Category: Technology

Super Roman Glue

First concrete, now superglue… is there anything the Romans didn’t engineer?

I’m sure the location that this glue concoction was recovered had something to do with its makeup (much as Roman concrete varies from place to place based on location of origin in the Empire). However, this is still pretty amazing considering the time gap:

Analysis shows that the Roman glue was made of bitumen, beef tallow and pitch. But researchers said they had failed so far to recreate the adhesive and that sawdust, soot or sand might have to be added to complete the process.

“When we finally manage to remake the superglue, it will easily compete with its modern equivalents,” Mr Willer said. “After all, which of today’s glues stick for 2,000 years?”

Glue Used by the Romans Has Stuck Around for 2,000 Years – The Independent

Medieval Archaeology Journal Online For Free

Not for everyone, but if you’re a history nerd like I am, this is a great opportunity:

An early Christmas present from the Society for Medieval Archaeology:

Good news from the Society for Medieval Archaeology and the wizards at the Archaaeology Data Service. The first fifty (50) issues of Medieval Archaeology are available for free online. Its not quite open access, because the issues can’t be archived elsewhere, but that’s no real problem as long as the ADS stays funded.

The Society exists to ‘further the study of the period from the 5th to the 16th century A.D. by publishing a journal of international standing dealing primarily with the archaeological evidence, and by other means such as by holding regular meetings and arranging conferences.’ It’s clear making the journal freely accessible is going to do a lot for their work, but even so when you also have to balance the financial needs of the Society it’s still a courageous step in a field where most publications are subscription-only.

But the real reason to celebrate is that the journal is very good. There is plenty of stuff in it that deserves a wide audience. For instance Pictish symbol stones are a bit of a mystery. However I can read about them in the article Investing in Sculpture: Power in Early-historic Scotland by Meggen Gondek, which is available as a PDF from Volume 50 of Medieval Archaeology.

(Via Alun: Ancient Science and the Science of Ancient Things.)

Reality Check

Thanks to Phil at BadAstronomy for the reality check…


In the new Hubble image of the galaxy M74 we can also see a smattering of bright pink regions decorating the spiral arms. These are huge, relatively short-lived, clouds of hydrogen gas which glow due to the strong radiation from hot, young stars embedded within them; glowing pink regions of ionized hydrogen (hydrogen that has lost its electrons). These regions of star formation show an excess of light at ultraviolet wavelengths and astronomers call them HII regions.

Go out and look at the stars tonight. It’ll make you a better human.

GDrive Could Change the Way We Do Computing

Even though I love my data and am vigilant in keeping backups and offline storage of emails, pics, docs, etc I do use and enjoy the wide range of Google products. This morning, the Wall Street Journal had a piece on new details of the supposedly eventual release of Google’s “GDrive” or “Platypus” or “MyStuff” which would allow you to sync up your data in the cloud and access it from anywhere (including mobile) in a safe and cheap environment.

Marshall Kirkpatrick says this could be a game changer and gives three very good reasons why in a solid post that you should consider when thinking about the future of the web and the data we produce and construct in our individual molecular social graphs:

It’s easy to be cynical about the details coming from the Wall St. Journal this morning. It’s easy wonder whether Google will ever bring its storage product to market, whether it can be trusted given the number of times its own company blogs have been hacked and whether it’s even a good idea given the near omniscience the company will soon possess. I believe, though, that important new information is coming out about the GDrive and the product will play a fundamentally different roll in our lives than existing online storage products purport to.

ReadWriteWeb – GDrive: Three Ways It Could Be a Game Changer

Social Media Marketing Strategies

The always informative and wise Jeremiah Owyang has a top 10 list of posts regarding social media strategies. This is a must-bookmark post:

I’m answering a lot of questions and see myself referring to the same blog posts and concepts over and over. There’s a few posts that I recommend that you read, some of them were published a few months ago, but are starting to become very relevant. In fact, I’ll send this post to a few clients that need to get up to speed…

Ten Web Strategy Blog Posts I wish you’d read

Zoho Writer Allows Offline Editing

A few backs the continual innovative team at Zoho announed the integration of Google Gears into the Zoho Writer web app. Zoho Writer is analogous to Google Docs and similar online word processing applications. The first cut had offline viewing facility alone. However, this release pushes the online word processing space ahead as it allows for offline editing.

Here’s a video from Zoho explaining more details:
http://zoho.com/zohowriter-zoho/zohowriter-zoho.html