The Blacksmith Institute has created a list and interactive map of the Top-10 worlds worst polluted places.

The list was compiled with the help of a technical advisory board including experts from John Hopkins, Hunter College and Harvard University. The Top-10 were selected from more then 300 potential sites by evaluating where human health is most at risk and where children’s lives are especially threatened.

The report available also for download from the Blacksmith Institute also notes that …most of the worst places are not generally known, even in their countries…

In difference to general assumptions, except one site (Doe Run Corp in La Oroya), none have involvement from major multinational companies. Instead, the worst pollution is from a range of sources:

• Old companies now long defunct and untraceable
• Government companies and activities, especially cold war activities
• Local or regional businesses, not international ones.
• Clusters of small artisanal activities

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US 3D scanner and printer company Z Corporation has introduced a new portable 3D scanner the Z Scanner 700.

The system connects to computers via FireWire and creates scans of the object surface in almost real-time. The company claims that the scanner can capture virtually any object from any angle, anywhere.

As this scanner can be moved around any object even hard to reach objects can be scanned easily. The results produced do not require combining / stitching together multiple scans - with the included software the scanner produces files that are directly ready for output to a 3D printer.

We expect 3D printing soon to become mainstream (on lower quality levels also for consumers) and in the near future to become as common as currently 2D printing already is.

A new release of Adobe Flash Player 9 has been made available for download today on the Adobe labs web site.

In addition to bug fixes and minor enhancements, the new release introduces support for full screen mode in the web player and support for Windows Vista.
A prerelease build of Flash Player 9 Update for the Linux platform is included.

The Flash Player 9 Update for Linux currently does not include full-screen mode and complete SSL support (SSL support is currently available in the Linux Plugin but not the Linux Standalone Player). Linux Full-screen mode and SSL support will be available in the final release.

Japanese web site Cardboard-House-Painting has a set of galleries online with photographs of cardboard shelter paintings from people who lived on the street in Japan’s homeless city that was created around the Shinjuku Underground station’s in the mid-1990s.

…Hundreds of cardboard houses grew up in the underground passageways of the west exit. On each of these houses were paintings. Mysterious and magical, they threw vivid colors of resistance out into space, a kaleidoscope of derisive laughter against the state.

A group of painters painted them. Leading the group was Take Junichiro, who is also the person who created the Cardboard-House-Painting website. Once during the painting process Take was arrested and forced to spend 22 days in jail. The painting continued even after his arrest, but finally came to an end when the underground kingdom was destroyed in a huge fire.

After the fire, the authorities started reconstruction on the tunnels so that the homeless could never occupy them again. They succeeded in kicking the homeless out of the west exit underground….

The Cardboard-House-Painting website was created to call attention to the paintings on the cardboard houses, and …bring back to life the kingdom within a city that once was there but has now become nothing more than a phantom.

Japanese toy maker Tomy has introduced a new model of its LUMI PAD series that you can attach to your fridge.

With this battery-powered magnetic message board no message will be missed anymore. It has a build-in movement sensor and uses pens with special ink that glows in the dark. When it is switched on and detects someone passing by it starts flashing the message text.

The LUMI PAD is available from retailers and online shops including:

in the UK: GADGETS.CO.UK
International: LIVINGisEasy.co.uk

via OhGizmo

Last night Apple officially acknowledged that a small number of Video iPods available for purchase after 12-September-2006 have been infected with the MS Windows RavMonE.exe Virus

The virus will not damage any Apple Macs or the iPod, but will attack MS Windows machines connected to infected iPods. RavMonE.exe is a Spyware Worm (type W32/RJump-B) that might install a backdoor on infected computers and allows others to access and take over control of the computer.

You can find information on how to remove the virus on a specially created Apple support page or on the support pages of the antivirus software supplier you trust in.

If you ever wanted to know what the world’s tallest building look like, where they are and other details, have a look at Skyscaperpage.com diagram pages.

On 280 pages it lists 6978 buildings starting with the Burj Dubai (807.7 m) down to some smaller towers with “only” 50 floors. Additional details are available together with illustration(s) of most of the buildings.

thanks Obeee for the tip

In his last edition top European business and political magazine The Economist has an interesting brief article on US voting machines.
Crash and re-boot, that’s how the article is titled, is looking into how the wrong kind of voting machines could bring chaos to the mid-term elections. Even the Economist that rarely is using stronger wording is ending with what has happened is a …scandal…

Recommended Reading (article is online without subscription)

If there is not enough left for everybody it will always be the poor that have to pay….

Its actually not steganography, the files are embedded in plain text or easily identifiable as such, but The Tech Tray has put up a nice tutorial how to hide files within JPG graphic files.

Its a step-by-step guide that almost everybody with a MS Windows computer should be able to follow successfully. See for yourself….

P.S. If there’s anybody out there interested into more sophisticated solutions I’m happy to put up a how-to for that. Just leave a comment.