Why do Airplane Windows have Holes?

If you have ever traveled on a window seat in an Airplane, you would have noticed a small hole near the bottom of the window pane. This hole is not accessible from the inside (it's not on the pane closest to you), and appears to be on a 'middle' pane. On cold mornings, you can even see ice crystals forming on this pane, like the image below.

Ice on Airplane Window

It's a little unsettling if you don't know why airplanes would need a hole on each window. Isn't the whole purpose of the window to keep the cabin pressurized while allowing for pleasing views to us passengers? A hole in even one of the window panes would make the window as a whole weaker - no? As it turns out, the opposite is true - the hole is a safety feature!

Of the three panes of a typical aircraft window, the first one (from inside) is merely to protect the second and third ones. If you recall your experience with the first pane, it is a little flimsy and bends a little under pressure from your finger. Surely this pane isn't going to hold out against the low outside pressure at cruising altitude. The first pane keeps the passengers and little kids with their toys and spilling hot / cold beverages from interfering with the second and third panes - both of which are independently capable of maintaining cabin pressure. Wait - if both panes are capable of holding cabin pressure at cruising altitudes, why do we need two? For safety, of course. But why the hole?

Icy Art

The hole makes sure only the outer pane takes the load of Air pressure 'usually'. In case the outer pane fails, the inner one takes up the role of maintaining cabin pressure - albeit with a little leakage. This also makes window inspection easier - if the outer pane is OK, all is good and there's no need to inspect the middle pane. Pilots are anyways trained to descend to safer altitudes in case a window pane breaks, and the cabin pressurization system can handle the additional small load (due to leakage) easily in such a case.

So next time you see ice crystals forming on your airplane window, relax and take comfort in the fact that it's been designed as a safety feature. The added visual pleasure of seeing nature make intricate art right at your window is an added bonus.

Related articles:
dailymail.co.uk
slate.com

Face Detection in Advertising Could Lead To Embarrassment For You

In the very near future, the ads will start watching you. They will capture innocuous information like your gender and age range, and show you ads that you will most likely find useful. The technology is already in place, as seen in this video

While the current technology is in use in Europe, expect it to hit your shores soon enough if there's enough traction. And traction there will be - which advertiser would not want to ensure the right audience is exposed to its advertisements?

If you're obese, expect to see weight reduction ads everywhere you go - at the supermarket checkout, at the fuel stations, even at billboards on the highway :)

A New Era with 3D Printing

Ok, so Boeing is 3-D printing airplane components now. What does it mean for you?

1. Printing 3-D objects is going to get cheaper (soon). But that's anybody's guess
2. Soon you'll be concerned about the cost and quantity of printing material your children are using for their homework and for playing
3. Traditional supply chain is going to enter a disruption phase. Even for Boeing - it's much easier to simply print a worn-out part for replacement

How about reducing material usage? Or playing with material properties in a hitherto unexplored way? Enter Metal Foams - with the only difference being that now it'll be possible to control exactly how porous the material will be at each load-bearing point. 

A whole new era of material sciences beckons! 

Latest project - Indian payments on eShop plugin for wordpress

Did anyone notice that no wordpress eCommerce plugin offers payments in INR? I use the eShop plugin for one of our eCommerce websites and it was rather painful to integrate INR Payments into the plugin. However, things may be about to change for the better!

Am trying to convince the guys at EBS to integrate their payment gateway in the eShop plugin. What with Wordpress 3.0 being launched and eShop's latest version about to become live, this might be the best time for an Indian payment gateway to be permanently integrated into the plugin. Hope it goes well, will update on this blog - stay tuned!

