Check It Out

Links to cool places or things.

There are 1,524 posts filed in Check It Out (this is page 97 of 153).

RTP seeks to be more inviting for smaller companies

RTP seemed like a great idea 60 years ago but the tide has turned against the idea of putting job centers in the boonies. The younger workers (you know, the ones graduating from the schools that put the triangle in “Research Triangle Park”) don’t want to own cars. They want to work where they live. They want to work in a dynamic environment, not one with “large amounts of green space.” Collaboration with others spurs new ideas, not navel-gazing in green pastures (or former pastures, as is the case with RTP).

Skyrocketing gas prices and different priorities among today’s younger workforce are what dooms RTP. Yes, RTP could survive if it can become a place where one can not just work but also live and play, but it’s an uphill battle that RTP cannot win. Durham and Raleigh are light years ahead of RTP in this regard and that’s where the job growth will go.

Two years ago, concerned about competition from other research parks within the state and around the globe, RTP hired a New York urban design firm to update its master plan for the first time since the park was formed in 1959.

Since then, the urgency has also heightened as new competitors – Durham’s American Tobacco Campus and N.C. State University’s Centennial Campus, to name two – have attracted numerous start-ups.

The park, meanwhile, has been hurt by appearing to be content to be a suburban, isolated campus environment, said Joel Marcus, CEO of Alexandria Real Estate Equities, a California company that has been in the park since 1998 and today owns nearly a million square feet of lab space in RTP.

“That’s really not today’s world,” he said.

via RTP seeks to be more inviting for smaller companies, quick innovation – Economy – NewsObserver.com.

Time to update the City of Raleigh flag?

Leo Suarez of the Raleigh Connoisseur has some similar thoughts on Raleigh’s flag that I’ve had. I think the time might be ripe to update the city flag and get something we can all be proud to fly!

In other cities, the flag is a sense of pride. Chicago and Washington DC have great flags and if you’re lucky, you may find citizens with tattoos of it. (anyone in Raleigh can claim having this?)

In 2004, the North American Vexillological Association did a survey against 150 US city flags. Respondents answered on a 0 to 10 scale on what they thought were a well designed flags. We ranked 56 on that list, highest North Carolina city by the way, so flag design may not be a huge feather in our cap.

Still, I want to ask this question; Why are there so few Raleigh flags around town?

via The Raleigh Connoisseur (April 25, 2012) – The City of Raleigh Flag.

High-Tech Border Checks Will Blow Spies’ Cover

Wired has an absolutely fascinating story about how the U.S.’s border security paranoia has unwittingly made it very difficult for spies to use false identities. With biometric checking in effect, the days of a spy entering a country on a false passport are quickly coming to an end.

The increasing deployment of iris scanners and biometric passports at worldwide airports, hotels and business headquarters, designed to catch terrorists and criminals, are playing havoc with operations that require CIA spies to travel under false identities.

Busy spy crossroads such as Dubai, Jordan, India and many E.U. points of entry are employing iris scanners to link eyeballs irrevocably to a particular name. Likewise, the increasing use of biometric passports, which are embedded with microchips containing a person’s face, sex, fingerprints, date and place of birth, and other personal data, are increasingly replacing the old paper ones. For a clandestine field operative, flying under a false name could be a one-way ticket to a headquarters desk, since they’re irrevocably chained to whatever name and passport they used.

“If you go to one of those countries under an alias, you can’t go again under another name,” explains a career spook, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he remains an agency consultant. ”So it’s a one-time thing — one and done. The biometric data on your passport, and maybe your iris, too, has been linked forever to whatever name was on your passport the first time. You can’t show up again under a different name with the same data.”

via CIA’s Secret Fear: High-Tech Border Checks Will Blow Spies’ Cover | Danger Room | Wired.com.

Best Buy CEO Resigns Amid Competitive Pressures

Best Buy catches up with reality.

You know how much I dislike shopping at Best Buy? I was given a Best Buy gift card well over a year ago and still haven’t used it. How bad is a store when I can’t even be bothered to spend free money there?

I’d also say that in spite of the reporter’s speculation, people probably don’t use Best Buy as a showroom, mainly because they hate going into Best Buy as much as I do.

