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A High-Tech Movie Battle: Which 3-D Glasses Are Best? – “Four companies are fighting for bridge of the nose with three different technologies. Each of them is more advanced than the paper glasses worn to view “Bwana Devil,” regarded as the first of the commercial 3-D movies in the 1950s, but all work on the same general principle. Each eye sees a slightly different frame of the movie, but the brain puts them together and perceives depth…”
Intel to Introduce a High Speed (10GB/sec) Optical Fiber Interface to Replace USB – “High Speed data communication isn’t so speedy by the time it reaches your video player or smartphone. But soon, some data exchanges between consumer gadgets may travel at the higher rate of fiber optics, letting people transfer a Blu-ray version of “Gone With the Wind,” for example, or the complete family photo archive in less than a minute…” See also: An Express Lane From Camera to Computer
10 Amazing Tricks to Play with your Brain – One of them:
Revenge of the Cable Guys – “If you think online TV will be free forever, think again. The cable companies have a plan to keep control—and stick you with the bill…”
Top Ten Alternatives to Cable – “It’s still early days in the battle for the future of television. The cable guys are just rolling out their services, and the Silicon Valley upstarts have a lot of digital expertise and venture capital fueling them. If you want a digital alternative to cable, here are ten to consider…”
Why Google Android is winning – “The global smartphone market is still RIM’s to lose, with Apple in the pole position to profit from its mistakes. But new ComScore data on the U.S. smartphone market suggest that both should be worried by what they see in their rear-view mirrors…”
A Computer That Processes Faster Than The Speed of Light – “How fast is too fast? According to the laws of physics, the speed of light is a good boundary, as going beyond it opens you up to all sorts of paradoxes and space-time phenomena that are usually the stuff of sci-fi. But a couple of researchers in Austria have come up with a way to compute information faster than the speed of light…”
Performance comparison of web browsers
7 years difference – iPad vs. HP TC1100
Who are the Online Publishing Companies That Matter? – “The ten largest online publishers own a disproportionate amount of the world’s web traffic. These busy sites, including subsidiary holdings, account for billions of unique visitors per month. They also comprise the most sought-after ad space in the world. However – and while the recession has played a role in the decline of the display CPM major publishers could acquire – an average $10 CPM, has in many cases, dwindled to $1CPM.”
GM Planning Engineless All-Electric Cars To Follow the Volt – “The 78-year-old Lutz told Associated Press that GM is “planning” a distinct line of electric vehicles without the backup engine that’s an integral part of the Voltec powertrain used for the 2011 Volt and future extended-range electric vehicles…”
Lithium-Sulfur Breakthrough Could Mean Safer and More Energy-Dense Batteries – “Theoretical Energy Density: 1550 Wh/KG !”
China Wants to Connect its High-Speed Rail to Europe (Largest Infrastructure Project in History) – “It might seem like a pipe dream if it weren’t for the fact that China is already about halfway through the construction of the largest high-speed rail (HSR) network in the world with the fastest trains in the world…”
Federal report: Cost of Internet scams more than doubled in 2009 – “The amount of money Americans lost to Internet-based scams and fraud soared to $559.7 million last year, more than double the figure for 2008, according to a new report…”
Effort to Widen U.S. Internet Access Sets Up Battle – “The Federal Communications Commission is proposing an ambitious 10-year plan that will reimagine the nation’s media and technology priorities by establishing high-speed Internet as the country’s dominant communication network. The plan, which will be submitted to Congress on Tuesday, is likely to generate debate in Washington and a lobbying battle among the telecommunication giants, which over time may face new competition for customers. Already, the broadcast television industry is resisting a proposal to give back spectrum the government wants to use for future mobile service…” See also: U.S. to roll out major broadband policy
A Light Switch For The Brain – “Some of the most important advances in neuroscience have been made thanks to a pair of gruesome cases a century apart that left their victims alive, coherent and missing big portions of their brains…”
Obama Sides with RIAA, MPAA; Backs ACTA – “And thus, our true colours reveal. Since Obama was the young newcomer, technically savvy, many of us were hoping that he might support patent and/or copyright reform. In case our story earlier on this subject didn’t already tip you off, this certainly will: Obama has sided squarely with the RIAA/MPAA lobby, and backs ACTA. No copyright and/or patent reform for you, American citizens!”