Websites that make money from YOUR updates

Never thought this was possible? Well, there are websites out there that make money when YOU write a blog update! Or even when you tweet to your own followers. How's that possible? Well - all they need to do is aggregate your data on their webpages and then have advertisements bring them the money. Typically, such a website will be owned by someone you want yourself to be associated with. Alternatively, they might also have some sort of an incentive for you to stay and have your content published through them. The system is definitely not illegal. In fact, it might be a great idea for you to make money from the internet - just think of something that can leverage the power of the masses. It could be something like a website that pulls data from other websites. Remember though, that one should always give credit to the source you're getting your data from. It's just plain ethics :)

Here's the first website, from Guy Kawasaki, that makes money for him when people write their blogs. Alltop is a great idea, and it solves a real problem - giving people one place where they can find all the top blogs and websites that cover a certain aspect of online publishing. What's more, it has become a rage with bloggers to have their content listed with Alltop. How Guy did it is just plain clever.

What's more, AllTop is also emerging as a one-stop for people to research on various topics that they cover (40 of the top searched topics on the internet). There's a whole section for people who're interested in blogging. You can see entries from your competition, all at one place.

And here's another website - TwitterTops, that attempts to do on twitter what Guy did with blogs and websites. The idea may be smaller, but the central theme is the same - to bring top tweeps together. In its current avatar, the websites appears to only collate TwitterTops from various geographies. Hopefully they'll be able to eventually amass tweeps based on their expertise as well. After all, just being the top twitter user in a particular country or city doesn't mean as much as being a twitter authority on a subject! The TwitterTops management needs to wake up and take notice!

Of course - you can also argue that all the top bloggers are eventually making money off of other people's hard work - TechCrunch does not itself make all the great web services they talk about. Popular Science doesn't invent all they write about. But at least these guys write about stuff! AllTop and TwitterTops promise not to write about stuff - they are only going to show the world what YOU have thought of! If only I could think of the next similar idea that could fly :)

Thanks to the social networks that make discovering such websites easy!  

PutVote redirecting to SalesForce?

Indian social bookmarking site PutVote.com may have lost traction with the public finally. The site is currently redirecting to this page in SalesForce.

To verify yourself, click the PutVote link above. Hover over the link before you click to make sure it points to the right page. The way I see it, PutVote would've been started by SalesForce (correct me if I am mistaken) and had to be shut down on account of either spamming or misuse by people. Here's a snapshot of what the site looked like, from Google's Cache. It isn't too hard to identify the spam links.

Last I remember, the site did not have any bookmarking juice to offer. This just goes to prove that using bad English isn't the best idea to attract the growing Indian internet audience.

Here are some of the other social bookmarking sites available in India:

Indianpad

NewsCola

HumDigg

IndiaMarks

IndiaGram

Formus of \India

IndiaBytes

NaDa to Report

Found a great piece of software that works across platforms and OSs, across computers and hand-held devices, never fails in what it does and requires less than a couple of seconds to download and install. Introducing NaDa - it does nothing for everybody!

Here's what the creators have to say about this product:

NaDa™ is a new concept. A thought, really. It is very light : 1 byte. It doesn't take long to fetch. It doesn't take long to understand. It doesn't disturb your habits nor does it makes you feel insecure. It is a reassuring piece of software that does nothing, and does it very well. That's a lot !

With good reviews and recommendations from users, there really is no reason why somebody would not want to install NaDa in their systems. Here's the download link. If you like what you install, be sure to leave a comment.

AdAir - First Peek at Dubai

Did you hear of the newest advertising idea in the world? I bragged about it here even though I don't have anything to do with it. Now AdAir just landed in the Guinness Book of World Records for the world's largest banner! At 20,000 square meters, I'm sure nothing else comes close.

And who is going to be the advertiser on this outdoor media? Guardian quotes Stephen Jones in that the advertiser is going to be a real estate company, in line with the current expansion in Dubai. Soon you will see ground based advertisements when you fly over Los Angeles International Airport and Chicago O'Hare.

As I wondered earlier, the ads will most likely target window seat passengers flying to these airports. This may well be one of the ways that make air travel free in the future. Would you mind a travel route covered with advertisements if your tickets were free? Or would you rather take an aisle seat and pay for it?

