Status update

Hi all,

The Social Gnome has been awfully un-social over the last few weeks, mostly due to the fact that I have a new job that has taken up a lot of my time.

As of the start of May 2014 I am now the Chief Communications Officer for Sundaya, a solar energy company based out of Jakarta Indonesia.

The job opened up a lot of opportunities for me; not only am I in charged of setting up a whole new communications strategy for a emerging company, I also get to combine that with a passion for clean energy.

I get to do what I love, and I get to help the planet (which I also love) - one small step at a time :).

Part of the reason for why I accepted the new job was that I believe the technology to be good enough now to actually support a new for of communication when it comes to clean energy and solar. Up until recently the talk has been mostly that fossil fuels are killing the planet, and if you dont get of the fossil train, you (by association) are also killing the planet. I never responded well to that type of "threat communication" and never really understood why that seemed to be the bulk of everything pro clean energy.

Now we have gotten to the point where solar cells, and battery packs, are actually good enough to cover most of our everyday energy needs. It is no longer a stretch to use solar - you no longer have to give up any standard comforts - but you can rather easily make the switch, at least for some of the minor products (charging phones and computers for example).

For these reasons I am very excited to work for Sundaya, and I invite you all to follow our Facebook pages and our blog (both run by yours truly).

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sundayainternational
Blog: http://sundaya.com/blogroll/

Today we have published an interesting article on the blog about Light up Somalia, a project bringing light and jobs to the rural parts of Somalia using Sundaya products. Check it out!

Time to forget, Google

Google is releasing a new web service for EU citizens who no longer want to appear in Google search results. The service , which basically consists of an online form, is a response to the European Court's recent ruling in which a Spanish man were given the right to remove sensitive personal information from the search results. 

The European Court decision is a so called “prejudice” which means the all member courts have to follow the ruling. For the individual it means that all EU citizens now have the right to be "forgotten" by Google - if certain conditions are met.

The EU citizens who want to be forgotten by Google can now submit a request to Google via the new website. Attached to the request shall be a copy of the individual’s identity card, which country's laws are cited, and which particular search string that should be removed. 

Google will review each case individually and then weigh privacy against the public interest. A politician who made ​​a fool of himself for instance cannot expect to disappear from search results since it would probably fall under public interest.

Google has also put together a special task force to try to develop a long term strategy for dealing with the anticipated floods of requirements for clearances to come. The task force consist of both Google big wigs such as Chairman Eric Schmidt and Chief Legal Officer David Drummond, and externals as Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and UN reporter Frank La Rue.

Want to get removed from search terms? Here is the web form.

Dubai PD utilizes Google Glass

Not only do the police in Dubai have a way cooler police car armada than most other countries, now their traffic cops will also be equipped with Google Glass. 

The whole thing is still in a testing phase, but the Dubai PD have already developed two new Google Glass apps; one that takes photos of traffic violations, and another that allows the officer to identify a car and its owner based on the car's registration number.

Currently Google Glass is officially only for sale in the US but the Dubai chief of police says to Gulf News that, if the test falls out well they will begin to provide more officers with Google Glasses, as the product becomes available in to the Dubai market.

YouTube is acquiring Twitch for $1 billion

The popular video game streaming service may soon be a part of YouTube.

A deal for YouTube to purchase Twitch for $1 billion is closing "imminently," according to a report by Variety.

Sources familiar with the matter say that the deal will be carried out with an "all-cash offer" and would make it the biggest acquisition in YouTube's history since Google buying the video-sharing site for $1.65 billion in 2006. YouTube has prepared for regulators in the United States to challenge the deal with expectations that the Justice Department will decide whether the deal is anti-competitive, sources say.

Chase, director of PR for Twitch, said on Twitter, "For those asking about the story today, Twitch doesn't comment on rumors." YouTube representatives have declined to comment too.

Twitch is a significant player in gaming today now that new consoles like PlayStation 4 and Xbox One can take advantage of Twitch streaming out of the box. A deal like this can be beneficial for Twitch to scale up in its infrastructure, but there are other concerns too like YouTube's copyright claims. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out and what it really means for gamers.

Good night Nokia - Good morning Nokia Microsoft Mobile

Today Nokia officially belongs to Microsoft, and according to a leak so it seems a name change is imminent.

