Articles about Science&Technology
Preston Hollow People Talks to One Half of Crime-Recording Couple
On Good Morning America tomorrow, you’ll be able to see Vincent Hunter discuss how he captured footage of two thugs breaking into his Royal Park Estates home using iCam. (Hunter then posted the footage on YouTube.) Preston Hollow People’s Claire St. Amant got Hunter’s wife, Janet, on the horn today for a preview.
Kids In Keller Are Lucky
Maybe it’s the fact that I’m still rocking the 3G iPhone. Perhaps it’s because I graduated from a high school in Beaumont, Texas, some 200 years ago. Whatever the case, this story about newly completed Timber View Middle School in Keller makes me feel old. According to this WFAA report, “there are iPads instead of spiral notebooks” at this place! Now I must go—my dial up isn’t working so well, and I have to hurry and check the email on the World Wide Web before I lose my connection.
TI’s Templeton Sees Bright Tech Future … If
Rich Templeton says he’s as optimistic about the future of technology as he’s ever been, and not just because Dallas-based Texas Instruments enjoyed 42 percent revenue growth in the latest quarter. TI’s chairman, president and CEO says global markets are ripe with tech opportunity, and North Texas companies are well-positioned to benefit from that. But to really do so, he told the Dallas Regional Chamber’s 10th Annual State of Technology luncheon today, the area needs to keep “investing” in the likes of education and infrastructure.
Specifically, Templeton told the big crowd, DFW needs to: promote more funding for university research efforts; make education in general a higher priority; embrace open trade; improve the area’s transportation/power infrastructure; and keep costs–including federal, state, and local taxes–low. He pointed out that the U.S. corporate income tax rate is the second-highest among 32 countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development–one of two times he drew spontaneous applause from the tech-savvy business crowd. (The other came when he mentioned the importance of doing a better job on education.)
Tim Rogers Is Cool Thanks to Willis
It was 108 years ago this month that Willis Haviland Carrier of Buffalo, N.Y., gave birth to a new invention — the air conditioner. If you wonder what the Dallas connection is, step outside. Just imagine life in Dallas without AC.
Pre-teen Brainiacs Counsel DFW Airport
Think you’re smarter than a 5th grader? OK. How about smarter than a group of Dallas-area pre-teens who call themselves XS NRG? They’ve just told Dallas-Fort Forth International Airport how it can save money and be greener by reducing jet-plane fuel inefficiencies. SweetCharity’s got the details.
Blogger Claims to Disprove Global Warming With Texas Line Graphs
A blog called “Watts Up With That?” uses our record snowfall in Dallas last week as a jumping-off point for discussing mean temperatures in Texas over the past century. The author uses simple line graphs to demonstrate that temperatures in small towns like Dublin or Brenham have barely budged over that time. So where’s your global warming, he asks.
Meanwhile his snapshot for San Antonio shows a clear rise in temperature, all of which he attributes to the “Urban Heat Island” effect. I’m no climate scientist, but when experts mention catastrophic climate change, aren’t they talking about a worldwide spike of even just a couple of degrees on average? Isn’t it incorrect to think that imprecise measures, like these line graphs, of extremely localized temperatures have much bearing on the discussion?
All Eyes on iPad, Jobs at Apple Store
PR whiz John Shore was at the Apple store on Knox this morning just as Steve Jobs was on the West Coast announcing the Second Coming, er, Apple’s new iPad. John says the Apple CEO’s presentation was broadcast live at the store, where everything came to a screeching halt until it was over. Anybody heard anything yet about pricing, availability, etc.?
Unidentified Flying Objects Heard Near Love Field
In today’s FB version of “Anything You Ever Wanted to Know,” a question from the nation:
Could you ask if anyone knows what was going on Saturday the 23rd at 2pm around the Love Field area? I was convinced a plane was going to crash in my front yard the noise was so loud. The plane(s) flew over 2 to 3 times at extremely low altitude. My neighbor said he saw 2 military jets.
My first thought is that the Frontiers of Flight Museum was flying around their historic birds again, though I couldn’t find any event announcements on their website. Thought number two: maybe a few of those military cargo jets that sometimes careen over Hollywood Ave. after 10 p.m. were landing at Love Field. But this is all speculation. So, dear informed readers, please share if have info.