New analysis of the structure of spider silks explains paradox of super-strength – “Spiders and silkworms are masters of materials science, but scientists are finally catching up. Silks are among the toughest materials known, stronger and less brittle, pound for pound, than steel. Now scientists at MIT have unraveled some of their deepest secrets in research that could lead the way to the creation of synthetic materials that duplicate, or even exceed, the extraordinary properties of natural silk…”
Psychopaths Keep Their Eyes on the Prize – “Whether it involves gambling away one’s life savings or committing one murder after another, a psychopath inevitably leaves the rest of us wondering: What was going on in his head? Now researchers report that part of the answer may be hypersensitivity to rewards, which may create a pathological drive for money, sex, and status…”
Systems engineer deemed best job in America
– “The site first looked at more than 7,000 jobs. It then poured its eyes over numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. It selected jobs that would grow by 10 percent or more in the next decade, according to these statistics. Oh, and it had to be a job that required at least a bachelor’s degree…”
Search on for Death Star that throws out deadly comets – “Nasa scientists are searching for an invisible ‘Death Star’ that circles the Sun, which catapults potentially catastrophic comets at the Earth….”
Star on course to meet Solar system identified – “Movement of an orange dwarf star with a mass of about half that of the Sun will eventually bring it right to the solar system, stellar data analysis indicates…”
Apple Details iPad’s Battery Replacement Plan – “It’s no secret that the Cupertino-based developer has inched the totality of its product lines toward non-replaceable batteries. So what happens, then, when your iPhone or Macbook Pro battery loses its ability to hold much of a charge? What about the iPad? Will you have to run back to your local Apple store to pick up a replacement?”
Systems engineer deemed best job in America
– “If you’re a systems engineer who wonders whether you’ve chosen the right profession, I bring you good news. Please take a deep breath, stand up, and be prepared to leap so high, you will touch the sky. Then you will, perhaps, want to touch the Skyy. For a survey has declared that systems engineer is the best job in America…”
How Your Twitter Account Could Land You in Jail – “Tehran and Pittsburgh were not the first time social networking and mass texts were used to support a large-scale protest: At the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City, thousands of protesters were organized by a mass-messaging program called TXTmob (pdf). This proved the new tools’ usefulness to both activists and police, and they adjusted their strategies accordingly. TXTmob is even credited as one of the programs that inspired Twitter’s inventors…”
Twitter is watching you… New technology tells the world where you’re tweeting from – “Twitter already reveals to the rest of the world what you’re doing and what you’re thinking, and now the microblogging site can let everyone know where you are as well…”
Solar-Powered iPhone Battery Case: Apple Approves – “In sunlight, the case can grab enough juice in a two-hours for 30 minutes talk time on 3G and an hour on 2G. That’s enough to make this case useful on its own, especially as outdoors is exactly the place you can’t plug in a charger. The case also has a hole for hooking onto a carabiner and hanging from a backpack — a bad idea in the city, but out in the wilderness and away from pickpockets it is ideal…”
The impossible computer is theoretically possible – “A computer that works faster than the speed of light has been proposed by Viennese physicists Karl Svozil and Volkmar Putz. They call the theoretical result a superluminal computer. The principle at use is called quantum entanglement, the linking of objects’ quantum states so one can’t be described without the other….”
