In August, tech savvy teenagers will descend upon London for a huge conference event on one of the most important topics of our time, and no, I’m not talking about the new Star Trek movie. Dubbed “Tomorrow’s Web,” the conference will focus on the future of the internet and cyber-entrepreneurship. It is specifically geared to a younger generation of high-school, and presumably, college-aged kids with big ideas. According to the conference organizer, Grant Bell, an internet entrepreneur himself, the event will allow innovators and entrepreneurs to discuss new developments in web technologies in addition to strategies for growing their businesses.

There’s no wondering who these kids’ icons are and where they see themselves in a few years; they all want to be the next Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook. But don’t think that any titans of web development, like Mark Zuckerberg or Google co-founder, Larry Page, will be in attendance. If you look at the list of not-so-distinguished speakers, you can see that the conference truly is “by kids, for kids” and most speakers’ headshots are nothing more than a webcam photo taken at their home computer. However, just because these young entrepreneurs are relatively unknown today doesn’t mean they won’t be famous tomorrow. If there’s one thing the digital revolution is teaching us, it’s that the internet can make anyone a star. If you’d like to attend but are worried your advanced age (and here advanced is used quite loosely) will set you apart, don’t fret, the conference is open to everyone and it’s free. Just make sure you’re tech and social media savvy or else your head will start spinning with all the tweeting, blogging, and flickring that will undoubtedly be going on. The organizers could have benefited from the advice of elder event planners, though, as the conference is still lacking a home a month out, so I wouldn’t book your flight to London yet just to be safe. They may be internet entrepreneurs, but they’re still teenagers (i.e. procrastinators). Regardless, we’re excited to see the yields of this innovative conference.  

A study titled “Croppers to livestock keepers: livelihood transitions to 2050 in Africa due to Climate Change” released in early June estimates that by 2050 climate change will affect between 500,000 and 1 million square kilometers of marginal farmland in Africa. To offset the potential impact of climate change the report recommends farmers to shift towards raising heartier livestock (i.e. camels, donkeys, goats and cattle).

Often called the “ships of the desert,” camels can go up to seven days without water and can tolerate lower quality water than their cattle counterparts. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) asserts that camels are valuable not only in their ability to survive heat and drought, but also hold great economic value and can be used for their milk, meat, hair and as a mode of transport.  In all seriousness, what implications does a shift from traditional food or livestock production to camel rearing have for a country’s food security?

The FAO doesn’t seem concerned and highlights that camel milk is nutritionally better than cow milk, containing 3 times as much Vitamin C and high amounts of iron, unsaturated fatty acids and B vitamins. Yum! Furthermore, recent estimates by the FAO show that the world camel milk market could reach upwards of $10 billion. Care for camel milk on your frosted flakes, anyone?

For even more information be sure to visit the International Livestock Research Institute for an article on how livestock may provide a pathway around climate change.

The founders of The Pirate Bay have been found guilty, denied appeal, and face both jail time and heavy fines.

What’s a pirate to do? Thumb the nose and keep working.

Rather than shutting down the site, the founders introduced a service to provide greater anonymity to users for a paltry $7 a month. Around 180,000 people have signed up for the service so far, which alone would offset the $3.6 million court settlement in less than three months.

Also, adding to The Pirate Bay’s already-existing side projects (including a temporary mailbox service, blog hosting, image hosting, and text hosting) is a YouTube-like site for video hosting. All of The Pirate Bay’s projects are free, uncensored, and anonymous.

Making the biggest splash is the news today that The Pirate Bay will be sold to Global Gaming Factory X AB, a Swedish advertising company.  A news release on The Pirate Bay blog explains that there is no need to worry and that this is a desired development, emphasizing that the sale will not affect the site’s core identity:

The old crew is still around in different ways. We will also not stop being active in the politics of the internets - quite the opposite. Now we’re fueling up for going into the next gear. TPB will have economical muscles to let people evolve it. It will team up with great technicians to evolve the protocols. And we, the people interested in more than just technology, will have the time to focus on that. It’s win-win-win.

Global Gaming Factory will clearly attempt to find a way to monetize The Pirate Bay’s activities, perhaps a step toward legitimizing the service as well.

The New York Times reported Sunday that new laws have made rain-water collection legal in the state. The article describes the new legal status of the previously ubiquitous illegal practice in the state: clandestinely collecting rain water and using it for your home or business. The practice, far more efficient than using energy to pump groundwater in mountainous state, is an example of local governments realizing that small steps can provide big dividends as America thinks more and more about sustainable environmental policies.

The legal issues at hand are complicated water use statutes, which until now had reached skyward from the ground, assigning ownership of precipitation based on who owned rights from decades past. As the article explains,

“Precipitation, every last drop or flake, was assigned ownership from the moment it fell in many Western states, making scofflaws of people who scooped rainfall from their own gutters. In some instances, the rights to that water were assigned a century or more ago.”

