It finally happened! As some of you may recall, way back in September I was selected to be a part of NASA’s tweetup for the 39th and final launch of Discovery. Long story short, after 115 days, Discovery finally lifted off on her way to the International Space Station on February 24, 2011. We were fortunate enough to be invited back by NASA and their amazing staff to witness the launch from the press area. It’s about three miles from the launchpad and, from what I’ve been told, just about as close as you can safely be to a launch.

As the countdown clock ticked down, everyone was getting situated in their spots for the launch. The edge of the press site was lined with on-lookers both Tweetup and press related. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen so many DSLRs in one place before. I was armed only with my iPhone 4 camera and a desire to just soak it all in.

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If you’re like me, you read a lot. You browse Twitter for the latest updates. You eagerly pull up a daily list of blogs, news, and reviews. Scavenging quickly for the main idea, you consume the latest articles with a voracious appetite. You are up-to-date. You are informed. At least for the next twenty minutes.

I recently read a controversial article in which the author makes an ironic point about a growing problem with our growing knowledge:

“We pay a price for all the information we consume these days – and it’s knowing less.” Read the rest of the entry >

This past weekend I saw Michael Bublé live for the second time. It was an amazing concert full of talent and wonderful crowd interaction for such a large venue, the Allstate Arena. (Normally you’d think of Bublé in a more concert hall or jazz club type of place.) It definitely captured the heart of what a great performance should be through musicality and stage presence.

One of the highlights of the evening, outside of Bublé himself, was the opening act, Naturally 7. At first glance you might have thought this was a standard A Cappella group – seven guys standing on stage singing and wooing all the ladies – but then you realized that everything you were hearing was all them. What I mean by this is that sounds you would normally picture coming from a drum set or electric guitar were all coming out of those seven men. There were no physical instruments to be seen; there was no pre-recorded track playing in the background. They call it “vocal play,” and they’re using their voices as vocal instruments. What an incredibly refreshing change, when it seems like most new music coming out these days is full of auto-tune and electronic additions.

Their amazing talent and innovative approach had them featured on TED back in May of 2009 (as you know we’re big fans of TED here at Rule29 and posted their TED video back in June of 2009), and not to mention touring on Bublé’s ‘Crazy Love’ Tour around the world and many other gigs and performances.

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As some of you may know, I was recently selected by NASA to attend the Tweetup surrounding the launch of STS-133. This launch is to be the final flight of the Shuttle Discovery, and one of the last flights before the shuttle program itself is put into retirement. Needless to say, I was a bit excited. The event was put on at the NASA press site, which is just a hair over three miles from the shuttle. We all gathered there to hear from NASA directors, astronauts, and technicians.

So I set out Saturday on my adventure…

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I awoke a couple of days ago to the morning news anchor spouting off the day’s top stories. Usually the morning news is full of fluff that goes in one ear and out the other, but the last report I heard before leaving my house caught my attention.

The Internet is running out of addresses. [Gasp!]

Yes, it was always inevitable, I suppose, but in the story the anchor declared a time limit—one year. By the end of 2011 there will be no Internet addresses left. I laughed at first, but during my commute I couldn’t stop thinking about this foresight. Could it really be possible? Do we really only have a year before we all start scrambling for any address we can get our hands on? There have even been reports that an IP address black market will arise.

It turns out that with all the mobile devices and the growing number of Internet users in general is the primary cause for our imminent IPv4 (Internet Protocol version four) failure. First introduced in the 1980, IPv4 is what today’s Internet was built upon with its 32-bit addresses allow for approximately 4 billion IP addresses. Unfortunately, experts say we will use all these up by next September. So what’s the world to do? In the meantime, check out this countdown on Twitter to either induce an emotional collapse or perhaps just a laugh.

Good news is there is a solution: IPv6 (gold star to anyone who can explain the leap over IPv5). Without this 128-bit address protocol (that’s 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 addresses) Internet growth is slated to go downhill. The problem, like with most other global issues, is all about the benjamins—millions of devices need to be updated to be compatible with IPv6. Without the upgrade businesses could lose out on traffic from users connecting to the web on new IPv6 addresses.

So, will this make people go pre-Y2K crazy, or will it be more like the actual Y2K? Will we break the Internet? No, but either way I’m sure hilarious T-shirts and hysteric Facebook statuses are just around the corner.