Bamboo Innovator

Truffle farming: How mapping technology is being used to discover new places to grow savoury and expensive fungi

Truffle farming: How mapping technology is being used to discover new places to grow savoury and expensive fungi

Mar 8th 2014 | From the print edition

PIGS, dogs and rakes can all be useful in the quest to discover wild truffles, but each has its drawbacks. Pigs like to gobble up the fancy fungi as much as their owners do. Dogs are costly to train. Rakes wreak havoc on the duff (leaf litter) that often covers truffle-rich soil, thus damaging the fungi’s environment. Truffles are, nevertheless, successfully being unearthed in areas not traditionally associated with their growth. Read more of this post

Can parallel lines meet: Power transmission: How to build a real supergrid by making existing electricity lines more efficient at transmitting power

Can parallel lines meet: Power transmission: How to build a real supergrid by making existing electricity lines more efficient at transmitting power

Mar 8th 2014 | From the print edition

GERMANY has a problem. The decision, taken in 2011, to close down the country’s nuclear-power stations risks leaving parts of the country with insufficient supplies of electricity. This means power will have to be brought in from elsewhere. But to do that seems, on the face of things, to require the building of new transmission lines, which will be unpopular with those they pass by. Read more of this post

Giant batteries: The missing piece of the renewable-power jigsaw may now have been found in the form of a new type of flow battery

Going with the flow

Giant batteries: The missing piece of the renewable-power jigsaw may now have been found in the form of a new type of flow battery

Mar 8th 2014 | From the print edition

THERE is nothing so expensive, some cynics suspect, as free fuel. It is not that turning wind and sunlight into electricity is itself that costly, provided you pick the right places to do it. But it is not reliable. The wind does not always blow, and even in the most cloud-free desert night falls with monotonous regularity. Political commitments to use large quantities of renewables, such as several European countries have made (see article), thus risk the lights going out. The search therefore has been on for a cheap way to store energy transduced from sun and wind when it is plentiful, so that it can be used when it is not. Read more of this post

French telecoms wars: Gloves off; Since the beginning of 2012, when a new competitor, Iliad Group’s Free, crashed in with super-low prices and soon snatched more than 10% of the market, revenues of the three incumbent operators tumbled

French telecoms wars: Gloves off

Mar 8th 2014, 11:38 by M.S. | PARIS

ANY ordinary person who has spent some time in France will have been puzzled by the unpredictable internet and mobile connections in a country where services are by and large among the world’s best. It is not only in remote rural regions that you have to run up a hill waving your mobile to send a text. The Left Bank in Paris can also feel like the Pyrenees. This may now change, thanks to a gloves-off battle for the country’s second-biggest telecoms operator. Read more of this post

Like the world fairs of old, Silicon Valley runs on booms, busts, and showboating impresarios. That’s a good thing

Like the world fairs of old, Silicon Valley runs on booms, busts, and showboating impresarios. That’s a good thing

by Venkatesh Rao 3,500 words

Venkatesh Rao is a Seattle-based writer and consultant. He is the author of Tempo (2011), a book on decision-making, and blogs at ribbonfarm.

A few times a month, I walk from my apartment in the rapidly gentrifying Lower Queen Anne part of Seattle towards one of the cafés in the booming South Lake Union neighbourhood. A good deal of the real estate along my route is controlled by Microsoft’s co-founder Paul Allen, and much of the demand is driven by Amazon’s inexorable rise. Read more of this post

Evan Williams, the billionaire co-founder of Twitter, is trying to rethink online writing at his new start-up, Medium

MARCH 8, 2014, 2:00 PM  Comment

With Medium, Evan Williams Is Tackling the Future of Writing Online

By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER

Peter DaSilva for The New York TimesEvan Williams, the billionaire co-founder of Twitter, is trying to rethink online writing at his new start-up, Medium.

As a founder of both Blogger and Twitter, Evan Williams helped change the way people write online. Now, with his latest start-up,Medium, he is trying to figure out how we will write in the future. Read more of this post

Google’s Project Loon: The gamble that’s so crazy it might work

Google’s Project Loon: The gamble that’s so crazy it might work

BY DOMINIC BASULTO

March 6 at 7:43 am

Google’s Project Loon, in which high-altitude balloons circle the globe using wind currents and solar power to provide WiFi connectivity to remote locations in developing markets, officially launched this past week, with balloons headed out around the world from a remote location in New Zealand. If you’re so inclined, there’s even a way to follow along online in real-time as winds blow these balloons at 25 mph along the 40^th parallel in the Southern Hemisphere. Read more of this post

Imagining the potential of a Google AdWords for the physical world

Imagining the potential of a Google AdWords for the physical world

BY MATT MCFARLAND

February 26 at 9:27 am

Advertisements in public places come in one variety: one-size fits all. Signs, posters and billboards are generally the same no matter who you are. This is an inherently wasteful model. It brings to mind the John Wanamaker quote, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Read more of this post

“Social Media Doesn’t Sleep”: How This Local Shop Cranked Sales from $63K to $7 Million

 “SOCIAL MEDIA DOESN’T SLEEP”: HOW THIS LOCAL SHOP CRANKED SALES FROM $63K TO $7 MILLION

FROM TWEETING TO PHOTOGRAPHING MODELS HERSELF TO CUSTOMER SERVICE, DIANA HARBOUR IS RE-DEFINING WHAT IT MEANS TO BE HANDS-ON. HERE ARE THE SECRETS TO SOCIAL SELLING SHE’S LEARNED WITH THE RED DRESS BOUTIQUE. Read more of this post

Carphone comeback: How tech giants are racing to win the smart car battle

Carphone comeback: How tech giants are racing to win the smart car battle

Matt Hartley | March 8, 2014 7:30 AM ET
Welcome to the Second Coming of the carphone.

Anyone of a certain age can remember the first time they used a phone from inside a car. And more often than not, they were excited to tell the person on the other end of the line that they were, in fact, talking to them on a carphone. Read more of this post