During an email brainstorming session with Chahal, he pointed out another way for advertising on the ground - use one (or many) of those laser lights to draw high-refresh images on the ground. That way, the ads can be moving pictures instead of being just still ones. This would definitely impact the conversion rates (which are going to be difficult to measure) and the amount of attention the ads receive. Unfortunately we did not brainstorm what happens to the ads in the day. Maybe the current day/night ads can double as a screen for night-only laser advertising.

Surely, this kind of advertising is only beginning now and we can expect more innovations in this arena soon.

This is where I got the news from.

Bubble 2.0

FrankShaw has a very interesting post here on the reasons why the current internet bubble will pop. The example he points to, eBay's acquisition of Skype for $3.1 Billion in 2005, is very relevant to the argument that the current trend of buying over perceived value of a company might lead to the creation of a bubble. Armed with the right tools, one can find a lot of such examples in today's markets.

If you look at the current 'online contextual advertising' market, you can see signs of a bubble forming. Almost every service depends on advertising as a monetization method. If you remember those obstructive ads of yesterday, the contrast between then and now is very noticeable. Problem is, there might be a race for the two types of advertising models to meet midway. If you've noticed, webpages keep getting more and more cluttered with advertising and other 'link propagating' methods. And visitors keep evolving too, most people today have learnt to avoid even the most contextually relevant ads. Of course, the system works when I'm searching for airline tickets to the Bahamas, but not when I am searching for information on Labor Day. And most searches are probably related for information and may not be focused on products per se. Effectively, people get trained to ignore the advertisements altogether.

So what might the future of advertising hold? I'm tempted to say "that's for Google to decide", but I guess "Time will tell" isn't a bad cliche after all. BTW, lemme know if you find this blog too cluttered :)

Take on Internet Applications

GigaOM has an interesting post today on Big Internet is Web 2.0’s OS — so Who Owns the Apps? written by Alistair Croll. I have known GigaOM for some very insightful pieces of information but this post is really on top. Alistair writes about how opening up their platforms helps large web services like eBay, Google and Amazon turn into operating systems, servicing niche areas of online business.

Big Internet companies are making themselves the OS of the web 2.0 world. In addition to the fundamentals — operating a web application, storing data, handling logins — each company has a core expertise. In Google’s case, it’s page ranking and relevance; Facebook maps social relationships; Salesforce knows about customer relationships; and eBay has an auction and reputation engine.

Applications created on top of powerful existing platforms get the inherent ability to be relevant and effective, yet light weight. An application built on top of the eBay platform leverages from its reputation and auction engine while delivering functionality that eBay itself may not want to currently get into. Opening up their platform has brought Facebook where it currently is.

Creating an environment for application creation is beneficial for the web service crown jewels of today and they will only hurt themselves by creating roadblocks in the way of application development. Hopefully the Facebooks of today realize the goldmine of collective intelligence they are sitting on and try to tap into it by removing some of the hurdles. Creating conditions for development of applications serving the long tail is going to be the way of the future as per the current internet trends.

Create a Video For AdSense!

Remember my earlier coverage of the Gmail video? People who reached this blog too late missed the video submission deadlines back in August. Hopefully you're early enough not to miss this AdSense Video submission opportunity.

If you have a website or blog that uses AdSense for monetization (or at least one channel of monetization), make a video for submission to the AdSense Publisher Stories and get featured on the AdSense Blog! For details on what your video should include and how to go about submissions, here's a big chunk of data copied from the AdSense Blog:

Here's how it works:

1. Shoot a video (2 minutes or shorter) about your story with AdSense.
2. Fill out the submission form and submit your video as a video response to Tim’s video on YouTube.
3. We will review your submissions and pick a few videos to be featured on the AdSense blog in the coming weeks.

In your video, you may want to answer some of the questions below, but feel free to include others.

