This is a major advancement in robotics because it’s the first 2 winged robot built to such a small scale that it can pass as a real fly but there are still some challenges.

At the moment, Wood’s fly is limited by a tether that keeps it moving in a straight, upward direction. The researchers are currently working on a flight controller so that the robot can move in different directions.

The researchers are also working on an onboard power source. (At the moment, the robotic fly is powered externally.) Wood says that a scaled-down lithium-polymer battery would provide less than five minutes of flying time.

Tiny, lightweight sensors need to be integrated as well. Chemical sensors could be used, for example, to detect toxic substances in hazardous areas so that people can go into the area with the appropriate safety gear. Wood and his colleagues will also need to develop software routines for the fly so that it will be able to avoid obstacles.

So it still seems to have a ways to go before it can be used practically. Still, once engineers figure out how to overcome these challenges, let’s hope this doesn’t go on sale to the general public! Can you imagine the late night infomercials telling you how this invention can catch your cheating spouse in action or record or sit in on your competitor’s business meetings?

Here’s the chart Charlene Li posted on her blog. The rungs at the top of the ladder indicate a higher level of participation.

Like the Pew study, the Forrester study places those who engage with blogging and video creation as the high end of the tech spectrum, though here, they’re at 13% vs the 8% in the Pew study.

Of those Elite Tech Users, 8% are avid Web 2.0 devotees. This group is far more likely to own a digital or video camera, a web cam, and an iPod/MP3 player than the rest of the groups. They also are more likely to create and engage with video content. Nearly all (97%) have broadband connections at home or work. Not surprisingly, most are young - the median age is 28 - ethicnically diverse, and are mostly male (70%).

In contrast, the least connected group is more likely to watch TV every day and have cable or satellite service. This group is the oldest - median age is 64 - and they report the lowest levels of household income. They are more likely to be women (57%). Three quarters are white and 18% are African American.

I can’t say I’m surprised that young people are more likely to actively engage with online technology and have made it part of their lives while older people tend to prefer to do things they way they’ve always done… I wonder, however, if it’s more of an educational thing - people would like to learn more about technology but don’t have the time/resources to do so - or simply a matter of preference - ie they’re more efficient without technology.

Perhaps Blu-Ray will win the DVD wars - I mentioned awhile back that I was siding with Blu-Ray - but it seems a bit enthusiastic to say that within three years, even normal DVDs will no longer be in use.

Still, according to NewsFactor, Blu-Ray discs outsold HD-DVDs two-to-one during the first two months of 2007, and The Departed (great movie, btw!) sold 20,000 Blu-Ray discs to 13,000 HD-DVDs, so the initial numbers seem to favor Blu-Ray.

Unfortunately, I haven’t yet purchased my Playstation 3 so I have not yet been able to evaluate Blu-Ray’s quality. After realizing there was no way I was willing to pay ridiculous prices around Christmas time, I broke down and purchased a Samsung LNS3241D 32″ HDTV instead. I’ve been waiting patiently for PS3s to become more readily available ever since.

I’m a bit of a domain junkie, in that I’ve purchased somewhere around 90 domain names, though I haven’t gotten into the domain resellers business yet. Admittedly, I have grand plans for all of them - if I ever get around to building the sites and writing the content.

I consider myself pretty good at the trial and error process of finding a good, keyword rich .com or .net domain for under $7 (I use GoDaddy.com for domain registration + search the web for a coupon to use to get domains for $6.95.)

That said, I didn’t realize how “entrepreneurs” were profiting from domain name trial periods. Apparently, there’s a five day grace period that was originally designed to correct mistakes like registrants mistyping the domain name they’re trying to buy.

Entrepreneurs, spammers, and scam artists are taking advantage of this grace period to buy domains during this period and test them out to see which ones generate the most paid search traffic. They keep those that make more than their $6-7 annual fee and give the non-profitable domains back on day four.

Speculators write software to automatically register hundreds or thousands of names. Some are variants of trademarks or generic keywords that Internet users are likely to type — or mistype. Others are names grabbed after their original owners fail to renew.

During the grace period, the entrepreneur puts up a Web page featuring keyword search ads and receives a commission on each ad clicked. Services like Google Inc.’s AdSense for Domains and Yahoo Inc.’s Domain Match help large domain name owners set them up, even as the search companies officially oppose abuses in tasting.

Addresses likely to generate more than the $6 annual cost of domain name are kept — not a high threshold given how lucrative search advertising is these days.

The rest are thrown back into the pool on the fourth or fifth day, only to be grabbed by another group of domain name tasters.

What’s crazy is that there are up to 6 million domain names tied up in this process at any give time! When one person gives back their domain, another snaps it up before it can go back on the market to the public.

The practice has spiked, with an average tasting of 1.2 million names each day in December, compared with 7,200 two years earlier, according to data from Name Intelligence Inc., which analyzes domain name patterns. Legitimate registrations made up 2 percent of the registrations at the end of 2006, down from about half in 2004.