Stray Dogs: In Between Pet and Wolf
I live in Oak Cliff, so I live with stray dogs. They’ve bitten my car’s tires, lounged on my front porch, escorted me to and from the train station, and followed me and my two-year-old from the park to the in-laws only to then tussle with the in-laws’ dogs for a few hours. (On that occassion, like the DMN’s Courtney Keys, I called 3-1-1, who promised to send someone out within twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Awesome.) The question is: does Oak Cliff’s stray population compare with Moscow, which has 84 stray dogs per square mile? I’d love to see Oak Cliff’s stray-per-mile ratio. For now, I’ll just gnaw on this takeaway from this piece in the Financial Times:
Moscow’s strays sit somewhere between house pets and wolves, says Poyarkov, but are in the early stages of the shift from the domesticated back towards the wild. That said, there seems little chance of reversing this process. It is virtually impossible to domesticate a stray: many cannot stand being confined indoors.
D Magazine’s iPhone App
I think I’m the only one in the office without an iPhone, but that didn’t stop me from being the first person (I believe) to design an iPhone App for D’s blogs thanks to AppMakr, the open source program that unveiled yesterday and lets you design iPhone apps for any ol’ url you feel like. The catch: it costs $199 to publish the thing, which is not bad considering, though I didn’t have it on me at 11:35 last night when I made this in all of six minutes. So all I can offer this morning are images of the un-launched D app after the jump. But here’s the challenge, creative and witty denizens of the FB Nation: out-do this. Design a better D app, or better yet, design one for someone else. Surely there needs to be a John Wiley Price iPhone app, right? I bet there’s an app design that could help Mary Suhm choose a new police chief. The site couldn’t be simpler. So . . . go.
Big in Japan Gets Big Pub in WSJ
Big in Japan is a local tech developer that has written a few lines of code for our humble enterprise (what’s up, Mr. Muse?). In today’s Wall Street Journal, they get some good pub for a smart phone app they’ve written called ShopSavvy. It allows you to scan a bar code on an item you’re about to buy and compare its price to other prices at nearby stores. I’m downloading it in 3 … 2 …
Update: You know what’s not awesome? ShopSavvy. I installed it on my iPhone. I tried to launch it six times. Each time, it crashed. I rebooted the phone and tried again. Still crashed. What is up indeed, Mr. Muse?
AT&T May Charge iPhone Users Per Data Byte
The best thing about having an iPhone is how easy it is to jump on the Internet and get any piece of information I’m looking for quickly. And it’s all for one flat monthly fee. I’ve found Dallas-based AT&T’s 3G service to be outstanding in terms of its speed and reliability. Even when I venture out into the wilderness, to areas off AT&T’s 3G map, I’ve been pleased with what I’ve been able to pull up on my iPhone. (Now, making phone calls, that’s an entirely different kettle of fish.)
Apparently things aren’t nearly as good for users in New York and San Francisco, as the head of AT&T’s wireless division admitted today that the company needs to do better for them. He noted that most iPhone users don’t know how much bandwidth they’re consuming. (I certainly don’t.) Three percent of smartphone users drive 40% of the data traffic.
And the company is considering how it might begin to charge users for what they use, which could be on a per-byte of data basis.
Denton Student Loses Siemens Competition
It’s an old story really, you spend long nights in the lab devising a protein drug carrier that can maintain a sustained drug release while preventing the protein from degrading inside the human body. Your work could allow a diabetes patient to significantly reduce the number of insulin injections needed regularly. You’re hailed for your achievement and advance to the national Siemens Competition in Math, Science, & Technology.
But then some hotshot comes along and does something sexier, like find alternative ways to kill cancer cells that have grown drug-resistant. What a showboater.
Cue Cat, Part Deux: Rise of the Qyoo
NBC 5 saw fit to run an infomercial for a smart-phone application called “Qyoo” that’s being touted as the next big thing by an outfit in Uptown. It reads 2D barcodes off just about anything and can instantaneously link a smart phone to a website or a video to bring more information to the user. If Qyoo is reminding you of the CueCat, you’re not alone.
The blogger Alexander Muse makes a pretty convincing case that Qyoo isn’t likely to catch on, especially since there are others giving away the same technology for free. Here is a “QR code,” for an earlier Frontburner post, created in less than a minute :
By the by, the Channel 5 report says that Qyoo is being designed by a “Brit, a Brain, and Bohemian.” If you watch their video, can you explain to me what makes the Bohemian a Bohemian, besides the fact, maybe, that he’s a young guy with a beard wearing coffee-shop glasses?
More From the Museum of Nature & Science’s Groundbreaking
Glenn brought us some details yesterday from the groundbreaking. Ryan Jones from our web team was there, too, and offers more reportage after the jump:
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