Google's new super headquarters open in London's Covent Gardengoogle s new super headquarters in London by designers PENSON may be home to some Union jack flag themes,
Pension really delivered on Google's new digs. The designers call the design a London townhouse-hybrid
Pension has named different parts of the office things like Secret Gardens, Allotments, Google Green, Google Park and Grannies Flat,
in compliance with Google's famed Red List that focuses on removing toxic ingredients of materials.
The Gardens connect to Google's cafe, and Google Park, which is a big garden.
The cafe was designed with a retro-feel and has a view over the city. The Google Green looks out across this area
linking together the cafe, Gardens and the Town hall, and features couches for Town hall overflow or informal meetings.
The super HQ follows along the new trends in office buildings, especially for the more progressive tech companies like Apple, Google Facebook and Twitter.
GPS saves gas for produce delivery companymichael Gilbert says the Navman Wireless installation paid for itself in 90 days.
engaged with Navman Wireless for services that help track and optimize routes. The company tested the GPS SYSTEMS
The Navman Wireless technology quickly helped reduce the amount of time that drivers spent offloading their trucks at each stop.
It takes from 20 to 30 minutes for Navman Wireless to install its technology in each vehicle,
without having to change out the hardware. Image courtesy of Indianapolis Fruit
Green algae used to make plastics that don't contain petroleumyou've heard of silverware and plasticware,
In this case, the algae serves as a biopolymer on the opposite end of the manufacturing pipeline--instead of reducing pollution from the creation of traditional plastic,
Samsung's E200eco mobile phone, which is made partially of  corn-based bioplastic. More stories about algae and alternative fuels on Smartplanet:
at roughly 330 liters per day for water consumed via the distribution system, and a massive 550 liters per day for all uses, including groundwater sources.
this design is easy to insert into the urban fabric, according to SOA's website. It would also be a type of mixed-use development for urban farming.
SOA website explains. Growing popular tropical fruits in these types of greenhouse structures makes sense.
Small producers who sell through Aires de Campo gain the benefit of a better-known brand, national marketing and access to the company's far-reaching distribution network.
Free wi-fi and power outlets, spacious seats, online ticketing, and convenient pickup locations have increased the appeal of
So Google Green, take note: There's a hungry segment of small business owners who could really benefit from real-time guidance on avoiding slow roads,
According to The Telegraph: Albert Einstein, who liked to make bold claims (often wrong), famously said that
Einstein was right-honey bee collapse threaten global food security The Telegraph Photo: Â cygnus921/flickr Related on Smartplanet:
Hong kong's farms transition to attract urban hobbyistsa volunteer works inside a mesh greenhouse HONG KONG--In one of the most modern and gritty cities in the world,
On a sunny Saturday in April, one volunteer was tending produce in a mesh greenhouse,
Now that all 928 factoids--a central part of the Snapple experience--are listed on the company's website,
The Internet is lambasted as an abyss of lies, when really it s a place to organize around the question of what s real...
it s that the Internet's not inherently a place for lies any more than a bottle cap is a place for truth.
Yesterday I caught up by phone with Dave Marshall, a Portland city councilor and chair of the Energy and Environmental Sustainability Committee.
Their bike network is unparalleled in the country. It s an amazing infrastructure. You can see their commitment to getting people to where they need to go without the automobile.
So there s a movement to get the region to grow its public transit network. In 2008 there was part of a study the Department of transportation did to widen 295 through the peninsula,
It s one of the only Amtrak services where you can get Wifi and lobster rolls.
We ve been expanding our network with bike lanes. We have a new trail that was a rail line.
We already have a pretty important trail network that people use here. One is the Baxter Boulevard trail,
And while you can get simple open-source printers for surprisingly cheap (anywhere from $250-$500),
we just haven t quantified them. via Co. Exist
How to feed an astronaut: a talk with NASA's space food managerwhile it's not exactly five-star cuisine,
or cookies because they create crumbs. We do bring up some crackers, but first we did an assessment to find the cracker that won't break too easily.
which has spreads, cheeses, meats, a few entrees and cookies for dessert. What are some of the most popular food items for astronauts?
If you go to these sites today, you'll see that the charcoal is still intact in the ground
The Michigan scientists looked at unused land using aerial imagery and tapped into the city's database.
How wireless networks could keep cows from burping methanehere s a novel way to combat global warming:
CSIRO s Sustainable agriculture Flagship in Brisbane, Australia may have found an unlikely solution in wireless networks.
and connect them with an ad hoc wireless network. The device stays in the stomach for weeks
Deli Wang, professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the UC San diego Jacobs School of engineering
IBM supercomputer named world's fastest, lands new jobonce again, America can brag about having the world Â's fastest supercomputer.
