The Waterless Washing Machine

So, I saw this and got me all excited. You've no doubt noticed the increasing number of waterless urinals in restaurants, bars and workplaces across the land if you're a bloke. Well, here is the "Waterless" Washing Machine, courtesy of a company from Leeds. British innovation leading the way! It uses 90% less water than a normal washing machine, using "beads" to get into all the nooks and crannies of your washing. The machine causes a 30% cost saving for the user (a lot of the energy usually used in a washing machine is for heating the water) and once the beads are done, they can be used to make other plastic stuff like dashboards. 


Sounds perfect. Now we just need people to get their heads round the idea.....

Google At War With Apple with New Tablet?

While Apple caused a huge stir in the world of tech and gadgets last week with the announcement of its' forthcoming ipad, major players google may have leaked details of their own multitouch tablet machine.

The picture opposite, which appeared on their Chrominum site, reveal how their Chrome OS would function on a touchscreen machine, and as you can see, a QWERTY keyboard can appear on screen, there are resizeable windows and zooming functionality.

If such rumours suggest no love lost between Apple and Google, they will be further fuelled by reports that at a meeting between Apple CEO / cult leader Steve Jobs and his employees, he said of Google that "they want to kill the iphone" (with their release of Nexus One), and even more controversially, of their "Don't Be Evil" mantra, "It's bullshit".

As they say in the playground, "fight fight fight fight!" Watch this space for developments.....

The All-New Apple Ipad : Emperor's New Clothes, Or The Re-Invention of Portable Computing?

Wow. So after much consternation, prediction and hype, the Apple Ipad has Finally landed. 

The Specs were widely predicted, but in the end, rumours of an OLED display were incorrect, while it comes in 16G, 32G, and 64G capacities, with support for 720 telly, but sadly NO flash. It's been described as essentially an oversized iphone, and so anyone familiar with the existing apple smartphone offering should find its' 9.7 inch touchscreen interface pretty familiar, and far more expansive, while the 160,000 apps available for the iphone will no doubt be adapted and added to for this gizmo.

Probably equally important, if not more so, was the announcement by Steve Jobs of an Apple ibooks store, which is envisioned to revolutionise the print publishing industry in the same way iTunes changed music consumption. The new tablet and store will utilise an "epub" form - a free and open e-book standard. While it the latter comes as a welcome relief for writers hoping for a future for the industry, personally, I'm doubtful whether this latest must-have accessory is going to be the "kindle-killer" that it clearly hopes to be. Since it doesn't use the "e-paper" technology of other e-readers, using it will become heavy on the eyes after several hours of reading.

Meanwhile, it's clearly also aimed at the Netbook market, as a cross between a lightweight laptop and smartphone. However, the rather difficulty of tapping away on-screen means that a keyboard doc has been produced for those who wish to type extensively, pictured thus:

The keyboard itself is similar to that of the sleek-looking kind already offered with full-sized Macs, but the problem for me is that A) It looks delicate, and ready to be snapped or damaged, as does the large touch-screen which cannot be protected from scratches by folding the gizmo shut, and B) It takes away the all-in-one nature of this object which purports to be the gadget to end all gadgets. 

On the plus side, I can see the ipad being a great outlet for games developers, who are already thriving on the Iphone Apps store, thus putting it alongside PSPs and Nintendo DSs.

It's clearly also intended to be a portable TV / video as well, far better for watching than the tiny screens offered by the nano, classic, and even the Iphone, which isn't quite big enough. 

What the ipad is for me, created out of an intention to revolutionise an area somewhere between the smartphone, e-reader portable media player, and laptop, but it remains to be seen whether it will manage it. It could applications that are revolutionary, particularly in education, which I think could be key, but it remains to be seen whether or not it will manage to do this - it's all about adoption of the technology, but given apples' track record on revolutionising useage (particularly re-inventing the smartphone with the advent of the iphone, and the many apps that have mushroomed in both creation and widespread adoption), I wouldn't put it past them to manage it. 

Manchester Blog Awards

Belated it may be, but here it is. A couple of weeks back, Manchester had its' fourth annual Blog Awards, which were started by Kate Feld of The Manchizzle.   As a resident of this fine city, which is ahead of the curve when it comes to all things creative and internety, I think it's only fair that I give you a roundup of the winners.

Best City and Neighbourhood Blog
Lost In Manchester of which a judge on the panel said, "Sometimes it’s easy to forget to look at what’s right under your nose. I love its unashamed raw passion for Manchester". The Manchester Zedders also got a special mention from the jury.

Best Personal Blog

My Shitty Twenties (pictured) Of the single-mother from Salford, judges said her blog was, "Moving, thoughtful, funny and wise. Sometimes heartbreaking, always uplifting." Runner up was Cynical Ben., which certainly put a smile on my face....

Best New Blog
Word And Fixtures, the work of Claire Conlon, Mancunian media type who has previously worked for Elle, Nova and Wallpaper. "“It was the only blog out of the twenty-four shortlisted that made me laugh out loud.” Second place went to achingly cool music blog Songs From Under The Floorboards.

Best Writing On A Blog
My Shitty Twenties. "It's almost impossible not to get drawn into the story that this blog tells."  Others shortlisted were I Thought I Told You To Wait In The Car, and Dave Hartley's Weblog.

Best Arts And Culture Blog
Run Paint Run Run. "Opinionated, heartfelt and pleasantly rough-around-the-edges, a blog with an infectious enthusiasm for art." Runner up was The Manchester Hermit by artist Ansuman Biswas, who has written, rather curiously about living in the Gothic Tower in Manchester Museum.

