Adam V’s Tumble Blog

It seems like they’re already everywhere – if you look down at your keyboard, one is providing the little green indicator for your Num Lock key, while another may be frantically blinking to inform you of your waiting voice mail. On your next drive, chances are you will stop at a stoplight lit purely by LED’s and perhaps may notice a blinker made up of small, bright lights instead of one bulb. LED’s certainly are everywhere, faithfully providing indications of all kinds. But, with a few exceptions, the primary purpose of an LED is to indicate rather than illuminate, despite the fact that LED’s do nothing useful besides produce light. A few new developments, however, may bring solid-state lighting into our homes very soon.

via What Is The State Of Solid State LED Lighting?.

But the world’s corporate and academic R&D labs were busy laying the foundations of some amazing future technologies in 2008. They produced concepts such as silicon chips you can swallow for personalized medicine from the inside out and a fourth fundamental element in electronic circuitry. And engineers cranked out a few less groundbreaking — but no less important — inventions, like a space-age swimsuit to help Michael Phelps slice through the water faster than a river otter on a jet ski.

via wired.com

Last time, we talked about installing Sugar so that you could emulate the OLPC environment on your system. Now it’s time to explore how activities work on the XO.

via Red Hat Magazine.

By 2012, Pittsburgh’s streets will have 20,000 new trees. That’s the goal of Treevitalize Pittsburgh. The program’s modeled after one in Philadelphia. The Allegheny Front’s Alicia Dellaera has the story.

via The Allegheny Front.

If you’re intrigued by multitouch technology as much as I am, you’ve probably been following it pretty closely and are at least impressed by its potential.

But what could it do better? According to Apple, taking the “touch” out of multitouch would be a good first step.

According to an article on AppleInsider, Apple has issued a 30-page patent that touches on the implementation of proximity sensors into its multitouch technology on devices larger than the iPhone.

via  Apple – CNET News.

ScienceDaily (Dec. 7, 2008) — The virus behind cold sores is a major cause of the insoluble protein plaques found in the brains of Alzheimer’s disease sufferers, University of Manchester researchers have revealed.

via Science Daily.