iPad Pre-Orders: For Idiots Only – “Apple started taking early orders yesterday for its tablet, even though no one’s really sure what they’re buying…”
The amazing true story of Zeitoun – “Abdulrahman Zeitoun is the real-life hero of Dave Eggers’s new book. In the aftermath of hurricane Katrina he paddled from house to house in a canoe, offering help to his neighbours. For his trouble, he was arrested as a suspected terrorist…”
Family of four gets their genomes sequenced – “As if all of this data wasn’t enough, the family itself had been chosen because both children (and neither parent) suffers from two genetic diseases: Miller syndrome and primary ciliary dyskinesia. The former has not had a gene definitively associated with it; the latter has had a number. The simplest explanation of this would be a single recessive mutation, with the parents heterozygous, and the offspring homozygous. Since the diseases are rare, the authors excluded any base differences that have been previously identified as common within the human population. Only a single gene fit this pattern when identical mutations were considered. But it’s possible for different mutations in the same gene to cause a single phenotype, with each parent carrying a distinct base change. Three additional genes matched this pattern…”
Animal Suicide Sheds Light on Human Behavior – “Suicide is not just a human behavior — and studying it can help us understand human suicide…”
Apple’s Spat With Google Is Getting Personal – “Google and Apple had worked together to bring Google’s search and mapping services to the iPhone, the executives told the audience, and Mr. Schmidt joked that the collaboration was so close that the two men should simply merge their companies and call them “AppleGoo.” “
Seven Improved Security Features in Windows 7 – “While no operating system is perfect, Microsoft appears to have made significant security improvements with the release of Windows 7. This slideshow complements a post in Sue Marquette Poremba’s blog about the seven features she thinks will have the most impact on security in the newest version of Windows…”
Top 10 Google Apps Marketplace Apps – “Google’s Apps suite for domain owners and businesses has finally received some star treatment with the launch of the Apps Marketplace. Which Google-friendly apps are free, worth the cost, and entirely useful? These 10 are definitely worth a look…”
Google’s stated list of competitors grows from two to 10 – ” Google sees an Internet far more crowded with competitors than just a year ago. At least, that’s what the company is telling government regulators…”
Computers One Step Closer To Reading Your Mind – “Machines that decode your thoughts aren’t limited to the realm of science fiction anymore. A computer program that analyzes brain scans was able to tell which of three short films people were thinking about, according to a study in the journal Current Biology…”
Traces of the past: computer algorithm ‘reads’ memories – “Computer programs can predict which of three short films a person is thinking about, just by looking at their brain activity…”
Light Bulbs Burn Out Quickly – “Summary: Light bulbs can flicker or burn out long before they are supposed to. The failure is not in the wiring and it can almost always be traced to an operator-error problem…”
Fingerprinting Computer Chips – “A company that relies on atomic-level flaws in computer chips to tell one chip from another says that its circuits could help fight counterfeiting in anything from passports to handbags. Verayo, an MIT spinoff based in San Jose, CA, says the ID tags should be more secure and relatively cheap to make…”
How Real are the Defects in Toyota’s Cars? – “One of the great mysteries of the Toyota debacle is why Toyota ignored the complaints for so long. Or at least it’s a mystery to reporters on cable news, abetted by consumer advocates who were all too happy to imply that Toyota didn’t care how many people it killed as long as they made a profit…”
Laptops could be key to an earthquake early-warning system – “Every personal computer would double as a seismic monitor. That MacBook at the coffee house, the one used by the guy pounding out a screenplay? Working to detect ground tremors while its user sips a latte. The aging PC gathering dust in the guest room? Ready to catch the next quake…”
Toyota discounts boost sales, US mulls ‘black box’ – ” Toyota’s U.S. sales surged by nearly 50 percent in the first eight days of March compared with the year-ago period due to zero-percent financing offers and other incentives, industry tracking service Edmunds.com and dealers said on Thursday. Edmunds, which analyzes U.S. auto sales trends, also estimated that Toyota’s U.S. retail market share in early March had jumped to 16.8 percent, up sharply from 12.8 percent a month earlier when safety problems had sent sales tumbling…”
Why no one cares about privacy anymore – “Norms are changing, with confidentiality giving way to openness. Participating in YouTube, Loopt, FriendFeed, Flickr, and other elements of modern digital society means giving up some privacy, yet millions of people are willing to make that trade-off every day. Of people with an online profile, nearly 40 percent have disabled privacy settings so anyone may view it, according to a Pew Internet survey released a year ago. The percentage is probably higher today…”
Simon’s £1m egomobile: High maintenance, a few miles on the clock… but which does he love more – his wheels or his woman? – “For those who have never driven one, the Bugatti Veyron – the fastest, most powerful and, at £1million, costliest production car ever made – must seem obscene. The top speed it has clocked in a test drive by a racing driver is 253mph – a third of the speed of sound and 240mph more than the average speed on the traffic-choked streets of Los Angeles. This is clearly no deterrent to Simon Cowell, who was pictured this week driving his pride and joy around the world’s entertainment capital…”
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