#thetechpete

Link: 'Test tube' meat could slash energy use

From edie.net:

Meat grown in laboratories could slash the energy used in its production, according to new research.

Beef, pork and lamb grown using tissue engineering techniques, often referred to as cultured or in vitro meat, need up to 45% less energy to produce according to scientists.

Work carried out by scientists from Oxford University and the University of Amsterdam, also estimates the artificial meat could lower greenhouse gas emissions by 96% compared to conventionally produced meat.

However, the meat is never actually part of a real animal and has been produced in laboratories on very small scale, but the high costs of the process mean it has not been taken up commercially, yet.

Link: EXCLUSIVE: Google to Retire Blogger/Picasa Brands in Google+ Push -- Ben Parr

From stoweboyd:

Ben Parr reports — exclusively — that Picasa and Blogger will become cogs in the Google+ refactoring of Google’s social tools.

As I recently wrote, ” Google+ is currently a browser based system, but it is relatively easy to imagine the core functionality implemented in a next generation Android, and all the tools — like Circles and Hangouts — accessed as complementary apps, along with dozens or hundreds of others built by Google or a growing ecology of developers.”

And it seems that Google is moving to quickly ‘plusify’ systems that were standalone apps until the present day.

Hmmm, wish they would absorb YouTube and ditch that stupid name while they’re at it (“YouTube”—REALLY?).  Of course, sucking Blogger into g+ seems to be making it a serious competitor with… Tumblr.

Ruh-roh!

Link: A Different Threat to Net Neutrality

fredericguarino:

get ready to rumble !

continuations:

The whole fight about net neutrality is about to take a turn from the abstract to the concrete but in a somewhat unexpected way. It is not ISPs or telcos that are turning out to be the immediate culprits, but rather content owners, specifically TV networks. They are blocking Google TV from…

I was thinking the exact same thing this morning.  Why is accessing their content on Google TV any different from accessing their account in Google Chrome? Or Firefox? Or…? Isn’t the easy way around this just to turn all TVs into PCs?

“Microblogging wars?” Really?

From the usually well-balanced underpaidgenius:

Microblogging Wars Escalate: Posterous Claims Tumblr Blocks Its Autopost Feature

soupsoup:

I think this is a smart move by Tumblr.

Not as a strategic way to make Posterous less useful, but because I don’t want content auto-posted from one social network to another anywhere, be it Posterous, Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Auto-posting, link dumping, are the worst things to ever happen to social media besides social media “experts”

Since Stowe hasn’t added any commentary here, I assume he agrees with the soupsoup post.  This doesn’t make him unbalanced, but usually he throws a little something in to let UnderpaidGenius readers know what he thinks.  Since he didn’t assume is all we can do. In that case, then I disagree with both of them. The worse thing to happen to social media is the idea that people can decide what’s right for everyone—even *saying* that a particular use of a particular site or function should not be allowed is a downright douchey thing to do. Who are you to decide what things are used for? Who cares? Don’t like how someone uses something? Don’t follow them or don’t use the site.  One site being deliberately jerky to another, regardless of the reason, has one effect that matters—the users being inconvenienced.

But no, no, it’s much more important that these “Microblogging wars” continue, for they are just wars!  WAIT—no they’re not.  Posterous and Tumblr are both pretty good at being douchey.

In fact, from my first experience with Tumblr I felt that Tumblr cornered the market on uber-controlling, doucheyness in that it has a few odd limitations that almost turned me off the site, entirely.  For starters, Tumblr tells you exactly how to post what you post.  Want to post a picture?  No title allowed. The same goes for video and audio posts, too—Sure, you can add a title to a text post, but it is “optional,” which always feels like discouragement, to me.  When I email a picture directly to Tumblr, it only accepts the email’s subject as the caption (rather than the title, unlike Posterous, which logically does this) and Tumblr ignores any *actual* caption you include in the body of the email (also, *unlike* Posterous).

Then, when you do post a pic, depending on how you do it, it may show up in full-size *only* on your blog and as a thumbnail to any Tumblr users who follow you or possibly, to them, not at all.  See, if you only visit a Tumblr-user’s main page, you see everything they want you to see—which is fine. But if you take advantage of Tumblr’s largely AWESOME Twitter-style dashboard (which displays your stream of Tumblr blogs you’re following), all bets are off.  Tumblr will either display a seriously tiny thumbnail of your image or not at all, putting a tiny rectangle icon in its place. I don’t care why Tumblr does this—it is intensely frustrating.

Tumblr does a few things really well, however.  The previously-mentioned Twitter-style dashboard is completely addictive.  I *love* it and it’s really why I continue to use Tumblr.  It’s the single easiest way to keep up with blogs you care about.  I wish every other blog service would rip it off because every time I come across a blog I love that isn’t on Tumblr I get frustrated because nobody makes it easier to follow you than Tumblr.  In fact, I just walk away from blogs on other services for that reason :(

Tumblr also makes it SUPER easy to run multiple blogs.  I run over a dozen of them.  Their theme system is straightforward and incredibly simple to use or customize.  Their tags work incredibly well (even as categories) and you can provide RSS feeds for each tag if you want to.  I love that Tumblr will allow you to import feeds. However, like regular posting, there are rigid guidelines the imports must fit into—which I don’t like.

