Here's What's Awesome: Hearing Sound on Paper, Solar Tiles on the Roof

Hope your Friday is as awesome as the set of weekly links we call Here's What's Awesome.

Now Available as MP3, CD, Triple LP and Lamp Soot Etchings
It's not often that Word of Mouth showcases new music that's older than the Civil War, but here we are. A group of audio researchers with First Sounds have been able to play a performance from April 9, 1860 captured by a device called a phonautograph. The device made a paper record of sound waves using soot from an oil lamp, guided by a diaphragm, which moved to the sound.

Phonautographs could not be played back in their time; that piece of the recording puzzle wouldn't be put in place until Edison's cylinders more than a decade later. But the First Sounds historians were able to make detailed scans of the phonautograph and hear what they recorded - which was a female voice singing a stretch of "Au Clair de la Lune." This is extremely low-fi sound - don't expect any modern musician save maybe Lou Barlow to start issuing phonautographs - but you don't often get the chance to hear a voice from 1860 singing to you. [Noise Addicts]

Here Comes The Sun
This week I've found more articles about solar power than any other topic. It's everywhere: Oregon's powering a stretch of highway with solar. No pun intended, virtually every retailer under the sun is installing or looking at installing solar panels on their roofs; IKEA's even planning to sell them.

If you've been bitten by the solar bug but aren't sure if panels will pay off (even with a solar barn raising), RoofRay aims to help. The site uses images from Google Maps to estimate how much solar energy you could harness on your roof. [BoingBoing Gadgets]

Code of Conduct, Part 2
You might have caught Virginia and I talking on Tuesday's show about the new code of conduct for Internet providers in other countries that Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are drafting. Now the same privacy issues that the code is aimed at addressing are coming up in India. The Wall Street Journal has a piece about a company in India who wants Google to divulge the name of a blogger who they say defamed the company. There's more at Wired.

(Photo by Chuckumentary)