A couple of space colony summer studies were conducted at NASA Ames in the 1970s. Colonies housing about 10,000 people were designed. A number of artistic renderings of the concepts were made. Via Pruned.
Images out of a catalogue for biodecontamination and microbial protection products and services. More Bacteria here.
For example this Google-Earth-File reports on a backpacking trip in Arizona, with embedded images, made with Robogeo. An interesting new form of multimedia travelogue for me. Hmm, the Israel-Lebanon Conflict don't look less complicated in Google-Earth. All via gearthblog.com.
The Pentagon's defence scientists want to create an army of cyber-insects that can be remotely controlled to check out explosives and send transmissions. Reminds me of the Novel "Gläserne Bienen" by Ernst Jünger written in the year 1957.
Mars is set for a close encounter with Earth, approaching to within 69.4 million km (43.1 million miles) of our planet in the early hours of Sunday. New Mars Panoramas stitched by Hans Nyberg.
Instructables is a step-by-step collaboration system that helps record and share projects with a mixture of images, text, ingredient lists, CAD files, and more. For example how to create a video camera mount for bicycles. Tutorials on building your individual kiteboard or mix probably tasty yoghurt. 
This chess applet shows a map of the possible futures as the program tries to decide its best move. The fascinating Thinking Machine 4 is based on Processing, a language and environment for programing images and sounds.
Some new clients made with Carnivore, a software application that listens to all Internet traffic on a specific local network. Next, CarnivorePE serves this data stream to interfaces that interpret the network traffic in various ways: one example by marumushi.com. Since the last time i visited the Carnivore-website, a MacOS X version is also available. 
Dirk Gion
skates all over the Australian continent on his mountain-
board powered by his kites only. He follows an almost
3000 kilometer route through the Australian outback. A new, at least futuristic looking, four-wheel device by Segway. This is a strange website about the biological anti-gravity experiments of Viktor S. Grebennikov who was also engaged in invisibility and time-warping. Interesting solar materials i found on treehugger.
VoiSec is small tool to attach audio-information to diverse objects. Kind of a PostIt for people with visual impairment or dyslexia. Remington invented a new compact wireless 360° mobile display system. Buzztracker visualizes frequencies and relationships between locations in the Google world news directory. Via we-make-money-not-art.com A new mobile robotic platform from White Box Robotics for the consumer allow to build low cost mobile robots from off-the-shelf computer parts. Website coming on May 10, 2005.
Rotundus is a new ball-shaped robot build for surveillance and inspection in rough environments. It can run in most terrain - snow, mud, sand, water. I've found this spiderlike robot at robots.net. New Scientist reports about walking robots that utilising the natural dynamics of the human body. An ugly looking menacingly robot. These Robots are nevertheless the mothers of all the cute robot-dogs and vacuum cleaning robots we know today.
This article on designing the invisible leads me to Ambient Devices, who has invented color based visualizers for weather or the stock-market. Via Future Now
Frosty images of northern lights in Alaska by Dick Hutchinson who lives 48 miles south of the Arctic Circle. Aurora Borealis images taken in and around the Fairbanks by Jan Curtis.
Images of optical phenomena in atmosphere like Rainbows, Rays and Shadows and high atmosphere appearances like Nacreous Clouds. The site also provides explanation models of the accordingly phenomena as well as further links.
Nationmaster provides statistical information about the countries of the world in comparison. The website allows the user to generate graphs based on different data sources like the CIA World Factbook and the OECD. About half of all male workers in Czech Republic and Slovakia are industrial workers. Did you know that Iceland ranks on place 1 in the Top 100 of Internet users per capital (787.45 per 1000 people) followed by the United States on place 7 (with 590.78 per 1000 people) ? Iceland is also leading in the Top 100 of Tractor concentration by the way...
NTT has developed a storage technology that allows 1GB of data (in the prototype) to be stored on a layered clear plastic chip that's the size of a postage stamp and costs a few hundred yen. The plan is for mass production versions to cost perhaps Y100-Y200 per card and store 10GB and upwards. Via Future Now.
EXIF is a standard for storing interchange information in image files, especially those using JPEG compression. Some Links on storing location related information with EXIF. Via Muxway. Information about image location could provide a very useful form of annotation, both for the primary user wishing to search within their own image collection, and for when distributing such images amongst secondary users over the internet, for example. Another thread on the same topic, few more links here.
Engineers at Icosystem in Cambridge, Massachusetts, have developed a program that can predict what is coming next by "evolving" future hacker and virus attacks based on information from known ones. New Scientist Article.
DuPont Authentication Systems and A4Vision, a company that sells facial-imaging products, have developed a biometric security device that generates in-depth, three-dimensional facial portraits, stored in a film called Izon, similar to holograms that can be embedded in documents. Wired reports.
A Very Unofficial Blog Following the Twin NASA Exploration Rovers: Spirit and Opportunity. Via *.*
Visible Earth is a searchable NASA directory of images of the Earth. For example Mount Everest seen from the International Space Station. Storm Photo Gallery via
Geisha Asobi.Eastman Kodak said it will stop selling traditional film cameras in the United States, Canada and Western Europe, another move by the troubled photography company to cut lines with declining appeal in favor of fast-growing digital products.
BBC Article reports that cellphones are almost as useful to the police as fingerprints or DNA. Several british trials featuring mobile phones as evidence.
Interesting article on tracking gps cellphones. CNET reports on RFID tags.
A new study by the New York University Medical Center And School Of Medicine says that the risk of dying from some forms of heart disease among non-smokers living in polluted cities is roughly comparable to the increased risk caused by being a former smoker.
Andrew Davidhazy shows how he has build an experimental digital camera. See also some pictures taken by the scanner-camera. The 360° full-circle lens invented by Sony allows the full 360° surroundings of the camera to be imaged at the same time with a single lens.
This interactive, java-based system invites you to explore how the usage patterns of numbers reflect our culture, history and biology. The data shown represents the "popularity" of every integer between 0 and 100000 collected periodically from a popular search engine.
Sodaplay: the home of creative play, make time to waste time.
