Roogle morphs to Feedster

Welcome to the RSS Search Engine Formerly Known as Roogle — I Give you Feedster !.

Welcome to the RSS Search Engine Formerly Known as Roogle — I Give you Feedster !

Well I've got two very good pieces of news for today.  The first one is the new name: feedster.com.  The site is up and working.  Feel free to stop on by.

Logo help from Etation Media and I know about the swoosh…

[The FuzzyBlog!]

Lots of great activity on the RSS front, which is definitely a good thing. I expect I'll be adding a link to Feedster on my blog in the next couple of days. 

Nonsense about RFID tags in Benetton's fashions

RFID tags in Benetton clothing. Benetton is buying 15 million RFID (radio frequency identification) tags to attach to the labels in their clothing as an anti-theft measure. People are freaked out (again) about privacy issues, but the reality (at least today) is that the range of RFID tech is too short for someone to drive by your house and scan your closet. Still, it does make sense to zap the tags out of commission once items are paid for. Link Discuss [Boing Boing Blog]

Yet another example of magical thinking and technological ignorance driving debates. This post is about the only one I’ve seen out of dozens that points out that everyone’s fears are based on false assumptions about the technology. So, for example, we see this kind of nonsense quoted in a Wired News piece on the issue [by way of Privacy Digest]:

Mike Liard, an analyst with technology research and consulting firm Venture Development, said the more companies that embed RFID tags in their products, the more likely it is for someone to drive by a home and say, “Look what we’ve got in there. An HDTV is in there, and she wears Benetton.”

It wouldn’t surprise me if some marketing analyst would like to do this. It also wouldn’t surprise me if some unscrupulous technology consultant would take their money without bothering to explain that the range of RFID scanners is on the order of 2 meters. But that doesn’t make the actual prospect of black vans roaming the suburbs any more likely or any more feasible. If it still bothers you, line your closets with aluminum foil, but wouldn’t it be easier to develop a shred of understanding about what is and isn’t technologically possible?

Where all of us live

Where All of Us Live.

Lance Knobel posts a very nice map of where people live:

Global population distribution: Based on population estimates from 1994, when global population was 5.5 billion. It is estimated to be 6.3 billion today


Update: Excellent! Thanks! Eric Eisenhart says:

A higher resolution version with an explanation and credit is available at http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap030305.html

Posted by Eric Eisenhart at March 6, 2003 04:06 PM


Update: And there is the still bigger version at http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0303/peopleearth94_usda_big.gif. [Semi-Daily Journal]

Fascinating info-graphic

Images of the future circa 1950

Radebaugh's lost future. Jeff sez, “A Web site of the futuristic illustrator Radebaugh. You'll recognize some of his illustrations as magazine covers from the 1930s through the 1950s. Our vision of the future was, in part, molded by these types of illustrations. One of my favorite films is The 5th Element where the art direction seems to come right from Radebaugh's brush.” Link Discuss (Thanks, Jeff!)
[Boing Boing Blog]

Great illustrations. I'd love to have one of these prints on my wall.