* Where you are from and what you do for a living?
* Why did you create your site, blog, or forum?
* Who is your intended audience?
* How did you hear about AdSense?
* How has AdSense helped you?
* What are some useful AdSense tips you would give to other publishers so that they can see the same success?

I'd rather have you read the terms and conditions at the Blog itself, but please hurry - submission deadline is the 31st of October. If you don't have a YouTube account, get it here. Don't miss this chance to have your blog/website featured on the Google AdSense Blog! You might even be able to pick-up visitors on the way. Look at Tim Carter's video below and try to resist visiting his website..

iPhone Could be More iNnovative

While we can fathom that electronic accessories aren't the most environmentally viable of creations, at least I was under the impression that the iPhone, and all products Apple, are as safe as they can be. Apparently this is not so, as I learnt from the TechCrunch post today.

According to Greeneace, the iPhone is the only top phone company still using PVC in the manufacture of the earphone cables. The iPhone also contains chemicals like Bromine, Chlorine and Phthalates - some of which have been eliminated or greatly reduced in Nokia and Sony phones. Moreover, the non-user-replaceable batteries of the iPhone don't help Apple one bit.

Maybe it's time Apple took lead in another aspect of technology by choosing to go green in a way no other company has gone before. After all, we expect Apple to be nothing less than exceptional in every aspect.

Just How Did They Measure Hydrogen's Weight?

Gizmodo has an interesting post on Korean researchers having developed an unmanned plane that uses half-a-kilo of hydrogen to make whopping 10-hour flights. Unlike fossil fuels, Hydrogen packs an immense amount of energy and a half-kilo of the thing is energy equivalent to 1.3 kilograms of gasoline (Source).

My question is, how does one go about measuring the weight of Hydrogen? Being the lightest substance, it's not like you can fill a balloon with hydrogen and tape it to a weighing scale as that would show a negative weight. Moreover, just how negative the weight will be depends on the atmospheric pressure at the time of measurement. Vacuum measurement seems like a good alternative, but as soon as you fill a test tube (previously holding vacuum) with Hydrogen, it should become lighter than its original weight.

Googling for Hydrogen's weight measurement led to some 404s in the book search and more 404s in the actual results. I'm wondering if Google is trying to hide this particular information from the public. One of the results points to heating Methane until it breaks down (The Methane molecule consists of one atom of Carbon and four atoms of Hydrogen) to release Hydrogen. A difference in the weight of Methane used and of the Carbon left over should give the true weight of Hydrogen, given that one knows just how many molecules of Methane were there to start with. Even then, isn't every Hydrogen atom like a wing for the Carbon atom?

If you find yourself inclined to answer, leave a comment. For the sake of simplicity, let's not get into Avogadro's number and such jargon - not every reader may be able to follow.

Law Enforcement Modules from FBI

FBI is now probably the first Law Enforcement agency in the world to directly seek help from bloggers and website owners to track Predators, Missing Persons and Most Wanted Persons. This link to the FBI website shows the 4 different modules you can incorporate into your webpage to help nab a criminal.

Although the modules use [iframe] and cannot be called 'Widgets' as-such, it's still nice to see a government agency trying to use current technology to help a good cause.

If you have space available on your webpage and you haven't decided on what to do with it, give the FBI widgets a go. Who knows, you might even be able to win the reward set on one of the most-wanted people!

Via Mashable

New Frontier on Nigerian Scams - Hotels and Real Estate

I have posted here earlier on internet scams and the different ways they employ to dupe Average Joe of his money. It's a pity that most scams originate in Nigeria and I almost burnt my fingers once on eBay trying to make my first sale. What seemed legit business would have resulted in me shipping the item to an address in Nigeria without ever getting to see my payment. I was so happy on making a successful sale that I 'almost' overlooked the fact that the confirmation email did not originate from PayPal at all! Lucky save for me. If you are interested in finding out about the other methods used to cheat people, this post might be a good starting point.

