Sydneysiders will soon be able to cycle between dedicated bike stands that are to be installed around the city, being the “future vision” that was voted the most popular by visitors to the In An ABSOLUT World website recently.

“In An ABSOLUT World is proving to be a fascinating social experiment, and this will continue when we realise this most popular vision in September 2008″, said Clare Dunstan, Brand Manager, ABSOLUT (Australia). “The concept of dedicated bike stands has already been successfully implemented in cities such as Amsterdam, Stockholm and Paris, and it would be a tremendous result if our experiment actually encouraged the ‘powers that be’ to fully realise the initiative on an on-going basis”, Dunstan added.

Since its release in 1977 Star Wars has done far more than spawn a six-movie series, as this diagram, originally published by Wired, depicts.

Fascinating, as Star Trek’s Mr Spock, would say.

Via Kottke.

Alister Cameron is asking people to dig up the oldest business card they can lay their hands on, and post a photo of it.

The oldest example I could find is this card from my web design days during the dot-com boom, when I was working for (the sadly now defunct) Sydney design studio, 110 Design.

A photo of my current card can be found here.

While the human-like robots of science fiction have created unrealistic perceptions and expectations of actual robots, Bill Smart, a roboticist at Missouri’s Washington University, thinks such misconceptions could nevertheless be helpful in robot design.

Smart thinks those raised expectations were down to the impact of unrealistically human-like robots in movies and books. “People don’t really know what they are. C-3PO in Star Wars is very humanlike, intelligent and capable, but real robots are not like that at all.” Instead of just forcing people to alter their expectations, Smart thinks it makes sense to study how people’s ideas about robots are influenced by fiction. That knowledge could be used to design robots that make the most of those expectations.” My real concern is to get people and robots to play together nicely,” says Smart.

Bill Melendez, the only person allowed by Charles M. Schulz to animate his Peanuts comic strip, has died aged 91.

Melendez also animated other well known cartoon characters during his career, including Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig and Daffy Duck.

Japanese temple building company Kongo Gumi was established in 578AD and ceased trading in 2007, after being overwhelmed by debt, and an apparent downturn in the temple building industry.

Aside from the inauspicious final chapter however, what was the key to remaining in business for almost a millennium and a half?

Other than favourable economic and trading conditions, family ownership seems to have played a big hand in their longevity, as it has for a number of other long running enterprises.

Undoubtedly family business represents the most lasting type of business. The expert in family business, Professor Willian O’Hara, in one of his books mentioned about family business the following: “Before the multinational corporation, there was family business. Before the Industrial Revolution, there was family business. Before the enlightenment of Greece and the empire of Rome, there was family business.”

Depriving someone of internet access is essentially depriving them of a human right, according to a New Zealand government minister, Judith Tizard.

The internet is now so much an essential part of life and commerce that access to it can be seen as “a human right”, says Culture and Heritage Minister Judith Tizard. She made the remark on launching a book on the history of the internet in New Zealand, commissioned by InternetNZ. Called Connecting the Clouds, the book is written by former Computerworld staffer Keith Newman.

The World Youth Day event at Randwick Racecourse seems like a long distant memory now, and after months of absence, the horses and racing return to Randwick tomorrow.

The big event on the racing calendar however is the Spring Carnival, which kicks off on 27 September and runs through until Melbourne Cup Day on Tuesday 4 November.

Time to pull the suit out of moth balls and get my horse racing fix for the year.

Love triangles have a tendency to be problematic at the best of times, but more so when all involved are married.

The Edge Of Love sees Welsh poet Dylan Thomas at the centre of a struggle for his affections between Caitlin MacNamara (Sienna Miller) his wife, and Vera Phillips (Keira Knightley), a flame from his teenage years.

Played out initially in World War II London during the blitz, tensions really begin to rise when the group relocates to Wales, and Vera’s husband, William Killick (Cillian Murphy), returns from the war.

Isn’t this just overstating the obvious a little?

To create change, you need to reach out to those who don’t already agree with you. If you’re just having agreeable conversations with likeminded people, you’re probably not actually accomplishing much in the way of fostering change.

Than again, probably not. Although reasonably straightforward, it’s a point-of-view that is all too quickly overlooked.