Weekend Roundup: Guns, Blood, and Micro-publishing

No time for long posts, so I’ll just lay it on you.

Guns
Amazing stuff on what might be the next generation of projectile weapon.

“Imagine a gun with no recoil, no sound, no heat, no gunpowder, no visible firing signature (muzzle flash), and no stoppages or jams of any kind. Now imagine that this gun could fire .308 caliber and .50 caliber metal projectiles accurately at up to 8,000 fps (feet-per-second), featured an infinitely variable/programmable cyclic rate-of-fire (as high as 120,000 rounds-per-minute), and were capable of laying down a 360-degree field of fire.”

I haven’t watched the video yet, but I intend to.

Blood
Japanese researchers have developed a fuel cell that runs on blood. Down the road, we might be able to implant these suckers in our bodies to power artificial hearts and other such devices. This could be a milestone in extending human life. Of course, the Slashdot page has about 5 jillion Matrix jokes.

Micro-publishing
I keep saying that publishing is the new face of entrepreneurship. Blogging is just the tip of the iceberg. Seth Godin writes about a guy who has created the Winery Web Site Report, which rates over 2,400 winery Web sites, and then sells copies for $500 apiece. If just 10% buy a copy, that’s $120,000. Not too shabby.

Of course, this kind of publishing explosion will also create a need for better content searching….