Cool

South African tech company Unlimited IT was so frustrated with the slow Internet speeds provided by Telkom, one of South Africa's biggest internet providers, that it hired a pigeon named Winston. As the Times of South Africa reports, Winston carried a 4gb memory card from one branch of Unlimited IT to another, far faster than Telkom's transfer speed:  

The 11-month-old pigeon flew 80km from a call centre in Howick, outside Pietermaritzburg, to a head office in Hillcrest, Durban, to prove a bird is faster at transferring data than Telkom’s ADSL lines.

Winston made his delivery in 2 hours 6 minutes and 57 seconds, beating Telkom’s estimated download time of up to two days. By the time the memory card, carrying company data, had been collected from Winston and downloaded by midday, the ADSL download had managed 100MB of data.

The Christian Science Monitor's Scott Balduf, based in Johannesburg, explains why the story is more significant than just good publicity for Ultimate and Winston:

Africans pay some of the highest prices for some of the least reliable Internet service in the world. And if a country like South Africa – relatively prosperous and developed – can't solve this problem, then it's going to need a lot more pigeons.

Telkom has since responded to the South Africa Press Association and denied responsibility for Ultimate's Internet connection woes.

flickr/dubliniete

Here's why you should never bet against Japanese innovation.

At right, Japanese Health Minister Yoichi Masuzoe feeds himself with the assistance of "My Spoon" during a demonstration of healthcare robots in Tokyo on Nov. 10. People with disabilities can operate a joystick with their jaw, hands, or feet to direct My Spoon to their mouth.

My Spoon has undergone rigorous research and development, which seems to have paid off. It won a Robot of the Year award in 2006.

Photo: STR/AFP/Getty Images

Approximately 2,500 sheep took to the streets of Marseille, in southern France, on Nov. 9 as part of a demonstration of breeders and shepherds who are protesting the crisis in the ovine sector and demanding more government assistance.

The banner reads:"Barnier, go to the end …; Sarko, think about us!!" (Michel Barnier is France's agricultural minister, and Sarko, of course, refers to President Nicolas Sarkozy.)

The above is an aerial view of a humongous portrait of U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, sculpted in gravel and sand by American artist Jorge Rodriguez Gerada on a Barcelona beachfront, on Nov. 3. The project is called Expectation, and it required a civil engineering firm, a topographer, machinery for clearing the area, and gravel as a filler, among other things.

Information provided with the photo says:

The outsize scale allows the artist to allude to the global impact on the eve of his [Obama's] election. It both embodies the immense sense of hope felt by Barack Obanma's [sic] supporters and raises a mirror to reflect the source of that hope.

Photo: LLUIS GENE/AFP/Getty Images

In celebration of its 10th birthday, Google is making the Web, circa 2001, available this month. (For technical reasons, 2001 was the earliest version of its index that it could make available.)

Here are some fun findings I came across while playing with the site, which proudly announces "Search 1,326,920,000 web pages":

ForeignPolicy.com. At the time I searched, there was an AIG advertisement at the top of the screen that declared, "The greatest risk is not taking one." (I guess bailed-out AIG took that statement to its extreme.)

Barack Obama. The name gets 672 results, the first to his page at the Illinois Senate.

John McCain. The first link takes you to the "Straight Talk America" site left over from his 2000 presidential campaign.

Iraq war. It gets 17,600 results, with nine of the first 10 referring to the Iran-Iraq War. (No. 10 is to the "Iraq War Drinking Game.")

Facebook. The second link that pops up takes you to a page that says, "The facebook is only accessible to people on the Harvard network."

What kind of antique jewels have you come across while playing with the 2001 Google? Feel free to comment below.

Lara Tomlin for FP

If global warming, weapons of mass destruction, or an asteroid eliminate human life on Earth, all will not be lost. Stephen Colbert's DNA will be there to save the human species.

Next month, a digitized copy of Colbert's DNA will be sent to the International Space Station as part of "Operation Immortality," a project of video game designer Richard Garriott. In the event that humans cease to exist, aliens can use the DNA to resurrect Homo sapiens.

Colbert, the satirist who was the winning write-in candidate in FP's "World's Top Public Intellectuals" poll, says he is now even closer to his "lifelong dream" of being the floating fetus at the end of the 1968 science fiction movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Unsworn Industries

If you've ever had a burning desire to have your voice projected through a megaphone in Norway, today is your last chance.

This summer, a group of artists erected a 23-foot-tall, wind-powered "telemegaphone" on top of a mountain in western Norway that overlooks the village of Dale and a scenic fjord. Dial 47 90 369389, and your voice will be projected through the telemegaphone and across the scenic Nordic landscape. Sing, yell, yodel, pontificate. Better yet, play a concerto.

Today's the last day, however. Tomorrow, Sept. 6, the telemegaphone is being turned off -- deer season is commencing.