An anonymous reader writes “A rocky world orbiting a nearby star was confirmed (PDF) as the first planet outside our Solar System to meet key requirements for sustaining life.” The “key requirement” was actually a Starbucks — astronomers were pretty surprised to find out that they like their coffee burnt on Gliese 581d too.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

See the original article here:
Gliese 581d Confirmed as 'Habitable' Exoplanet

I think e-ink is one of those fantastic retro-future technologies that is so cool because it’s so simple. But, inevitably, I’m going to want some color. Thankfully, Ricoh has just developed a new color e-paper screen that’s better than ever. More

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Update: Here’s a statement we got from Sprint:

“We did have some disruption to Sprint SMS traffic earlier tonight, but it wasn’t a complete disruption — we lost partial capacity for about an hour. Engineers immediately began rerouting traffic and after about an hour things went back to normal.

There is no significant voice disruption anywhere in the US except for a small part of our Sprint network in the Washington, DC area. That has since been resolved and had no relation to the SMS disruption.”

Sprint network is down in some areas, SMS and voice call services affected (updated) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 May 2011 22:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Sprint network is down, no SMS and voice calls for some of you originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 May 2011 22:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This photo, purportedly taken near Louisiana’s Morganza Spillway, is simultaneously horrifying and kind of amusing. The snake just looks so purposeful, with its head raised like that. As though it’s out running some errands, or on a morning commute.

That said, I kind of hope somebody spots the pixels that prove this image is a fake. Because the idea of giant snakes hanging out alongside American highways gives my feet a terrible case of the crawling willies.

Continue reading here:
Giant snake flees Mississippi floods

Another day, another step closer to quantum dot reality. Today, Nanosys unveiled its new Quantum Dot Enhancement Film (QDEF), marking the first time that the nanotechnology is available for LCD manufacturers. According to the company, its optical film can deliver up to 60 percent of all colors visible to the human eye, compared with the 20 to 25 percent that most displays offer. To create QDEF, Nanosys’ engineers suspended a blend of quantum dots within optical film and applied it to a blue LED, which helped get the nanocrystals excited. Once they started hopping around, the dots emitted high-quality white light and a rich, wide color gamut, without consuming as much power as white LED-based materials. No word yet on when we can expect to see QDEF in consumer displays, but Nanosys claims that the film is “process-ready” and easy for manufacturers to integrate. For now, you can amuse yourselves by comparing the two frogs pictured above and guessing which one is covered in quantum dots. Full PR after the break.

Continue reading Nanosys unveils Quantum Dot Enhancement Film for LCDs, promises all kinds of colors

Nanosys unveils Quantum Dot Enhancement Film for LCDs, promises all kinds of colors originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 May 2011 13:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When I was a kid I planted a tree that grew over the rooftop of my house. At the time I thought that was pretty cool, but now I have seen this great gallery of The Strangest Trees on Earth, which you will agree are pretty strange. See full gallery at the link.

Link

See the article here:
The Strangest Trees on Earth

Sometime last week we quietly turned on our latest project. Plansharing: Collaboration for Architects, Engineers, Designers, and their clients is a basecamp like tool for CAD. The idea is to make the communication around plans and large projects clear and simple. We focused on a single feature, marking up plans. You can view arbitrarily complicated CAD files without flash, plugins, or installed software. How do we do it? We copy the way google maps and open street maps work, making tiles instead of rendering full vector images. Last year I built a beach cabin , and in the process i realized that there was something really broken in the communication process between architects, builders, and their clients. To make change requests, talk about what needed to be done, we either had to travel for a face to face meeting, or mark up pdf’s of the plans. Some hacking, brainstorming with Diego , some tweaking, mockups, running code, and now we’ve got plansharing . It’s very focused on the primary task, discussions around plans, viewing changes, communicating visually online what’s happening in CAD files. We’ll be flushing it out, building it in to a collaboration tool. It’s not done, it’s not refined or polished, but it mostly works and we think we’ve got enough of an app to be useful. We’re looking for beta testers. Know somebody who works with CAD, or is getting their kitchen remodeled? Give plansharing a try and tell us what you think.

See the article here:
My latest project, Plansharing: Basecamp for CAD