Humans are not the only ones who look forward to summer. Imagine warm weather from your pet's perspective - long walks in parks full of green grass and interesting aromas for dogs, and hours of bird-watching ...

At least 38 people were hospitalized yesterday after they suf fered an allergic reaction to an unknown substance in a Newark apartment building infested with bedbugs, fleas and mice.

While Montrealers won't be able to admire the aurora borealis in Northern Qubec, they will have the opportunity to see it at La Ronde tonight.

For those wondering, I contemplated hammering out a "Punch Drunk Hangover" this week upon returning from the West Coast, but a two-and-a-half hour layover in Phoenix decided to take issue with the notion.

I had an article about napping few weeks back and how it is beneficial to combat daytime sleepiness.

Frank Capra It goes without saying that Capra is one of the greatest and most beloved directors of all time, especially renowned for his madcap romantic comedies.

Apart from two excellent dishes, Eoin Higgins felt let down, and at times a little scared, by the food at this Polish restaurant Gospoda Polska: bring a Polish friend to get the best out of the menu mark ...

Two of the mayor's long-standing ideas will finally get their day in the sun. Mayor Ken Shearin for more than a year has wanted staggered elections for City Council members.

It ties in nicely with my post on why we love anything, I think. A John Lennon song, video directed by Paul Thomas Anderson.

I am a Developer on the International Fundamentals team at Microsoft. I work on making connections with developers both inside and outside of Microsoft to help make sure that they are making full use of the ...

TheSync writes "Hollywood Reporter claims that SMPTE (the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers) will 'establish an industry task force to define the parameters of a mastering standard for 3D content distributed via broadcast, cable, satellite, packaged media and the Internet, and played-out on televisions, computer screens and other tethered displays.' Already, Japanese Nippon BS viewers with Hyundai 3D LCD sets can watch an hour of 3D programming daily. Even your existing DLP TV set might be 3D capable today with the addition of LCD shutter glasses." Reader DaMan1970 makes note of another developing television technology; telescopic pixel displays. "Each pixel consists of 2 opposing mirrors where the primary mirror can change shape under an applied voltage. When the pixel is off, the primary & secondary mirrors are parallel & reflect all of the incoming light back into the light source."

jg21 writes "As previously discussed on Slashdot, the new tendency to speak of 'The Cloud' or 'Cloud Computing' often seems to generate more heat than light, but one familiar industry fault line is becoming clear — those who believe clouds can be proprietary vs. those who believe they should be free. One CEO who sides with open clouds in order that companies can pick and choose from vendors depending on precisely what they need has written a detailed article in which he outlines how, in his opinion, Platform-as-a-Service should work. He identifies nine features of 'an ideal PaaS cloud' including the requirement that 'Developers should be able to interact with the cloud computer, to do business with it, without having to get on the phone with a sales person, or submit a help ticket.' [From the article: 'I think this means that cloud computing companies will, just like banks, begin more and more to "loan" each other infrastructure to handle our own peaks and valleys, But in order for this to happen we'd need the next requirement.']"

Roland Piquepaille writes "You all know that incandescent bulbs are pretty inefficient, converting only 10% of electricity into light — and 90% into heat. Light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, could soon replace incandescent and compact fluorescent bulbs in our homes. They are more efficient and environmentally friendly. But LED lights are currently too expensive because they are using a sapphire-based technology. Now, Purdue University researchers have found a way to build low-cost and bright LEDs for home lighting. According to the researchers, the LED lights now on the market cost about $100 while LED lights based on their new technology could be commercially available within a couple of years for a cost of about $5. It would also help to cut our electricity bill by about 10%."

krygny writes "NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft (whose extended mission is called EPOXI) has created a video of the moon transiting Earth as seen from 31 million miles away. Scientists are using the video to develop techniques to study alien worlds. 'Our video shows some specific features that are important for observations of Earth-like planets orbiting other stars,' said Drake Deming of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center... 'A "sun glint'" can be seen in the movie, caused by light reflected from Earth's oceans, and similar glints to be observed from extrasolar planets could indicate alien oceans. Also, we used infrared light instead of the normal red light to make the color composite images, and that makes the land masses much more visible.'" Here are links to the two videos, one red-green-blue and the other infrared-green-blue.

