The latest New Scientist has a piece on Ted Ciamillo, the machinist who invented the hydrospeeder (think: Bondian underwater motorcycle) and the Lunocet (a tail for divers modeled on dolphins). Ciamillo’s latest project is a human-powered mini-sub he plans to use to pedal across the Atlantic:

Ciamillo designed his mini-submarine around a larger version of the Lunocet. The body of the vessel is built from lightweight yet tough materials: a stainless steel frame, a polycarbonate shell and a propulsion system made from aluminium and titanium. It will operate as a “wet” sub: instead of having a pressurised shell filled with air, it will be full of water at all times. Buoyancy is provided by PVC foam packed into the shell and from air bladders that can be filled or emptied to keep the vessel at the desired depth. At 1.2 metres at its widest point by 5 metres long it is not exactly roomy, but neither is it claustrophobic. “Being weightless, with all the windows, you feel like you have plenty of room,” Ciamillo says.

Across the ocean in a pedal-powered submarine

More:

• American Maker: The Winner “Airheads Air Drums”
• online casinoBuild your own one-person submarine

edfa

Microsoft pushed out the first release candidate of its revamped browser, Internet Explorer 8, today.

The folks up in Redmond are often criticized for dragging their heels regarding web standards—and even new features available to most other modern browsers—but IE8 is by far the best offering of the much-maligned browser to date. We’ve already walked you through IE8’s familiar but useful new features, and so far we haven’t seen any major differences. If you’ve been using IE8, let’s hear what changes you spot in the comments. There’s no central download page, so here are a couple of links to the download depending on your system:

• IE 8 for XP
• IE 8 for Vista and Windows Server 2008

If you’re not using XP or Vista, you can find other links to IE8 RC1 with this Microsoft Download Center search. Thanks Jeremy!

Apple has just released the 2.2.1 update for iPhones and iPod touches today, complete with various bug-fix promises for Safari, Mail, and the Camera app.

The update applies to all versions (iPhone and iPhone 3G) and most likely to both generations of the iPod touch. (Just plug in your device and hit Update to find out for sure.) It’s not a terribly exciting update, so don’t expect any cool new features. (Sorry to all you unreasonable folks wanting MMS and copy-and-paste.) If you’ve jailbroken your iPhone, you should hold tight on the upgrade until we see whether or not 2.2.1 is jailbreakable.

[via]

The majority of Lifehacker readers start their hunt for lost acquaintances at Pipl.com. If you’re not getting lucky at Pipl, try some good old-fashioned GStalking at the second-place finisher, Google. Coming up short with both Pipl and Google? Poke around with the third-place search app in this week’s Hive Five Best People Search-Engines, Facebook—the place where people go to be found.

Today Gmail Labs released a new feature that bridges the gap between desktop and web-based applications like never before: Offline Gmail. You can now access your Gmail from your browser any time, whether or not you’re online

AdSweep is a user script that blocks a good number of ads on some major websites, and works from a simple file you plug into your Opera or Google Chrome files.

The instructions for installing the single AdSweep.user.js file in your Opera or Chrome browser are laid out step-by-step on AdSweep’s main page. Opera users have a mostly graphical process, while Chrome users will have to check their version and then make a few tweaks to enable user scripts. The site notes that AdSweep will work for Firefox as well, along with Safari and Internet Explorer with some third-party add-ons, but each of those platforms has their own ad-blocking solutions, like Firefox’s uber-popular Adblock Plus. Chrome users can also use a proxy solution like the previously detailed Privoxy to get annoying ads out of their way.

We have to say it—the site you’re reading right now is, of course, supported by advertising, and we’d ask that you keep them displayed if you dig what we do here. But AdSweep is pretty easily tweaked with, since it’s just one file, and can be used for blocking of extremely annoying ads. It’s a free download, works where Opera and Chrome can install. Thanks, Saša!

AdSweep

My dad always tell me this. If you are putting too much effort into a specific task, while not making good progress, there is something wrong there.

This is true for all endeavors in life, from the most basic to the most complex ones. Suppose you are trying to cut a piece of wood with a hand saw. Despite putting all your strength on it, however, you are not making good progress. Well, there is something wrong there. You are probably not handling the saw the right way, or you are not approaching the wood with the right angle.

Upon facing a similar situation, some people would keep going carelessly, until all their energy is drained and they are overwhelmed by the task and just give up. Other people, however, stop and try to figure out what is wrong. Read the rest of this entry…

1. Keep Track
Keep track of blogs and leave comments on them. A good way to keep the conversation going is to install a MyBlogLog widget and visit the blog of people visiting your site.

