Tech Curiosities: Boounce, ReadyBoost, and Fonolo

Admin.Jane

Three items have piqued my technical curiosity in the past week.  One I am excited about sharing because I had good results with it, one that I plan to try, and one I think is likely not ready for consumer prime time . . .

Boounce:

I heard about this on the local public radio community spotlight of a local techical start-up.  Billed by its producer as a low-footprint browser add-on that hyper-charges internet searching, Boounce (pronounced "bounce") returns searches from multitudes of standard and vertical search engines as well as niche websites concurrently.  With search results organized by clickable icons (when in "Toolbar" mode), Bounce claims to dive deeper and vastly outperform standard search engines in the amount and quality of results -- Because any given single

Facebook Friending and the Art of Profile Pics

Just a thought here, fellow Facebookers . . .

That is all.

~Riot.Jane

QOTD: The Internet Breeds Entitlement

Riot.Jane

Today's quotation:

The Web is truly customizable: You can listen to radios that play only your preferred tunes and read newspapers that cover only your favorite subjects. "We're used to having our tastes perfectly matched, whcih leads to entitlement," [Elias] Aboujaoude [author of Virtually You] says. If we don't experience novel things or sit through experiences we don't enjoy, we'll become a nation of spoiled, sheletered brats.

Bartz, Andrea. "The E-Ego." Psychology Today. Jun 2011: 25. Print

Today in 1945: Arthur C. Clarke Invents the Communications Satellite

Riot.Jane

If one particular man in history had died of polio as a child, you might not be reading this.  In fact, I daresay that modern Western life would indeed be very different.

On this day in 1945, Arthur C. Clarke began privately circulating his academic paper The Space-Station: Its Radio Applications.  (.pdf-page 34)

This privately-circulated paper and another published in Wireless World in October of the same year, Extra-Terrestrial Relays: Can Rocket Stations GiveWorld-Wide Radio Coverage? (.pdf-page 38), oth "discussed the special characteristics of geosynchronous orbit that would enable three satellites in that orbit to provide global communications." (.pdf-page 23.)

Broadband Research = Free Wireless Router!

Techies wanting to play a part in research that will provide US consumers with accurate broadband statistics (and maybe receive a free wireless router in the process!) should consider joining the Test My ISP project.

The Federal Communications Commision (FCC) and SamKnows are joining forces to test, measure, and provide reliable US home broadband connection statistics by placing 10,000 routers in homes across the country. They're actually distributing 10,000 free Netgear WNR3500L wireless-N routers pre-loaded with testing firmware to participants.