Editor’s note: The following guest post is by Nikhyl Singhal, the co-founder and CEO of voice-application startup SayNow. Is it conceivable that one of our greatest inventions, the phone number, is about to face extinction? Just ask Mark Zuckerberg. Earlier this year, when asked if Facebook would be around in 100 years, as long as Ma Bell has been around, Zuckerberg responded, “I don’t know. But I don’t know how long telephones will be around for.”  Will they be around for ten more years? I’ll go even further. It may not even take 5 years for the phone service, as we know it, to meet its demise. Who’s going to lead the charge?  Voice on Gmail and Skype are just the beginning.  What are Facebook, Apple, Yahoo, and Microsoft doing?  As AT&T, Verizon, Apple and Google spent this summer hashing out plans for world domination, it seems that Facebook is best positioned to strike the fatal blow against our beloved carriers.  And it starts with those phone digits. I’m certain my grandkids will never dial a phone number, or even have one. It’s time to say goodbye to ten digits along with the world’s oldest social network.  While we’re at it, let’s kill phone-tree mazes, do-not-call lists…everything associated with phone numbers. Don’t misconstrue what I’m saying. This isn’t the demise of phone calls.  Far from it.  People will still talk on their phones.  They just want the service to be simple and fun, which won’t entail punching digits into a device to start a conversation. Why put phone numbers on deathwatch?  Consider a few facts:

No control. Anyone can dial your 10 digits, including your ex-girlfriend, a political campaign worker, or a solicitor.  Unlisted numbers, Caller ID and do-not-call lists all tried to solve this problem, but these solutions still don’t prevent unwanted calls. Phone numbers are tied to a device, not to you. Everyone has multiple numbers, yet your home line is shared, leaving callers guessing the best way to reach you. User experience is very limited. The phone was designed as a utility—dial a number, have a conversation. It’s remained this way since its inception.  It’s not optimized for other experiences, which is why voicemail and conference calls are tedious, and why checking flight status is worse than a root canal.

Compare this to your social networks.  You have control over who accesses your information; you have one username and profile that you use at all times; and applications fill in the holes and extend the network’s capabilities to communicate, play games and meet people on your own terms. On any Facebook page, I can “send a message”, even if we aren’t friends. And I can choose to receive messages from non-friends. The key thing is the network sets up a policy, and I as a user can change this. We don’t have this choice on the phone network today. Anyone can dial my number, and I can’t control it—but I do control my interaction on a social network. Google, Skype, and others try to resolve telephony problems by stuffing the phone system into the web.  Personally, I’ve spent five years at SayNow trying to eke more out of the digit-based phone system too.  We’ve built dozens of applications that enable brands, celebrities and millions of users to use the phone in an entirely new way.  But we’ve all hit the limits of what we can accomplish.  Instead of replicating the antiquated phone network inside the web, let’s instead dramatically simplify telephony by adding voice on top of our social networks. If given a choice between Ma Bell and Zuckerbell as our operator, we should choose Zuck.  Despite criticisms about Facebook’s privacy settings, the site gives us far more control over our interactions than we have on the telephone.  Since our contacts live in the network, we already belong to the world’s largest white pages.  And with more businesses moving to social networks, throw in the global yellow pages, too.  So say goodbye to lost phone numbers, moving contacts between devices and even 411.  More importantly, just as you determine who can see your bachelor party photos, you will soon have complete control over who has access to call you and who doesn’t. As I write this I already hear my wife saying, “Honey, why can’t my mom call us anymore?” Also relevant here are the creative smartphone applications that developers churn out daily.  None of these leverage the primary reason these mobile devices exist: voice.  Once smartphone platforms allow developers to initiate conversations and voice messages, you can bet voice will finally become flexible and fun. Speaking of which, I was at a Lady Gaga concert recently, and the good people at Virgin Mobile arranged for Gaga to “surprise” a fan with a phone call that upgraded her seats.  Great idea, but we all know the entire activity was scripted and carefully orchestrated.  But what if it wasn’t?  Lady Gaga should be able to open her iPhone, see her Facebook, Twitter, or MySpace fans, choose someone checked in at the venue, and…. (cue drumroll), call them.  Call one of them.  Some of them.  All of them.  And whether you have 5 million friends or just 5, phone calls should be just that easy.  So enjoy punching those digits while they are still around. CrunchBase InformationGoogle VoiceFacebookSayNowInformation provided by CrunchBase