2. Valueable Content
Nothing creates long-term traffic more than value. Consider writing posts with resources or explaining how things work. Useful things get linked to and they get onto del.icio.us, which is far better long-term than a digg front page.

3. Inform Search Engines & Aggregators
Inform search engines and aggregators like Technorati (using the ping functionality) when your blog is updated, this should ensure maximum traffic coming from those sources. (check the List of Ping Services)

4. Simple & Understandable Content
Simplify. Pay attention to complex issues in your field of work. It may be a big long publication that is hard to wade through or a concept that is hard to grasp. Reference it and make a shorter “for dummies” version with your own lessons learned and relevant tips. When doing this, I have been surprised to find that the simplified post will appear before the more complex version in search results. Perhaps this is why it results in increased traffic; people looking for more help or clarification on the subject will land on your blog.

5. Create Polemic
Try to be polemic. I write obsessively about all-things political from the left-wing perspective in the form of humorous, sarcastic one-liners.

6. Translate into Other Languages
A simple tip that will probably boost your page views: install a translator plugin. I decided to use a paid plugin for this, but if I am not wrong there are some free ones as well. The translation is not very good, as you can imagine, but it helps to attract readers that are not fluent in English.

7. Blog Carnival
Submit articles to blog carnivals (http://blogcarnival.com) that are related to your niche. Your article almost always gets posted, and it must generate a handful of visitors, at least.

8. Newsgroups
Newsgroups. I always see a spike when I post a review to a newsgroup.

9. Unique Design
Create a new design for your website. Not only will it be more attractive to your regular readers, but you can submit it to some CSS gallery showcase sites that feature great designs. This will give you exposure on those sites while generating a lot of traffic and backlinks from those types of sites.

10. Participate in conversations on related blogs
Participate in conversations on related blogs. Start conversations on your own blog. Don’t just post about a story and leave it at that, engage your audience, ask questions and call to action.

11. Get Blog Friends
Comment on blogs, write useful content and make good friends on forums.

12. Comment on Other Blogs
You must be active to generate traffic. I post comments on other blogs that are related to mine, and I post my site link in my signature at the forums. Spread the word about your blog and it will certainly attract readers.

13. MyBlogLog.com
Just browse around MyBlogLog.com and you will surely get visitors to your blog. Also try to join as many communities as possible that are related to your topic.

14. Make Off-line Advertisement
A great tip for generating traffic is off-line by including your url in all your off-line liturature from business cards, letterheads, pamphlets, adverts through in-store signage if applicable. I even have our website on my vehicle.

15. Trackbacks & Optimization
Read lots of other blogs. Leave trackbacks. Make sure your blog is optimized for search engines. Leverage social bookmarking sites like digg (both for new ideas and for traffic).

16. Commenting Other Blogs
Leave comments on other blogs. If you’re already reading them, it takes just a couple of seconds to leave a message agreeing or disagreeing with the author, you get to leave a link to your site, and you will almost ALWAYS get traffic from your comments.

17. Post Frequently
Post 3-5 times a day. Use ping services like pingomatic or set up wordpress to ping some of the ping services. Engage your readers. Put up polls, ask them questions, give them quizes, free tools, etc. Make them want to come back and tell their friends about you.

18. Community
It’s one word but it is the most important one when it comes to blogging. The only “blog metric” that makes sense is the vibrant community of readers it has. Building a community around your blog will bring you increased traffic, but how do you start? The boilerplate response to building traffic is always “SEO, social networking sites, and commenting on blogs” but it can be simplified to “be part of a community”. The easiest way to seed your blog is with an already existing community. But the only way to do that is to be part of the community yourself.

19. Squidoo Lenses
Squidoo Lenses are a good way to generate traffic. By using a lense, you can generate your own custom “community” of webpages, including some of the more popular pages in your “neighborhood.” Including your own webpage in such a list is a good way of generating traffic.

20. Ezine Articles
I’ve had good success writing articles and submitting them to EzineArticles. Articles that have been written from well-researched keyword phrases and accepted by EzineArticles tend to rank very high in Google for that search term. Placing anchor text in the footer of those articles so the reader can visit my relevant website has always increased my site traffic.

21. Submit it to a Design Portal
I came upon some unexpected traffic when my blog popped up on some css design portals like www.cssmania.com and www.webcreme.com. If you can put some time into the concept behind and design for your blog, I’d recommend submitting your site to a design portal not only for additional traffic but to build an additional community around your site.

