"The World in Progress" - Media Crushing for all Ages

Sunday, July 29, 2007

The Growing Wind Industry

The burgeoning wind power industry has spurred the construction of new manufacturing plants in Arkansas, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and South Dakota. DMI Industries, a wind tower manufacturer, announced in May its plans to acquire a facility near Tulsa, Oklahoma, that will give the company the ability to produce larger towers for offshore wind plants and to ship them overseas. DMI intends to modify the existing plant for its purposes by early 2008. The facility features 500,000 square feet of production space and will ultimately employ up to 450 people. In late June, Knight & Carver held the grand opening for its new 26,000-square-foot wind blade production and repair facility in Howard, South Dakota, bringing at least 35 jobs to the state. On July 18th, LM Glasfiber announced that they will also build a new wind blade facility, to be located in Little Rock, Arkansas. The plant will begin operations early next year and will employ more than 1,000 people within five years.

Sterling Communications Recognized as Top Tech Communicator by IT Industry Journalists

High-Tech Public Relations Agency Places in PRSourceCode’s Annual Study

LOS GATOS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sterling Communications Inc., an independent, full-service high-tech public relations agency, announced today that is has been named to PRSourceCode’s Top Tech Communicators list, placing second in the mid-sized agency category. The study, which is based on survey responses from more than 300 leading information technology (IT) journalists, ranks agencies based on responsiveness, reliability and overall recognition of editorial needs.

“The relationships between PR professionals and journalists are based on trust and credibility – two characteristics that, according to the industry’s most prominent editors, Sterling Communications exemplifies,” said Steven J. Smith, general manager, PRSourceCode. “We congratulate the company on being recognized as one of the PR industry’s most effective communicators.”

The survey, now in its second year, honored the top five large, mid-sized and small public relations agencies, as well as the top 15 corporate PR departments. Survey respondents included IT journalists from some of the industry’s most influential publications such as COMPUTERWORLD and EWEEK, as well as IT reporters at consumer-oriented news outlets such as USA TODAY and U.S. NEWS and WORLD REPORT.

“Sterling prides itself on our ability to effectively communicate the unique stories of each of our clients, and to do so, we rely heavily on the relationships we’ve formed with the media,” said Marianne O’Connor, president and CEO of Sterling Communications. “It’s extremely gratifying to be recognized by the editors we work with on a daily basis. It’s also a true testament to the effectiveness of our philosophy that building credibility, and not hype, is the best way to represent our clients.”

More details about the “Top Tech Communicators” study, including a full list of winners, is available at http://www.prsourcecode.com/TopTechCommunicators2007.asp.

Technology News - New York Times

Saturday, July 28, 2007

Newsflash: Time May Not Exist — Discover Magazine

No one keeps track of time better than Ferenc Krausz. In his lab at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany, he has clocked the shortest time intervals ever observed. Krausz uses ultraviolet laser pulses to track the absurdly brief quantum leaps of electrons within atoms. The events he probes last for about 100 attoseconds, or 100 quintillionths of a second. For a little perspective, 100 attoseconds is to one second as a second is to 300 million years.

But even Krausz works far from the frontier of time. There is a temporal realm called the Planck scale, where even attoseconds drag by like eons. It marks the edge of known physics, a region where distances and intervals are so short that the very concepts of time and space start to break down. Planck time—the smallest unit of time that has any physical meaning—is 10^-43 second, less than a trillionth of a trillionth of an attosecond. Beyond that? Tempus incognito. At least for now.

Saturday, July 21, 2007

At iMeme: God, technology and...platforms? - Jul. 20, 2007

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Webcasters wake up Monday to an uncertain future

Lennon's glasses for sale in Web auction

A pair of round, gold-rimmed sunglasses worn by Beatle John Lennon that set a fashion trend has come up for auction at a British Web site with bidding said to be as high as $1.5 million.

The glasses, put up for bid late last week at Web site 991.com, belonged to Japanese television producer Junishi Yore who was a translator for the Beatles in 1966.

Yore's account of the glasses' authenticity is on the Web site.

Several media reports said the bidding was frenzied, with prices rising into the millions, but 991.com sales marketing director John Warner declined to confirm a figure saying the auction was secret. Bidding is set to end on July 31.

"I think it's fair to say this has created a bit of a stir," said Warner about the auction of Lennon's glasses.
Now on News.com
Road Trip 2007: Bound for Vegas Taking the pulse of eldercare tech Photos: 10 tech letdowns...with cool names Extra: Digital images dominate--with a downside

The glasses come with Yore's handwritten note saying he got them when the Beatle was on tour in Japan. Lennon befriended Yore and before the two parted, they exchanged gifts. Lennon gave Yore his glasses, and Yore gave Lennon copper cups.

Lennon was often photographed in his round, wire-rimmed glasses, and the image became iconic for young men and women of his generation who adopted the same look.

When Lennon was murdered outside his New York apartment in 1980, Yore pushed the lenses from the sunglasses in accordance with a Japanese tradition that calls for the glass to be displaced so that the soul can see in the afterlife.

Story Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.