MIT researchers tested the first prototype of the Seaswarm, a pack of robots that use nanotechnology to suck up oil from the surface of the ocean for immediate processing. When completed, the robots will be able to travel along oil-spilled waters, collecting oil more cheaply and efficiently than oil skimmers. The robots are large: 16 feet in length and seven feet in width. They push a conveyor belt wrapped by an oil-absorbing nanowire mesh that repels water while slurping up to twenty times its weight in oil. Once the robot is full, the material can be heated up to remove the oil and sent back into the waters to collect more. MIT’s SENSEable City Lab Associate Director Assaf Biderman likens it to a “rolling carpet” that could be able to clean for weeks on end in the right conditions. The robots are powered by solar panels and need only 100 watts of electricity to operate. Seaswarm’s name refers to how a team of robots behave when they’re sent out on a mission together. The robots communicate wirelessly with one another and use GPS to sense where other robots in the fleet are working. This lets them spread evenly to clean the spill with more precision. The robots can also detect the edge of the spill and work their way inward.
This video explains how the robots clean up oil and collaborate with one other:

Researchers estimate that 5,000 robots could clean a spill as large as the one in the gulf in a month. The group plans to enter its developments to the X Prize competition for oil cleanup. The prototype comes after months of development. Researchers planned to present Seaswarm at the TEDxOilSpill conference, but were apparently stopped last-minute due to an “unresolved intellectual property dispute at MIT.” Another group of researchers at Texas Tech has been working on a similar oil-absorbing material we mentioned before as a solution to oil spill cleanup. We can hope there will be no future oil spills, but in case there are, the Seaswarm could offer hope for a quicker cleanup.

According to a blog post today on the company’s site, Facebook is revamping its Chat feature to be faster, more stabilized and reliable. Facebook says that Chat, which launched two years ago, is now one of the most widely used communication features on the network. In the next few weeks, Facebook will “be making important improvements in the way connections are established and messages are sent.” Of course, one of the results of the improvements, says Facebook engineer Rodrigo Schmidt, is that Chat will not be supported on older browsers, particularly on IE6. Support for IE6 will be discontinued on Sept. 15. IE6 has pretty much been laid to rest, even by Microsoft, so it’s not surprising that Facebook will no longer continue support for the dated browser. Recent reports show that IE6 usage has fallen to only 4.7 percent, but Facebook still has to give users time to upgrade to new browser. Earlier this year, Facebook launched support for Jabber/XMPP, an open protocol that made it easy for any chat client or web service to integrate Facebook Chat. CrunchBase InformationFacebook ChatInformation provided by CrunchBase

We were excited when we got our hands on an unlaunched version of Google Voice for the desktop, which let users make and receive calls via a soft phone on their computer. We hear that software is still on ice, though, and won’t be launched any time soon. But it probably doesn’t matter – today Google Voice is being integrated right into the browser via Gmail. It’s amazingly good – I know because I’ve been testing it for the last few days. Just download the Google Talk plugin for your browser and you can then make calls to any U.S. or Canadian phone number directly from Gmail. And if you already use Google Voice you can make those calls anywhere else, too, for a very low per minute charge. The feature is fully integrated into Google Voice, which means you can set Google Voice to receive calls in Gmail, and use your Google Voice contact book. Dialing a phone number works just like a normal phone. Just click “Call phone” at the top of your chat list and dial a number or enter a contact’s name. This is great news if you’ve got bad cell reception in your home or workplace, because you can make and receive calls anywhere you have Wifi reception. Some other very cool features: if you’re on Google Voice and take a call from within Gmail, you switch a call over to your mobile phone and continue it on the go without having to drop the call and reconnect. Call quality is very, very good – comparable to Skype. See video below of test calls we performed. (Play fullscreen for best viewing, and make sure to check out the screenshots below). Pricing: Calls to US and Canada for free at least through the end of the year. Google PM Real Time Communications Craig Walker says they hope to keep these calls free indefinitely, provided the margins on international calls can cover the free US/Canada calls. 2 cents/minute landline rates to dozens of countries, with no connection fee on calls. Mobile rates are often less expensive than competitors.

