ASUS concept motherboard features an onboard UPS and system memory – “Perhaps a glance into the future, it’s a rather curious concept model. Now, rarely do we get all that excited about a motherboard. Sure, there are good ones and bad ones, but the feature lists are, overall, fairly normalised. ASUS’s concept mobo, however, diverges quite significantly from the norm…”

Vital Jacket Will Monitor Your Health – “The Chilean based Company BioDevices recently unveiled Vital Jacket – a wearable vital-signs monitoring system. Vital Jacket uses microelectronics embedded into a T-shirt that will continuously monitor heart rate and electrocardiogram (ECG) waves of the wearer. The Vital Jacket was designed as a functional approach for individuals that need continuous or frequent monitoring of cardiac health and functioning, with fitness, high performance sports, security, and medical applications…”

F1 tech races into ordinary life – “A new exhibition demonstrating how technology from Formula One racing influences more pedestrian pursuits has opened at the Science Museum in London…”

Welcome to the New and Improved Matrix – “The distinction between the online and offline world is becoming less and less clear. Is the World Wide Web taking over the World? Or is it the other way around?”

Yosemite Extreme Panoramic Imaging Project – “The final image will be one continuous unwrapped panorama of all valley wall faces…”

Apple’s redesigned iPod shuffle hits 4GB, talks to you – “Bam, another Apple rumor vindicated. Apple just doubled the capacity of its iPod shuffle to 4GB while ditching the control wheel entirely. The new design keeps the clip and adds VoiceOver — a new feature that gets around the lack of display by telling you which song is playing and who performs it at the touch of a button on the earbud cable. It’ll also call out your playlists and let you navigate to others. Available in black or silver for $80 and your claim to what Apple calls the “world’s smallest music player.” Check the video tutorial after the break…”

Samsung, Apple, RIM whale on Nokia, steal smartphone share – “Smartphones are still on the global rise, but growth dropped to its slowest pace in Q4 2008, according to a new study. Things also are not going well for Nokia, either, as the handset maker surrendered an increasing amount of ground to rivals like RIM, Apple, and even Samsung…”

Ready for take-off: the state of in-flight internet – “Internet access at 35,000 feet is no longer next year’s technology. Several dozen planes over the US have broadband over WiFi backed by satellite or ground cell stations, and hundreds more are coming this year. Here’s how the technology works, which airlines offer Internet service, and what’s coming up…”

Inmates running the Twitter asylum – “I used to think I was in control of what I blog and what I Twitter. Recently I’ve been disabused of this notion, particularly with regard to what I Twitter. In a postmodern, Jacques Derrida sense, the reader has come to mean more than the author. Or to think that she does…”

Veranda Solar – Bringing Solar Power to a Windowsill Near You? – “veranda%20solar.jpgSolar power. It’s talked about by many, it’s seen on many consumer goods, but as of yet, it’s not seen on many roofs. Not without substantial government subsidies. It’s often difficult and time consuming to install, requiring a team of professionals and reams of paperwork…”

Rummager’s galactic find turns out to be stolen meteorite – “This story begins not in a galaxy far away, but at a Milwaukee rummage sale a few years ago. Tom Lynch paid $10 for an odd hunk of metal he figured might be copper or bronze with potential salvage value. He had no idea it had dropped from space into the Arizona desert some 50,000 years ago…”

Making ads more interesting – “At Google, we believe that ads are a valuable source of information — one that can connect people to the advertisers offering products, services and ideas that interest them. By making ads more relevant, and improving the connection between advertisers and our users, we can create more value for everyone. Users get more useful ads, and these more relevant ads generate higher returns for advertisers and publishers. Advertising is the lifeblood of the digital economy: it helps support the content and services we all enjoy for free online today, including much of our news, search, email, video and social networks…”

Or…

Google ad service raises privacy fears – “Is Google’s new targeted advertising service a boon to users, or is it Big Brother in disguise?”

iPods and Young People Have Utterly Destroyed Music – “You know how most people are perfectly happy with Apple standard-issue earbuds, white plastic molded around a crappy audio experience? A Stanford professor’s informal annual study shows that youngins like the “sizzle sounds” of MP3s…”

Secure deletion: a single overwrite will do it – “The myth that to delete data really securely from a hard disk you have to overwrite it many times, using different patterns, has persisted for decades, despite the fact that even firms specialising in data recovery, openly admit that if a hard disk is overwritten with zeros just once, all of its data is irretrievably lost….”

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