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Long before GPS, ships have been using a system called “LORAN” to navigate the worlds oceans. LORAN, or Long-Range Aids to Navigation is a land-based positioning system run by the Coast Guard to allow ships to track their positions at sea. (Both GPS and LORAN work on the same principles - you can triangulate your location based on two or three fixed points provided you know how far from each one you are.) The 30-year-old system will get a $34.5 million upgrade from the Department on Homeland Security to upgrade the transmission equipment, and add a data channel that will transmit detailed information and a constant time-keeping signal.

Popular Mechanics says that LORAN is a good backup for GPS because :

Story and quote from Popular Mechanics
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4266972.html

I mean, think about what would happen if GPS failed. It’s everywhere. Its used to locate millitary airplanes, ships, and weapons. Hikers and other outdoor professionals use it to navigate rough terrain and not get lost. We’ve got it in our cars to give us directions on how to get from here to there. It’s used to track the location of other commercial equipment and packages. A major GPS failure could take quite a while to recover from. A backup plan is always a good idea.

I knew that Google had an airplane (a few actually), but I never knew where they kept it. . .

“The bummer about owning 767s and G-Fives is you need somewhere to land
them, preferably close to your office so you don’t have blow hours
stuck in traffic with all the plebes. Thankfully, resourceful Google
has already solved that problem–by cutting a deal with NASA to
use the government’s private runway next door to the Silicon Valley
Googleplex. And now Google has made the deal even more convenient, by
signing a broader deal to rent 42 acres of NASA land for 40 years on
which to build a new Googleplex.”

$1.3 million for the runway, and $3.66 million for the 42 acres. Not bad.
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/6/google_secures_nasa_land_and_767_runway_for_40_years

Check out this link if you want to know (and see) Google’s $15 million ex-Quantas 767, and some of the may locations its been over the past year or so. (Clickable map included.)

http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/6/where_in_the_world_are_larry_sergey_and_the_google_party_jet_

Read more about the Google Jet here
http://www.airlinepilotforums.com/archive/index.php/t-1441.html

on Thursday, IBM unveilied their design for an internally-cooled computer chips. The new chips have thousands of tiny water passages that run between the chips layers. Each tube is only 50 microns in diameter, and is hermetically sealed using silicon walls and solicon oxide around each connection between tubes. At only 10 microns, the seals require fabrication accuracy almost 10x more precise then is required for current computer chips. The entire chip sits in a silicon cooling container, with water pumped through the chip, in one side and out the other. IBM says that the technology could become commonplace in consumer products within five years.

(Graphic from link)

http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/06/06/ibm.shows.water.cooled.cpu/

“Flat screens for computers? They will soon be passe if the vision of Queen’s University computing professor Roel Vertegaal takes off outside the lab.

The Ontario school’s Human Media Laboratory is cooking up futuristic
computer screens on Coke cans that can receive RSS feeds and videos (as
seen above) and even on paper (as seen below) that blow away some of the other PC form factor improvements on the market or in the works”

Read more about this technology, and take a look at some photos showing what could be here
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/28371

So, Firefox 3 is coming closer to release and so are all the pros and cons of an update to firefox. Theres always the problem that alot of extensions that you have come to depend on go pop, and many developers do not continually update their plugins.
For FF3, quite a few improvements are slated. A new Bookmark system is being implemented, its become more of a searchable tool and lets you filter bookmarks.
A very useful tool, Whole-page zooming is also being developed. We all know what happens when you jack up the text size, it becomes huge, layout dies, images stay tiny. Well…whole page zooming will solve that I wonder how well this will work with multimedia, but we shall see.
Major performance fixes are in place, so hopefully it won’t start sucking ram and cpu. I know I can’t wait for this, as I check my ram usage and see that FF is using an enormous 1.3 gigs of ram (I blame too many tabs)
It’s also changed the address bar so that what you type there searches your history, be it in the page, the title, the url, its pretty nice when you can’t remember the url of a page you’ve visited in the past.

