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The Future Of... Kitchen Counters

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Artist re-imagines flight with amphibious planes

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AT&T Installs Wi-Fi to Make Up for Weak Coverage

AT&T has a New Year’s present for any customers planning on spending the evening in New York’s Times Square or San Francisco’s Embarcadero: Huge tracts of free Wi-Fi.

Maybe that will make up for the company’s famously spotty 3G coverage in these busy urban areas.

AT&T announced Tuesday that it planned to expand a “Wi-Fi hotzone” it created in Times Square in May of this year. The “hotzone” is an extra-large area of Wi-Fi coverage, served by multiple routers, which is free for AT&T customers to use with any 802.11b/g–compatible device. The new coverage area now includes the north central part of Times Square, extending along Seventh Avenue, east along 46th Street, and along Broadway.

The company will also add hotzones near New York’s Rockefeller Center and St. Patrick’s Cathedral in the coming days. It also plans to create a hotzone in San Francisco’s Embarcadero Center, an office building complex near the city’s waterfront, although it’s unclear from the announcement when this service area will turn on.

You won’t be able to make calls using Wi-Fi unless you’re using a VoIP app like Skype — so if you’re an iPhone user, don’t expect these hotzones to solve your dropped-calls problem. However, you will be able to browse the web, check e-mail, post Twitter updates, and post increasingly blurry photos of your New Year’s Eve revelries via apps like Instagram.

AT&T customers can connect their phones to the new hotzones simply by selecting the “attwifi” network. For instructions, see AT&T’s Wi-Fi information page.

Photo credit: Will Hines/Flickr

How Zip Ties Can Help You Bike Through a Blizzard

Don’t get stuck in the snow because of Snowpocalypse 2010. With the right gear, you can still ride to work — on your bike.

One of the cheapest winter bike hacks is to attach zip ties to your tires. It’s a quick-and-dirty way of giving yourself some much-needed traction on icy, slushy streets and costs far less than a set of studded snow tires.

Fritz Rice of the Dutch Bike Co. explains how to install a package or two of zip ties on your tires. He admits that “it looks ludicrous” but makes up for its looks by giving your wheels some grippy ribs. As he’s installed them, the zip ties’ connectors are on the outside edge of the tires, which helps them bite even more when you’re banking to turn.

Update 1:20pm Pacific: As commenter Dave wisely notes below: Don’t try this if your bike has rim brakes, as the zip ties will get in the way of the brake pads. It will only work if you’ve got a brakeless fixie, or have disc brakes or a coaster brake.

We haven’t tested this (the Wired offices are thankfully snow-free), so if you have experience with zip-tied tires, let us know in the comments how well they work.

For more winter riding tips, check out Wired’s How-To Wiki for detailed instructions on how to winterize your bike (and your bike clothing).

Dutch Bike Co. (via Gizmodo)

Photo: Fritz Rice

NAO report highlights education success in STEM subjects

Dawinderpal Sahota, Computing, Monday 15 November 2010 at 14:09:00

Take up of Maths and Science subjects on the up, but Department of Education
not meeting its teacher recriuitment targets

The Department for Education has made good progress in improving take up and
achievement in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) subjects,
according to a recent report from the National Audit Office, although there has
been less success in attracting more teachers to these areas.

The report, entitled
Educating
the Next Generation of Scientists, recently published claims that take-up
and achievement in A-Level Maths and GCSE Triple Science has improved, and that
the knock on effect of the success has been that pupil take-up of the three
individual sciences at A-Level has increased by almost 150 per cent in the last
five years.

The NAO claims that there is evidence that pupils taking Triple Science GCSE
are more likely than those studying combined science to choose science subjects
at A-Level and to achieve higher grades. However, by June 2009, almost half of
secondary schools still did not offer Triple Science.

It is often said that qualifications in the pure sciences are a good basis
for a career in IT and technology.

Meanwhile, take-up of Maths A-Level has already exceeded the targets for 2014
set by the Department of Education, but take-up of physics A-Level has increased
only slightly since 2005-06.

The Department is not on course to meet the targets set by the previous
government for recruiting more mathematics and physics teachers by 2014.

?The Department for Education has focused its resources on improving pupil
take-up and achievement in school science and maths, and has made good progress
in areas such as A-Level maths and GCSE Triple Science,? said Amyas Morse, head
of the National Audit Office.

?To make further progress, what?s needed is a more joined-up approach,
bringing together key success factors to maximise successful results and
efficient use of public resources.?

Full story at http://www.computing.co.uk/computing/news/2273121/report-highlight-education

The beauty of snowflakes magnified

Cosmic Log: With the gripes and groans piling up in the aftermath of this week's East Coast blizzard, let's remember that snow has a beautiful side, especially when seen under a microscope.

Full story at http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/12/28/5725935-the-beauty-of-snowflakes-magnified

Ten things Web users should fear in 2011

The year 2010 marked a major turning point in the world of cyberscares. Now computer criminals are being credited with stalling a rogue nuclear power plant program and with bringing world diplomacy to its knees. And 2011 will likely provide even more dramatic examples of how the Internet has changed.

Full story at http://redtape.msnbc.com/2010/12/ten-things-web-users-should-fear-in-2011.html