IBM Â's Sequoia helped regained the top spot on the TOP500 list of the world s top supercomputers.
Drawing from 1, 572,864 cores, the IBM Bluegene/Q system clocked in at 16.32 petaflops per second, according to the LINPACK benchmark.
For clarification, a petaflop is measured as a thousand trillion floating point operations per second. In less technical terms, it would take 6. 7 billion people continuously typing on calculators for 320 years to complete as many calculations as the Sequoia can get done in just an hour.
And this time around the computer really outprocessed the competition. Last year Â's supercomputing champion, Fujitsu s Å K Computer Â, finished in second place with a benchmark score of 10.51 Pflop/s. It Â
's still a powerful computer, though much slower with less than half as many cores than the Sequoia.
And just behind the Japanese system is another IBM machine, the Mira, which registered at 8. 15 petaflop/s. In fact, of the top 10 fastest supercomputers,
half of them were built by Big Blue. Related post: World s fastest processor is an overclocked beast video So
what exactly is all that processing power used for? Located at the US Department of energy's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, the world Â's most capable computer has just been enlisted this month to carry out nuclear weapon simulations.
The intensive computing work will allow scientists to test the replicate explosions to check the effectiveness of the military Â's current arsenal without the need to perform actual underground tests.
The Sequoia will also be used to advance our understanding in the fields of astronomy, energy, genetics and climate change.
While it Â's natural to assume that the crown jewel of IBM computing systems would be a real energy vampire
it Â's incredibly power-efficient. In fact, the Sequoia consumes 7. 9 megawatts, much less than the K computer which uses 12.6 megawatts.
For the complete list from TOP500, check out TOP500 Â's annual rankings. Want more Smart ideas?
Check out the archive or the latest record-breaking tech: Amazing video: 30-story hotel built in just 15 days Volkswagen car goes 1,
Icon Carol Bartz, former CEO, Autodesk and Yahoo! Carol Bartz isn't afraid to get her hands dirty.
or so for our phone interview after I tracked down her assistant through Cisco, where she is the lead director.
where she put down roots with her husband Bill Marr (a former Digital Equipment and Sun microsystems executive) close to 20 years ago.
and discipline to two very different high-tech companies, design software developer Autodesk and Internet services giant Yahoo!
In her first all-hands meeting at Autodesk--where she grew the company's revenue from $285 million to $1. 5 billion over a 14-year tenure--Bartz  asked one executive to leave
It took her four days to realize most employees wandered into those meetings at least 20 minutes late and one e-mail to institute a new policy of starting on time.
While she brought that mindset to both Autodesk and Yahoo! Bartz had far less time at the latter company to define
It was much easier to develop a plan at Autodesk and actually see it through,
It became a standing joke to see how fast her weekly e-mail updates would wind up in the hands of reporters.
When Bartz was fired unceremoniously via cell phone by the Yahoo! chairman two-and-a-half years into her assignment, she used the media maelstrom to her advantage.
and her children (a son and two daughters) and then came clean in a terse e-mail to all 14,000 employees:
I am very sad to tell you that I've just been fired over the phone by Yahoo!'
Carol. That e-mail leaked to the press, just as Bartz had anticipated. I ask Bartz if she was given enough time to clean up the organizational mess she inherited at Yahoo!
in order to take computer science classes. To pay for it, she talked her way into a job as a miniskirt-wearing cocktail waitress,
opting out of the night computer operator position that was her other option --even though she didn't know a whiskey-and-seven from a vodka tonic.
After earning her bachelor's degree in Computer science in 1971, Bartz held marketing and sales positions with 3m
and Digital Equipment before being recruited to Sun microsystems in 1983. Nine years later, she was named CEO and chairman of Autodesk,
the first female to be brought in from the outside to run a major high-tech company. The day after she started
You have to do a lot of work at the job site. You have to snap it all together, usually with pneumatic nailing tools.
and disseminate its findings at conferences and via its website (www. nordicfoodlab. org). The day before my ant-foraging expedition,
In Hong kong, appointments only for iphone 4shong KONG--It s not too surprising anywhere in the world to see people lining up to buy the iphone 4s.
Preorders of the iphone 4s reportedly sold out in less than 10 minutes on Monday. Then a line began to form outside the Apple store days in advance of the smart phone s in store sales
which began yesterday at 7 a m. Thousands tried to line up to buy the device, and a majority of them were asked to leave.
