Skill Zone News issue 57
This newsletter is being written over the weekend that Apple releases its next version of its phone, and people have queued overnight on pavements outside Apple stores around the world to hand over hard earned cash. I can guess what this week's trending topic on Twitter is going to be.
24th September 2012
Is the party over for party balloons?
In August, the Rutherford Laboratories in Oxfordshire, a research facility which costs £30,000 per day to operate, stood idle for a day because it couldn't obtain supplies of Helium, despite it being the second most common element in the universe. The price of helium is affecting more than just party balloons.
Selling off the IPV4 space
It has emerged that the Department of Work and Pensions holds a large block of the increasingly hard to obtain IPV4 numbers, and an e-petition wants to know what the Government plans to do with them.
Sticks and stones may break my bones
Six months ago I wrote about TripAdvisor's run in with the ASA who said that TripAdvisor could not verify that its user-generated reviews were accurate and honest, and that asking the person submitting the review to tick a box declaring it was genuine was insufficient. In a similar tale from across the Atlantic, a US judge seems to have come to quite the opposite conclusion.
Die hard with an iPod
The Daily Mail reported that Bruce Willis was to sue Apple over the right to pass on his downloaded music collection to his daughters in his will. A few hours later, the Willis family tweeted that the story was a hoax, which then led to reporters asking if they could confirm the tweet, to make sure that the tweet wasn't itself a hoax. Nevertheless, it raises a morbid but important question. What happens to your digital assets when you die?
Peppers from space
In north west China's Gansu province, cosmic capsicums have gone on sale and account for more than half the local red pepper market. You might find them alongside other off-world creations such as the basket-ball sized aubergine, and half-meter long cucumbers.
Ignoble Prizes 2012
Always a joy to read, the Ignoble Prizes are awarded each year for the less stellar pieces of research that won't quite change the world.
This article comes from the SKILLZONE email newsletter, published monthly since January 2008, and covering topics related to technology and the internet. All articles and artwork in the SKILLZONE newsletter are orignal content.