Gordon Bell has created custom designed software, MyLifeBits, that records and saves everything  he does during the day. “The last time he counted, MyLifeBits had more than 101,000 emails, almost 15,000 Word and PDF documents, 99,000 Web pages, and 44,000 pictures.”

He is attempting to bring Vannevar Bush’s Memex idea to life, in which technology could be used to save everything and browse as a supplement to your memory.

Another similar type of project, also being undertaken at Microsoft, is LifeBrowser. Eric Horowitz is attempting to create software that would “automatically identify the most significant events in your life, so that when you scroll back through your history, it shows you only the most important highlights.”

Source: Fast Company A Head For Detail

Fortune on MIT’s Neil Gershenfeld, director of MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA):

Today your all-in-one device prints, scans, faxes and copies. Tomorrow it will cut, score, etch and sew. Want a new dining room chair? You’ll design it on a PC and press PRINT, and your personal fabricator will create it for you right before your eyes. Just make sure tray No. 2 has enough wood.

Source: Fortune Magazine: A Factory of One’s Own

Tim Berners Lee “wants to set up a web science research project to study the social implications of the web’s development. ”

Project Description:

The Web Science Research Initiative will chart out a research agenda aimed at understanding the scientific, technical and social challenges underlying the growth of the web.  Of particular interest is the growing volume of information on the web that documents more and more aspects of human activity and knowledge. The project will examine how we access this information and assess its reliability. 

Source: BBC News

The TEAHA approach attempts to achieve interoperability by developing a middleware platform that mediates between different appliances and communication systems to overcome the multitude of players - appliance manufacturers, telecommunications firms, utility companies, software designers and system installers - involved in trying to build a smart home.

Issues:

Architecture:

(Download Teaha Brochure for complete information - zipped pdf file)

Source: ZDNet: Emerging Technology Trends

“Many of the consequences of a war with Iran are easy to imagine. Oil would soar to at least $200 per barrel if we could get it. Gas shortages would bring back the gas lines of 1973 and 1979. Our European alliances would be stretched to the breaking point if not beyond it. ……What I fear no one forsees is a substantial danger that we could lose the army now deployed in Iraq. “

“The structure of our position in Iraq could lead to that greatest of military disasters, encirclement. That is precisely the danger if we go to war with Iran. “

“The danger arises because almost all of the vast quantities of supplies American armies need come into Iraq from one direction, up from Kuwait and other Gulf ports in the south. If that supply line is cut, our forces may not have enough stuff, especially fuel, to get out of Iraq. “