tv

And not just because of all the people sitting there using electricity and eating corn chips. 4,000 tons of nitrogen triflouride is used each year in the production of flat screen TVs and monitors. Michael Prathner of the Environment Institute of the University of California in Irvine claims that the stuff is 17,000 times as potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide, and writes in Geophysical Research Letters that it has "a potential greenhouse impact larger than that of the industrialised nations' emissions of perflourocarbons (PFCs) or sulfur hexaflouride (SF6), or even that of the world's largest coal-fired power plants". It survives...

Rick Grierson makes music with his mind. He has put together a mashup of MAX MSP / MAX PRO and EEG to create an application which lets you compose music with the power of your brainwaves alone. Awesome.

For those that missed the news last week, BBC Worldwide, Channel 4 and ITV are to launch a video-on-demand service offering more than 10,000 hours of TV programming. The project has a working title of "Kangaroo" and is due to launch next year and is a major step forward for the development of online TV in the UK.

Media Guardian reports that Kangaroo, which one source has described as "wanting to do for broadband what Freeview did for digital TV", will be a joint venture in which BBC Worldwide, ITV and Channel 4 have an equal share. In a joint statement, the partners said Kangaroo "will work independently as an aggregator of both joint venture partners and third-party content".

The project aims to be a "rich entertainment site", where consumers can catch up with recently aired shows and older archive programming. The service will initially be available via the web, with shows available either streamed or to download. However, the ultimate aim is to deliver Kangaroo content direct to televisions. Users will be offered programming for free, rental and buy-to-own, with the intention that Kangaroo provides a "one-stop shop" for all BBC, ITV and Channel 4 content.

Nice idea. Shame about the name.