 The dealers would quickly resell the phones to other individuals or gray-market retailers for about a $200 profit.
000 customers to buy a maximum of five phones each in a frenzy of sales that lasted three hours.
all others will now only be able to buy the phone from Apple through its online appointment
But not surprisingly, at the time of this post, all iphone models are marked on the site as unavailable
and developers wield enormous power. Difficult as it may be, the government is left to play referee,
. plans to open totally vegetarian outlets near two pilgrimage sites in India. The first restaurant will open in 2013, near the Golden Temple in the northern city of Amritsar,
who describes the food available near the religious site as a bit bland. Å You can t have any onions
With this move, the company will open itself up to millions of strictly vegetarian religious pilgrims who visit these two major sites.
Which is perhaps why some right-wing Hindu groups are creating a fuss about Mcdonald s setting-up shop near religious sites.
PHOTO-Google images/blog. sysomos. com
In Korea, old brews get new lifeseoul--As the sun sets over Seoul, a low-lit basement bar in a back street in the traditional district of Anguk fills up with a cool, 20-to 30-something clientele.
 said Joe Mcpherson, who runs Seoul s  Zenkimchi  blog.  ŠThe Japanese liked makgeolli,
and four days on site to put it together. Â But it took months to arrange for the bronze sculptures, books,
Bholu Ram lives in the Sangam Vihar slums of Delhi and works as a bus handyman with a monthly salary of Rs 4
Ram does not even know that the government is planning to change this policy and give him food grains instead.
Probir Banerjee, head of Pondy Citizens Action Network, which works for the coastal preservation, said that the  Pondicherry harbor constructed in 1989 has blocked the natural movement of sand causing massive erosion to northern beaches  on India's  southeastern coast.
or to spread their nets, he said. Over the years, the government has built also walls made of rock to keep the Bay of bengal Sea from washing away villages in Pondicherry.
and participate, said Ashok Khosla, head of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the world's oldest environmental network.
NASA has culled available data from its network of satellites to generate a map that depicts the amount
and the number of ground sites is limited very. To create the map, the research team used data from the Geoscience Laser Altimeter System lidar on NASA's ICESAT satellite.
via NASA) Related on Smartplanet: How NASA satellites unearthed Egypt s lost pyramids How satellite technology may have tracked down Bin laden Video:
space station s streaming webcam to let users spy on earthlings More interactive maps and graphics:
what he calls a personal obsession with how recursion works in both nature and programming.
ipad opens digital doors for the elderlywhat would happen if Apple seeded assisted-living homes with ipads?
I believe such a measure would help bridge the gulf between the elderly and technology.
you probably did not see many north of seventy eying Apple's ipad. That's because because there's a digital divide that doesn't get much attention.
It's escaped Apple's eye, too. While Baby boomers (me) enter their later years with ipads under their arms
and Blackberries in their pocket, there's still a generation of elderly technology is leaving behind.
It s like the digital divide. Education and socioeconomic status play a role. Some haven t learned the new skills.
Of course, computer and Internet usage among the elderly varies. My high school English teacher mother who died in 2003 would have nothing to do with them even though her son's
(me) life work was following personal computers as a journalist. Yet her brother, an engineer, Â who in good health turns 86 this year embraced notebook PCS a dozen years ago. credit:
or learn well enough to use a computer or gadget? There are initiatives to ease the elderly's introduction to the Internet such as the COMPANIONS Project in the UK.
It posits the idea of the device getting to know the user. COMPANIONS aims to change the way we think about the relationships of people to computers
and the Internet by developing a virtual conversational'Companion'.'This will be an agent or'presence'that stays with the user for long periods of time, developing a relationship and'knowing'its owners preferences and wishes.
It will communicate with the user primarily by using and understanding speech. All well and good,
Back to the present and the ipad. Many are asking if it is truly a game changer.
Does it redefine Internet interaction, books, mobility and ease of use? I'll leave those questions for other posts,
but if Apple dropped ipads into the laps of the elderly, I'd wager many would get hooked.
Even if the ipad is an overgrown iphone, let's face it, the latter was too small most elderly to understand and use.
A mobile phone is for someone on the go and many elderly are settled quite. But the ipad is big enough yet light enough for them to hold in their lap.
The touch screen is ideal. Indeed, Eldergadget. com's First Look gives the ipad a thumbs up:
As far as usability goes, the ipad s bright touch screen is easy for any user to pick up
and start playing with immediately. Response time is quick and efficient which will please most users.
However, some concerns have arisen about the usability of the on-screen keyboard which can be an awkward experience.