Only 2%!

I like Apple, but I’m not a raving fan who believes they can do no wrong, like some. I love my iPod Nano, and have considered purchasing an iBook in the past… but I never felt like they are a company that can do not wrong - especially when they sued bloggers (and lost).

So I admit that when I first read his memo, I didn’t believe he was sincere. If he really wanted to do something, he would remove DRM from all the indie artists out there who offer their audio on iTunes but would prefer their files not be protected by DRM.

Cory Doctorow responded in a Salon article late last month, saying

DRM’s principal effect is legal, not technical. Since the passage of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it’s been illegal to break DRMs in this country. It doesn’t matter if DRM restricts access to something you have every right to use (for example, a DRM that region-locks a movie you’ve bought so that it won’t play in the U.S.). You’re not allowed to break DRM, and corporations certainly can’t field products that break it. The results are ugly: Companies like 321 Studios (whose DVD X-Copy software lets you make otherwise legal backups of your DVDs) were sued into oblivion by the motion picture companies for trying such a thing.

So if you shellac a one-atom-thick layer of DRM over a product, you get the full power of the American legal system as a weapon to use against competitors. Apple may have created a successful “Switch” campaign by reverse-engineering Microsoft products like PowerPoint to make Keynote, an Apple program that lets you run old PowerPoint decks on your Mac, but Microsoft can’t create a “Switch to the Zune” campaign that offers you the ability to play your iTunes Store songs on a Zune, Microsoft’s latest abortive iPod-killer.

Although Apple’s DRM is wholly ineffective at preventing copying, it does manage to raise the cost of switching from an iPod to a competing device. Every iTunes song you buy for 99 cents amounts to a 99 cent tax on switching from an iPod to a Zune. That’s because your iTunes songs won’t play on your Zune — or on any other player, save those made or licensed by Apple. Jobs tries to skate around this in his memo, suggesting that only a tiny fraction of the music on iPods comes from his music store, and so the anti-switching effects are minimal.

So what, exactly, does Steve Jobs hope to get out of his memo? Maybe some good will - even though he knows that his appeal won’t change anything? It’s more PR than anything, I think.

There is some good news in all of this, though. A few weeks ago, Reps. Rich Boucher (D-Va.) and John Dolittle (R-Calif.) introduced what they call the “Freedom and Innovation Revitalizing U.S. Entrepreneurship” (or FAIR USE) bill, which may crack down on companies that use DRM. They say

“The Digital Millennium Copyright Act dramatically tilted the copyright balance toward complete copyright protection at the expense of the public’s right to fair use,” Boucher said in a statement. “Without a change in the law, individuals will be less willing to purchase digital media if their use of the media within the home is severely circumscribed and the manufacturers of equipment and software that enables circumvention for legitimate purposes will be reluctant to introduce the products into the market.”

Let’s hope that Congress makes this an issue in the upcoming months.

But - is the PS3 really worth $2000? I mean, yeah, I want one, but $2000??? And I thought $599 was high. The BusinessWeek article mentions rave reviews, but 3x the retail price? I’m just not that obsessed.

Anyway, the article makes a good point about Sony and Microsoft vying for the personal entertainment space while Nintendo remains content to just be a console. I think Sony has more at stake than Microsoft, given their latest battery replacement fiasco with Dell notebooks that could cost the company $431M. Add that to the fact that their video game division is reporting $1.71 billion in loses for the PS3. Sony just seems to be bleeding money at this point.

Microsoft’s entertainment division recently posted a $96 million loss despite having sold 6 million Xbox 360s so far and forecasting they’ll sell 10 million by the end of the year.

The PS3 has a long way to go to catch up. They’re planning to have 400,000 by the launch Nov 17, 600,000 on the market by the end of the year and 2 million by March 2007. It remains to be seen if they’ll all sell out. And if they’ll ever turn a profit on the machine.

At least the analysts are predicting it will finally beat Xbox come 2011.

Here are the pros and cons of each as I see them:

Player Price: HD DVD wins. The players are roughly half the cost of Blu Ray at this point - HD DVD players start at $500 while Blu Ray starts around $1000. That said, the PS3 will narrow the cost gap once stores start carrying the machines. Even non-gamers may be tempted to pick up a PS3 at $599 for the Blu Ray player that comes with it.

Media Price: Blu Ray wins. Currently, HD DVDs are going for about $29 MSRP for older titles and $35-40 for new titles. Blu Ray discs are going for about $23 for older titles and $30 for newer titles. (update: although on Amazon.com, the discs are virtually the same cost.)

Quality: Blu Ray wins. Both formats are capable of High Definition standards, but currently, HD DVD players can’t play the 1080 High Definition output. Blu Ray can. (update: although Toshiba now has released a 2nd gen model that can play 1080.)