22. MySpace-like community sites
I’ve recently gotten involved with several “MySpace-like” community sites that focus on my target audience. I share my thoughts in their forums, post intros to my real blog on their system blog and I’ve even created a group for my specific niche. It’s been very, very successful for me.

23. Blogg-buzz.com
Well, obviously everyone knows that social bookmarking sites like Digg, del.icio.us, etc. bring lots of traffic. But I’m now submitting some of my articles to blogg-buzz.com (a digg like site for bloggers), and I always get not a bad traffic from there.

24. Participate in Yahoo Answers
Participate in Yahoo Answers and LinkedIn Answers where you can demonstrate your expertise, get associated with relevant keywords and put your URL out there.

25. Be the First Commenter
Be the first to write a post about the ‘Top Ten Blogs’ in your niche. The post will rank highly in any general search for blogs in your niche and other bloggers in your niche write about the post and link to it.

26. Participate in forums
Participating in forums is a great way to get loyal readers. Either link baiting people in your signature or posting great advice and tips will give you high quality traffic, which will result in return visitors.

27. Group Writing Projects
A simple trick I’ve used to increase traffic to my blog is participate in group writing projects. In fact, that’s what I’m doing right now.

28. Arshives
Don’t forget your archives. I just posted a roundup of all interviews I did over the past seven months. One of them generated a new link and a big traffic spike from a group of users that look like they will be loyal readers now.

29. Write something controversial
I don’t think it’s good to write something controversial just for the purpose of getting traffic necessarily (especially if it’s only for that purpose and you’re being disingenuous), but it works.

30. Contact Other Blog Authors
Find the best blogs on your niche and contact the authors. Introduce yourself and send a link of your blog. This might help them to discover your blog, read it and possibly link to it.

Microsoft issued a critical security warning Tuesday that a malicious exploit is making the rounds and attacking vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer 7.

The risk is believed to be widespread, given that IE 7 is the latest version of Microsoft’s browser and is bundled with XP service pack 3 and also Vista, said Dave Marcus, director of security research and communications for McAfee’s Avert Labs. Read the rest of this entry…

Scientists have created two new types of materials that can bend light the wrong way, creating the first step toward an invisibility cloaking device.

One approach uses a type of fishnet of metal layers to reverse the direction of light, while another uses tiny silver wires, both at the nanoscale level.

Both are so-called metamaterials — artificially engineered structures that have properties not seen in nature, such as negative refractive index.

The two teams were working separately under the direction of Xiang Zhang of the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center at the University of California, Berkeley with U.S. government funding. One team reported its findings in the journal Science and the other in the journal Nature.

Each new material works to reverse light in limited wavelengths, so no one will be using them to hide buildings from satellites, said Jason Valentine, who worked on one of the projects.

“We are not actually cloaking anything,” Valentine said in a telephone interview. “I don’t think we have to worry about invisible people walking around any time soon. To be honest, we are just at the beginning of doing anything like that.”

Valentine’s team made a material that affects light near the visible spectrum, in a region used in fiber optics.

“In naturally occurring material, the index of refraction, a measure of how light bends in a medium, is positive,” he said.

“When you see a fish in the water, the fish will appear to be in front of the position it really is. Or if you put a stick in the water, the stick seems to bend away from you.”

These are illusions caused by the light bending when it moves between water and air.

NEGATIVE REFRACTION

The negative refraction achieved by the teams at Berkeley would be different.

“Instead of the fish appearing to be slightly ahead of where it is in the water, it would actually appear to be above the water’s surface,” Valentine said. “It’s kind of weird.”

For a metamaterial to produce negative refraction, it must have a structural array smaller than the wavelength of the electromagnetic radiation being used. This was done using microwaves in 2006 by David Smith of Duke University in North Carolina and John Pendry of Imperial College London.

Visible light is harder. Some groups managed it with very thin layers, virtually only one atom thick, but these materials were not practical to work with and absorbed a great deal of the light directed at it.

“What we have done is taken that material and made it much thicker,” Valentine said.

His team, whose work is reported in Nature, used stacked silver and metal dielectric layers stacked on top of each other and then punched through with holes. “We call it a fishnet,” Valentine said.The other team, reporting in Science, used an oxide template and grew silver nanowires inside porous aluminum oxide at tiny distances apart, smaller than the wavelength of visible light. This material refracts visible light.

Immediate applications might be superior optical devices, Valentine said — perhaps a microscope that could see a living virus.

“However, cloaking may be something that this material could be used for in the future,” he said. “You’d have to wrap whatever you wanted to cloak in the material. It would just send light around. By sending light around the object that is to be cloaked, you don’t see it.”

Maggie Fox (Washington Reuters)