Easterners like me have a hard time conceptualizing issues of water scarcity, and given that I am thoroughly a city boy, I have been spoiled by faucets, hoses and fountains that flow without a thought. This serves as an important example of a type of innovation that is consistently underestimated: good policy. Technological advances are absolutely necessary for the future, but we need intelligent, efficient policies as well. Maybe Colorado can learn a lesson or two from New York.

Google has plunged into the global water crisis–and, as can be expected when computers meet water–it has electrifying potential.

The internet giant made a splash when it unveiled Fusion Tables, a revolutionary data-sharing technology that liberates users from the shackles of big, cumbersome data sets.

“Data by itself is nothing” explained Peter Gleick, the world’s pre-eminent water expert.

Fusion Tables is a Wikipedia-fied Excel, with a dose of Google-ease and Ipod design. It

“provides users a rare opportunity to share critical data, probe them, organize pertinent information and generate design elements — charts and graphs — that translate complex information into much more digestible trends”, wrote Circle of Blue.

Fusion Tables offers solutions to key challenges to the water and sanitation sector. Indeed, “the challenge of sharing data about water was one of our initial inspirations,” stated Google-developer Alon Halevy in a video with Gleick. The field has plenty of data but falls short in analyzing the information creatively, harnessing insights from other disciplines, and conveying messages in a compelling manner.

The House Foreign Affairs committee managed at least an hour of fascinating dialogue on the future of nuclear arms control with Russia before partisan bickering took over and dragged the hearing into polemic banter. Beginning with a broad overview of the current situation the world faces, Chairman Howard Berman (D-CA) began the proceedings by delivering a critique of the stance that nuclear weapons make us safer, and argued that our possession of nuclear weapons served as a symbol for rogue nations: if a state can get nuclear weapons than they have to be taken seriously. He argued for getting a new arms control treaty in place as soon as possible, and noted that we needed some legal mechanism for checking on the Russian stockpiles.

Delivering the GOP party line, Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) argued that to press for compromise with the Russians would amount to negotiating from a position of weakness, and made several valid points about the Russians overstepping fair negotiations. She concluded her remarks by speculating as to whether Chinese policy was affected by our nuclear arsenal.

After the experts, including Secretary William Perry, testified, the questioning began. Congressman Rohrbacher (R-CA) rhetorically asked if Reagan would have limited our strategic nuclear capabilities in a time when there were so many threats, and posited that it was not realistic to actually move towards zero nuclear weapons. Secretary Perry calmly reminded the congressman about just who came up with the zero nukes goal (Reagan). One hopes that the two sides can come to a compromise, and balance the need to monitor Russia’s nuclear program with America’s ability to promote global security with our military power, both nuclear and conventional.

While attempts at solar-powered cars are more well-known and visible, a Swiss psychiatrist and adventurist has unveiled a solar airplane that will be flown around the world in 2012.

The Solar Impulse is a plane designed to be solely powered by solar energy, day and night.  Although not powerful (at an average flight speed of 44 mph, it will take between 20 and 25 days to circumnavigate the globe), the prototype is a strong case for optimism about alternative fuels:

“Yesterday it was a dream. Today it is a plane. Tomorrow it will be an ambassador of renewable energy,” Piccard, the plane’s creator and pilot, said at a news conference at Duebendorf airfield near Zurich today. “If an aircraft is able to fly day and night without fuel, propelled solely by solar energy, let no one come and claim that is impossible to do the same thing for motor vehicles, heating and air conditioning systems and computers.”

A venture that has taken six years, fifty engineers, $98 million from investors, and an indomitable spirit, the Solar Impulse will begin test flights later this year.

The sight of a hydrogen car in some flashy expo center is nothing new. We’ve seen hydrogen-powered vehicles for years, on the showroom floor and on the street. Nor does a hydrogen fuel pump at a gas station receive much attention these days. So why all the buzz surrounding the new, as yet unnamed, hydrogen-burning city car from the company Riversimple? Sure it’s stylish – the car looks both tomorrow and yesterday with its futuristic passenger doors that open like airplane hatches and its wheels reminiscent of an old town car – and has a distinctly British feel to it, but what’s getting most of the attention is the company’s business model.Riversimple plans to make the car’s designs open source, meaning anyone can download them from the internet and build the car themselves. It seems crazy that they would just give them away for free, especially when you consider that engineers have been at work on these designs for 9 years, but the company’s execs are hoping the move will drastically reduce their production costs. Going open source would allow small plants to build the cars themselves and tailor them to the local market. In return, Riversimple would save itself the astronomical costs of building a large, central manufacturing plant. With more eyes poring over the designs, they also hope to improve the quality of their product. Two heads are better than one, after all.There are of course a few potential hang ups with the plan. Like, what if no one builds the car? And, what if no one buys (or in Riversimple’s case, leases) the car? These could spell disaster for the company financially, but even if sales are slow at first, in the end Riversimple could be rewarded handsomely for jumping on the open source trend early. Not to mention they couldn’t have picked a better time to ruffle the feathers of the automotive industry. Never has it been riper for change. For more about Riversimple’s car and business model, check out this article over at BBC.