-
year
plan to battle it. Now it is thought to effect 6 of 1,000 kids: "Autism no longer considered a rare condition...
November 3 to 9, 2003
Kev's News: No matter what happens, there it is! Did you know that this is the
year
of the Hawaiian Forest? In honor, here's a picture from last week of what they're replacing the forests with.....
October 27 to November 2, 2003
20% less males aged 18 to 34 are watching TV compared to last
year
...
October 27, 2003
Kev's News: None of the news you want to hear, all the news you need to hear! Electricity from water The first new method of generating electricity in 150
year
s...
Sanyo is making corn-derived biodegradable CDs - they'll hit stores in December. Much better for landfills. They degrade after 50-100
year
s...
Next
year
public, free globally connected 10-foot high 24-hour cylindrical videoconferencing portals will be set up in major cities...
A trial just started that could pave the way for holding U.S. companies accountable for pollution overseas - it involves toxic oil dumps in total 50 percent larger than the Exxon Valdez spill sprea...
October 14, 2003
The world's first motorized surfboard This is quite a revolutionary device - it's to surfing what snowboards are to skiing. This August it won approval for U.S. distribution after a 16-yea...
October 6, 2003
"Study: Orangutans may die out in 20
year
s...
September 15, 2003
"12-
year
-Old Sued for Music Downloading (by RIAA)...
September 8, 2003
"Not Just Warmer: It's the Hottest for 2,000
year
s...
The trials of teaching 14
year
-olds...
Diamond-cutting robots are on the rise! Contrast with the recent progress made in synthetic diamond tech (see the recent Wired) and you'll see how the entire industry could be completely automated i...
Ever see that movie "Blast From The Past", about a man who spent 35
year
s in a nuclear fallout shelter built by his dad...
September 2, 2003
The incredible story of an Estonian man who lived in the forest for eight
year
s evading the Soviets...
An award-winning British journalist leaves the US after six
year
s but finds it again at a Patti Smith concert. Lots of nice little facts in this article.....
August 25, 2003
Affected by the recent computer viruses? The solution: 1) Don't use Outlook. 2) Don't use Windows. I just spent a couple hours cleaning up a friend's infected Windows machine this week. In over 1...
August 12, 2003
The English to 12-
year
-old AOLer Translato...
July 28, 2003
Thanks to 10,000
year
s of selective breeding by humans, bananas will vanish forever in a decade...
July 21, 2003
However, note that every
year
since 1977 there have been more Canadians moving to the US than vice-versa...
July 16, 2003
"Why," you may wonder, "are you sending me email like this, Kev?" you may ask. I say: because you have a committed interest in keeping the world from being absolutely mediocre. Therefore an...
July 8, 2003
...reminds me of the grad student many
year
s ago that built his own atom bomb.....