NewsScan Daily, 28 February 2005 ("Above The Fold" )

NewsScan Daily, 28 February 2005 ("Above The Fold" )
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"ABOVE THE FOLD" 
       NewsScan Goes Dark
       Esther Dyson Expands Her Horizon
       The Social Life of Innovation
       Creator of Macintosh Dies at 61
       Beep When You Score... Or Vibrate
 
FEATURES
       Flash Card
       Honorary Subscriber: Richard P. Feynman
 
NEWSSCAN GOES DARK
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absolutely wonderful.
 
ESTHER DYSON EXPANDS HER HORIZON
    The Internet guru and venture capitalist Esther Dyson is putting on a
conference in Scottsdale, Arizona, called Flight School, the purpose of
which will be to explore the best ways of putting real people into space.
Dyson says, "Nobody's holding a space conference, so I decided to do one.
It's not that there aren't space conferences, but nothing as tacky and
commercial as we want to be... The initial people who are interested are
billionaires, but the goal is to do things like build a space elevators and
have people live on Mars." (New York Times 28 Feb 2005)
<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/28/technology/28dyson.html?>
 
THE SOCIAL LIFE OF INNOVATION
    Reed Hastings, founder of the online movie rental business company
Netflix, is proud that "in 2000, 2001, very few people -- including
Blockbuster -- thought that online rental would be a large, profitable
business. We are amazed that Blockbuster waited five years and for us to get
to $500 million in revenue in their core business. Amazon, we're not amazed.
Clearly it's an optional market for them." Asked by an interviewer which
companies he looks to for inspiration, Hastings cited HBO and Starbucks,
because they "innovated in content distribution in a substantial way." And
he pointed out: "Importantly, they're not technology examples. It's not
about coding faster. The thing that has made a big difference in our
continued evolution is we find consumers are very social and they want to
talk about movies. And so we just launched this Friends program, where
subscribers can give each other permission and then share each other's movie
ratings and queue and other aspects. It makes it a lot more fun to see what
your friends are watching. That's an example of the kind of innovation we're
doing." (San Jose Mercury News 28 Feb 2005)
<http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/11005883.htm>
 
CREATOR OF MACINTOSH DIES AT 61
    Jef Raskin, the computer interface expert and polymath who conceived
Apple's Macintosh computer, has died at 61 of pancreatic cancer. Raskin had
been a computer science professor before joining Apple in 1978 as it 31st
employee. He left the company three years later, and formed a company called
Information Appliance, and began work on his book "The Humane Interface."
Besides his computer-related activities, he was a respected mathematician
and he conducted the San Francisco Chamber Opera Society, played three
instruments, and created artwork that's displayed at New York's Museum of
Modern Art. He also received a patent for airplane wing construction, and
was an accomplished archer, target shooter and occasional race car driver.
Some of the letters he sent to NewsScan can be found in our archives, and
our interview with him for Ubiquity is archived at
<http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/j_raskin/_2.html>. He was a friend and a great
man. (AP 28 Feb 2005)
<http://apnews.excite.com/article/20050228/D88HIDK00.html>
 
BEEP WHEN YOU SCORE... OR VIBRATE
     The organization that makes the rules for world soccer will use this
year's under-17 world championship games to test a soccer ball containing a
microchip that signals when it crosses the goal line. The ball was produced
in part by Adidas. When it crosses the line, the microchip transmits a
signal to a watchlike device on the referee's wrist, and either beeps or
vibrates. International Football Association Board official Sepp Blatter
says, "Not a day goes by without technology making progress. We therefore
have a duty to at least examine whether new technology could be used in
football ["soccer" to Americans]." (AP 26 Feb 2005)
<http://apnews.excite.com/article/20050227/D88GIB680.html>
 
***** 
 
FLASH CARD
     "In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn than to
contemplate." (René Descartes)
 
HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: RICHARD P. FEYNMAN
    Today's Honorary Subscriber is the American physicist Richard P. Feynman
(1918-1988), one of the most celebrated and revered scientists of modern
times. 
     As a theoretical physicist, Feynman's main contribution was his highly
original work in quantum mechanics. Among his noteworthy contributions was
his use of diagrams (now called Feynman diagrams) that were graphic
analogues of the mathematical expressions employed in describing the
behavior of systems of interacting particles. In recognition of his work he
received a Nobel Prize and numerous other honors. Towards the end of his
life, a final recognition came for his fascinating account of the critical
role he played in the investigation of the space shuttle Challenger
explosion in 1986.
     Feynman was the first-born son of Melville and Lucille Feynman, who
nurtured his early interest in mathematics and science. He attended the
public schools of Far Rockaway, New York, and in his final year of high
school he won the New York University Math Championship. He did his
undergraduate work at MIT and his doctoral work at Princeton, and was caught
up in the atomic bomb project, first at Princeton and then at Los Alamos
after he received his doctorate in 1942.
    After World War II, Feynman was appointed a professor of theoretical
physics at Cornell University, where he devoted himself to teaching. While
he enjoyed teaching and was a brilliant lecturer, he gradually developed the
desire to return to the quantum theory research he had put aside for his
World War II work. This motivated him to take a position as professor of
theoretical physics at Caltech, where he remained for the rest of his
career.
    Feynman died in 1988 at the UCLA Medical Center after an eight-year
battle with abdominal cancer. Today his influence lives on in his books and
recorded lectures, including his popularizations of physics in such
publications as "QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter" and the
classic three-volume textbook, "The Feynman Lectures on Physics" (which
contain his four years of lectures at Caltech and which undergraduate majors
in physics still find inspiring).
     On the occasion of Feynman's death, onetime Caltech president Marvin
Goldberger described him as "a towering figure in 20th century physics,
always curious, always modest, always ebullient, always willing to share his
deep insights with students and colleagues."
 
 [To find a library copy of "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman: Adventures
of a Curious Character,"  visit RLG's RedLightGreen service at
<http://www.redlightgreen.com/ucwprod/servlet/ucw.servlets.UCWController?ACTION=EDITION&WORKID=12529662&>
-- or to purchase a copy go to:
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0393316041//newsscancom/ref=nosim>
     We donate all revenue from our book recommendations to adult literacy
programs.]

 
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We call our news section " Above The Fold"  to honor the tradition of the
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