Finding where the fish might hang out: Setting his tackle box aside, Tim Thurston steers his 18-foot power boat on a straight-as-an-arrow course across Maine’s China Lake as he prepares to pull something other than brown trout or bass from the greenish waters.
Armed with a combination global positioning system and depth recorder, he is trying to produce a detailed and accurate map depicting how the bottom of the lake is shaped.
The primary market for his maps consists of fishermen and recreational boaters. Maps spelling out the contours of the lake bottom can signal the most productive fishing spots.
When Thurston began Maine Lake Charts Inc. in 2001, the only lake depth data available came from a Depression-era program designed to put people back to work.
Mini eyes in the sky: Seiko Epson Corp. is developing a flying robot that looks like a miniature helicopter and is about the size of a giant bug. The company hopes it’ll prove handy for security, disaster rescue and space exploration.
The robot, 3.35 inches tall and 0.4 ounces, follows a flight-route program sent by Bluetooth wireless from a computer.
On board is a 32-bit microcontroller, a superthin motor, a digital camera that sends blurry images and a tiny gyro-sensor, which the company said may also appear in digital cameras and cellphones as soon as this year to help deliver more precise images.
The Micro Flying Robot barely managed to get off the ground in a demonstration this week. It crashed off the table at one point and required long waits for battery changes. It can fly just three minutes at a time, for now, and its lift was wobbly because the machine’s precision is not much better than a wind-up toy.
America speeds up: The number of Americans who get on the Internet via high-speed lines has now equaled the number using dial-up connections.
July measurements from Nielsen/NetRatings placed the broadband audience at 51 percent of the U.S. online population at home. That’s up from 38 percent a year ago.
Marc Ryan, senior director of analysis at the Internet research company, said many people are initially lured by deals from broadband providers. After the promotional rate ends, he said, “to go backward (to dial-up) is very difficult.”
Nielsen/NetRatings found broadband penetration highest among those under 35 years old – and particularly the 18-to-20 age group, at 59 percent. Those 65 years and older have the lowest penetration, at 34 percent.
The numbers are based on the company’s panel of 40,000 Internet users who report what sites they visit and what type of connections they have. The panelists were recruited randomly using telephone-based methods.
There’s money in that lamppost: Further proof New York’s real estate market is inflated: The city plans to sell space on top of lampposts to wireless phone companies for $21.6 million a year.
The equipment would be attached to 18,000 of the city’s 200,000 lampposts. T-Mobile USA Inc., Nextel Partners Inc., IDT Corp. and three other wireless carriers want the equipment to increase their networks’ capacity.
“Manhattan has 100 percent coverage, but if you’re driving along the West Side Highway at peak hours, you might not be able to get on the phone,” thanks to network congestion, said Gino Menchini, the city’s commissioner for information technology.
One part of the 15-year deal is cheap Wi-Fi phones for neighborhoods where less than 95 percent of residents have home phones. IDT, which has agreed to market the cheaper phone service in those neighborhoods, would pay lower rates for poles there than other companies would in wealthier areas.
Give him the PaperNapkin.net treatment: Attention, single women: If that guy hitting on you just won’t quit until you surrender your e-mail address, feel free to call upon Paper Napkin.
Billed as an e-mail rejection service, Paper Napkin will tell your persistent suitor to buzz off when he comes calling electronically.
Here’s how it works:
Give out any e-mail address with “PaperNapkin.net” after the “at” sign. You don’t need to register the address ahead of time.
When your suitor tries to contact you for a date, he’ll instead receive a form letter stating in part, “Maybe you’re just out of your league here.”
Josh Santangelo, a Web developer in Seattle, said he got the idea over lunch last week after a discussion on dating turned to the New York Rejection Line – a phone number women can give out to reach a generic recording of rejection. He thought there ought to be something similar for e-mail, and he wrote the code for it that afternoon.
He said some 400 people have tried the service since a friend publicized it at the Web journal Metafilter. Most were tests, though about 30 appeared to be real rejects.
Networks adopt ad catalog system: Four major television networks have recently started using a uniform cataloging system for tracking advertisements.
The Ad-ID system is an Internet-accessible database that assigns codes to television, print and radio commercials scheduled to air or run in publications, creating a repository of information about the ads.
ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox will label the commercials slated to air on their networks with the 12-digit code assigned by Ad-ID so advertisers can track scheduling, billing and other information about their ad campaigns simply by going on the Internet.
Traditionally, individual advertising agencies employed their own system. Broadcasters then tagged the ads with a uniform eight-digit code, but the system isn’t consolidated with other media formats such as print.
Associated Press
Associated Press
Tim Thurston downloads GPS data while mapping the underwater contours of China Lake in Vassalboro, Maine.
Associated Press
Seiko Epson Corp.’s micro flying robot is controlled by a wireless Bluetooth connection from a computer.
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