John Lamansky

I realize this news is a couple weeks old, but I just found out that you can now use Google to search for patents. Very cool!

Yep, now you can digg podcasts: Digg has released a new section of their site called Digg Podcasts, where you can vote for podcasts in a variety of categories, as well as the individual episodes. (Note: since it’s in beta, a Digg account is required to access Digg Podcasts.)

It’s a neat application of Digg’s methodology and member base, but isn’t this voting system already being done by the venerable Podcast Alley?

From a CNET News.com article:

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers signed off on the .Asia Registry Agreement on Wednesday at its annual meeting in Sao Paulo, Brazil, meaning that businesses in the Asia-Pacific region will soon have the option of registering an “.asia” domain. The top-level domain will be overseen by the DotAsia Organization. The “.asia” domain will be used as a supplement to country domains like “.jp” for Japan and “.cn” for China.

According to a post on the Official Google Blog:

Google is a company fueled by innovation, which to us means trying lots of new things all the time — and sometimes it means reconsidering our goals for a product. Later this week, we will stop accepting new questions in Google Answers, the very first project we worked on here.

They don’t give a specific reason, but from what I’ve read across the Internet it seems to be at least in part because of the explosive popularity of Yahoo! Answers.

It’ll be somewhat sad to see this product go. But it’s kind of like a floppy drive: you have a peace of mind knowing you have one in case you really need it, but you almost never end up using it.

Longtime readers may know that in my bio in the sidebar I used to say that I “hope to start a podcast or two someday.” Well, that “someday” is here! I have a few podcast projects I’ve been working on lately that I’d like to share with you: the Catholic Geek Podcast and the Tech News Podcast.

Okay, so this first one isn’t “new” because I’ve been running it for some time. However, I’m just now starting to promote it now that I feel it is of high enough quality. It’s my personal podcast known as the Catholic Geek Podcast, with the subtitle “An Eclectic Podcast by a Catholic Teenage Programmer.”

Of course, when I said “high enough quality” in the above paragraph, I didn’t mean top-notch quality, but high enough to the point that it isn’t a pain to listen to (except for the first three episodes; those weren’t very good). In my opinion it isn’t as high-quality as this blog; I’m good at writing, but I don’t have a very good radio voice (I’m hoping it’ll come with practice).

Although this blog has my name as its title, it seems that the podcast is the more personal of the two; I suppose it’s the nature of the podcasting medium.

The second podcast just started; it’s so new, in fact, that there’s only one episode up (ooh, aah). It’s called the Tech News Podcast, and I co-host it along with a friend of mine named Paul. What makes it particularly interesting, in my opinion, is that I’m a Windows person, and Paul happens to be a Mac person. And as many of you may know, when you mix together Windows and Mac people you’ll get quite interesting results indeed.

The first episode went quite well. (Well, the first public episode, that is. We tried another episode some time ago but didn’t publish it because of audio quality issues.) Here’s the shownotes for episode one:

In the premiere episode, John and Paul discuss Microsoft’s Zune player vs. the iPod, Mac security vs. Windows security, Firefox vs. Internet Explorer 7, Firefox add-ons, webcams that track your sleep patterns, phishing as a job, paper-based storage systems, and Wingdings codes.

Anyone interested in technology is probably drooling by now. I mean, who can resist a podcast about Wingdings codes? Joking aside, I highly recommend that you check it out. We’re planning to do episode 2 tomorrow; I’ll let you know when that’s up.

And as a side note, I’d also recommend you check out Paul’s blog. Paul and I are alike in many areas (except operating system allegiance), so if you like my blog, you’ll probably like his too (though Paul tends to talk more about politics whereas I tend to talk more about technology).

Please let me know what you think of the Catholic Geek Podcast, and please let Paul and me know what you think about the Tech News Podcast. We’d love to hear your feedback!

The cool-looking packaging for Windows Vista and Office 2007 has been announced. I like it!

According to a CNET News.com article:

A team of Russian and American scientists have discovered a new element, number 118, in experiments conducted in the first half of 2005. The announcement, however, is just being made now.

[...]

This is the fifth element discovered by cooperation between Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in collaboration with researchers from Dubna, the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Russia. They also discovered elements 113, 114, 115 and 116.