Capacity: Blu Ray wins. Blu Ray discs can hold 25GB on a single layer and 50GB on the dual-layer discs, while HD DVD discs can only hold 30GB on a dual-layered disc.

Game Consoles: The PS3 will come equipped with a Blu Ray player while Microsoft will sell an HD DVD player as an external drive for the Xbox 360. Had they decided to equip the Xbox with the HD DVD players from the start, they’d have a full year on Sony. As of now, they’re starting on relatively equal ground. This is also a toss up.

Selection: Blu Ray (maybe)? At this point, it’s probably a toss up since the technology’s so new and the selection for both is so poor. Blu Ray has a number of big studios like Disney, Miramax, Fox, and Sony supporting it. Studios like Paramount and Warner say they’ll support both formats. It looks like the money’s with Blu Ray technology, though.

Conclusions:If you’re a non-gamer, then I’d probably agree with Computer Shopper that you might as well sit this one out. Personally, I’m planning on buying a Playstation 3 once they become readily available - which may not be until March as it looks now - so I’m going with Blu Ray since it comes with my console anyway.

As it looks now, I think Blu Ray is the better technology and has the support of movie studios. It’s main problem is price, which will change when the PS3 comes out. At $499 or $599, I can see non-gamers picking up the console simply for the Blu Ray dvd player if they really want one.

That said, Microsoft is releasing an external HD DVD drive for $199 for the Xbox 360, so I wouldn’t count Microsoft out yet. If they’re supporting the format, there’s money on that side too… it’s just a matter of how much Microsoft will throw at it.

update - For an ongoing comparison of the sales numbers of the two formats, check out TheDVDWars.com. As of right now, there are currently 64 Blu Ray movies on the market and 91 HD DVDs - not a very good selection! HD DVDs are currently outselling Blu Ray, but it looks like regular DVDs are by far the most popular choice.

The well attended event had a number of seminars you could pay to attend, keynotes, and a large expo hall. There was no shortage of camera gear, though I didn’t see some of the notable brands like Panasonic, Samsung, or Olympus. Nikon was heavily promoting their latest DSLR, the D80, while Leica was doing the same for their new digital camera, the M8.

Here are some highlights:

1. Lensbabies - The new Lensbaby 3G is now out, which allows you to lock your lens in place when you get it just right and then adjust the focus. Lensbabies allow you to compress and bend your lens to get a softer blur around your object of focus. They retail for about $270. www.lensbabies.com
2. I listened to a booth seminar by Mary Du Prie who gave a fascinating lecture on how to pose people for professional photography so they look natural - and if you’re photographing models, what modeling agencies are looking for in model photographs. She did a live demonstration on how to give directions to your subject, which was very informative. Check out her website at www.photographingmodels.com for her dvds.
3. Adobe was giving lectures throughout the day demonstrating the power of their Creative Suite 2 and handing out demo cds. For those of us who have yet to upgrade, they were giving out 15% discounts, so I think I’ll be taking advantage of that shortly. If you order through their online store, use code Q4DI which is good until 11/10/06.
4. Want to win a Leica V-Lux 1? Go Indie is having a photography contest. The deadline for submission is 12/15/06. Check out www.goindiecontest.com for details.
5. Sony has a new Digital SLR called the alpha 100. It’s a 10.2 megapixel CCD with in camera image stabilization and is roughly the size of a Canon Rebel XT. They boost it can “shoot without interruption at up to three frames per second until the memory card is full” and that you can shoot up to 750 shots with a single battery charge. www.sony.com/dslr
6. If ever you wanted a mini-tripod you could wrap around a pole or tree branch, check out the Gorillapod. They come in 3 sizes, with the largest sturdy enough to mount up to 6.6 lbs. www.joby.com
7. O’Reilly publishes a number of digital photography books. As of this summer, most of their Photoshop Cookbooks are finally available though their Safari online subscription service. If you prefer hard copies, they’re running a promotion - buy 2 books, get 1 free. Use discount code OPC141 when ordering from www.oreilly.com/digitalmediastore. I’m not sure how long that’s good for.

The CEO of JotSpot, Joe Kraus, formerly founded and sold Excite.com quoted a VC at Mobius Venture Capital when he defined Web 2.0 as “Ajax, Adsense, and Arrogance,” which I thought was pretty funny. He then when on to discuss how the Web 2.0 boom is different from the dotcoms of the 90s - mainly that access to cheap labor and hardware drive down costs so it feels like a “return to entrepreneurship” and a “return to doing it for the love of it.”

Another anecdote - When the Personal News Network CEO Lauren Elliot quotes figures that something like 80% of people have never sent a picture through their cell phone, Guy Kawasaki, who moderates the panel, polls the audience. From his reaction, it looks like very few actually have done it - including himself! Personally, I’ve taken a few pics from my camera, but have never emailed them.

If you’re interested in Web 2.0 and where it’s headed, check it out. There’s some great advice on starting a company.