Blog Of The Year

Lost In Manchester. with it's curiosity for the little details that put the "Greater" before Manchester (see for example, the picture opposite). Judges said "Quirky, original and focussed, with an eye for detail. Putting the extra into extraordinary.”

In other MBA news, Jenn Ashworth, who won the awards two years ago, with Every Day I Lie A Little, was shortlisted for the Guardian-run Not The Booker prize for her book A Kind Of Intimacy. coming as a runner up to Rana Dasgupta.

The Future Of Civilisation

Hi Chaps and chappesses,

Back again. Been off doing my music, movies, and TV journalism blogs elsewhere.

Surfing Youtube for my regular dose of futurism, I found this awesome exposition by reknowned thinker Michio Kaku of the civilisations that scientists are searching for across the universe. There's a typology, with Types 1 to 3. At the moment, earth doesn't even figure, it's a 'Type 0' civilisation, because we're so primative at harnessing the earth's resources! Rest at peace, though, he explains how we're in transition to be able to truly harness the earth's resources, before we can reach Star Trek, and Star Wars levels of advancement (yes, really!).

News Roundup

So, it's Sunday, oh what a fun day. Not. Currently hunting around various news sites for stories worthy of the mighty Red Pill, I found several, so here are a selection...

Firstly, in some rather unsurprising science news, apparently modern man had sex with neanderthals, across the species barrier, according to the research of Professor Svaante Paabo. The two species lived alongside another 30,000 years ago, for around 10-12,000 years. Further research on the neanderthal genome sequence will reveal if this had a permanent effect or not. The whole thing sounds what usually I usually observe when I go out for a night in Manchester, if you ask me.

The much anticipated release of Windows 7 last Thursday has made the news everywhere, as the successor to the much-maligned Vista broke all sales records for Microsoft, giving a lot of IT companies a huge boost in the process, particularly PC manfacturers threatened by the rising sales of Apple Mac computers that has taken place this year, which has partly been attributed to the weaknesses of the old Microsoft platform. The new operating system has multi-touch screen functionality, is great for easy home networking, is apparently a lot less annoying than Vista. Happy days.

And in good news in the world of medicine and biology, a gel has been developed that can stop the spread of HIV/Aids as well as a condom. Researchers at the University of Utah have developed the gel, which would be ideal for use in countries where family planning is not openly discussed. I'm personally all for any measures that can be taken to stop this easily preventable disease in its' tracks, so that sounds great to me.

The first 1000 year old human has already been born

As openers go, that's got to be a pretty controversial statement, but there it is. I sat agast last night as I watched a BBC 4 programme It's Only A Theory , a bearded and erudite Cambridge don, Dr Aubrey De Grey expounded the above theory.

He explained that at the beginning of the twentieth century, life expectancy for someone in the UK was around mid-40s, and with medical advances, by the end of the century, a person could expect to live to their mid 70s. Now, hold onto your chair. Dr De Grey then explained how, given the exponentially increasing pace of development in technology, we could to expect to see a similar gain, in a shorter amount of time, he guessed around 30 years. The clever bit here was that he believed this ongoing process of technological discovery would mean that those being born, and upto around 30 today would ride the wave of innovation, so by the time they reached the maximum life expectancy for their age, advances would have pushed back their terminal age even further, virtually into perpetuity - he called this "longevity escape velocity".

He also said there would be a shift in the way we increase the maximum age of your average human. The gains made in the past century were the result of resolving issues that were killing the very young, infant mortality, and childbirth mortality. This time however, the gains will be made by actual, bone-fide rejuvenation, restoring the ageing human body at the cellular level, as far back as young adulthood (around 20, he suggested). All of a sudden, the prospect of living over 100 seems far more attractive.....

The panel on the TV show obviously toyed with his idea, before rejecting it as a possibility. I for one however, agreed, on the basis of the evidence he put forward - after all, he was only suggesting one such person might exist, not millions.

Of course, even if he's only a fraction right, which as a professor who studies ageing, he must be, a hugely ageing does raise a great number of moral, philosopical and practical questions. This is the fun bit for me, the bit where I can geek out, and extrapolate the various ramifications of the red pill on offer. Let us make some predictions:

• The pension age will one day probably be 75 0r 80 for those, like myself, currently in their 30s, let alone the UK government's tentative plans to raise it to 66.
• Society will become more risk-averse. With human beings living for extraordinary amounts of time, death will become more and more unusual, and unexpected, something to be avoided at all costs. So there'll be less nutters base jumping and climbing buildings.
• Birth rates will drop massively. It's people in their teens and twenties that tend to have risky, unprotected sex leading to pregnancy, whereas older people tend to plan.
• The doctor on the show also said it would be possible to conceive at much older ages, so children would grow up with parents that are more socially conservative, responsible, experienced etc., as older people tend to be. This might in turn lead to a drop in crime rates and other social problems related to inexperienced parenting.
• Lots of people would go on Saga holidays, and Carol Vorderman would carry on being in Channel 5 adverts for stairlifts and life insurance in perpetuity.
• The definition of youth and youth culture will continue to shift as it has done in the post war years, with people deferring responsibility and family into their 40s and 50s in the coming decades.
• Those who can afford anti-ageing technologies and scientifically advanced medical care will be tend to be wealthy, many of the older people in society will be the rich, whereas poorer people will tend to die at a much younger age, progressing and pronouncing the current age/wealth gap to a much greater level.

Anyway, if you have any suggestions, feel free to add them. Enjoy......