CrunchBase InformationGoogle VoiceInformation provided by CrunchBase

If you go to Google Finance on your iPhone or Android via the mobile browser, it looks a lot like an app. You can enter a ticker symbol or company name in the search box at the top to generate a current price and stock chart. Three buttons on top let you switch from a market view to your saved portfolio to news. The new mobile-friendly design just launched yesterday. (It is still catching up to Yahoo Finance, which has been mobile browser friendly for a while). The new mobile Google Finance presents most of the same information you can find on the main Website in a single, scrollable column: recent quotes, market charts, financial news headlines, a visual summary showing how different sectors are doing, and a list of gainers and losers. Google Finance is also linked to other Google properties. Along the top, Finance is shown as a tab with other Google search properties such as Web and Images. When you do a search for a stock price or company on Google’s regular mobile search page, Google Finance results appear and take you into the Google Finance mobile experience.
Google Finance also has an Android app, but no dedicated iPhone app. If you are on the iPhone, the best app for Google Finance is now the browser. CrunchBase InformationGoogle FinanceInformation provided by CrunchBase

Apple this morning said iTunes U downloads have topped 300 million, making it one of the world’s most popular online educational catalogs. The company also says over 800 universities throughout the world have active iTunes U sites, and nearly half of these institutions distribute their content publicly on the iTunes Store. Currently, iTunes users have access to more than 350,000 audio and video files from educational institutions around the globe, the company adds. Created in collaboration with colleges and universities about 3 years ago, iTunes U offers users public access to free content from institutions such as Harvard, MIT, Cambridge, Oxford, University of Melbourne and Université de Montréal. iTunes U gives users the chance to experience university courses, lab demonstrations, sports highlights, campus tours and special lectures. CrunchBase InformationAppleiTunesInformation provided by CrunchBase

The $24 billion solar panel market could use a good dusting. The benefits of solar energy are well-known, but what’s rarely mentioned is its nemesis: dust. Even a little bit—one-seventh of an ounce per square yard—can weaken a panel’s power conversion by 40%. To tackle the problem, scientists looked to Mars, where similar technology was developed for space missions to the planet. NASA, along with Boston University, originally developed the self-cleaning technology for its Mars missions, to battle the planet’s red dust. Some of the rovers and other vehicles are solar-powered, and the self-cleaning coating on their solar panels helps them explore more effectively. The technology, which has yet to be commercialized, consists of a clear coating with dust-monitoring sensors. The sensors send an electric charge into the coating when too much dust accumulates, and the coating creates a short blast of electricity to knock dust off the edges of the panels with minimal energy use. Scientists say close to 90% of the dust can be eliminated within two minutes every time dust piles up too high. Coating the surface of solar cells could increase their efficiency and reduce maintenance costs, especially for large-scale installations. The installation is relatively simple, and doesn’t require any mechanical movement or water to dust the panels. Self-cleaning solar panels would be especially effective in large installations, which are not only enormous, but often remote. The desert environments where many of these installations reside often challenge the panels with dust storms and little rain. Globally, the number of panels installed between 2003 and 2008 grew by 50%, and in the foreseeable future, the growth rate is expected to increase about 25% annually. CrunchBase InformationNASAInformation provided by CrunchBase