One of those seemingly incredible predictions is that we will be able to store the contents of the Internet on a hand-held device in about 20 years. That kind of storage would require incredible bandwidth, data indexing and synchronisation capability. So there are two further steps towards that dream:

• Infineon have built a 20 nanometer-sized flash memory cell based on a FinFET (Fin Field Effect Transistor). Expect to be able to buy 32 Gigabit flash in about 3 years - extraordinary.
• DoCoMo have achieved 1 Gb per-second downloads in a laboratary mobile phone network.

Technology advances so fast, if you don't keep up you get left so far behind what is possible. Combine this kind of storage and bandwidth in a hand-held device, add a fast CPU and bus, mix in short-range wireless communication, and you've got an astonishing opportunity to create software and services that no-one has ever seen before. Just imagine it; you'll be able to do a lot more than jot a few notes, save some contacts and track your tasks on that class of PDA.

The BBC article 'Artificial life' comes step closer describes how scientists at the Rockefeller University have "created" a cell using soft cell walls made of fat molecules taken from egg white, while the cell contents are an extract of the common gut bug E. coli with its genetic material replaced. The cell fluid makes a flourescent kind of protein.

Ok, so here's a wild idea - would it be possible to make an artificial human organ comprising a collection of such artificial cells which could create the 20 amino acids? This would mean we could be less dependent on certain types of food sources which provide vitamins that are normally an essential part of our diet. This could in turn enable life in less habitable conditions (such as in a long running space mission) .

My wild ideas aside, it's clear that techniques like nano-needles make this kind of manipulation (or creation) of living cells easier, including the possibility to alter stem cells to control their function and operation as progenitor cells, allowing the creation of different kinds of specific cells.

All of this reminds me of Voltaire's comment: if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him; what (or perhaps who) will we be able to invent tomorrow?

Seth Godin has started a list of 1000 things everyone should know; item 26 is "How to read the media for spin and for insight"; after reading his other blog, I think Seth needs to read Michael Crichton's Caltech Michelin lecture again with this in mind.

In this lecture, Crichton critically attacks concepts such as the Drake Equation (a series of (mostly) unknowns which compute the likelihood of alien life) and Nuclear Winter (where a suspension of material in the atmosphere blocks light reaching the Earth's surface) as part of a litany of scientific "errors". But the punchline comes when Crichton finally talks about Global Warming, leaving the reader in no doubt that it will similarly be revealed as pseudo-science. However Crichton does not discuss any specific counter-evidence; he simply alludes to similarities in the growth of belief in global warming to that in the nuclear winter scenario. And when you view this part in the context of the lecture's title "Aliens Cause Global Warming", the whole thing comes across as a sponsored frame, and quite a good one at that.

Crichton ends the talk with a suggestion that scientists attempt to disprove scientific experiments or theories, in a manner which is similar to the practice of quality assurance in software development where engineers look for faults or flaws in software before it is released. This thought is so common-sensible (but so meaningless since for the most part this is already how scientists work) that I have to wonder why this kind of talk was permitted at Caltech. It's actually a shame that the practice of quality assurance does not apply to lectures by high profile authors of pseudo-scientific novels. Disclosure? Nope, zero cool.

Meanwhile the debate and analysis of global warming rages on, but it seems to me that only the pro-warming scientists offer credible evidence.

I haven't yet seen let alone used a tablet PC but I know I want one; PDA's offer so many new usage opportunities but their limited screen size, slower CPU and lack of a hard disk or keyboard makes them inflexible. A full-on PDA or tablet-format desktop is the best of both worlds. My ideal tablet would run Mac OS or JDS and have a 1200x1024 resolution with a fairly decent compact keyboard.

An enthusiast has published details on an iBook hardware hack that lets Mac users get the tablet experience.

If I peer a little deeper in the crystal ball, my ideal PDA/desktop would also be Sun Ray capable, able to use both WiFi and 3G data, and provide offline file, mail and calendar sync capabilites. Not to mention that it would make a really powerful remote control for a home entertainment system. Kill-er.

It's tough for parents today; the internet has so much to offer children, but also a lot of adult and inappropriate content.

However the European Union is providing 60m Euro in funding to provide parents and teachers with tools to keep their children safe while on the internet. It's likely that these tools will be based on open-source, so they will be usable world-wide.

It's already possible to use free tools to do this today, but it's not yet easy enough. The key terms that you encounter with web or mail filtering are whitelist and blacklist; a whitelist or YES-list is a list of good sites/addresses that are allowed through, a blacklist or NO-list is a list of known bad sites. If you want the safest solution, you can use a whitelist and prevent anything that is not on that list from coming through. A blacklist is typically only useful if you subscribe to an update service (similar to virus protection); even with regular updates they can never be entirely safe, so I don't recommend them. It is also possible to use filters that look for keywords in the address name or in the content; if your list of keywords is long enough, this is far safer.

Here are some specific tools you might like to take a closer look at:

• A web proxy such as the popular Squid can stop inappropriate content as well as caching content for faster access; DansGuardian is far easier to use and supports keyword-based filters
• For blocking spam and adult mail, Postfix is an advanced mail-processing program similar to the popular sendmail; it supports a variety of techniques for stopping inappropriate mail or spam; for example, see this Newsforge article which uses a Postfix after content filter

Most free tools work best on UNIX-based systems such as Linux and Solaris. If your children use Windows, you can setup a separate machine to act as an internet gateway.

But if you're not interested in technology, there are several good sites where you can get more advice; the Filtering Software site contains reviews of several easy-to-use packages, and Phil Bradleys's Child Safe Internet has a host of links and useful information.

It's great to see Sun Ray now available for broadband. Folks who know SunRay thin clients tend to like their instant boot, solid state electronics (no moving parts, no disks), silence (a room full of Sun Rays is eerily quiet, nice if you're in a shared office, a call centre or a library), cool-ness (use minimal power, generate negligible heat) and their statelessness (if anyone steals a Sun Ray, they take no data; the flip side is that you can walk from one Sun Ray to another and instantly get back your desktop session by just inserting a card - check out our Mary packing her "laptop" - that's right, that little card is all she needs to access her desktop).

But now you can get all that, and take your Sun Ray home or on the road. Secure, low-cost, centrally managed computing and storage - simplicity itself. You might not believe it until you've seen it, and once you've seen it, you may not want to go back to managing your own desktop.

As someone who just last week had the distinct non-pleasure of trying to retrieve all the data I could from my laptop hard drive (ok tell me, who actually manages to do backup often enough that they don't lose some data? ;), not to mention fighting spyware from the time I used Internet Explorer on Windows, I'm seriously considering switching to SunRay full time; life really is too short to fight the problems of a thick client laptop.

Update: mere minutes after posting this earlier, a fellow Sun blogger Paul Rogers has another tale of woe about a laptop. And they can affect fertility too? ;)