Self-assembling and chip making innovation

Source: NY Times

Prototype
Trying to Put New Zip Into Moore’s Law
By MICHAEL FITZGERALD
Published: February 24, 2008
If innovation has a heart, it’s probably a semiconductor, beating to the pace of Moore’s Law.

Song skip

Was listening to the radio online which I do more and more now after having gone away from the radio for years since before I'd listen to it on my commute to work and now I ride the bus, but I did miss it, so I'm glad to be able to listen to the radio online.

But was doing so and I manually skipped a song by hitting stop in the browser.

But why isn't there a song skip button?

It'd give the radio station immediate information about songs that people dislike enough to skip, and save me from remembering to hit start again when I wonder about why it's so quiet, remember I cut it off, and I figure that song I'm skipping is over.

That's an open source, free idea. Song skippers should be standard. It doesn't hurt the radio station at all, as even if they have ads, ad-skipping wouldn't be supported though I'd hate to skip a song into ads, but I'd tolerate it to be able to easily skip songs.

Solar power redux

Source: NY Times

Ping
Silicon Valley Starts to Turn Its Face to the Sun
By G. PASCAL ZACHARY
Published: February 17, 2008
Some of the region’s best minds are captivated by the challenge of solar power and hope to put the development of solar technologies on a faster track.