Proto-Knowledge

Monday, January 31, 2011

Video shows Scale of Planets

Brad Goodspeed wondered what the sky would look like if the planets in our solarsystem were as close to Earth as the moon is and revolved around us. [Watch fullscreen for best effects].

Scale from Brad Goodspeed on Vimeo.
Scale Video Shows Planets in Sky | Geekosystem

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Ebooks outsell Paperbacks

Yes, it's finally happened. Ebooks sales have overtaken paperback sales on Amazon.com. Amazon said that it was selling more Kindle books than paperback books: For every 100 paperback books, Amazon sold 115 Kindle ebooks (not counting free Kindle ebooks).

Does this mean to end of brick-and-mortar bookstores? Read more here: Amazon: Kindle books outselling paperbacks | Crave - CNET

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Qwiki offers narrated information slideshows

Qwiki is a new information site that offers automatically generated and narrated slideshows on over 3 million topics. Qwiki pulls information and pictures from Wikipedia.

Qwiki was founded by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin and YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim.

Just enter a search term and watch the slideshow. Try it out here Qwiki.

Jane Espenson: Science Fiction Writer and Nerd

Jane Espenson (46) is writer and/or co-executive producer of some of the biggest cult science-fiction shows of the past decade, including Star Trek The next generation, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Battlestar Galactica, Caprica and Gilmore Girls.

Jane studied computer science and linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley. Go Bears!

Read more about Jane Espenson here: Jane Espenson: Writer, sci-fi thriller, one nerdy lady - CNN.com

Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day on January 31

January 31st is the "official" Bubble Wrap appreciation day. Happy 54th Birthday Bubble Wrap!

Who invented Bubble Wrap? The story begins in 1957 in a garage in Hawthorne, NJ with two engineers, Marc Chavannes and Al Fielding. Marc and Al were trying to make a plastic wallpaper with a paper backing. Surprisingly, this product didn’t take off. However, they realized that their invention could be used as a cushioning packaging material. See more info about the Bubble Wrap® Appreciation Day.

Fun video about the history of bubble wrap:

Play virtual bubble wrap popping:

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Science Tattoo Collection

For hard-core science geeks: Click here to see a collection of evolution-themed tattoos: Visualizing Evolution

Additionally, you can visit the Science Tattoo Emporium that has a large collection of tattoos featuring scientific visualizations from different disciplines (chemistry, physics, biology, computer science, earth science, math, engineering).