Not to be left behind in the Web 2.0 phenomenon, the scammers have upped their techniques of duping people. The latest one, reported here, is an unsolicited email from someone (apparently) in the UK interested in making a real estate investment in your country. The very fact that the email is unsolicited should raise an alarm. If it doesn't, for some reason, consider the following:

No prior acquaintance

Person willing to invest in huge property (like a 5-Star hotel)

Unnecessary stress on 'Honesty'

Critical illness angle - shouldn't the person be looking forward to passing his family wealth to the next-of-kin at this point?

And here's what readers like you can do to help Average Joe - Spread the word. The strongest line of defense against 'new and improved' scam techniques is to get people informed as soon as a new technique is discovered. SunSeven also lists 16 ways in which scammers get access to your email ids.

Save Three Minutes and Lots of Power - Splashtop

With Splashtop you can access the internet without having to boot your PC. All you need to do is hit the power button and, before the OS loads, use Splashtop to access your email, YouTube videos, Maps, Skype and other services.

What you save isn't just the 3 minutes on booting time. With a service that lets you power-on and off with ease, you don't need to keep your computer running 24X7 at all. Imagine the number of free TV hours that could generate!

Currently Splashtop is available only on the Asus P5E3 Deluxe/WiFi AP Motherboards, but the service may be integrated with other motherboards as Splashtop is in talks with companies that make hardware.

Here are a few things the Splashtop team had to say about their product - It is fast

With Splashtop your computer is ready to use seconds after you turn it on. Instead of waiting for a full boot, you have Web access in mere seconds. Chat, surf, play a game - all one click away.

Splashtop is Secure

Splashtop is a secure Web-surfing environment. You can surf the Web while staying immune to many of the attacks that plague Windows.

It is Eco-Friendly

Splashtop boots so quickly there's no reason to leave your PC on all the time. Now you can use your time more effectively, and consume much less energy.

With most people buying computers today just to connect to the internet, is it possible that Splashcast (and the included browser) one day make it possible for people to stop using Windows? I may have let my imagination run wild but with the $10 million funding received, this could be exactly what the Splashtop people have in mind!

Other blogs that mentioned Splashtop -

DeviceVM's SplashTop: more info about the five second Linux system at Engadget

Splashtop Funded And Launched: Surf The Web Before Booting Up Your PC at Mashable

Asustek P5E3 Motherboard Features Embedded "Splashtop" Linux Variant at Gizmodo

Microsoft Should Read Email

Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft, is back in the headlines after claiming last week that 'Unlike Google, Microsoft doesn't read your email'. Pray tell, Mr. Ballmer, how does Microsoft know where to send the email if they don't read it? For an email to be transmitted over the internet to my browser, it definitely needs to be read first. What Microsoft doesn't do (can't do?) is serve-up unobtrusive contextual ads. Moreover, how does Microsoft detect spam emails if they don't read any emails at all?

For one, Steve Ballmer is not new to creating controversy. He was in the news earlier for his comments on the iPhone and how the expensive phone will not appeal to customers because of the lack of a keyboard. On how Microsoft plans to compete with the iPhone, he said "Right now we're selling millions and millions and millions of phones a year, Apple is selling ZERO phones a year (this is just before the launch of the iPhone). In 6 months they'll have by far the most expensive phone in the marketplace and let's see how the competition goes". We all know how the competition went for that one. Here's a video where you can see Mr. Ballmer fielding the question himself -

If you like the iPhone, though, you would love the following video where Craig Ferguson bashes Microsoft's Zune in favor of the iPhone. A must watch video -

If you want to head to where people are discussing Mr. Ballmer's latest comment, here are some places -

Steve Ballmer Attacks Google's Gmail Ads at Mashable

Microsoft's Ballmer: Google Reads Your Mail at Slashdot

OLPC's XO Reviewed

NY Times' David Pogue reviews OLPC's 'Initially planned at $100 but now selling at $200' XO laptop. Somewhat contrary to what a lot of people are expecting, the XO does pack a punch when it comes to functionality that will help students in poor countries.

