Wed
Jan 7
2009
Four short links: 8 Jan 2009
by Nat Torkington| @gnat | comments: 2
Four quickies from databases, telephone history, botnets, and disaster tech.
- MemCacheDB - a persistent storage engine for fast and reliable key-value based object storage and retrieval, with transactions and replication (via stinky). Joining Cassandra, Prophet, CouchDB, and many others in the "doing something new to make use of all this data" game. For an interesting counterpoint, read Not Drinking Kool Aid for an interesting counterpoint, though.
- True Story of the Telephone - a fascinating story of how Alexander Graham Bell didn't invent the telephone, but stole it for love. Distrust most pat stories of invention—Scott Berkun (author of Myths of Innovation) has plenty more of these myths that are great heroic stories but aren't actually, alas, true.
- Visualizing Botnet Spread - interesting animation showing the spread of a botnet by keeping track of IRC channel joins. (via mauricio)
- Solvatten - solar powered system for turning undrinkable water into drinkable (video below). (via mauricio)
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The Solvatten water treatment is interesting. The company's website however does not provide specifics of price ($35 USD for a family of 5) nor efficacy, other than claiming E.coli are reduced to safe levels. What about other pathogens?
The CDC recommends boiling water for 1 minute or using chemical treatment - are chemical pills that expensive in comparison? Certainly more portable as they are used by campers.
A different approach is using water evaporation. The production rate is much lower (~ 1 liter/dy/unit) and too expensive as currently priced. However, the water is pure. The device was designed for desalination, but I see no reason why it couldn't treat non-potable water.
http://www.watercone.com/presse/Wash_post.pdf
Perhaps a cheaper version of the watercone would be a good solution, its extremely simple technology could be adapted for local manufacture.
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thesethings [01.08.09 01:53 AM]
Nat,
I'm digging your "Four short links" series, and guau, that drinking water system is impressively accessible. I was scared to click on the link, because sometimes "disaster tech" is (very reasonably) dramatic to talk about. But the site's tone was straightforward and clear without making you bummed about the underlying problem it's solving.