lately i don't have much time to read all the rss feeds that i subscribe to, especially the feeds relating to news and gadgets. thank god my friend forwarded the cream of the crop to me: pigeons get backpacks for pollution monitoring.

"A flock of pigeons fitted with mobile phone backpacks is to be used to monitor air pollution, New Scientist magazine reported on Wednesday. The 20 pigeons will be released into the skies over San Jose, California, in August. Each bird will carry a GPS satellite tracking receiver, air pollution sensors and a basic mobile phone. Text messages on air quality will be beamed back in real time to a special pigeon "blog", a journal accessible on the Internet. Miniature cameras slung around the pigeons' necks will also post aerial pictures....The pigeons will take to the air at the inter-Society for Electronic Arts' annual symposium in San Jose on August 5. The data they send back will be displayed on the blog in the form of an interactive map."
--cnn swiped from reuters 2/2/06

oh this is too good! pigeons with gps, mobile phones, cameras, and a blog?! they're even geekier than me. it's a tempting reason to move back to northern california. or at least be in san jose on august 5! can you imagine the announcement? "release the geek pigeons!"