Via Slashdot

Turns out that it’s way more efficient to make hydrogen from water now than people had been thinking.

QuantumSphere Inc. says it has perfected the manufacture of highly reactive catalytic nanoparticle coatings that could up the efficiency of electrolysis, the technique that generates hydrogen from water. Moreover, the coatings could also eliminate the need for expensive metals like platinum in hydrogen fuel cells.

Boasting 1,000 times the surface area of traditional materials, the coatings can be used to retrofit existing electrolysers to increase their efficiency to 85 percent–exceeding the Department of Energy’s goal for 2010 by 10 percent. The scheme holds the promise of 96 percent efficiency by the time cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells hit automobile showrooms, according to the Santa Ana, Calif., company.

The best part is how this technique could actually make hydrogen as cost-effective as using fossil fuels, even allowing people to create their own fuel from distilled water.

“Instead of switching 170,000 gas stations over to hydrogen, using our electrodes could enable consumers to make their own hydrogen, either in the garage or right on the vehicle,” said Kevin Maloney, president, chief executive officer and co-founder of QuantumSphere. “Our nanoparticle-coated electrodes make electrolysers efficient enough to provide hydrogen on demand from a tank of distilled water in your car.”

I wonder when these guys will have some stock I can buy?

Apple’s COO Tim Cook says that the iPhone SDK will finally launch next Thursday–likely while I’m in the air on the way to SxSW:

Cook also hinted that on March 6, Apple will release tools that programmers can use to create downloadable iPhone software, which Apple can then sell through its iTunes stores.

But of course, this is geek news, not regular-people news, so it comes as part of an article on Cook’s assertion that Apple’s not married to the single-carrier business model for the iPhone. Nice. Perhaps sometime soon, I’ll be able to finally switch to Verizon and ditch AT&T forever.

NYTimes has the skinny:

After 40 Democratic primaries and caucuses, capped by a winning streak in 11 contests over the last two weeks, Mr. Obama has made substantial gains across most major demographic groups in the Democratic Party, including men and women, liberals and moderates, higher- and lower-income voters, and those with and without college degrees.

But there are storm clouds on the horizon:

When all voters are asked to look ahead to the general election, Mr. McCain, the likely Republican nominee, is seen as better prepared for the presidency, better able to handle an international crisis and more equipped to serve as commander in chief than either of the Democratic candidates.

I have to believe that that number/attitude is soft. When people get a serious dose of the idea of electing an old, old man (oldest ever) to the Presidency, along with the idea of electing an old, old man who wants to have our troops in Iraq until we’re all old, old men, I think they’ll see the light.

In November, we’ll have President-elect Obama.

“SouthBy” is what us Austin natives call the madcap media festival of SxSW that takes over the city every March for about 2 weeks. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to rock out with Black Mountain at the Scoot Inn during the music part of the festival/conference, as I’ll just be staying for the Interactive part, but I got to see them at the Rock n Roll Hotel here in DC this past Tuesday, and I have to say that the rocking was extreme.

But, as Levar Burton would say, you don’t have to take my word for it—check them out here.

But back to the festival. I’m rather chagrined to see that the follow-up to last year’s awesome Will Wright keynote (where we got to see him actually play Spore!) is an interview by over-hyped digital gift mogul Mark Zuckerberg. I call him a “digital gift mogul” because that’s all Facebook really sells. They just lost their “chief revenue officer” earlier this week, too. He says it’s because he wants to be a CEO, but I think it’s because he’s not interested in working for a company that covers its nut with nothing more than breathlessly-proffered VC and digital icons of Troll dolls and panties.

Anywho…Zuckerberg is a flavor of the month. Well maybe six months or so, but he doesn’t deserve to be the keynote speaker at SxSW Interactive. Especially when PC Magazine is putting out articles like this one, entitled “Facebook’s Death Spiral” just before the conference. A couple classes on graph theory and some regurgitated ideas that four or five other people have had before you does not a visionary make, and visionaries are who we’re supposed to have as keynote speakers @ SxSW. That’s a chair that’s been previously held by giants like Philip Glass, Malcolm Gladwell, Howard Rheingold, and Bruce Sterling. We’ll let Mark Cuban and Ana Marie Cox slip in under the door, even if they don’t really fit the mold. But even with them there, Zuck doesn’t belong in the club.

Calling Zuckerman a visionary for making Facebook after Friendster and MySpace (and a bazillion other, less famous general-purpose social networks) had been around for years is like comparing me to Merriwether Lewis because I drove from St. Louis to Montana in a Dodge Caravan. Sooner or later, Google will stitch together all their services, hire some badass interaction dudes like Adaptive Path or IDEO, and put Facebook out of their chumptastic misery.

Meanwhile, I’m sitting here wondering if I can start an anti-keynote, like maybe at a 6th street bar, called something like “Let’s All List the Technical, Philisophical, and Interactional Reasons that Facebook isn’t Worth $15 Billion.”

I wonder how many people would show?

(Via Slashdot)

A new study by three of the web’s top metrics firms says that the value of the click as the primary measurement of online advertising efficacy may be waning:

The study illustrates that heavy clickers represent just 6% of the online population yet account for 50% of all display ad clicks. While many online media companies use click-through rate as an ad negotiation currency, the study shows that heavy clickers are not representative of the general public. In fact, heavy clickers skew towards Internet users between the ages of 25-44 and households with an income under $40,000. Heavy clickers behave very differently online than the typical Internet user, and while they spend four times more time online than non-clickers, their spending does not proportionately reflect this very heavy Internet usage. Heavy clickers are also relatively more likely to visit auctions, gambling, and career services sites – a markedly different surfing pattern than non-clickers.

The article goes on to say that this trend speaks more toward brand-building campaigns than direct response campaigns, as one of the primary conclusions of the study is that brand-building online isn’t as easy. Just because a 22-year-old clicks on your brand doesn’t mean he’s loyal to it. He might just be looking for the free iPod…