Street advertising gets stock-savvy

Technology

THE “greenest” way to recycle

the valuable plastic in TV sets is

to mechanically recover it.

Two methods can be used to

recycle the 2.5 kilograms of plastic

in an average 64-centimetre

cathode ray tube TV. It can either

be incinerated to generate energy,

or the salvageable plastic can be

mechanically recovered and

reused. Until now, which of these

methods was the greenest was

unclear, as incineration produces

emissions, while mechanical

recovery consumes energy.

Now, after an analysis of each

method, mechanical recovery has

won out. “Incineration emits the

larger quantity of greenhouse

gases,” says Gjergj Dodbiba of

Tokyo University, Japan, in a

paper to be published in the

Journal of Cleaner Production. The

team hope their findings will feed

into government recycling plans.

GOOGLE has revolutionised

web advertising with its AdSense

system, which displays adverts

for products related to the page

being viewed. Now it wants to do

the same for billboard ads.

In a patent the company has

filed, it argues that however glitzy

the ads that run on electronic

billboards in shopping malls and

out on the street, they are all but

16thousand people watched a police video of two “people of interest” to a Canadian murder inquiry on YouTube. A man then gave himself up

Internet companies are poised to

launch a code of conduct governing

their operations in China.

Web firms have faced sustained

criticism for their activities in China,

which include censoring websites.

So Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and

Amazon have been working with

researchers at the University of

California, Berkeley, and Oxford and

Harvard universities, alongside Amnesty

International and Human Rights Watch,

to develop an ethical code of conduct.

A spokesman for Yahoo says it will be

launched in the next few months.

The code will include an

undertaking not to censor a website or

search term unless ordered to do so in

writing. This is in response to criticism

from Human Rights Watch and others

that companies have been “more royal

than the queen” in censoring words

before being ordered to. The firms will

also pledge to keep information on users

for the shortest time possible, and to

inform people if data is passed on to the

government. Error messages displayed

when someone attempts to access an

illegal site could be replaced with a

more honest web page detailing which

department and ministry are responsible

for filtering the content. There will

also be an appeals process and publicly

available documentation on what terms

and web addresses are censored.

Codes of conduct do not have a great

track record, so the key to its success will

be how it is enforced, says Brad Adams

of Human Rights Watch. The code

should be backed up by international

legislation to force companies to comply

with its terms, he says.

WEB FIRMS TACKLE CHINA EFFECT

useless if local stores have not got

the advertised products in stock.

Google has come up with a system

that only advertises products

available nearby.

Stores buying advertising time

on local electronic billboards are

able to connect their stock-control

computers to the network.

The ads are displayed in rotation,

but only until the stock-control

computer reports the product

as sold out. At that point, the ad

is omitted from the cycle until

the product is restocked.

A vibrating vest for soldiers could put an end to cryptic battlefield hand signals.

The spandex vest, developed by the US army, has 16 vibrating motors on its back to

indicate commands such as “turn left”, “speed up” or “slow down”. In tests,

volunteers distinguished between 15 different signals used to direct them around

an obstacle course. Commands are sent to the vest via Bluetooth.

Xerox is helping people who want to browse paper documents but don’t want to

risk sensitive information falling into the wrong hands. The company has developed a

system that prints most of a document’s text but replaces selected words and figures

with a bar code. To read the full text the paper is scanned; a password or fingerprint

plus special software reveals the encrypted content (US patent 2006/0259983).

GIZMO

0 20 40 60 80

13 July 1836

1836 - 1911

1911 - 1935

1935 - 1961

1961 - 1976

1976 - 1991

1991 - 1999

1999 - 2006

1 million

2 million

3 million

4 million

5 million

6 million

7 million

Years

1st patent

THE AGE OF INVENTION

The time taken for 1 million US patents to be

granted has declined dramatically since 1836

A report by In-Stat, which claims that 2007 will see a backlash against network neutrality, the principle that all data packets on the internet should be

treated equally. The report predicts the rising amount of video and other bandwidth-hungry files on the web will slow down other traffic.

“Proponents of net neutrality will plead for a tiered service”

–Less censorship?–

PETE

R PA

RKS/

AFP/

GETT

Y IM

AGES

www.newscientist.com 6 January 2007 | NewScientist | 21

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What to do with a TV when it dies

Street advertising gets stock-savvy

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