As a Canadian, I am happy that I finally have an excuse to blog about hockey. Since the beginning of the game, I can think of several technologies that advanced the game. Synthetic goalie equipment, composite sticks and that awful glowing puck(non-advancing technology) come to mind.

Heated skates might be the next big thing. Reuters has posted an article about this new technology.

[they] cut down on friction and allow players to move faster and save energy.

[a] resistor heats the blade to 5 degrees Celsius (41 degrees Fahrenheit), or just above freezing point, and thickens the film of water between ice and blade that acts as a lubricant and makes skating possible.

tests showed the blades cut friction between blade and ice by 50 percent.

I will not be convinced that these will have an impact on the game until I see the official results of their testing. I am not even sure if the NHL will legalize these if they do work out to be beneficial. The data on the Thermablade website, like most product pages, are not backed up by statistics and there is a lot of anecdotal evidence.

Here is the Thermablade product page.

Thinkgeek has just posted a Wi-Fi detecting T-shirt. You can see the product page here. This shirt is a similar to the T-equalizer shirt which was previously the coolest shirt ever.

It seems as though the digg effect can shut down more than just web pages. This shirt will not be available for a few weeks. I have a feeling that the manufacturer of this will underestimate the demand.

Scholarpedia is a new online encyclopedia and competitor to Wikipedia. I am a big user of Wikipedia and have wasted a lot of time clicking through articles. I have exactly the same habits as the user in this XKCD cartoon. Despite it’s addictiveness, Wikipedia does have a problem with the quality of its content as it is not accepted by any academic institution.

Scholarpedia’s author selection is a lot more strict than Wikipedia and it is peer reviewed. It can still be user edited, however new editions must be approved by the original curator. The main idea behind it is to have an online encyclopedia like wikipedia, but with higher quality articles.

So far, there are only encyclopedias in Computational Neuroscience, Dynamical Systems, Computational Intelligence and Astrophysics. I am not an expert in any of these fields, however the amount of content so far looks promising. I am a little bit skeptical as to whether this will expand quickly because of the greater amount of work required to produce an article. It is based on the same MediaWiki engine as Wikipedia, so the look and feel is completely natural.

Check out Scholarpedia soon!!!!!