Links for 23-11-2007
Kurzweil on immortality at the Guardian, ladybird bog-bot, the writer as entrepreneur …
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1 – UK retailers to record labels: DRM is killing us
“In response to declining music sales in the UK, the ERA has called for the music industry to put an end to DRM. The organization [...] blames draconian digital copy protection technologies for the slow growth of the digital music market.”
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2 – Bring on the nanobots, and we will live long and prosper
“Within a couple of decades, we will have “nanobots” in our blood stream, basically small robots the size of blood cells, that will keep us healthy at the cellular and molecular level.”
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3 – Magnetic pulses to brain treat depression
“Stimulating the brain with rapid bursts of magnetic energy is a safe and effective treatment for major depression, a new large-scale study has found.” Hmmm.
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4 – Ladybug robot cleans restrooms
“In addition to cleaning, Lady Bird can engage in simple conversation with restroom users, thanks to microphones in its “antennae,†speech recognition capabilities and a voice synthesizer.” Only in Japan, kids.
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5 – favikon
Automatic favicon generator.
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6 – Can Amazon’s Kindle e-book wean us off paper?
In short, not yet.
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7 – Vanity publishing is now more attractive
“If the invention of the printing press liberated books from the monopoly of the monasteries in the 15th century, then self-publishing is freeing us today from the power of publishers.” Er, hang on a second …
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8 – The Rise Of The Writer-Entrepreneur
“… the next time a writer gets fed up with the studios mangling his scripts, perhaps he’ll have the opportunity to prove he can do it better by raising some venture capital and producing the movie himself.”