WmHBlair writes "Flightglobal has a report about the upgrades being made to the B-2A Stealth Bomber, which include Pentium class processors, JOVIAL code rewritten in C, and fibre channel hard drives. The Register, as usual, makes light of this event with a tongue-in-cheek news item noting that the upgrade drags Stealth Bomber IT systems into the '90s."

arcticstoat writes in with word that scientists at the Space Nanotechnology Laboratory at MIT have found a new way of extending Moore's law into the future — they have succeeded in etching a grid of 25nm lines into a silicon wafer. The article notes that this technique could be used for writing the grid on which chips are laid down, but that the electronic elements would have to be written using more complex techniques. "[Researchers] created an interference pattern using light from a laser with a wavelength of 351 nm. The pattern consists of alternating light and dark zones repeating every 200 nm. This allowed them to etch 25-nm lines into a silicon wafer, each 175 nm apart. They then repeated the process three times, each time shifting the interference pattern by 50 nm and etching another 25-nm groove. The resulting grid has alternating 25-nm stripes and grooves..."

Vegematic writes "Researchers at MIT have improved solar collectors using dyes. They just increased their performance results by a factor of 4. These paint-on materials can increase the power obtained from existing solar cells by a factor of over 40 without needing to track the sun. 'By collecting light over their full surface and concentrating it at their edges, these devices reduce the required area of solar cells and consequently, the cost of solar power. Stacking multiple concentrators allows the optimization of solar cells at each wavelength, increasing the overall power output.' There is also a shorter FAQ available."

thatskinnyguy sends news of Merriam-Webster's 2008 list of new words and, to no-one's surprise, a good number of them come out of geek culture: words like webinar, malware, netroots, pretexting, and fanboy are now official words according to M-W. The CNet article pulls out one "new" word for special appreciation — mondegreen — and, while the article gets the origin right, it ends with a lame call for readers to send in their favorite mondegreens. (CNet does have the good grace to link the Kiss This Guy site.) SFGate columnist Jon Carroll has been collecting readers' mondegreens since 1995 and his list is bound to be better. Quoting Carroll, in a prophetic mode: "This space has been for some years the chief publicity agent for mondegreens. The Oxford English Dictionary has not yet seen the light, but it will, it will." Would you believe, Merriam-Webster's?

Ponca City, We love you writes "Once the US converts from analog to digital broadcasting next February, those who receive their signals over the air will need a converter box for older, non-digital models. Government-approved converter boxes sell for $60 or less and a government-issued $40 rebate coupon is available for the asking but that hasn't stopped companies like the Ohio-based Universal TechTronics from offering supposedly free converter boxes. The gimmick: the box is free, as long as you pay $88 for a five-year warranty, plus $9.30 shipping. Universal TechTronics seems to specialize in 'high-tech' products of questionable value, marketing the Cool Surge portable air cooler, 'a work of engineering genius from the China coast so advanced that no windows, vents, or freon are needed' that uses the same energy as a 60-watt light bulb. It works by blowing a stream of air over two ice packs that you have previously frozen in your freezer. What's the best tech scam you've heard of lately?"

ram.loss writes "According to a Reuters article, a long version of Metropolis has been found at a cinema museum in Argentina, by a newly appointed archivist. The reels have been authenticated by the Murnau foundation at Germany. 'Although estimates of its original length vary depending on the speed at which it is shown, Possmann said "Metropolis" was conceived as a film lasting just over 2-1/2 hours. Around 20 to 25 minutes of footage that fleshes out secondary characters and sheds light on the plot would be added to the film pending restoration, he added. But around 5 minutes of the original were probably still missing, he said.'"