No More Rabbit Ears

A team of researchers in Korea have developed what they are calling a smart skin antenna. The material is a flat block about the size of the palm of your hand and contains hundreds of embedded microstrip antennas. Because the material would be flush with the outer surface of any vehicle it was used in, it would reduce drag and eliminate a site of potential structural weakness. The advantage in cars and airplanes is obvious. They also suggest using the material in consumer electronics to eliminate the extendible antenna in cell phones, boom boxes, and televisions. That last suggestion raises an important question for me. How would you attach the aluminium foil flags to these antennas when you want to improve the reception of your television set?

Making the surveillance society fun

This makes the sixties paranoid in me want to start stockpiling canned peas and ammunition in my secret mountain hideout again.

Users of social network sites like Facebook will soon be sharing their exact whereabouts with their friends in real-time, owing to new technology that uses the mobile phone as a tracking device, experts say.

A new social network site, Gypsii, which launched this week at a phone industry trade show in Barcelona, allows users to search for and identify their contacts, be they in the neighbouring street or across the ocean.

[...]

"The real time location-based element of Gypsii adds a new dimension to the social networking phenomenon," said the founder and chief executive of the company, Dan Harple.

Anyone, at any time, gets to know the exact location and movements of everyone else in the network. This seems like the favorite dot net application for fearful parents, the government, pedophile stalkers, and those guys who run for the school board so they can tell kids to pull up their pants.

No thanks.

Two questions

How is Netflix able to bypass the pop-up blocker on my Firefox browser and why does Netflix think this kind of behavior will make me think favorably of their service?