" Quick response (QR) codes -- those two-dimensional barcodes that resemble a checkerboard on LSD -- are appearing more frequently on billboards, magazine ads, business cards, stickers, T-shirts and anything that is used to promote stuff.
But evidence suggests many people don't understand what QR codes are or what to do with them."
"As people share more information about themselves online, the internet, in effect, has created a public transcript of consciousness -- storing our thoughts, locations, social lives and memories in data warehouses all over the world. This has enabled technological advances and shaped our social interactions. It's also really freaked some people out. "
Finding creative solutions to energy issues has become a major priority for Google co-founder and CEO Larry Page in recent years. For the obvious reasons -- a growing population, increasingly scarce resources, and climate change -- he believes that the corporate world needs to operate more sustainably, and he is determined to build the nation's first zero-carbon company. This means a business that ultimately is so energy efficient and uses so much clean power that it emits no greenhouse gas -- a very tall order indeed. Experts aren't sure whether it's even possible for a company to emit no carbon, but Google is trying to come as close to that goal as possible. "As we became a bigger user of energy, we wanted to make sure we were not just part of the problem, but part of the solution," says Urs Hölzle, Google's employee No. 8 and a senior vice president who oversees the company's green initiatives.