"Digital genome" safeguards dying data formats: The Planets Project

This is an effort to preseve the plethora of digital formats for posterity, something we call the "Dear Appy" problem caused by varying media, operating systems, databases, applications, etc.  The Reuters article describe the project as:

"SAANEN, Switzerland (Reuters Life!) - In a secret bunker deep in the Swiss Alps, European researchers have deposited a "digital genome" that will provide the blueprint for future generations to read data stored using defunct technology.
...scientists carried a time capsule through a labyrinth of tunnels and five security zones to a vault near the slopes of chic ski resort Gstaad.
The sealed box containing the key to unpick defunct digital formats will be locked away for the next quarter of a century behind a 3-1/2 tonne door strong enough to resist nuclear attack at the data storage facility, known as the Swiss Fort Knox.  
"Einstein's notebooks you can take down off the shelf and read them today. Roll forward 50 years and most of Stephen Hawking's notes will likely only be stored digitally and we might not be able to access them all," said the British Library's Adam Farquhar, one of two computer scientists and archivists entrusted with transferring the capsule.
The capsule is the culmination of the four-year "Planets" project, which draws on the expertise of 16 European libraries, archives and research institutions, to preserve the world's digital assets as hardware and software is superseded at a blistering pace. 
 "The time capsule being deposited inside Swiss Fort Knox contains the digital equivalent of the genetic code of different data formats, a 'digital genome'," said the grey-bearded Farquhar, coordinator of the 15 million-euro ($18.49 million) project."

 http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64H4GE20100519 for the full story.

Eternos

A while ago I posted about Lifestream backup which makes a backup of your online life at facebook, twitter, wordpress, photobucket, etc. (Seems they have been renamed to "backupify"). Another entry in this space is Eternos "

Eternos supports backup of Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Picasa Web Albums, Blogs, and RSS feeds. You can see your posts in attractive timelines. One interesting twist they have is dealing with your data when you die: they let you designate trustees that will gain access to your account "upon confirmation you have passed on."

Inductive charging

Chargers and charging making owning many portable devices a real drag. I wish I could just toss them all on a charging mat – like this one by Powermat.

Student memex

In our chapter on learning, we describe how electronic textbooks will pave the way for the student memex: a device that lets them record all their learning. One example of electronic textbooks comes from DynamicBooks, a subsidiary of Macmillan. These e-textbooks are interactive and customizable; The New York Times calls them "a kind of Wikipedia of textbooks."

The iPad and the Kindle seem like attractive platforms for e-textbooks. Over time, as the e-textbook evolves into the student memex, look for features like pen input.

Video recording continues to shrink

Video recorders continue to get cheaper and smaller. A popular packaging is to combine a USB memory stick with a tiny camera. For example, the Stunt Cam and the Sinykon 65125. For around $25, you can clip one of these little cameras in your shirt pocket and record away for hours (it sounds like the battery will die after a couple of hours, although the memory of the Stunt Cam can hold 33 hours of video).

Sinykon markets their camera as a "spy pen camera" so I want to make clear that we do NOT advocate spy recording. I'd like to wear a camera like this to capture, say, a walk around Fisherman's wharf in San Francisco. Mike Bukhin has a neat idea for warning people that he is taking pictures (he has his cell phone programmed to regularly snap pictures and upload them to a server). Mike has a pocket sewn into his hoodie with a hole for the camera, but, far from being a surreptitious, he puts a picture of a Camera on it to draw attention to what he is doing.