Nokia-Microsoft deal is going to close soon and a leaked Nokia’s letter to its existing Devices and Services business suppliers base reveals two interesting things. First revelation is about renaming of Nokia Oyj to Microsoft Mobile Oy, which will be a wholly-owned Microsoft subsidiary and may be the name of Microsoft’s mobile devices arm. Good thing for suppliers is that current terms and conditions that they have with the Devices and Services business will not change post deal-closure.

"Please note that upon the close of the transaction between Microsoft and Nokia, the name of Nokia Corporation/Nokia Oyj will change to Microsoft Mobile Oy. Microsoft Mobile Oy is the legal entity name that should be used for VAT IDs and for the issuance of invoices."

Nokia has already announced that 25th April will be the date of Nokia-Microsoft deal-closure. The deal faced hurdles in China due to local vendor’s apprehensions and in India due to the ongoing tax issues. 

In an interesting development, HTC has shown interest in buying Nokia’s Chennai plant, if it is up for sale!

This is an era that is being laid to rest today. It is a little sad especially considering that Nokia once dominated the world's mobile phone market. One cannot help but wonder how, and when everything went south... 

Ten 3D Printed Houses In A Day

2014 is looking to become the year of the 3D printer. There really doesn't seem to be a thing you cannot print. Adding "building a house in a day" to the list of accomplished projects may seem to be pushing it; 10 houses on the verge of impossible. 

However a Chinese company recently proved the skeptics wrong.

The WinSun Decoration Design Engineering Co. has printed 10 homes in 24 hours out of recycled materials. The houses, each covering an area of 200 square meters, are printed entirely in concrete.

This isn't the first attempt at 3D printing large structures in a short amount of time. Researchers in California are making a printer that can build a house in 24 hours.

In Amsterdam earlier this month, construction of a 3D printed house began. The house is made out of plastic bricks that fit together like Lego. It's also being printed onsite. The Chinese houses, on the other hand, weren't built onsite. They were printed in pieces and then put together in Shanghai's Qingpu district.

The pieces are made using recycled construction materials and industrial waste to form a concrete aggregate, Gizmodo reports. The 3D printer used to build the houses is 500 feet long, 33 feet wide and 20 feet high. Each home costs around $4,800.

"We purchased parts for the printer overseas, and assembled the machine in a factory in Suzhou," the company's CEO, Ma Yihe, said. "Such a new type of 3D printed structure is environment-friendly and cost-effective."

The final product. Needs some paint but essentially ready to move in to. 

WinSun plans to build 100 recycling factories in the country, one in every 300 km, to collect and transform the waste into materials for 3D printing through special handling, processing and separation technology. WinSun hopes their 3D printer and technology could offer "affordable and dignified housing" for the impoverished.

Do you think 3D printed houses are the way of the future. Please leave your comment below. 

60 years of being Boring

Every day, something significant to human history must happen … right?

Wrong. The computer program True Knowledge defined April 11, 1954 as the most boring of the 20th century – a day where absolutely nothing happened. Algorithms using weighted values for more than three million facts including historical events, birthdays of significant people, etc. made experts conclude that April 11, 1954, was really, really uneventful.

But why was it so boring? Usually in other days, someone famous was born, someone notorious died, or something significant happened. On this specific day apparently none of that went down. The leading scientist who came up with that date, William Tunstall-Pedoe, searched for a day where no result really popped up:

"It occurred to us that we are able to objectively measure the importance of every day in history. Some days are highly eventful and on some days far less happens and we can also objectively estimate the importance of these events. For fun we wrote the program and set it going. When the results came back the winner (or perhaps loser) was April 11, 1954 – a Sunday in the 1950s.”

The best the machine could muster for the day was the fact that Belgium had its fourth post-war general election and that a Turkish academic who taught electronics was born. But it could all have been so different for April 11. On April 12th history notes that Bill Haley and the Comets recorded Rock Around The Clock, forever inscribing this day in musical history. 

Other major events on April 12th 1954 include US forces organizing a major airlift of military supplies to forces in Indo-China, RAF bombers sweeping over the forests of Kenya, dropping tons of explosives on Mau Mau hideouts, and electricity finally being brought to the households of East Anglia, the UK, home of among other buildings the Cambridge University.

True Knowledge (now known as Evi), which provides a direct answer to a question instead of providing a list of links like other sites such as Google, was launched online in February 2007. The system can store hundreds of millions of facts about people, places, events and businesses.

The funniest thing is that the most boring day ever is now somewhat interesting, because of its status as the most boring day ever. So does that mean the second most boring day ever is now the most boring?