Physically, the ipad is quite light, weighing around 1. 5 lbs, which should not trouble most aging adults.
Forget the keyboard. That's not what the ipad is about. Most assuredly, some would put the ipad aside.
But others would be introduced to a digital world that would reconnect them to the mainstream,
open up new vistas and mitigate the loneliness that invariably comes with the terrritory. My beloved uncle always said getting old isn't for sissies.
I nosed around the web for programs Apple might have for the elderly and surprisingly found nothing.
It's ok for Apple to have those hip TV ads with rockin'music to promote the ipad to Gen whatevers,
The ipad is a huge opportunity there. With his recent liver transplant Apple CEO Steve jobs had a serious brush with his own mortality.
ipad showing notebooks the wayjust about every story on the ipad following its introduction Wednesday said it was just a bigger ipod Touch or iphone.
(and iphone) features just in a bigger enclosure with a bigger display. Evolutionary not revolutionary.
Indeed, the  CNET review of the 64 GB model described the ipad as an Ipod Touch with a glandular problem.
Another review said Apple has reinvented the netbook. The ipad strikes me as a bigger ipod Touch,
but that comparison also misses the ipad's potential to begin the end of the very long-in-the-tooth clamshell notebook computer.
Granted the ipad is nowhere near as powerful as today's notebook computers. As the CNET review points out,
the operating system on the ipad is a version of the iphone's operating system, not OS10.
The storage tops out at 64gb, the display is a netbookish 9. 7 inches and the whole thing is driven by a weakling 1 Gigahertz Apple processor.
DG/One, the first clamshell notebook TRS-80 Model 100 But the ipad addresses some of notebook's biggest weaknesses:
IPAD's weight is 1. 5-1. 6 pounds v 3-7 pounds for notebooks.
IPAD is a thin monolith with with no moving parts. Â The notebook clamshell design hasn't changed much in 25 years
and has plenty of moving, hence breakable, parts. Remember the first notebook PC, the DG/One which came out in 1984
and replaced the luggable? That's still the notebook's form factor today. Ironically, the ipad more closely resembles the DG/One's predecessor, the single piece Radio shack TRS-80 Model 100 portable computer.
Mechanical keyboards in notebooks are often the first thing to break. They get filthy and expose notebook innards to bagel crumbs
 The ipad's soft keyboard is on screen and has no mechanical keys. I don't know how good it is,
way better than a laptop...it's like holding the Internet in your hands. The cloud is where
I spend most of my time on this HP Pavilion notebook I am using to compose this post.
Sure, Jobs is prone to hyperbole, but he also has a peerless track record. Remember my Nov 3 post urging Apple to cut prices 25 percent to grab market share?
The ipad embraces this idea with aggressive $500-$830 pricing and is Apple's newest notebook, in my opinion.
the ipad does everything a notebook does. Overall, Â CNET gave the ipad 2. 5-3. 5 stars out of five which okay as in okay,
but not great. Â Even if the first ipads aren't notebook killers, they are a big step in that direction.
It's high time, too. Good to have you back, Steve. Follow me on Twitter
ipad? I'm passingi've had several opportunities to play with the ipad and like millions of others,
I love it. But I'm not going to buy one for the main reason I don't buy Apple.
That's because it's Jobs'way or the highway. credit: Apple Specifically with the ipad, it does not have a USB port, meaning
I can't connect it to my Blackberry which doubles as a broadband modem. I pay Verizon $30 a month for that service and the Blackberry works with all my PC notebooks and netbooks.
With the forthcoming 3g version of ipad, you pay $15 or $30 for broadband which will only work with that ipad.
Bloggers have praised the ipad because its broadband supplier AT&T will not require contracts, but they missed two essential points:
I can cancel my broadband any time with Verizon even though it's part of my overall Verizon cell phone contract.
And with the ipad, you pay for broadband that works only with your unit whereas my Verizon service works with any PC with the free Verizon Access Manager.
In short, my Verizon broadband via my Blackberry is a better deal. update: I was just speaking with a Verizon exec,
who tells me the Palm Pre acts as a mobile broadband WIFI hotspot (mobile broadband in, WIFI out).
And here's what's hard to believe: the mobile broadband/WIFI on the Pre is free for the the life of your contract (it's a promotion
which implies it will end. Normally, the service is $40 a month. I'm due for for upgrade
and a Palm Pre would save me $30 a month! It's not a bad phone, either...
I just hope Palm survives. The ipad also does not allow saving of PDFS and it's not Flash-friendly as one blogger writes.