There’s ever-growing speculation that Best Buy now is serving too much as a showroom for its possibly toughest competitor yet, online retailer Amazon.com. The thought is that customers are perusing the aisles at Best Buy, trying out or considering games, cameras and phones, then buying them cheaper online, and sometimes with less sales tax, through Amazon or some other online merchant.

via Best Buy CEO Resigns Amid Competitive Pressures, Search for Direction – Yahoo! Finance.

US Navy deploys 2nd aircraft carrier to Gulf

Two of the U.S. Navy’s aircraft carriers are now in the Persian Gulf. These carriers certainly raise visibility, though in a bathtub-sized body of water like the Persian Gulf they’ll be spending most of their time just getting out of each other’s way.

One comment to this story was from a former sailor who talked about how boring it is to be on a ship. That is especially true in the Gulf, where one can enjoy “hours upon hours of boredom punctuated with sheer moments of terror.”

The U.S. Navy said Monday it has deployed a second aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf region amid rising tensions with Iran over its disputed nuclear program.

The deployment of the nuclear-powered USS Enterprise along with the Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group marks one of the few times the Navy has had two aircraft carriers operating in waters near the Persian Gulf, said Cmdr. Amy Derrick-Frost of the Bahrain-based 5th Fleet.

The two carriers will support the American military operations in Afghanistan and anti-piracy efforts off Somalia’s coast and in the Gulf of Aden, she said.

via US Navy deploys 2nd aircraft carrier to Gulf :: WRAL.com.

Apple plans nation’s biggest private fuel cell energy project at N.C. data center

I’ve been meaning to blog about this all weekend. The N&O’s John Murawski has uncovered a very interesting aspect to the datacenter Apple is building in North Carolina: the country’s largest private fuel cell project.

North Carolina will be home to the nation’s largest private fuel cell energy project, a nonpolluting, silent power plant that will generate electricity from hydrogen.

Apple (yes, that Apple) filed its plans with the N.C. Utilities Commission on Thursday to build the 4.8-megawatt project in Maiden, about 40 miles northwest of Charlotte. That’s where Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple has built a data center to support the company’s iCloud online data storage system and its SIRI voice-recognition software.

The fuel cell project, the nation’s largest such project not built by an electric utility company, will be developed this year. It will be located on the same data complex that will host a planned 20-megawatt solar farm – the biggest ever proposed in this state.

But it’s the fuel cell project that’s generating buzz, eclipsing anything ever dreamed of in California, the nation’s epicenter for fuel cell projects.

“That’s a huge vote of confidence in fuel cells,” said James Warner, policy director of the Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Energy Association in Washington.

I’ve written before about how large companies build their datacenters in North Carolina to take advantage of the cheap electricity: electricity generated from dirty coal. Yet, fuel cells are (still) incredibly expensive and are among the cleanest energy sources around.

Why would Apple build a fuel cell plant in our state? It’s ironic, really, since all of Apple’s products are manufactured in China – powered by coal-smoke-belching power plants.

Does this mean that my dream of one day having a dishwasher-sized fuel cell power my home is moving closer to reality? What’s really going on here?

via Apple plans nation’s biggest private fuel cell energy project at N.C. data center – Business – NewsObserver.com.

Festival au Desert

If the ancient Mali city of Tumbuktu wasn’t already remote and exotic enough, now it’s in the hands of Tuareg rebels after a coup took place in Mali March 21st.

For over a decade, Mali has been the home of an annual African music concert known as Festival in the Desert. I’ve long wanted to travel to this concert and see the Sahara Desert and the city of Timbuktu but the security situation in the country brings this into question.

It’s not that I was ready to jet off to West Africa any time soon but I still hope one day to ride a camel to hear some of the most beautiful music on earth.

Who is the Route 29 Batman? This guy

Courtesy Montgomery County Police Department

I saw the picture on Facebook of Batman getting pulled over on Route 29 in Maryland, so naturally I wanted to find out more.

What a touching story. This Batman really IS a superhero!

Police pulled a man over on Route 29 in Silver Spring last week because of a problem with his plates. This would not ordinarily make international news, but the car was a black Lamborghini, the license plate was the Batman symbol, and the driver was Batman, dressed head-to-toe in his full superhero uniform.

HOLY MOVING VIOLATION!

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