From the toilet to you car. How? Here's how 08/06/2010
 Well, maybe the title says too much..,.or too little. VW has released a car that is powered by methane gas. If you have no idea what methane has to do with toilets, well, it's a gas that can be obtained from human waste (or poo). Here are pictures and a video courtesy of BBC PICS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/bristol/hi/people_and_places/nature/newsid_8885000/8885314.stm VIDEO: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-10884539 Add Comment A new definition of Touch 07/05/2010
 When Aldous Huxley described the 'Feelies' of his 1930s satire Brave New World he envisaged a world in which touch would be exploited by the technology of the future as much as vision. How wrong he was.
Of all the senses, touch as been somewhat neglected as a human means of interacting with machines. Haptics - which could lead to people interacting with virtual objects using a sense of touch or feel - means to change all that. Labs around the world are now racing to close the gap while the first commercial applications are hitting the market. For the first time people will be actually be able to have a virtual feel of some of the images that are placed before them. Keeping in touchA leading advocate of haptics is Russian scientist Doctor Ivan Poupyrev, now a senior researcher at Disney Research Labs in Pittsburgh. He claims this area is going to be "huge", particularly for hand held devices. "We don't do enough with touch," said Dr Poupyrev. "The basic goal of the technology we are developing at Disney is to create a perception of texture - to let people 'feel' objects on screen by stroking them with their fingers. "We do this by applying a high voltage to a transparent electrode on the glass plate - in this case people will feel a texture on the glass. By varying the frequency and amplitude of the signal we can create different sensations." Finland: The right to have broadband 07/01/2010
 Finland has become the first country in the world to make broadband a legal right for every citizen. From 1 July every Finn will have the right to access to a 1Mbps (megabit per second) broadband connection. Finland has vowed to connect everyone to a 100Mbps connection by 2015. In the UK the government has promised a minimum connection of at least 2Mbps to all homes by 2012 but has stopped short of enshrining this as a right in law. The Finnish deal means that from 1 July all telecommunications companies will be obliged to provide all residents with broadband lines that can run at a minimum 1Mbps speed. Broadband commitmentSpeaking to the BBC, Finland's communication minister Suvi Linden explained the thinking behind the legislation: "We considered the role of the internet in Finns everyday life. Internet services are no longer just for entertainment. Finland has worked hard to develop an information society and a couple of years ago we realised not everyone had access," she said. It is believed up to 96% of the population are already online and that only about 4,000 homes still need connecting to comply with the law. In the UK internet penetration stands at 73%. The British government has agreed to provide everyone with a minimum 2Mbps broadband connection by 2012 but it is a commitment rather than a legally binding ruling. "The UK has a universal service obligation which means virtually all communities will have broadband," said a spokesman for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Making broadband a legal right could have implications for countries that plan tough action on illegal file-sharing. Both the UK and France have said they may cut off or limit the internet connections of people who persistently download music or films for free. The Finnish government has adopted a more gentle approach. "We will have a policy where operators will send letters to illegal file-sharers but we are not planning on cutting off access," said Ms Linden. A poll conducted for the BBC World Service earlier this year found that almost four in five people around the world believed that access to the internet is a fundamental right. Iphone 4 revealed 06/08/2010
 Apple's next iPhone has finally been re-revealed. It's called iPhone 4 and it's just about everything we'd expected. Here are the best bits of news and information—aside from Steve Jobs' WWDC meltdown:
For those of you counting down to the robot uprising, you may be interested in the latest news from engineers at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. They've createdautonomous robots that randomly dock with each other. The little hexagonal modules that make up the flying drone are completely self-sufficient. In the context of a robot army, that means the airborne robot could be indestructible. Because the magnetically connected ‘bots easily break away from each other, they could blow apart under attack, and then reassemble themselves on the ground, good as new. For now, Raymond Oung, one of the lead researchers, envisions the self-controlled ‘bots more as a teaching tool for describing control systems than a tool of war. Once the modules meet up on the ground, the way they propel themselves into the air and stay there is is a dynamic demonstration of how a servo system works. Communicating via infrared sensors – like the kind in your TV remote – the ‘bots quickly adapt to the changing conditions of flight. Each module has its own attitude sensor, and broadcasts its location to others in the collective. That way, if the aircraft starts tilting towards the right, the modules on the right side generate more thrust to compensate. Add a dash of autonomous walking robots to these shape-shifting flyers, and you've almost got an airborne T-1000. Okay, okay, they're not quite there yet. So far, the Swiss robotics team has only flown four of the self-assembling ‘bots as one. But Raymond Oung, one of the lead researchers, says there's virtually "no upper limit on the number of modules" you could fly. By the end of the summer, they hope to demonstrate a swarm of twelve. After that, who knows. It's only a matter of time…  The moment we've all been waiting for...well, probably not all, but google chrome users on Mac and Linux. The stable version is finally out, and it comes with the goodness of google chrome as expected. I recently fired up my linux machine and installed the new version, there's no much graphical change but then i recently installed "chromium browser" from the ubuntu repos, turns out this is an older version and it is not supported by the google chromium team. If u want to know more about the differences, check here . So anyways, i decided to go with google-chrome. You can install it by visiting this link  Adobe unveils Flash for smartphones 05/21/2010
 One of the most common technologies for watching video on a computer is now available on smartphones. Flash software is used to deliver around 75% of online video and is the key technology that drives websites such as YouTube. Until now, many smartphones and netbooks have used a "light" version of the program, because of the limited processing power of the devices. The software is intended to work as well on a smartphone as a desktop PC. The latest version of Flash was unveiled at Google's "I/O" developer conference in San Francisco. Version 10.1 of Flash has been optimised to work on mobiles. Google was the first maker of a mobile operating system to declare that the technology will work on handsets running its Android software. However, only handsets running the latest version of Android, version 2.2, will be able to use Flash. Android is available on phones from a range of manufacturers, including Motorola, HTC and Samsung. "It turns out on the internet, people use Flash. And part of being open means being inclusive, rather than exclusive," said Vic Gundotra vice-president of engineering for Google. Adobe hopes that Flash 10.1 will soon be available on other mobile platforms such as BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Symbian. It has given no specific dates for when it will be available on these operating systems. It said it had worked hard to ensure that Flash on a mobile did not suck up battery power too quickly. Flash will still not be available on Apple's popular iPhone, which uses a proprietary Apple operating system. Steve Jobs, Apple's boss, has previously said that Flash had "one of the worst security records in 2009", "has not performed well on mobile devices", and "is the number one reason that Macs crash". In a reference to Apple's resistance to Flash on the iPhone, Mr Gundotra said: "A special thank you to Adobe for their willingness to work with us and engage with us ... it's much nicer than just saying no."  In a bid to find out how a butterfly takes to the air, researchers have built their own artificial version. They have created a model swallowtail butterfly that can fly just like the real thing. Swallowtails have large, slow-beating wings that means they fly unlike other butterflies. Despite these limitations, the model insect proves that swallowtails still achieve forward flight with simple flapping motions, say the researchers. Details of the artificial butterfly are presented in the journal Bioinspiration & Biomimetics, published by the Institute of Physics. more here Photocopy machines can be a security risk 05/19/2010
A few days ago i came across this article about photocopy machines made between the year 2002 to present that they actually store files in their hard disks. Apparently every time someone makes a scan or a digital copy a file is stored and most times not deleted. Imagine if one of these machines from a corporate company falls in the hands of a criminal. Companies have been warned to erase the drive before reselling but sadly it is not done. Here's a video on the subject:  The largest study to date on links between mobile phone use and certain types of brain cancer has proved inconclusive, researchers say.
The results indicate a possible health risk from heavy mobile phone use, said the World Health Organization (WHO), which conducted the study. But it said further research was needed for more conclusive answers. The 10-year study of 13,000 people has been criticised because mobile phone companies provided 25% of the funding. "The study doesn't reveal an increased risk, but we can't conclude that there is no risk because there are enough findings that suggest a possible risk," the study's chief author, Elisabeth Cardis, told AFP news agency. | AuthorName: Ezekiel     
 
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