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At 4,085 square miles, Salar de Uyuni in Southwest Bolivia is the world's largest salt flat. Those salts contain large amounts of sodium, potassium, magnesium and lithium, and these days, it's the last element on that list that is attracting attention. According to the USGS, Bolivia has 35% of the world's lithium resources, and since in the coming years, electric cars and plug-in hybrids that use lithium-ion batteries are expected to greatly increase in numbers, this could mean big changes for Bolivia, South-America's poorest country. - Wayne Smallman

From IRC to Twitter â€" the evolution of chat. - Wayne Smallman

At the Copenhagen climate conference, discussions are likely to cover emissions levels, the legacy of the Kyoto Protocol and the risks of inaction on global warming. - Wayne Smallman

This spectacular “blue marble” image is the most detailed true-color image of the entire Earth to date. Using a collection of satellite-based observations, scientists and visualizers stitched together months of observations of the land surface, oceans, sea ice, and clouds into a seamless, true-color mosaic of every square kilometer (.386 square mile) of our planet. These images are freely available to educators, scientists, museums, and the public. This record includes preview images and links to full resolution versions up to 21,600 pixels across. - Wayne Smallman

"This isn't news. It's an inevitability. Back in 2006, I pondered on the fate of the newspapers and how an electronic newspaper (like in the movie Minority Report) might be a viable technological solution ( http://ow.ly/J9Zl ). At some point, people all over the world got used to getting stuff for free, and then decided they didn't want to pay for newspapers any more. Blogging played its role in this, as did Google and just about every other for-free service provider out there. However, if you want qualified, quality media coverage, we're going to have to pay for this — that too is an inevitability." - Wayne Smallman

FIVE of the world’s biggest publishers are preparing to launch a joint venture this week aimed at regaining control of their content on the new generation of online reading devices. - Wayne Smallman

FIVE of the world’s biggest publishers are preparing to launch a joint venture this week aimed at regaining control of their content on the new generation of online reading devices. - Wayne Smallman

These are just some of the Google Products that are designed to make your surfing of the Internet more enjoyable and productive for you. Many of these products are very useful aids for keeping up to date with your postings as a user or as an ambassador. - Wayne Smallman

jQuery is great and the amount of free extensions is simply amazing! - Wayne Smallman

So let’s take a look at some real world social media policies and guidelines as used by companies. Zappos does a great job of summing it up in seven words, but the detail is also important and there are some fine suggestions here... - Wayne Smallman

Website landing pages are where people arrive when they’ve clicked on a link or an ad for your business. Getting them right is essential if you want to stop prospects from taking off again too soon. James Gurd explains - Wayne Smallman

Print stylesheets often come as a secondary thought on many websites, after all, who prints a webpage anyway?! Despite their slightly infrequent use, a print stylesheet can really help polish the printed document for when it is used. It doesn’t take too long to create, so let’s take a look at some handy tips that you can put into practice on your own site. - Wayne Smallman

Twitter 360 is an iPhone app that lets you visually see the flow of tweets from locations nearby, layered on top of your natural “real” environment. - Wayne Smallman

We have been hard at work integrating the new Twitter Retweet functionality and things are just about ready for the prime time. We wanted to show it off a little and see what you all have to say. - Wayne Smallman

Ommwriter is a simple text processor that firmly believes in making writing a pleasure once again, revindicating the close relationship between writer and paper. The more intimate the relation, the smoother the flow of inspiration. - Wayne Smallman

Heat shields are an important part of any space vehicle that re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere. The next generation of heat shields to protect astronauts and payloads on their re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere may use superconducting magnets to deflect the plasma that forms in front of spacecraft as they travel at high speeds in the air. - Wayne Smallman

Socialite is a beautiful Mac OS X application, designed to make it easy to stay in touch with the social networks and services that matter to you. From news on Digg, photos on Flickr, statuses and photos on Facebook and Twitter updates, to full Google Reader RSS syncing, Socialite keeps all your social networks in one convenient place. - Wayne Smallman

Discover how Headscape increased the sales of Wiltshire Farm Foods by 10,000% and how you can do the same for your site. - Wayne Smallman

We have tracked down this information for a number of social network sites (19 of them). All the major ones have been included, like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter and also some of the most popular social news sites; Digg, Reddit and Slashdot. - Wayne Smallman

Google Analytics can show you the total number of unique organic keyphrases at a glance, on the Traffic Sources ⇒ Keywords page. (Make sure you select 'non-paid' to exclude any CPC campaigns.) - Wayne Smallman

Lunascape, the only browser out there that can handle all three major web rendering engines — Firefox’s Gecko, Internet Explorer’s Trident and WebKit (Safari and Chrome) – received a makeover. - Wayne Smallman

Despite recent initiatives such as Data.gov, the idea of a machine-readable Web extolled by World Wide Web creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee still faces many obstacles, he admitted during a talk at the International Semantic Web Conference , held this week in Chantilly, Va. Formats found on Data.gov, such as spreadsheets or even application programming interfaces, don't do enough to help the reusability of data, he said. Neither are there enough commercial products available to make Web site transitions to the new semantic Web formats easy. - Wayne Smallman

A widescreen approach to social media measurement ultimately looks at the things that really matter: sales, profits, customer satisfaction and loyalty. Besides, honing in on the detail might not be the best use of your time, given the obvious difficulties that arise, particularly with attribution. - Wayne Smallman

Based on some widely reported stories about the success of two small businesses on twitter, @coffeegroundz and @nakedpizza (which we interviewed here), we can make some calculations that should be insightful and (absolutely) inspiring to small/local businesses everywhere. - Wayne Smallman

"To the eyes of layman, like myself, the small structures looked very much like that of ancient bacteria, fossilized in the rock. While this isn't absolute confirmation, it's certainly compelling evidence for life on Mars." - Wayne Smallman

Social media could transform the NHS and other public services in the same way that file-sharing changed the music industry, a conference has heard. - Wayne Smallman

Nasa scientists have produced the most compelling evidence yet that bacterial life exists on Mars. It showed that microscopic worm-like structures found in a Martian meteorite that hit the Earth 13,000 years ago are almost certainly fossilised bacteria. The so-called bio-morphs are embedded beneath the surface layers of the rock, suggesting that they were already present when the meteorite arrived, rather than being the result of subsequent contamination by Earthly bacteria. - Wayne Smallman

Why do hammerhead sharks have such a famously strange-shaped head? One hypothesis is that having eyes on either side of such a wide 'hammer' allows the sharks to see better. - Wayne Smallman

Google has been actively collecting feedback on Google Wave with an ongoing survey, which was distributed via email, the help center, and Twitter. Today they’ve published the initial findings for public dissection. - Wayne Smallman

Starting today, developers worldwide can integrate LinkedIn into their business applications and Web sites. Developer.linkedin.com is now live and open for business. - Wayne Smallman