All in all, some very good features and fixes for FF3, I just hope my beloved extensions don’t all bite the dust

“Polaroid recently announced it will launch its PoGo portable photo printer later on this summer. First seen
at CES 2008, the printer, whose name is short for Polaroid-on-the-go
according to Polaroid, achieves its compact 4.7- by 2.8- by 0.9-inch
size by not requiring any ink cartridges. Instead, it uses Zero Ink technology and ZINK Photo Paper as its medium.”

http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/06/06/polaroid.pogo.printer/

The printer (Shown above) can spit out a 2×3 color photo in under one minute. The “ZINK” paper gets its color from clear cyan, yellow, and magenta dyes that are activated and turn color by heat (applied inside the printer), which causes the ink to change color. The printers will be available @ Target on July 20, for $149 each. Paper is 10 sheets/ $4, or 30 sheets / $10.

I think its about time we finally saw a new innovation in digital photo printing. I mean, we’ve seen some neat things come around with digital photography, like the ability to email photos, and do our own touch-up and cropping, etc., etc. But nothings really changed in the past year or two. I mean, this new printer isn’t revolutionary. Theres a few odd things about it, like the fact that it does 2×3 prints, and not 4×6, which is pretty much the standard these days. (The small print size may be due to the small size of the printer - 4.7 x 2.8 inches, by only .9 inches thick.) I’d love to see one, and see what the print quality is. It would be neat if you could get pre-done sticker paper, or something like that, so that you could directly print and stick your photos anywhere.

Regardless of what the quality may or may not be, or the price of the paper (33 cents a print isn’t bad, especially realizing theres no hidden ink costs), its nice to finally see a truly portable photo printer.

Check out the Zink website here
http://www.zink.com/

In case you haven’t noticed, Google has changed its favicon, the little box that shows up to the left of the address bar in Firefox and Safari (and somewhere in IE too, but I haven’t used it in so long, I forget where. . . . .).

For many people, this was quite a surprise, simply because Google isn’t in the habit of changing the design or layout of their pages or logos. They just don’t. Okay, so its just the little icon next to the adress bar. Its not that important in the grand scheme of things. So why the change?

From the official Google Blog :

“Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products & User Experience, and Micheal Lopez, Web Designer

You
may have noticed that Google has a new favicon, the small icon you see
in your browser next to the URL or in your bookmarks list. Some people
have wondered why we changed our favicon — after all, we hadn’t in 8.5
years(!). The reason is that we wanted to develop a set of icons that
would scale better to some new platforms like the iPhone and other
mobile devices. So the new favicon is one of those, but we’ve also
developed a group of logo-based icons that all hang together as a
unified set. Here’s the full set:”

And there it is. What I find really interesting is this block of favicons that didn’t make the cut, or were just ideas that were tried out. It’s no surprise to me how simple the final favicon is; Simple is quite often better, especially with such a small graphic.

Images and quote from the Official Google Blog,
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/one-fish-two-fish-red-fish-blue-fish.html

UPDATE : In some random browsing, I noticed that the Google “G” with the blue background is a lot like the Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/) favicon,

.

It was similar enough to make me wonder for a second why the page I was looking at was connected to Google. . . . Maybe Googles new favicon needs some more work after all? I also have to say that I wondered why the Google “g” was done in such a funny lower case font - compare it to the Guardian “g” and its backwards.

What I wonder is how favicons will be used in the future. I mean, on a iPhone screen, I’d think that favicons might soon be integrated in new bookmarks, so that you just look for the favicon instead of reading the text. I’m not sure what you’d do if a page didn’t have a favicon, or how you’d store them on the mobile device, but its a thought.

And now, if you’re still curious, here the Favicon for FLB (the little logo on the left before HTTP:// ) :

Its the small version of our homepage logo,

This little robot searches for things to drum on, drives up to them, and starts playing.

This one has been making the rounds on a few blogs, and it IS pretty cool.

“On May 19, 2005, NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit captured this
stunning view as the Sun sank below the rim of Gusev crater on Mars.
This Panoramic Camera mosaic was taken around 6:07 in the evening of
the rover’s 489th Martian day, or sol.

Sunset and twilight
images are occasionally acquired by the science team to determine how
high into the atmosphere the Martian dust extends, and to look for dust
or ice clouds. Other images have shown that the twilight glow remains
visible, but increasingly fainter, for up to two hours before sunrise
or after sunset. The long Martian twilight (compared to Earth’s) is
caused by sunlight scattered around to the night side of the planet by
abundant high altitude dust. Similar long twilights or extra-colorful
sunrises and sunsets sometimes occur on Earth when tiny dust grains
that are erupted from powerful volcanoes scatter light high in the
atmosphere.”

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Texas A&M/Cornell”
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_347.html