Sticky notes, while useful enough on their own, have gotten a few enhancements from researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

They’re called Quickies. They look like ordinary yellow Post-it notes, but they integrate digital-pen hardware and handwriting recognition which stores the notes on a PC for later browsing.

The handwriting algorithm converts handwritten notes to computer-readable text, allowing users to search through them using keywords. The software can also be set to remind the user of certain notes at specific times.

All this might seem like a Rube Goldberg machine, but it might prove useful those who still appreciate the tactility of paper. —Hurley Goodall

If you’re one to use Facebook, by now you’ve likely noticed miscellaneous maps and movie quizzes blanketing people’s profiles. To date, there are 23,160 of these applications available, and they’re strewn across 22 categories.

Now comes a nifty little chart that ranks the available applications by type. The chart comes from the number-crunching blog FlowingData, which is run by Nathan Yau, a graduate student at the University of California at Los Angeles. It’s probably little surprise that an overwhelming majority of Facebook applications used in profiles fall into the “Just for Fun” category — reaffirming the site’s status as a prime time-waster. —Hurley Goodall

Google unveiled a prototype algorithm at a conference in Beijing last week that will add precision to the search engine’s image-search technology, The New York Times says.

Two Google researchers presented a paper describing the prototype, which is called VisualRank. It uses image-recognition technology to help rank the relevance of images found in a search.

Currently, Google Image Search results are ranked using the text around the image on the page. The new method will use the visual characteristics of the image itself, and rank search results by comparing similarities among them. —Hurley Goodall

Researchers from the University of Manchester have created the world’s smallest transistor.

The transistor, made of graphene (a carbon-based material), measures one atom thick and ten atoms across. The same team developed a slightly larger transistor last year that was 50 atoms across.

The development stems out of the limitations of silicon, which becomes less effective on microchips at a nanoscale. —Hurley Goodall

So what happens when 28 college students are told to give up technology—cell phones, iPods, television, and video games—for a five-day class assignment?

They all cave, that’s what. Well, all but two, an article in the Orlando Sentinel says.

And there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Mary Ann Murdoch, an English-composition instructor at the University of Central Florida, allowed students to undertake the spartan challenge for extra credit. It seems that the overwhelming sentiment about the assignment can be summed up by one student:

“It’d be stupid and dumb to go back to the old ways,” Philip Rogero said. “Why should we inconvenience ourselves when it’s right there for us?”...

Just in time for graduation, InfoWorld outlines five skills that just don’t cut it in today’s IT industry:

HTML Evidently AJAX and XML are putting the traditional mark-up language in the back seat. Besides that, who doesn’t know at least a little HTML?

“Legacy” programming languages As Wired Campus reported last week, old mainframe programming skills—think COBOL and FORTRAN—don’t command the prestige, or the salary, that they used to.

NetWare Does anyone remember this? Some business are still using this Novell-produced networking software, which had its heyday in the 90s, but Linux and Windows Server now rule the roost....

Academics interested in blogging for research-review purposes might want to take notice to some new developments—and debates—happening on the Web.

RSS feed aggregators are quickly becoming more sophisticated. New sites are cropping up, such as the recently-opened beta of Shyfter, which allow users to not only share their feeds, but also discuss specific posts in one place.

Some bloggers have taken issue with those developments. They say that Shyfter benefits from the use of their content and draws away discussion from their own blogs to another site. It makes it harder to track comments to their posts and keep discussion going.

The concept, however, doesn’t appear to be much different than what...

Scientists at Purdue University have created a high-resolution, interactive map tracking carbon emmissions in the U.S.

The project, called Vulcan, was supported with money from NASA and the Department of Energy, and depicts greenhouse-gas emmissions in greater detail than available before — right down to individual factories. The map is based on statistics collected from government agencies from 2002.

Below is a video showing the map in action.—Hurley Goodall

Mainframe programming is decidedly un-sexy in the IT industry. But as the baby boomers skilled in maintaining mainframes retire, there is heightened demand for IT graduates to replace them, says The Chicago Tribune

Mainframes have been around for decades, but have decreased in popularity in favor of distributed computing solutions in which tasks are doled out among multiple smaller computers. COBOL or assembly language might as well be Sanskrit in the programming world.

However, many large companies still prefer to use mainframes, which are often run by an aging workforce still fluent in those “dead languages.”

Unsurprisingly, IBM, the largest producer of mainframes, has furnished Illinois State University with its

As colleges push to integrate mobile-phone technology into the college experience, the AT&T Corporation has announced a contest to develop mobile-phone applications for campus use. Students and faculty members from any four-year institution are eligible to compete for the $10,000 prize. Students would get the money as scholarship funds.

Students and faculty members can develop applications across three categories—social networking, academics, and safety and security—for any type of mobile phone. The contest closes August, 31. The winner in each category will be announced in October.

So what happens with the applications after the winners are selected?

Mark Williams, a spokesman for AT&T, says that each application will remain the developer’s intellectual...