Things I am interested in…

(or other uses for your iPod besides listening to that awful music)

What is a podcast you ask? The term is derived from iPOD broadCAST, and further defined here. As the iPod dominates the portable MP3 player market (~85% at the present time), the name has stuck, although it is generic, and most podcasts can be listened to on any player (they are just MP3s, or the equivalent, when you get right down to it).

Podcasts are great. I listen to podcasts a lot, on a variety of subjects.

In no particular order, here is a selection:

• This Week in Tech (TWiT) – fairly prototypical, and often very amusing. It is generally about tech news, though the panel has been known to digress from time to time (make that, invariably digresses!) Run by Leo Laporte, who is somewhat of a podcasting personality, and very active in the field. Here is his home page.
• Cory Doctorow’s podcasts – from craphound.com and BoingBoing.net. At the moment he is one of the people I find most interesting to listen to, about copyright, DRM, etc… He also writes some good sf.
• Science information – the best of these is the weekly Scientific American podcast. The host, Steve Mirsky, is from the Bronx, and is also often wryly amusing. I’ve learnt more about beavers and turkeys than I ever thought I’d need to know. Others on my playlist include Digital Planet (more IT technology) from the BBC World Service, and the New Scientist podcast, though the brash intro music is somewhat off-putting.
• Movie and entertainment news – until the end of last year I was a keen listener to Ebert & Roeper‘s podcast, but this seems to have gone on hold (I guess while Roger Ebert continues to recover from his recent surgery). However, I have found a worthy alternative to take its place. Mark Kermode is witty, opinionated, and often quite scathing in his pithy reviews. Another excellent offering from the BBC.

There are a lot more, but this is something to be getting on with… Now I have to go to the gym.

Wow, there are a lot of groovy websites out there:

• a video on artificial muscle
• 10 emerging tecnologies in 2007
• Scientific American: Study shows why exercise boosts brainpower
• New Scientist: Small world networks key to memory

What is the semantic web I hear you ask?

 Well here are two articles that can help you, from the creator of the world wide web, Tim Berners-Lee:

• Scientific American article
• a slightly more technical article regarding how it could acutally work

Here’s hoping that this all happens sooner rather than later…

(excuse the pun!)

 Just heard on a podcast I was listening to while walking to work (Scientific American Science Talk) that the fourth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has finished this week.

 Here are some interesting factoids from this:

• Internationally, scientists are 90% certain that the increase in mean global temperature of 0.75 degrees centigrade since recording began during the Industrial Revolution (1850) is due to human activities, as is the ongoing rise in temperature
• Eleven out of twelve of the most recent summers have been the warmest on record (again, since 1850)
• The global atmospheric concentration of CO2 has increased from a pre-industrial average of 280 parts per million (ppm) to the most recent measurement of 379 ppm in 2005
• The rate of increase of atmospheric CO2 has been larger in 1995-2005 (1.9 ppm per year) than it has been in the 145 years preceding (1.4 ppm per year on average)
• If all human CO2 production were to freeze at current levels tomorrow, the mean global temperature would rise about another 0.5 degrees by the end of the century
• If things continue in the worst possible way, with unabated greenhouse gas production, then scientists are predicting a further rise in mean global temperature of about 4 degrees by the end of this century
• If that is the case (i.e., worst case scenario) then two to four billion people will face water shortages by the end of the century, and a further 170 million person’s homes will be under water due to the 0.4m seea level rise

According to the podcast, this is a very conservative report – it had to be so that all of the governments involved would agree to its publication.

 I personally think this is food for thought…