Weekly News Round Up

• Scientists invent pee-powered battery [The Register]
  Researchers in Singapore have developed a paper battery that is powered by urine. Despite sounding gloriously silly, the breakthrough promises a cheap and disposable power source for home health tests for things like diabetes.…
• RIAA admits CD-R more a threat than P2P [The Register]
  The Recording Industry Ass. of America has acknowledged that P2P file-sharing is less of a threat to music sales than bootleg CDs.…
• Flooded metro helps sizzling Tokyo cool off [New Scientist]
  As Tokyo slogs its way through another sweltering summer, water pumped up from the underground system is cooling the streets
• Academia’s quest for the ultimate search tool [CNET]
  U.C. Berkeley is developing a major research center focused on improving Internet search technology.
• Firefox loses ground to IE [The Register]
  Firefox’s market share slipped last month for the first time since the alternative browser began its battle to offer a popular alternative to Microsoft’s ubiqitous Internet Explorer software. This consistent growth suffered a set-back when Firefox fell back from 8.71 per cent market share in June to 8.07 per cent in July, acording to web analytics firm NetApplications. Over the same period Microsoft’s share rose from 86.56 per cent in June to 87.2 per cent in July, so Firefox’s loss was Microsoft’s gain.…
• Brits steal carloads of F**king Austrian roadsigns [The Register]
  An Austrian village called F**king [ed: original NSFW village name appears in the actual article] will not change its name despite sniggering Brits making off with its roadsigns.…
• Superbugs ‘found in chicken’
  Significant numbers of chickens on sale in UK shops are contaminated with superbugs, a survey commissioned by BBC’s Real Story suggests.
• TV Tries Shaky Hand at Podcasting[Wired News]
  odcasting is turning conventional wisdom about TV broadcasting on its head as thousands of people sign up to download and listen to free, audio-only versions of their favorite shows or special MP3-only programming.

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