Miracle weight loss!

There's an interesting link via Boing Boing today about a reference kilogram that seems to have lost weight. It's the weight of a fingerprint lighter. Even stranger is that though a series of these reference kilos were made out of the same material, at the same time, and stored under the same conditions, the weights seem to be ever-so-slowly drifting apart. It's a real mystery and it's got physicists mighty confused. (To say "this one included" makes me sound a far better physicist than I know I am... not that the statement isn't true, however.)

The kicker: If reference kilos are losing weight, then, by comparison, we're all gaining weight. (I'm only about 500 micrograms heavier than I thought, but that doesn't mean I won't at least think about going to the gym later today.)

How does that iPodTouch/iPhone screen work anyway?

When I saw the iPodTouch/iPhone screen in the Apple demo videos, I knew it felt familiar. Stumbling from link to link today, I found a video that I've seen before:



(Link to the webpage here.)
It's a talk from Feb 2006 on this wonderful new "multi-touch" technology. Though Apple found some nice little consumer apps to pop it into, the way this screen works could, quite literally, transform the way we interact with computers. It's so intuitive and seemingly simple to use. I've been thinking for ages about getting a touchpad interface to help with photo editing, etc... but this is light years ahead of that.

Take it a step further and think about what happens if this tech really catches on... I can imagine a whole new design for computers--fitting even more organically into our everyday lives. I'd love to have a desk with one of these things integrated right into it. Or a laptop that doesn't need an extra keyboard and is as intuitive to use as a pad of paper.

Not that computers aren't already everywhere, this takes them another leap away from being some alien technology and towards devices that you barely even notice you're using. Kind of scary. Kind of exhilarating. Can't wait to see what comes next.

For a little more insight into how it might actually work, have a peek here at an amazingly simple homebrew version.