The lappy appears small, but is fully loaded. The OLPC is for sale in America for two weeks, starting November, at $400. You don't get extra features for that amount, what you do get is the satisfaction of having helped one poor child get a laptop somewhere on the planet. No, you won't know where that child is. The XO has a gamepad controller, stereo speakers, a little camera, a dustproof and splashproof keyboard and a drop-proof casing. For more great info on the OLPC laptop, take a look at this YouTube video-

UC Berkeley YouTube Group

Hi, my name is UC Berkeley. I am 139 years old and live in Berkeley, California. My hobbies include Teaching, Research and Public Service. Maybe YouTube should not have treated UC Berkeley as just another group started by a person, but both YouTube and UC Berkeley are doing a great service by offering courses online for free. To access more than 300 hours of videotaped courses from UC Berkeley, visit this link.

These courses, from some of the best faculty in the world, can help every student supplement her knowledge outside of their respective classrooms. Especially in developing countries, perhaps such courses should be made mandatory for students to attend. Christina Maslach, UC Berkeley's vice provost for undergraduate education , said the following in a statement

"UC Berkeley on YouTube will provide a public window into university life, academics, events and athletics, which will build on our rich tradition of open educational content for the larger community,"

Another school that has made news earlier about Open Course ware is MIT, with over 1700 courses available for free to anyone with an internet connection. These courses, some of them including video lectures, help students plan a course of study and enhance their knowledge in a particular course.

I hope other top schools soon jump into the arena of providing information free of charge as a way of helping students in developing countries. With free education, the world will surely be a better place.

Other places where this was mentioned:

UC Berkeley first to post full lectures to YouTube at News.com

Berkeley puts courses on YouTube at SMH

UC Berkeley Puts Courses On YouTube at TechCrunch

UC Berkeley's YouTube Channel Offers Full-Course Lectures at Mashable

UC Berkeley Puts Lectures Online To Bore You At Home at Gizmodo

World In A Blink

Play this post

In his book, Gladwell talks about the power of thinking without thinking. Actually, this very sentence is written on the cover of the book.

Here's what Gladwell says about the book on his website -

It's a book about rapid cognition, about the kind of thinking that happens in a blink of an eye. When you meet someone for the first time, or walk into a house you are thinking of buying, or read the first few sentences of a book, your mind takes about two seconds to jump to a series of conclusions. Well, "Blink" is a book about those two seconds, because I think those instant conclusions that we reach are really powerful and really important and, occasionally, really good.

But that's not what this post is about. It's about Zeitgeist, Google's monthly list of 'Search patterns, trends and surprises'. To get a true blink view, I'll just cover the most popular query by country. To view the entire world list, please visit this link, or this link for US specific trends.

People in Afghanistan searched for Afghanistan and Kabul (their capital). With a 2% internet penetration rate and half-a-million subscribers (source), I'm not surprised. Maybe they wanted 'before and after' maps as well!

Argentinians searched for Football and Australians for Kelly Brook and Marilyn Monroe. Again, not surprising. China, the manufacturing behemoth, searched for Carrefour (and not Walmart, donno why). Costa Rica searched for Mathematics and the Czech Republic for 'Love'. Germany and Greece searched for Boom chicka wah wah and Reggae, respectively.

Hong Kong searches for an Indian actor while Iraq searches for Army Knowledge Online (is this dangerous?), Israel for 'Wooden Floors' and Pakistan for the SAT exam. In a way, you can predict the behavior and motivation of people just from what they are looking for. Poland searches for Swimming pools and Puerto Rico for 'Joy' and Russia for Carpets (approaching winters?). Singapore searches for Movie halls, movies and Investment advice. South Africa is looking at electronics, and Vietnam at Che Guevara.

Given all of this, it's not surprising that people in America are looking for Another Universe. We sure live in interesting times eh? Let others know what you think about these trends in the comments.