Although the article says, and I quote, “there is no fancy latinized name for the new element,” I’d imagine it would be named Ununoctium, following the current naming scheme for the 112-and-higher elements.

By looking at Wikipedia’s Periodic Table, it seems that element 117 is the only element left that hasn’t been discovered or synthesized yet.

So it looks like we’re just one away from discovering the whole periodic table — assuming, of course, that this claim doesn’t become yet another element discovery retraction.

Here’s some additional news that I’ve found across the net concerning Pluto’s demotion to dwarf planet.

From the CNET article “Textbook publishers grapple with Pluto demotion”:

Such fundamental changes to what kids are taught don’t happen very often. It’s like dropping Australia off the list of continents. Wikipedia got the change right away. So did other Internet resources. Now try correcting the millions of science textbooks, standardized tests, films and even solar system models that will be used in a classroom this fall.

From the ABC article “Pluto becomes one less planet to memorize”:

Pluto’s lost status disappointed some schoolchildren and had space museum curators scrambling but in the words of one teenager, “It’s one less planet to memorize.”

From the CNET article “Pluto: And then there were eight”:

Three other bodies had been contending for planetary status as well: Ceres, the largest-known asteroid; “Xena,” the nickname for 2003 UB313; and Charon, which has been considered Pluto’s moon.

Ceres and “Xena” will now share “dwarf planet” status with Pluto. Charon, it has been concluded, will be grouped with “small solar-system bodies.”

From an Los Angeles Times article titled “Pluto Learns Eight Is Enough for Planets”:

Members of the International Astronomical Union overwhelmingly voted to demote Pluto to a “dwarf planet.” Though still retaining the term planet, it was clear that Pluto had been exiled.

“Pluto’s out,” said Michael E. Brown, the Caltech astronomer whose discovery last year of a planet-like object called UB313 reignited the long-running debate over whether Pluto should be considered a planet. “People are going to be unhappy, but it’s the right thing to do. This is a great moment in science.”

[...]

“Poor little Pluto,” said Patricia Tombaugh, the 93-year-old widow of the man who discovered Pluto, Clyde Tombaugh. “Kids are going to be upset.”

From an Associated Press article on Yahoo News titled “Widow of Pluto’s discoverer ’shook up’”:

The widow of the astronomer who discovered Pluto 76 years ago said Thursday she was frustrated by the decision to strip it of its planetary status, but she added that Clyde Tombaugh would have understood.

“I’m not heartbroken. I’m just shook up,” Patricia Tombaugh, 93, said in a telephone interview from her home in Las Cruces.

[...]

Tombaugh had fought off other attempts to relegate Pluto, but his widow said this time he probably would have endorsed the change, now that other planetary objects have been discovered in the Kuiper Belt, the belt of comets on the edge of the solar system where Pluto resides.

[...]

[Jim Murphy of the New Mexico State University] said the declaration won’t change Pluto’s importance to science.

“Pluto didn’t cease to exist,” Murphy said. “It didn’t lose or gain any atoms. Its physical characteristics haven’t changed a bit because of this.”

Internet Explorer 7 Release Candidate 1 was released today. The SuperSite for Windows review concludes:

Internet Explorer 7 RC1 is faster, more stable, and better looking than previous IE 7 betas, so it’s a required update for any users who installed IE 7 Beta 3 or earlier. As for IE 6 users, I think it’s both safe and prudent to migrate to IE 7 now: You’ll be able to upgrade to the final version fairly effortlessly and the security enhancements and new functionality should win over even the most jaded. It’s not a perfect browser, but IE 7 is hugely improved, and even in this prerelease version is worth considering. I don’t think there’s enough there to sway Firefox users quite yet–maybe IE 8?–but IE 7, even in RC1 garb, is looking good. Recommended.

Huge news for those interested in the cosmos: today Pluto has lost its status as a planet.

From a CNET article:

The 2006 International Astronomical Union (IAU) General Assembly voted Thursday in Prague that Pluto, formerly known as a planet, will now be considered a “dwarf planet.”

The eight planets of Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune will be grouped as “classical planets.”

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