Archive for August, 2007

We now know Goobuntu is not coming. It’s only used internally. But what is coming for sure is the gPhone, the mobile made by one of the mightiest companies in the world: Google. It is now alleged that this phone will rewrite the rules of the industry. At least the wireless industry, and the shapeshift of rules would only apply to the US. I don’t know any certain facts about that, heck, we all don’t even know how the phone is gonna look like, what it can do, when it’s coming. Allegedly it might come around in the first quarter of 2008. We’ll see.

A concept of the Google Phone, dubbed “gPhone”

This article over on the last100 has some interesting views on Google’s speculative device that is yet to again reshape the market.

The most popular user-powered news site Digg has today unveiled its updated design and has introduced new functions to visitors. Videos submitted by users can now be played while being on the site itself, the look of the site is cleaner than before. Articles that contain videos now contain a thumbnail besides the article, and can be watched by clicking on it. The comment system, that has long been criticized by Digg’s users, has not seen a revamp. Also, the user-powered site continues to lack a picture section for submitted entries that contain an article with a picture or only picture by itself.

Digg Reloaded: The new look of the page – Click to enlarge

Registered users can submit anything they found on the web to Digg, by giving it a meaningful description and headline. Readers then can visit the submitted page, and rate it by so-called Diggs. The higher the rating, the higher the popularity of the submission. People have the possibility to comment on the submitted content and decide whether it should disappear (Bury) or make it popular, by giving it positive rating. Each positive rating and comment is worth one Digg.

Following up on Kevin’s post from last week, we’ve gone live with improvements to our home page that allow you to see both news and videos on a single page. We’ve gotten a lot of feedback that the videos are entertaining but people miss them because they’re isolated. Bringing them back into the stream on the homepage will hopefully bring more life to videos on the site. If you prefer just news or only videos, you can easily customize your view by setting either as your default home page (login and choose ‘Customize’).

To give the page a cleaner look and make it more functional, we’ve also tweaked the page and story summary layouts, streamlined the navigation, and provided more customization options. And with a new one-click bury, you no longer are required to choose a reason when you bury a story — this aims to help us get more feedback from people about what they don’t like (by making it easier to bury) so we can make more accurate determinations about unpopular content.

This update is also an especially important structural change for future content like images, which will also have its own dedicated section.

Thanks to Kurt Wilms and the other Digg developers who’ve helped make all of this happen. As Kevin described, we’ve got loads of stuff coming down the pipes that we’re working on in parallel right now.

As always, let us know what you think. Cheers! Daniel

Digg The Blog: New Digg Home Page Live Today
Digg Homepage

Japan has recently completed the construction plans for not only the biggest also the most impressive building in the world. This building has the futuristic name X-Seed 4000. It is so huge, that it actually can be considered a true arcology. The term arcology is derived from a mix of architecture and economy. In a nutshell, an arcology is an insanely huge structure, that is so big, it is a self-contained place. Once one connects to the system, you never need to leave it. In theory, these hyperstructures may solve the population problem on Earth, as these places offer space for many many many people.

No mountain: The X-Seed 4000 is higher than the mountain Fuji

In this case, the X-Seed 4000 is, like the name says, more than 4,000 metres high, has over 800 (!) stories, and comes in at a whopping 4 by 6 kilometres basement. The structure has enough space to hold up to 1 million people. The building is entirely powered by solar energy, and has a certain degree of smartness integrated in the hull – the building will change the pressure inside each story according to the height of each story. The structure houses complete economy systems and residential areas.

Pyramid of Gisa 2.0: You could stack up quite a few Pyramids of Gisa in here. However this pyramid is far more complex. Ah yes, and bigger, too.

The term arcology has been around quite a while, it has appeared in many science-fiction novels and video games. In the game Sim City 2000 for instance, when you reached a certain level in time, you were able to build arcologies. On the right, you can see the biggest arcology that housed up to 1 million people.

The X-Seed 4000 however, although completed in the paper, seems more like a powerful vision in the moment. It is not impossible to build it. But: The estimated cost of this hyperstructure is between a whopping 300-900 billion current US-Dollars. But for Japan, as one of the richest countries in the world, that might not be a problem. So stay tuned.

Wikipedia: The X-Seed 4000