mining

Asteroid mining: Land grab in space

As people come to terms with the limits of the Earth's natural resources, startup company Planetary Resources is eyeing another source: space.

The company, founded by XPrize Foundation CEO Peter Diamandis and aerospace engineer Eric Anderson, will launch at the Museum of Flight in Seattle later today. Its list of advisers includes Google CEO Larry Page, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, filmmaker James Cameron, and the former Microsoft chief software architect and space tourist Charles Simonyi. Other advisers are Google board member and investor Ram Shriram and Ross Perot Jr., son of the former presidential candidate.

Planetary Resources' goal … Read more

Data mining's adult challenges

Probably no data-mining legend has been more pervasive than the "beer and diapers" story, which apparently dates back to an early 1990s project that data-warehousing pioneer Teradata (then part of NCR) conducted for the Osco Drug retail chain.

As the story goes, they discovered that beer and diapers frequently appeared together in a shopping basket on certain days; the presumed explanation was that fathers picking up diapers bought a six-pack when they were out anyway. This correlation was then used to optimize displays and pricing in the stores.

That's the story anyway. The reality, as best anyone can determine, … Read more

Google Street View goes cave-diving in Japan

Sit behind the computer too much and you might find yourself wanting to see more natural wonders. Well, Google Japan found a new way for people to explore the world, one cave at a time.

The search giant sent several photography crews to shoot long exposures of several popular underground (natural and man-made) formations in Japan. The two areas include the centuries-old Okubo-mabu mineshaft (part of Iwami Ginzan) and massive Akiyoshi-do limestone cavern, available for viewing via the Street View interface. Click on the gallery below; 360-degree views of silver, stalactites, and stalagmites await your eyeballs...

(Via AV Watch)

Mining is your craft

Crafted lets you play a 2D version of the megapopular game Minecraft, using many of the same sounds and graphics--so much so that we're surprised it's still available in the iTunes App Store.

Mojang's Minecraft has achieved a huge following for its open, sandbox style of gameplay, letting you manipulate every block in the world. Once you've gathered the right materials, you can make picks for mining, axes for chopping down trees, torches so you can see at night, and a whole laundry list of other items.

Crafted offers a similar experience, but all in 2D. … Read more

Moon Express sees money in moon rocks

What's a search engine geek doing in the space business? Barney Pell, CTO and co-founder of Powerset, a search technology company that was acquired by Microsoft, has for the last year been working on building a robotic spacecraft to land on the moon, as the co-founder of a new company called Moon Express. (Pell also co-founded StockMaster, which was acquired by Red Herring when I worked there.)

It turns out that Pell is an old space hack. He has a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence from the University of Cambridge and worked on the AI program for Deep Space 1, … Read more

Where Molycorp mines rare earth elements (panoramas)

MOUNTAIN PASS, Calif.--Here in a hot, dusty corner of Southern California desert, a set of 17 chemical elements in the periodic table--so critical to advanced technology industries that they're a matter of national security--are being unearthed. Molycorp's rejuvinated $500 million facility, now under construction and set for completion in July 2012, will reduce the environmental impacts of the rare-earth-element-mining process and dramatically cut costs, providing a homegrown source for the elements used in so many national defense, energy, and consumer electronics products. This week, I toured the facility here, the only place in the United States that … Read more

Dig deep for big rewards

Miner Disturbance is a fun mining game that will immediately remind you of arcade classic Dig Dug, but offers much more. The object of the game is to complete goals as you dig downward into each mine. Some goals will require that you collect a certain number of minerals, and others will only require that you've dug to a specific depth.

But as you dig your way deeper, you'll face baddies like moles, bats, and other underground dwellers that you'll be able to defeat by swinging your pick. As you go farther into the game, you'll … Read more

nPario strip-mines online usage data for more effective ads

Last week, Bassel Ojjeh, CEO of the data analytics startup nPario, gave me an interesting look into how behavior tracking is being used in advertsing, as well as a somewhat startling look at his previous employer, Yahoo.

Prior to starting nPario, Ojjeh ran Yahoo's Strategic Data Solutions group, which he says managed one of the largest data stores in the world. When he was there in 2009, he said, it collected over 8 petabytes of usage data from 550 million users, over about 16,000 servers. This data was used to improve Yahoo's user experience, advertising targeting, and … Read more

Blast away asteroids!

Space Miner Blast is a slimmed-down arcade version of one of our favorite games on the iPhone called Space Miner: Space Ore Bust. The original game included a storyline in which you tried to keep your uncle's space-mining company afloat by mining various sectors of space and using the ore to make money so you could upgrade your ship. Though we still recommend the original as a more involved and unique game, Space Miner Blast takes the basic gameplay mechanic (flying around and shooting asteroids) and makes it into a fun challenge on its own.

Space Miner Blast tasks … Read more