I'll stick with my $290 open box HP Pavilion notebook (320 GB HD, 4gb RAM, fabulous keyboard...
great Windows 7 notebook. OK, I'll still have to read old-fashioned books and newspapers made from paper,
but frankly, they're both an experience I savor. I would buy an iphone and even give up the Blackberry,
but I suspect you already know why I don't. I am a Verizon customer and Apple has been all about giving AT&T the iphone monopoly.
Hopefully, the rumors that Verizon will finally get an iphone this summer are true. Only recently did Apple lift restrictions on voice over ip
which has been standard fare on PCS for years and a savior for parents with kids overseas.
For many Apple fans these downsides are a small price to pay for what I grant you is wonderful technology.
For me, they're a pain. Follow me on Twitter
ipads still scarce in hospitals; Apple's secret plan to change thatwhen I started writing about biomedical tech,
I figured ipads in hospitals would be the story to follow. And yes, every week or so, there's news of iphone apps for health purposes
and doctors using ipads for this and that. But as it turns out, the jury's still out on the usefulness of tablets in hospitals, NPR reports.
Sure, tablets are finding their way in. At the University of California, San diego Hospital, a physician assistant uses an ipad 2 to update a patient â oe who just received a brand new kidney â oe on his recovery.
She pulls up a graph of blood tests that charts how well his new organ's working
then a chest x-ray from a few days ago showing some fluid build up in the lungs.
But ipads have been available since April 2010, and less than 1%of hospitals have fully functional tablet systems.
Even at UC San diego, their electronic record system has a read-only app for the ipad (which means it can't be used for entering all new information.
So clinicians have to log on through another program, one that's built on a Windows platform.
Not to mention major concerns about spotty wireless in hospitals logging doctors off as they move around, distracted doctors,
and the security of patient records. And the ipad doesn't fit in the pocket of a standard white lab coat.
Jonathan Mack of the West Wireless Health Institute, a nonprofit that works to lower the cost of healthcare through new technology,
says another reason more hospitals aren't using tablets is that they've already invested millions into electronic record systems that aren't compatible with them.
In order to go back around and deploy these on ipads with full functionality, Mack says, it requires that hospitals cough up a lot more money.
Hospitals won't be willing to do that when they aren't even sure that tablets will make things easier.
The federal government is giving hospitals financial incentives to implement electronic medical records, but the most popular systems don't yet make apps that allow doctors to use the records on a tablet the way they would on a desktop or laptop.
To use a mobile device effectively requires a complete redesign of the way information is presented. ON THE OTHER HAND, Apple has a secret plan to steal your doctor's heart.
Apple is pushing the ipad into hospitals playing against its well-polished image as the world's most successful consumer gadget company, Wired reports.
Apple employee Afshad Mistri is the company's secret weapon in a stealth campaign to get the ipad into the hands of doctors.
He's also the guy who in just launched a special itunes room for healthcare,
and promoted it to a select group of healthcare app developers.)However, the company walks a fine line in the medical arena.
The Food and Drug Administration seems set on regulating the software that runs on the ipad, not the device itself,
but if the FDA were to decide that Apple is marketing the ipad for regulated medical uses,
it could unleash a regulatory nightmare. Elliot Fishman, a professor of radiology at Johns Hopkins, studies 50 to 100 CT scans per day on his tablet.
Recently, he checked up on 20 patients while traveling in Las vegas . What this ipad does is really extend my ability to be able to consult remotely anytime,
anywhere, he says. For some, the ipad can save up to an hour and a half per day â oe time that would otherwise be spent on collecting paper printouts of medical images
or heading to computer workstations to look them up online. Many doctors say that bringing an ipad to the bedside lets them administer a far more intimate and interactive level of care than they'd previously thought possible.
The device has freed up doctors to read papers and look up information no matter where they are.
Some hospitals are getting ready for some big rollouts. The Veterans Administration started soliciting bids from contractors to help them manage as many as 100
000 tablet users across its network of 152 hospitals. It's not entirely clear why Apple cares so much about doctors.
Why have a guy like Afhsad Mistri spending his days talking to doctors and medical software developers?
Why is healthcare the one vertical market that Apple promotes on its ipad apps for business page?
The answer might have to do with the late Steve jobs. People in computer science are interested always in medical imaging,
says Fishman, who visited Jobs in 2010. They always like to think that, you know, maybe Angry Birds is good
but something medical might actually change the world. From NPR and Wired. Image:
Overtext Web Module V3.0 Alpha
Copyright Semantic-Knowledge, 1994-2011