] RATE radio is a collaborative filtering client/server mp3
] player/downloader. The iRATE server has a large database
] of music. You rate the tracks and it uses your ratings
] and other peoples to guess what you'll like. The tracks
] are downloaded from websites which allow free and legal
] downloads of their music.

Hmm..

iRATE radio home

" He built a prototype for what he thinks could be the future of voting: an agent that mines your online and other computer habits to extract a political ideology, and then makes voting recommendations — or more omniously, even casts the ballots for you."

Voting by Net Proxy?

"Machines accurately infer user intent, remember experiences and allow users to call upon simulated experts
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - A new type of "smart" machine that could fundamentally change how people interact with computers is on the not-too-distant horizon at the Department of Energy's Sandia National Laboratories.

Over the past five years a team led by Sandia cognitive psychologist Chris Forsythe has been developing cognitive machines that accurately infer user intent, remember experiences with users and allow users to call upon simulated experts to help them analyze situations and make decisions."

Sandia team develops cognitive machines

"Open Source Victoria has expressed concern that the use of "insecure and vulnerable Microsoft platforms" have cost Australian industry and government a great deal in lost productivity and money and urged these sectors to upgrade to open source platforms such as Linux and FreeBSD."

Open source group urges switch to avoid 'costly' Windows worms

"Scientists at Cornell University in New York have now managed to build the ultimate in tiny transistors, in which electrons flow through a single atom. "

Scientists develop transistor the size of an atom

"Scientists running a pioneering experiment with "living robots" which think for themselves said they were amazed to find one escaping from the centre where it "lives"."

I am Not a Number!!! Well, maybe Number 5...

Robot on the run

“The lab is the world’s biggest playground for technology,” said Northrup, who joined Lawrence Livermore in 1993 and left about three years later to start the biotech company Cepheid. He is now president and chief executive of the startup MicroFluidic Systems Inc. in Pleasanton, Calif. “I had access to incredible technology, multimillion-dollar equipment … all the things I would need to figure out the problem.”

Resource-rich federal labs foster ingenuity, struggle with fledgling inventions

It's the fourth day of a scientific conference in Denver—four busy February days in a huge rabbit-warren convention center with long hallways and fluorescent lighting and serious scientists giving serious PowerPoint presentations in darkened auditoriums; four days of breakthroughs and advances—nanotech to biotech, anthropology to zoology, the whole mind-spinning stew. Four days, for the assembled journalists, of making sense of it all and banging out stories on the fly—and now comes word of what could be a light interlude: Keep an eye out for the guy carrying the head. Say what? The robotic human head. The press people for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the conference's sponsor, say the demonstration's on for tomorrow morning.

The Man Who Mistook his Girlfriend for a Robot

"Known as "sympathetic haptics" because it gives one person the ability to feel what another feels, the technology is still years away from being able to transmit the feeling of Tiger Woods's golf swing to another person, for instance."

Touch technology

" NEW YORK, Aug 3 (Reuters) - Even though nanotechnology is still in its infancy, the nano prefix is quickly growing into one of the most over-used and misused phrases in the English language."
"Nano-tex, which is majority owned by Burlington Industries Inc. (OTC BB:BRLG.OB - News) and aims to improve textiles at the molecular level, could have you outfitted in nanopants before long."
"They have already listed trademarks such as nano-care and nano-pel for their stain- and wrinkle-resistant materials."
"The environmental crusaders from Greenpeace may not be sure what nanotechnology is, but they are already against it.Greenpeace has called for a moratorium on the release of nanoparticles in commercial products until studies of potential nano pollution can be completed."

" Enthusiasts are referred to as nano reefers, which apparently has nothing to do with minuscule marijuana cigarettes."

Overused, misused nano becoming pervasive prefix