One other thing I like about Tumblr is that they let you include Google Adsense in your theme.  Letting you make a few pennies off of your own content—imagine that!  This was my main motivation for moving all of my online blogging to Tumblr and to put up with their other limitations, in the process.  It’s been worth it, but I wish they’d improve—loosen up their absurd posting rules—I was using Posterous to crosspost to Tumblr just because it was more flexible than directly posting to Tumblr—but since Tumblr doesn’t allow for crossposted images to display to Tumbr-users in their streams, I’ve stopped doing this.  So if Tumblr could allow for images to be displayed, that’d be great, too.

See, I love Posterous for it’s flexibility of posting but hate it for everything else.  It’s themes are hard to use, it’s interface is cumbersome and clunky, and their recent “Tumblr is for high school kids” post made them look like a bunch of dickweeds and inspired me to block anyone from seeing my content on their site.  In fact, it looks like they’ve just been targeting every blog site known to man and talking about how Posterous is better—it’s like they’re really desperate or something.

But of all the blogging services I’ve tried out, Posterous does have the most potential.  It is truly mobile and is as easy to post to as sending an email.  Of course, anything beyond that and it’s a horrible pain in the ass.

Link: The conscience of Google & how to opt out of Stalkery Ads

The harvest has begun.. Ron Bowes is from Canada, and he is a security consultant. Just this week, Mr. Bowes changed the world as we know it, perhaps ever damning the word “privacy” into the trash heap of history. And how did he do it? Using the very data that people knowingly and happily gave up themselves on Facebook..

Bowes collated 100 million Facebook users’ names, addresses, and unique ID numberson a single 2.8 gig file and posted it online..Facebook also enabled this grand release of private data.

via coalspeaker.com

I would quit Facebook in a New York second if only I could convince my family and friends who treat the site like a religion to quit, too.

Maybe I should bite the bullet and set the good example.  The problem with that is simple: FB as lame as it is, is great for networking.  Plus, it saves me money on business cards—I barely give them out. I just tell them the socnets I’m on and they find me if they want to.

website666:

Yesterday was the birthday of one of the most amazing scientists whom you have likely never heard of—Nikola Tesla!

turnofthecentury:

i12bent:July 10, 1856 was the birthday of one of the great scientists of the Victorian epoch, Nikola Tesla (d. 1943)…

Tesla was an important contributor to the birth of commercial electricity, and is best known for his many revolutionary developments in the field of electromagnetism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Tesla’s patents and theoretical work formed the basis of modern alternating current (AC) electric power systems.[ more Tesla here]

What that excerpt above means to say is: Nikola Tesla made it possible for our lives to be the way they are today.

Seriously, the man worked out how to deliver electricity to those wall outlets we plug all our crap into.  The man is a true hero to all of humankind and yet hardly anyone knows what he did.  Last month we saw Neil deGrasse Tyson give a Q&A talk at the American Museum of Natural History where Tyson explained that if he had a time machine he’d go back in time and hang out with Newton.  I say screw Newton—I wanna hang with the Tesla! If you haven’t heard of Tesla or have but want to learn more, I highly recommend finding a copy of The Man Who Invented the 20th Century by Robert Lomas. It’s a great read and tells you all about Tesla’s life and how history largely “forgot” him.

website666:

whitneymcn:

“There is another point to be made about the broad effects of iPads and Kindles on our culture. The clues people give about themselves used to be displayed proudly, or not, on the shelves of their homes and apartments. At dinner or a cocktail party, just a few moments in front of a bookshelf or record or CD rack could provide the kind of insight about your host it might otherwise take years to develop. In a future world without bookshelves, we will have many of these clues all neatly contained in files in your pocket or backpack. But, a phone or kindle is private, and access to it is more intimate than a moment in front of a rack of CDs.”

—

Marc Ruxin: The Death of Touch and the Lost Joy of the Unexpected

While I, too, have some concerns about trading physical artifacts for digital, I totally agree with the comment below…but man, I think there’s a full blog post in response to this. Assuming there’s time today…

(via tedr)(via newspeedwayboogie)(via mikehudack)

This assumes that we still meet people by going to their apts. I’ve met several hundred fine folks right here online, and know their pets’ names, what kind of music/books/art/pop culture/food they like, who many of their friends are, and often even more intimate and revealing details of their lives that you would never stumble across staring at someone’s bookshelf. And if they’re local and want to grab some food or a cocktail, I feel as if I already know enough to carry on a decent conversation with them in a noisy restaurant.

The phrase “the broad effects of ______” is always a red flag for me. I would argue the opposite, honestly. Tumblr has brought the “joy of the unexpected” back into my life.

(via aatombomb)

(via mikehudack)

I agree with aatombomb when he mentions what is a red flag to him.  Trying to define what the Internet (or any component part of it) is or does for everyone is absurd.  You might as well try to define how everyone uses a hammer.  Sure, the obvious use is for nails, but you can also pull nails out, then there are other types of hammering that can be done with it—from railroad spikes to tent stakes, to even, in a pinch, a home invader’s head.  The point is, Kindles and iPads are just doing what was already being done by the computer—removing stuff from our shelves.  However, blogs (not just Tumblr blogs), Twitter and other socnets replace our shelves.  Nowadays, if you read a book that you are proud to have read, you do something far more effective than displaying it on your shelf for your apartment-visitors to see—you blog/tweet/facebook it on the web for everyone to see it.  People will Google the book and stumble across your content. I know because I made a friend who found me after he Googled for an anime series I reviewed on my blog—we’ve been friends ever since.

A red flag for me is when people knee-jerk a negative reaction to some new thing that comes along.  Wasn’t it Jack Valenti that said the VCR was to Hollywood like the Boston Strangler was to a young woman?

We need to stop being so afraid of the future.

What bad could come from technology???