THE REINY DAY GUIDE TO TECHNOLOGY

 

April 2000

  • A robot in Germany passed a driving test using its mechanical arms, legs, lasers, camera, and radar. German diriving tests are suppoedly much harder than the US. VW is developing the robot; Yahoo News has the story.

  • Klein Dytham has a stunning site for their architecture firm based in Japan. The fetish section highlights interesting items of inspiration and canned features interesting and amusing Japanese beverages.

  • This idea frightened me, but at the same time amused me immensely. Slashdot ran an article about special pagers selling in Japan, China, and Germany. You program in what characteristics you are looking for in a date as well as info about yourself. When you are near someone who matches your criteria, your pager goes off. One company claims "it flirts for you."

  • MSNCS ran an article with some spectacular space photos. Scientists are indentifying black holes which more actively "suck" matter in than the one at the center of our universe.

  • The Shredder launches a JAVA window which "shreds" any webpage. The pattern of shredding is easy to determine, but is still interesting.

  • EML Optimem claims 10 gig storage on a standard roll of tape. What's next?

  • If you are looking for info on vintage stoves, try antiquegasstoves.com, antiquestove.com, and antiquestoves.com.

  • eactivism.com presents Click for the Cure, a campaign to fight breast cancer. Like the hunger site (see issue #0001), this site lets you make a small donation from their sponsors to the American Cancer Society with a single click.

 

Feature: easy access

There are some truly incredible sources of information of the net, but finding them is rather difficult (which is why I set this guide up). From the trivia standpoint, nothing beats The Straight Dope. I used to pick up the weekly copy of the LA Reader just to check out two articles: News of the Weird and The Straight Dope. Now they archive online, and you can get all the classics, like Can man live by bread alone? and What are the odds of getting AIDS from ordinary heterosexual sex? The column features many questions children tend to ask (Why is the sky blue?) and, of course, lots of sex questions (Has anyone ever had sex in space?) but I always well research an, in general, is just plain fascinating. If you like strange-but-true news, News of the Weird is highly amusing.

If that really isn't your cup of tea, How Stuff Works features a lot of factual, informational articles. There are catagories ranging from engines to food and from appliances to holidays. Take a peek at How Stocks and the Stock Market Work or How Tattoos Work to get a flavor of the writing style. Another good info source is howdoesitwork.com, which links to brand name FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) and manuals.

 

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