This Little Light of Mine - The eco-friendly city of Ann Arbor aims to be the nation's first to convert all downtown street lights to LED technology, which uses less than half the energy of traditional bulbs and could save the community $100,000 a year. [more]

Pinocchio is so Passé - Okay, I have to admit it: this one creeps me out. David Hanson, a robot maker, has created an "artificial boy" named Zeno. It can't speak or walk yet, but he has blinking eyes that can track people and a face that captivates with a range of expressions. "It's a representation of robotics as a character animation medium, one that is intelligent," Hanson beams. "It sees you and recognizes your face. It learns your name and can build a relationship with you." [more]

Comparing Apples to Oranges - A group of Canadian scientists is working on an ambitious project to create a global database of up to half a million of the world's species using DNA barcoding technology. The goal is to collect gather five million specimens and 500,000 species within a five-year period. The "barcoding of life" projects have drawn increasing attention, particularly from the United States, Canada and Europe, as scientists explore the technique's applications, which range from food safety and consumer protection to the identification of herbal plants. [more]

I Swear I'll Never Say "Pimptastic" Again - Things haven't changed much since the red-tipped white cane became a well recognized symbol of the blind. All of that could be poised to change, however, if Sebastian Ritzler's design prize takes off. He created an interactive guiding system for the blind called Mygo that comes in the form of a cool, rolling white cane. Some would go so far as to call the design ‘flashy pimptastic.’ [more]

If You Don't Know How to Use It, Don't Steal It - Timothy Scott Short stole a Digimarc printer used by the state of Missouri to print driver's licenses and casually called the company to procure the needed software drivers -- which caught the attention of the Secret Service agents already investigating him for identity theft. Digimarc isn't saying how the Secret Service knew Short had called, but since the printer can only be used to print Missouri IDs, it's safe to say they might have had a hunch. [more]

Seeing Isn't Always Believing - Dr. Hany Farid, a 41-year-old engineer, is a founder of a subdiscipline within computer science: digital forensics. Most days, he spends his time transforming ordinary images into ones with drastic new meanings. Click, goes his mouse. Courtney Love has joined Grandpa at the family barbecue. Click. Click. Elvis Presley is on Dartmouth’s board of trustees. While digital forensics is a relatively new field -- just five years old -- people have been manipulating photographs since the Civil War. [more]

Watching the Watchers - Under an agreement announced last week, Google will pay Nielsen an undisclosed amount to obtain detailed information about the kinds of people who watch specific TV shows. Google's access to the information is significant because it gives the Mountain View-based company more tools to draw upon as it tries to target television ads as effectively as it has done on the Internet. [more]

Resurrecting the Dead, or at Least Their Memory - Illegible words on church headstones could be read once more thanks to a scan technology developed in the US. The new scanning method detects carved figures such as writings and drawings through 3D scans and computer analysis. Interestingly enough, the technique could one day also be used by doctors to examine a patient's tongue for signs of illness. [more]

Life in the Funny Papers - A friend of mine has a quote in the signature of her e-mails that always strikes a bittersweet chord with me: Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, 'Where have I gone wrong?' Then a voice says to me, 'This is going to take more than one night.' Charles Schulz wasn't talking about the IT Industry when he wrote it, but he might as well have been. Nearly all companies have failed investments in software initiatives--many in the six and seven figure range! The good news is that the leading causes of these failures can be avoided by applying Menlo's High-Tech Anthropology^® practice. Join us for the next FREE 90-minute presentation on November 15th to learn how our approach creates the right software for the right application.

The Devil's in the Details - Pascal Cotte spent 3,000 hours analyzing data from scans he made of the Mona Lisa painting in the Louvre's laboratory three years ago. The resulting 22-gigabyte digital photo was made using 13 different color filters rather than the three or four found in standard digital cameras. So what did he find? Well, one example is that the Mona Lisa had brows and lashes at one time, but they were obliterated by restoration techniques. [more]

The Return of the $100 Laptop - The much touted "$100 laptop" is set to sell to the public as part of a give one, get one plan that will put a laptop in the hands of a child in a developing country. Walter Bender, head of software development at One Laptop per Child (OLPC), told the BBC News website: "From day one there's been a lot of interest expressed in having some way of people in the developed world participate in the programme." Under this new program one laptop will be sent to the buyer whilst a child in the developing world will receive the second machine. [more]